Civilization #3: The Religious Imagination

Okay, so I want to summarize and review what we have learned so far. So the main message is that for most of human history we have been peaceful, egalitarian and artistic. About 300,000 years ago our species, Homo sapiens, we were born in Africa, and then 50,000 years ago, because of change, we started to spread around the world. Okay, and throughout most of history we have been hunter-gatherers, and we don't know that much about our history, we can only guess, but based on the available archaeological evidence we have, we were for most of the time peaceful, egalitarian and artistic.

Okay, so peaceful does not mean we were not violent. There's lots of evidence that there was in-group conflict, so for example we discovered in burials people with skull fractures. Okay, so there's been violence, but there's been no evidence of organized warfare, that comes much later. Okay, that's the first thing. Second thing is that we were egalitarian, meaning that there was no difference in status and power between men and women, men and women were equal. There was no hierarchy, meaning that there were people who are considered more wealthy than other people. We know because we could not find any evidence of hierarchy, meaning larger houses, meaning groups with privileges.

Now there are individuals who might have had higher status, and we know because they were buried more elaborately than other people, so for example shamans, right? Shamans were their religious leaders, and as such they were accorded higher status than everyone else. Okay, the third thing is artistic. So as we know, they were engaged in cave paintings, they built monuments in order to celebrate and worship their religion, so for them art really was about the expression and celebration of their religion. Okay, so for most of human history we were peaceful, egalitarian and artistic, and we know that today we are not peaceful, we are not egalitarian, we are not that artistic. So what changed?

Next week I'll explain to you what changed. Okay, basically a new group of people called the Yamnaya came into being, and they had a different religion that celebrated warfare, patriarchy and wealth, and eventually spread all around Europe and Asia, and they conquered everyone, and they created a new history of humanity. That's next week. Okay, so I want to explain the evidence for why we think most of human history we were peaceful, egalitarian and artistic. Okay, so something else that we discussed in class is we don't know what their religion was, but we suspect that it was animism and shamanism.

Okay, remember that animism is the belief that we all come from the mother goddess, from one source of life, including trees, animals and humans, so every living being has a soul. Okay, and the other thing is that the soul is permanent, you can never kill it. Okay, the body and the soul are different, so it doesn't really matter if you die because your soul will go somewhere else and maybe come back. Okay, so death was not a big deal. And the third thing is that there's a spirit world or another world which is more real than our world. Okay, our world is just a manifestation, a physical manifestation, of the spirit world, but what matters is the spirit world. And the last thing is that there's an order to the universe, we have a part to play, so for example we can kill animals to feed ourselves, but we must pay tribute to these animals before and after we kill them in order to maintain the harmony of the universe. Okay, so that's what we believe the religion of early humans was everywhere in the world, including in China, including in Europe.

This is Göbekli Tepe, and you can see that this is a T-pillar and it's meant to represent a human, and inside the T-pillar is an animal, so basically the T-pillar represents the manifestation of the animal spirit in us, and we believe that this is a religious festival that they would have before they went hunting.

The evidence for this is that at the site we found a lot of animal bones. Okay, so does that make sense, guys? All right, so again this is all just review.

This religion goes back a long time. Okay, so this is 40,000 years ago, we found this small figurine, okay, it's a very small figurine in a cave in Germany, and this dates back to 40,000 years ago. Okay, so remember 50,000 years ago we started to leave Africa and venture into Europe and around the world. Okay, so this goes back to the beginning, the dawn of humanity. This is a flute, okay, that goes back to the same time. So at the beginning of humanity we were religious, we celebrated our religion through music and through art and through shamanism. Does that make sense, guys? Yes, it's a figurine, it's a doll, okay, so they believe that these dolls have religious qualities, right? Okay, does that make sense? It's like paintings. Okay, so remember, like, they also have these cave paintings where they're celebrating the mother goddess and they're saying the fact that life is a circle: after you kill the animals their soul goes back into the spirit world, and then through proper tribute and worship you can bring them back into this world.

Okay, this is a shaman dressed as an animal.

Okay, so now the question then is, okay, if we cannot go back in time and observe their religion, how do we know what their religion is? And the answer is we have a field of study called anthropology. Okay, anthropology, anthropology is a study of other cultures, and if our theory is right then we should be able to find other cultures that are still alive today that practice this religion, and what we've discovered is that if you go to places in the jungle in South America and in Africa, in Australia, they do practice this religion. Okay, so understanding the religion gives us tremendous insight into the thinking and religion of early humans, and that's what we will do today, okay, to truly understand what early humans thought and how they understood the world. Okay, does that make sense, guys? All right, so the first passage we're going to look at is from a book called The Wayfinders by Wade Davis.

