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Progression of Belief
This will specifically address the situation in Western
Culture, but applies by pattern to all cultures.
Speaking of any culture, the beliefs of the culture evolve.
More than just change, cultural beliefs grow and develop as new
knowledge and wisdom is added. The science of this is called
History of Conciousness.
While the development of a cultural belief system is
regulated partly by what knowledge is available, this may not
tell the whole story. The cultural belief system is also
regulated by the willingness of the society to accept new ideas
and knowledge. That in turn may be infleunced greatly by external
events.
What all that is to say is that cultural belief systems may
be adaptive enough that they usually are able to respond quickly
to the outside environment and so at any time are probably well
adapted to the environment that exists. While Western Culture has
progressed along fairly recognizable lines, was the change in
cultural belief limited by knowledge or environment?
In the context of social morality or religion, this then
offers an interesting observation. The cooperative aspects of
Christian morality have served Western Culture excellently and
seem to work great for most situations in this environment. Since
long before the time of Jesus, the cooperative ideals of
Christianity existed alongside the established religious
moralities such as the Jews. Acceptence of these beliefs
accelerated with Jesus, but still developed rather slowly.
Now view this from the other end of the time line.
It seems clear that in most natural tribal human cultures,
warfare is pretty common, seemingly as a method of population
control. This is an aspect of their social morality and works
pretty well in that environment when dealing with "others". It
does not define their cooperative interaction with other members
of their own tribe or family, which is interesting.
Move forward to when human ecology changed us to farmers and
herders.
Early farmers were timid like mice. Because of this, their
social morality, historically, has not been dominant. Again, this
is in the context of how they deal with "others" and says little
about interaction within the tribe or family. In any case though,
intertribal warfare was not a large aspect of their ecology.
Population tended to be regulated by starvation and disease in
that environment.
Early pastoralists were in an environment where the social
morality included raiding the flocks of other tribes. They still
had intertribal warfare, though it was signifigantly different
from the earlier tribal warfare. It was not directly used for
population control. Population was limited by other factors.
Apparently, the appropriate social morality is that outlined in
the old testement, "an eye for an eye". The assumption in this
hypothesis is that this was an excellent adaptation in this
environment. It is not that this was less developed than social
moralities developed later on, it was what was needed then. We
have some historical idea of what the moral system within the
pastoralist families and tribe, was. It became based on laws,
especially religious laws. This is when moral systems started to
become codified laws within a religion..
With the development of civil societies, came the niche of
the warrior. Just as it was pastoralist that became the first
wariors, the aggressive social morality of the pastoralists
became the first morality of the warrior. This was a new niche
and as the society and warriors developed, so did the social
morality the warrior. History records a fairly good description
of the various moralities used within the tribes and family. The
warriors did have to develop highly developed organizational and
cooperative skills. Again, it is assumed in this hypothis that
these moral systems were well adapted to survival in this
environment. Consideration of the moralities described in this
developmental sequence suggest that this is so.
Now look at this as the use of Christian morality increases
through history. The Zoroastans practiced many of the tenents of
Christianity 1000 years before the birth of Jesus, but
Christianity did not start to flourish for a long time. Was it
that the environment was not right for it? It has already been
stated that Christian morality facilitated the cooperative
aspects leading to the Renaissance and the industrial revolution.
Political forms like democracy, came from the warriors. So what
was the change in the environment that made Christian morality
appropriate? The development of cooperative systems like politics
and contracts allowed effective enough cooperation that the
overall benifits of increased social cooperation could be
realized.
Men sent out to find answers.
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