The DNA of an American Demi-God

“You could never convince a group of Chimpanzees to attack the neighboring group by promising them that if they die, then they would be dying for the great Chimpanzee God or the great Chimpanzee Nation, then after they die, they will go to Chimpanzee heaven and there receive lots of bananas and virgin Chimpanzees”.

This amusing, but pointedly revealing quote comes curtesy of Yuval Noah Harari, recorded while being interviewed on Sam Harris’ “Making Sense” podcast (Reality and the Imagination – March 2017). Context is everything, of course, and at this point in the interview, Yuval was explaining our all-to-human susceptibility to readily commit ourselves to what he termed “fictions” or stories, which likely started out as rudimentary concepts at first. In his book “Sapiens”, Harari makes a case that Homo sapiens only began to truly flourish once we eliminated the competition, meaning the other proto-human lines we shared the planet with….at least for a time. According to Harari, the archeological evidence suggests that once Homo sapiens  crossed paths with our various evolutionary cousins, their lines soon tapped out of the match and out of the fossil record. There were a handful of others that we know of, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo rudolfensis, and Homo soloensis.

The question, of course, is how Sapien’s managed to do that? Physically, each would have had fairly similar physical characteristics and capabilities, perhaps one could run faster, another stronger, but it seems reasonable to believe that something else contributed to their elimination from the scene. Yuval’s hypothesis is that at some point we, Homo sapiens, learned to understand concepts and then learned how to communicate those concepts to each other. A rudimentary language would have emerged that allowed thoughts to travel, so as to coordinate intentions. In due course, a new method of thinking and acting as a collective, as one mind (flag that), came to dominated those who could not organize in such a way. In other words, we learned to communicate plans of action as a group endeavor, and therefore could coordinate to maximum effect, while groups that acted individually, or at least had not yet developed an effective language, were at an existential disadvantage. The ability for an ‘individual’ to believe in a group ‘fiction’, then to act in accord with it, is a distinctly human piece of code, which is precisely the point of Harari’s amusing quote.

So, let’s run the tape and see where this new method of spreading thoughts through a few hundred thousand years of cultural and psychological development leads. If we do, we will soon bump into its logical consequence, the creation of myth, with is the natural conclusion of groupthink, writ large. The key to a Myth’s pervasiveness throughout all human cultures can be seen in how they are able to economize a given language by drawing on latent emotional precepts buried within a compelling storyline, while also suggesting symbolic meanings, and double-entendres embedded within the details of the story on offer; a two-for-one sale, you might say.

As you could imagine, mythic stories became an indispensable tool to explain the inexplicable. How else could the mysteries of nature be considered when our distant ancestors witnessed lightning bolts belching from the sky, rolling thunderstorms that shook the earth, volcanos spitting out lava, droughts, floods, and diseases that killed indiscriminately, all produced by invisible forces. Our first theologians were shamans consulting the moon and stars, or the entrails of small fury animals for guidance, all to tease out explanations to phenomena they could not fathom. Eventually, as those imaginary explanations grew ever more expansive, a type of religious sentiment began to appear that included group virtues and  ideals, as well as social and moral expectations with deities to worship and doctrines to adhere to. And because we are so susceptible to a good story, after all, myths…. or ‘fictions’, to stay with Harari’s original definition, quickly became the tool of choice for leaders wishing to sculpt group cohesion and to bend individual minds to act (and believe) as one.

This, we all know of course, at least in principle, but even as we acknowledge a myth’s ability to cultivate a given culture, an unintended consequence is the tribalism it can often foster, which is a pejorative catchphrase these days, but it certainly isn’t a modern invention, not by any means. As far back into the past as you wish to look, rival dogmas of tribe, nation, or religion have argued with, fought against, and even butchered one another in the name of their competing fictions.

Groups can feel, but they cannot think.

Still, the fruits born from our early ancestors clearly manifests itself in our pre-frontal cortex that we enjoy today, giving us, among many other benefits, the ability to think conceptually, to imagine scenarios, and recognize patterns of thought and behavior. This early superpower necessarily converged with our innate need for social approval, as well as our pathological need to live with a meaningful purpose. As a result, religious sentiments have been able to exploit these psychological tripwires to mode entire societies. Without an engaging myth, a given society would never develop the cohesion necessary to survive the evolutionary selection process.

But here’s the rub, that collection of traits, our innate desire to belong to a group and live with a sense of purpose and meaning, together will our credulity before a compelling story, represents a significant bug in our operating code. When all those variables are mixed together within an impassioned storyline, it can create quite an intoxicating brew, which in turn makes us highly susceptible to indoctrination. I’ll set aside the easy conformity of children, who seldom have any choice in the matter, but even adults can fall prey to a given ‘fiction’ if all the right psychological buttons are pushed. As Nietzsche pointedly suggested, our ‘herding tendency’ is the blind spot of our species.