Okay, this is a great book, if you guys ever have a chance please read this book. Okay, it's extremely well written. Wade Davis, he's an anthropologist, Canadian, and this recently came out. Okay, so he spent a lot of time traveling around the world to explore and to understand indigenous peoples, people who are native to the land and they've been there for a long, long time. So this is what he says about a tribe in the Amazon forest. Okay, "In the beginning, before the creation of seasons, before the ancestral mother Romi Kumu, woman shaman, opened her womb, before her blood and breast milk gave rise to rivers and her ribs to the mountain ridges of the world, there was only chaos in the universe. Spirits and demons known as hul preyed on their own kindred, bred without thought, committed incest without consequence, devoured their own young. Romi Kumu responded by destroying the world with fire and floods. Then, just as a mother turns over a warm slab of manioc bread on the griddle, she turned the inundated and charred world upside down, creating a flat and empty template from which life could emerge once again. As woman shaman she then gave birth to a new world: land, water, forest and animals." Okay, so this is what we call a creation myth, and every single civilization, every single people have a creation myth.

So let me ask you this question, okay: why do you need a myth? What's this creation myth doing, what does it explain? Okay, how the world formed, okay, but it does something much more important than that, which is, what, excuse me? Who are we, where we come from? Yes, but there's something, it yes, it explains all that, who we are, where we come from. Okay, that's what all creation myths do. What else is this myth doing which is very important for us, excuse me? Okay, so it's telling us how the universe was formed. Okay, what is in here that's very important and which is important for society to function well? Okay, so the woman shaman is a mother goddess, but what's in this paragraph that's very important in order for society to function? What do you need for society to function? You need rules and laws, right? So what this creation myth is doing, what all creation myths are doing, is explaining to you the legal structure of your society, why you can't do certain things. Okay, so for example you can't commit incest, okay, you can't eat your young people, you can't kill the young people.

Okay, why? Because that's what evil people do. You understand? So what this creation myth is doing is it's explaining the legal system, the rules and why we have them. We have these rules because they're evil, they represent the spirit. Okay, does that make sense, guys?

Okay, the other thing that you will notice about this creation myth is that it's very sophisticated and very elaborate. Okay, so this is a visualization of their understanding of creation, and as you can understand it's very complicated. Okay, does that make sense? Why is it complicated? Why is it complicated? Why is this so complicated? There are reasons for it. Why? Okay, so one thing that you will learn in this class is that what's really important is for you to believe that your religion is correct. Okay, it is just as correct as science. And what makes people believe that your religion is correct? You have to accomplish three things. Okay, the first, grandness, meaning that it is huge. Okay, it's vast, and as you can see this is a vast religion, a vast cosmology of how things started, so grandness is very important. Then you need completeness, and the idea of completeness is that everything that you see in the world must be explained in this cosmology.

Okay, so what this is doing is explaining to you how everything started, okay, where everything comes from, so completeness is important. Last thing is unity, meaning that there's a beginning and there's an end. Okay, as you can see there's a beginning and then there's an end. Okay, so this is something that we will learn in this class as we explore other religions, including Judaism and Christianity, where for religion to be powerful, for it to be authoritative, you need these three ideas: grandness, completeness and unity. Okay, does that make sense? All right, let's keep on going.

All right, so "thus for the people living today in the forest of the Paraná," okay, this is the Amazon forest, "the entire natural world is saturated with meaning and cosmological significance." Okay, they feel that everything around them has life and it's all connected, it's one unified whole. "Every rock and waterfall embodies a story. Plants and animals are but distinct physical manifestations of the same essential spiritual essence." Okay, we all come from the woman shaman, we all come from the mother goddess, therefore we all have the spark of life in us, and therefore we must be respected. Okay, the plants and the animals all must be respected as much as we are respected.

"At the same time, everything is more than it appears, for the visible world is only one level of perception. Behind every tangible form," tangible means concrete, physical, okay, "every plant and animal is a shadow dimension, a place invisible to ordinary people but visible to the shaman." So in other words, our world is a world we can see, but there are other worlds, the shadow dimension, which is more real, which captures our essence, where the soul resides. Okay, that's more real, and it's the job of the shaman to see and communicate with this world. "This is the realm of the H spirits, a world of deified ancestors, where rocks and rivers are alive, plants and animals are human beings, sap and blood the bodily fluids of the primordial river of the anaconda, hidden in cataracts behind the physical veil of waterfalls. In the very center of stones are the great malakas of the H spirit, where everything is beautiful: the shining feathers, the coca, the calabash of tobacco powder, which is in itself the skull and brain of the sun." Okay, now reading this, what can we say about their religion? What can we say about their religion that would be surprising to you?

