SO FOR THE LAST FEW THOUSAND YEARS we served the ape-masters in various hierarchical, ape-like cultures: Jericho, Ur, Babylon, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Israel, Rome, and Medieval Europe, to name a few familiar to those of us in the west.
Each of these cultures used the same techniques to enforce an ape-like hierarchy on their citizens:
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Economic dependence,
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Violence,
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Religious control of the world-view and morality of the culture, and
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Constant warfare to ensure fear and loyalty.
But humans are not apes, and we never stopped undermining and struggling against the system.
If you take a serious look at just one literary tradition which spans a good portion of this period—the Christian Bible (which carries us a bit further forward in history than the Hebrew Scriptures alone)—you will find, time and time again, that government propaganda sits side by side with the view of the masses and a critique of the system.
We are told that God ordained the kings of Israel, but we are also told that God warned Israel against having a king at all.
We are told of the need for ritual sacrifice, to sustain the priestly system, and then we are told that true sacrifice is seeing to the needs of the poor.
We are told that the top of the hierarchy belongs to the king, because he is the ordained son of God, and then we are told that all humans are sons and daughters of God.
At every turn the two worldviews—the democracy and freedom of the humans, and the hierarchy and slavery of the apes—struggled for control of the culture.
For a brief moment, about 2,000 years ago, it seemed there was a chance to throw off the ape-culture entirely.
A small Jewish sect, named after the oil with which the ancient kings had been anointed, attempted to establish a peaceful counterpoint to the culture of the apes.
They believed in sharing all things, in living without law, in trust.
They believed in ignoring differences of class.
They were socialists at heart.
They came very close to the culture of our ancient ancestors.
They presented such a threat to the ape-state that they were branded with that most horrible of labels—they were called atheists, for not believing in the gods of Rome.
Had they managed to continue this experiment they might well have taken the world back from the ape-masters.
But alas, they were co-opted: they were taken in hand by the currently dying ape-culture and turned into the new propaganda arm of Rome itself.
They were turned into another state religion, complete with priests and dogmas and threats of supernatural punishment for the masses.
But still the resistance did not die.
It did not die within that church, and it continued to fight within other institutions and cultures.
The next great step forward for humans in the west came a bit later.
There came a time when conditions were just right for the human cause:
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It had partly to do with the enlightenment,
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partly to do with the contact colonists of the New World had with the less ape-like native cultures,
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partly to do with a fortunate turn of politics, and also
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it was rooted in the fight that had been going on all along—in smaller victories:
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the tradition of common law,
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the Magna Carta,
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the Parliament in England.
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When the colonies broke from their English ape-master, instead of setting up a completely hierarchical system of their own they attempted to set up a democracy.
We're getting much closer to the events we set out to put into context.
We have just about 200 years to go...
Next: A Brief Recap...