It is precisely our susceptibility to conform, to bend a knee to a given fiction, even fictions that should shock us with their absurdities, that must be acknowledged and confronted, because our failure to reject dubious beliefs can have real consequences. To make that point a bit more explicit, just consider the following ‘fictions’ that we, primates that we are, have adopted and practiced at one time or another in our past, each of which clearly demonstrates the irrationality of a mind consumed by a story.

Take the practice of “Sati” or “Suttee”, which for many centuries was the practice of Hindu widows sacrificing themselves by immolation atop their husbands funeral pyre to be burned alive. This was performed, it was ‘believed’, so that the husband, not the wife, could enjoy a proper afterlife. Or mull over the Aztecs, who ‘believed’ it necessary for priests to carve out the heart of their still living human sacrifices to appease the Sun God so that he would return the following day. Or consider the Attis cult from ancient Greece, which should make every man squirm. As the myth goes, Attis was a mortal who was punished with madness by the God Cybele for rejecting her advances, which led him to cut off his own testicles, then died shortly thereafter. Unsurprisingly, as these things go, Cybele had a change of heart and convinced Zeus to resurrect Attis. And from this bizarre ‘fiction’, the Attis priests ‘believed’, with evident sublime conviction, that if they castrated themselves, which they often did during public festivals, they could secure their own resurrections.

Don’t be shocked. We have a deep history with pious absurdities. Hell, just consider the barbaric tortures and auto-da-fe’s (burning at the stake) performed by Medieval Inquisitors who were convinced they were doing God’s will, or ancient Jews who were so committed to Yahweh’s laws that they stoned to death (try imagining what that entails) anyone caught performing labor, such as collecting firewood, on the sabbath, or that every male must take a knife to slice off their foreskin or to follow his instructions for selling their daughters into sexual slavery. These are clearly ridiculous beliefs to entertain, let alone hold dear, yet in presenting them, my intent is not to be hyperbolic, but rather to point out the ridiculous degrees of credulity that a believing mind can find itself. And if you find yourself tempted to believe that kind of foolishness is well behind us, that we are far too educated and rational in our modern world to fall for such ideas, because after all, we have traveled to the moon, split the atom, and sequenced our genome, yet you would be mistaken. Credulity runs deep in our species.

My point there is not to poke fun at all the crazy shit we have come to believe over the millennia, but rather to the epistemology we failed to cultivate that allows them a seat at the table in the first place. In a nutshell, epistemology is the investigation of knowledge and what distinguishes ‘justified belief’ from ‘subjective opinion’. In other words, how do we ‘know’ what we think we know. What methodology are we employing to fact check and discern the evidence and its reliability? How much due diligence are we demanding from ourselves to investigate spurious assertions? Do we balance the evidence against the weight of its probability? This must be an ever-present feature of our thought process, our master value before committing ourselves to any idea. And if not, then we will no doubt find ourselves believing in all manner of other downstream fictions.

For example, if someone truly believes in the virgin birth, or the resurrection of the dead, just to stay in the lane of Christianity, then what is there to stop them from believing that a star moved across the sky and hovered over a house, or that ‘faith’ allowed Peter to defy the law of gravity, or that Paul cured a genetic disability by a word command, or that Peter’s shadow cured the sick. If someone buys into all of that, then what epistemology is left in place to stop the belief that ghosts can haunt houses, or that the position of Jupiter and Saturn in the solar system can predict how my day will go tomorrow, or that a long dead Saint can help find my lost car keys or even cure constipation. It is clearly evident to me that a correlation exists between accepting a few core religious fictions, and the multitudes of smaller ones that will come along for an easy ride. All that is required is a comfort for squishy thinking.

But perhaps I’m setting the expectations too high, given our primate ancestry, so let me offer an amusing quote from Robert Conner to make the point more artfully than I’m able to.

“Those who understand a bit of evolution know the human brain is a patchwork of rather haphazard adaptations, not properly wired to process either logic or probability, and as such is not designed to clearly distinguish between rational discourse and gibberish. Our nearest living relatives are chimps, but those who are unaware of the implications of our family tree (no pun intended) are also blissfully unaware they are producing a wonderfully modulated string of monkey sounds they mistake for revelations of deep mysteries.”

With that quote, I want to pause for a moment in order to properly frame the issue that is in plain sight; that our easy gullibility to outrageous myths will have downstream consequences, which can clearly be seen in how many Iron Age superstitions have survived fully intact into our modern scientific world, which apparently is part of the American DNA. It should be clear to anyone following the plot that the door “faith” cracks open, allows more pernicious beliefs to join their company. It’s our failure to adopt an effective methodology, in other words to call bullshit on obvious foolishness that will eventually lead to trouble…..and that trouble goes by the name of propaganda.

