Who Were the Gods? Do You Wanna Be A Bird?

It was a tough homework assignment by Moraline: Who were the Gods? Because he wasn't asking a straight-forward question, and he knew it.

No, the question of "Who were the Gods for the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Hindus," is one thing.

Then, the question of "Who were the gods for the Inuit?"

Well, that was the trick question.

My guess is that Moraline was challenging the reader to re-arrange his vantage point. The Inuit had no gods. That term, "gods," isn't the word to use. No, better use "spirit," as does Carpenter.

If this is true, did Moraline ask the question to point out that the Inuit in fact had no gods? That the very structure and point of reference of "gods" had no relevance or meaning to the Inuit?

If so, Moraline's work points at a huge divide in human experience: those that had helping and hurting spirits, personal, changing things that were part of life and shared and understood as a community, something normal, sane, and adaptive; and then something bifurcating, estranging, and alienating: that of the omniscient, omnipotent, beyond time and space.

Moraline's initial reaction to my extra-terrestrial theory was: "Look, you don't even need to get there to get there." And that's true if you can point to helicopters in the Amazon today. We're there right now, is his point.

But I am going to be difficult and say: Yeah man, but what about, say, 8,000 years ago?

What's my point here? You have tales that Heidegger calls "orginary," coming out of ancient Ireland and Greece. Far-fetched, crazy-assed shit. Far before Homer, and across more than a few ancient cultures. You have a dark ages that lasted 2,000 years before Homer and Hesiod. It happened after a period of very advanced civilization on Earth (Sumerian, in particular). It happened after the Greeks already reached a level of state building. What followed afterwards was a loss of the ancient Greek language. Homer and Hesiod did not understand the Greek that had occurred 2,000 years before their time. But the Greek that was 2,000 years before their time was more complex.

That means that so much time had gone by in Greece that by the time Homer and Hesiod were literate, their ancestors were mythical and nearly unintelligible to them. Yet their ancestors had huge civilizations, huge governments, huge surpluses.2,000 years of primitive darkness had passed in the interim.

Hesiod comes out of nowhere and writes about basic ways human can survive. He says he hates the sea, and says how to gain independence by farming and storing. He warns of government and disputes.

This is some crazy talk of gods. It's a phenomenology of man's reaction to a radically different other, what I think is ancient man's reaction to super-modern technology. I understand the human protest against even paying attention to some high tech visit 8,000 years ago or even further back. Because the phenomenology of the matter would ax most of it to the epoche. You'd still point to the cabin in the wilderness, to the traditional family in the wilderness, and point out, correctly, a fucking space ship, a fucking so-called 'dominant' class, really can be tossed in the trash can with the tossers, with the sitters.

You ever hear a bull frog in the dark? 

Who Were the Gods?

Moraline's contribution to the answer was more significant than he realized. Because he took a phenomenological approach; Husserl would have been happy.

The natural attitude gives a blunt answer that makes impotent and meaningless man. The phenomenological attitude (of which I consider Moraline) liberates man.

There was a dominant class that arrived a long, long time ago. Whether they influenced or created man isn't clear. Hesiod says they were the great race--but he doesn't say they were the great race of men, as they weren't men, but Gods. And this leads one to recognize: the term 'god' means drastically different things.

You have the same story, at the same time, on other parts of Earth. You also have incredible and sudden advances in mathematics, language, 'government,' engineering, etc. Of course, all of this 3000 B.C--India, South America, China, Middle East, Ireland. Yes, the Irish. Once cave men, suddenly building landing strips 5000 years ago. 

It then vanished and reappeared.'It,' what was 'it.' Why did Hesiod's voice, coming from the 'dark ages,' so dark that humans didn't even have crude oil lamps, much less language? Why did an illiterate refugee suddenly write epic poetry? Why was Homer a contemporary of Hesiod? What were these men writing about, how did these men learn to write when the advanced language and culture of the Greeks was decimated? Note that the Greek of Homer and Hesiod was new. Language itself had been dead for 2000 years. How did it somehow come back?

Perhaps what Moraline uncovers is the hidden transcript of the individual. The Inuit, for example. They either were unlucky to wander to such a cold and hellish place, or for them the independence was worth the cold. My take is that the Inuit were not idiotic, aimless wanderers. They got there and survived there because they did not want what they left. Scott speaks of the hill peoples of Asia, running from legibility.

Independent from what? It doesn't matter. Yes, they (the Inuit) are a community. But not dominated so easily by some force, perhaps what is called a force of legibility.

Yet to understand that the bully might have not been from Earth is something either new or ancient. Hesiod's account of the Gods agrees with the Irish, the Indians, the Hebrews, the Mayans, and Sumerians, the Egyptians, the Chinese. These are systemic tales, these are tales of sophisticated, organized violence. Being and Time suddenly is a clear account of the matter.

Who were the Gods? It depends on who you ask. Is your god your guiding spirit? Or is does your god strike you down with fire? Why is the aquifer of the Dead Sea radioactive?