I have always felt that propaganda is the short-hand version (the bastard-child, if you will allow me) of myth because both emerge from the same psychological seed. Both spring from a narrative that draws on latent emotional precepts, and both encourage and foster a sense of cohesion, brotherhood, and common purpose. The difference between the two is that mythology is by definition passive, and implicit, while propaganda’s aim is to convert, explicitly. Of course, the hidden trap we face with propaganda is that it’s far too easy to be manipulated by the ideologs writing the script. And this is THE key point to keep in mind because we are so prone to captivation that we can unwillingly get swept along by a story without questioning its validity, intentions, or consequences.

Generally speaking, believers believe stories, and propagandist well understand this bug in our psychology. First comes a seductive narrative, then a “Pied Piper”, either a theologian, politician, or perhaps a podcaster or even a news anchor, will seek to explain and justify the narrative in a way that plays into those emotional precepts mentioned earlier, all in order to sculpt the individual into a collective paridyme. Once there, handpicked “proofs” of the narrative are offered to confirm the bias that had just been created. Belief in the story then becomes its own confirmation. This is the ‘Kool-Aid’ propaganda offers.

In my opinion, a clear example of the phenomenon can be seen in the grab bag of positions (beliefs) offered up by Fox News. For instance, if someone were to tell me they watch Fox News religiously, and then mentioned their position on abortion, for example, why would I then be able to predict their stance on taxes? Or their stance on Climate Change, or Affirmative Action, or Gun Legislation, or Immigration, or even LGBTQ?  What is the correlation between them if not the full narrative being packaged and sold by the Fox News?  They have conditioned their audience by systematically peddling a Nation loving, Flag waving, God fearing, Grandma and Apple Pie collection of political positions with such fawning piety and patriotism that to agree with just one of their precepts will provide a comfortable seat for the others. I posted an essay recently titled “Defiance”, that mentions this very issue, which was inspired by a song from Rage Against the Machine titled, “Bullet in Your Head”, a phrase that precisely captures what propaganda accomplishes. For those keeping score, the dystopian consequence of their marketing model has provided, either implicitly, or explicitly, a working model for anyone wanting to manipulate the democratic process by showing just how easily an entire voting bloc can be manufactured and manipulated into thinking and acting in lockstep.

And nothing exemplifies all of these elements coming together with more absurdity than what we see with the Cult of Trump.

And it is a cult, so let’s not dance around that Elephant, because all the necessary markers are visible in plain view. The rabid devotion, the unquestioned loyalty, the willingness to sacrifice self-interest for the benefit of the dear leader, the dogmatic embrace of symbolism, i.e. flags and slogans, the virulent contempt of opposing views, the psychological drug of group validation…. I could go on and on. But the two most crucial ingredients for Trump’s demi-god status among his core believers are precisely what you would expect from an American populace, God and Country. Both of which have been served up to his followers with such dogmatic intensity that their fawning worship of him has all the characteristics of a fetish.

How else can we explain why 80% of white Evangelical Christians voted him. A man so compromised by immorality that he entered the Presidency after paying off a lawsuit from a porn star. A man who bragged, on tape, that he enjoyed grabbing Miss America contestants by their “p***y” (yes, I’m quoting him directly) while walking through their dressing rooms, who forcibly separated young immigrant children from their parents as a matter of policy. A man who openly advocated torture, who is a self-acknowledged “White Nationalist” (i.e. racist) and misogynist. And to ‘trump’ them all, a man who attempted a coordinated, violent coup to overturn an election that he lost, which would have destroyed our democracy, but yet……. but yet, still retains the allegiance of that flag waving, cross bearing, “God, Country and Guns” voting bloc.

How does that make any sense?

To answer that, I want to bring Robert Conner back into the fray because I have found him to have such a unique flair for cutting to the chase. It also dovetails perfectly with the riddle this note attempts to address…..how could this happen? (Emphasis is mine).

“First, imagine–if you can (but you can’t) a novelist possessed of such a twisted, perverse. and cynical imagination that he wrote a book (or series of books) detailing what has actually happened in the past six years in American politics, novels spanning the time from the farcical debates leading up to Trump’s election to the aftermath of the murderous assault on the nation’s capital. Now imagine if you can (but you can’t), that a man who lied as a matter of course multiple times per day, a man that turned the US government into a multi-million dollar nepotistic grift machine, a man who couldn’t make money off casinos (!), couldn’t make a profit off vodka (!!), a thrice-married, self-confessed voyeur, a man who openly, and publicly incited treason, yet became the idol of the “values voting” Religious Right………Are you befuddled? At a complete loss? Are you flummoxed, out to sea with no land in sight, disoriented, wondering what galaxy you’ve landed in?”

“What might possibly prepare a sizable segment of the American populace to embrace such a figure? …. I won’t abuse your patience any further because you can already see where I’m going with this, n’est-ce pas? Cutting to the chase, religious belief conditions people to believe literally anything.……Believe what your retinas recorded. Who flocked (so to speak) to the Offal Office to lay hands upon the Second Cyrus? What execrable collection of lying, grifting, obsequious opportunist lickspittles would stoop to such a thing? I’m asking rhetorically of course.“