Okay, first of all, it's very rich, it's very imaginative, they have a vivid imagination. Okay, the other thing is that it's extremely sophisticated and complex. So one major prejudice that we might have about these people is, well, they don't drive cars, they don't have cell phones, therefore they must be stupid, but clearly from our understanding of their religious beliefs, they're actually extremely imaginative and extremely sophisticated. Okay, does that make sense, guys?

All right, so these are their shamans in religious practice. Okay, what can we say about this picture? What stands out about this picture? What surprises you, or what catches your eye about them? What can we say about their beliefs based on this picture? Okay, yeah, so there's a lot of thought put into what they wear, right? Okay, so again, sophistication. Their clothing, the way they dress, suggests that this is a very sophisticated religion. Okay, it's not like they just put on anything, it's like it seems they put a lot of care and thought into what they wear. Okay, that's the first thing. What's the other thing? What's the other thing, excuse me? Well, there are many of them, there's three of them, but what do you notice about the way they look?

In their bodies and the way they stand in relationship to each other, what do you notice? Yeah. Okay, yeah, I mean, he probably has a higher status, okay, and he stands in the middle. Okay, what else? Excuse me. Okay, so you're right, like, okay, if this is a tribe and all they're trying to do is hunt and eat food, none of this makes any sense, right? But the main argument that I've been trying to tell you is, like, no, their first priority is their religion. Okay, so everything they do has a religious significance to it. We don't know what it is, they don't really speak our language, but for them everything that they do must have a religious meaning. Okay, so it's the religion that centers their life. So the other thing I would say is you can see there's some organization in order to it, right? So as you say, the person, the elder, stands in the middle, okay, and these two, can you see the symmetry? Okay, it's clear that they are doing a religious ceremony, and because this religious ceremony requires their bodies to be a certain way in relation to each other, it requires them to dress a certain way, it requires them to say certain things.

Okay, clearly they are in prayer of some sort. We call this the idea of ritual. Ritual is just the expression of religion in everyday practice. In other words, their lives are extremely ritualized, meaning what they do every second has a religious meaning and significance. Okay, does that make sense to you guys? Right, so for example, you come to school and you think your life is very ordered, right, because maybe at 8:00 you start class, and then when class starts the teacher takes attendance, okay, that's all ritual, and then at 8:45 the bell rings and then you go off and get some water or something. Okay, if you want to go to the restroom you have to raise your hand. This is all what we call ritual, so your lives are extremely ritualized.

The thing about ritual is behind the ritual there has to be a belief system. Okay, so for us, the school, we believe the system is set up so that you learn how to do well in life, right? You learn how to be on time, you learn how to respect authority, you learn how to read books. Okay, so this society is in exactly the same way, where every minute of their lives there's order and structure to what they do that has meaning and purpose.

Okay, does that make sense?

Okay, so let's talk about their ritual. Okay, it is to the realm of the H spirit that the shaman goes in ritual. So the shaman is responsible for entering the world of the demons and negotiating and communicating with them. Okay, that's his role, that's why he has his power and authority. "Contrary to popular lore in the West, the shaman of the Barasana never uses or manipulates medicinal plants. His duty and sacred path is to move in the timeless realm of the hul, embrace the primordial powers, and harness and restore the energy of all creation. He is like a modern engineer who enters the depths of a nuclear reactor to renew the entire cosmic order." So if, for example, plants are dying outside, what does this mean? If plants are dying outside, what does this mean? The animals and plants are dying, how can we fix a problem, why are bad things happening? Bad things are happening because the spirits are unhappy, right? Does that make sense? So therefore you must go into the spirit world and understand why the spirits are unhappy and fix it. Okay, and that's the role of the shaman. And what this is saying is this, what this is saying is that our world doesn't matter, guys.

Okay, our world is insignificant, what matters is the spirit world, because the spirit world is what controls everything. Okay, does that make sense, guys?

Okay, "Among the Barasana, such knowledge is a fundamental obligation of the living. In practice this implies that the Barasana see the Earth as a potent force, as being alive with spiritual beings and ancestral powers. To live off the land is to embrace both its creative and destructive potential. Human beings, plants and animals share the same cosmic origin, in a profound sense are seen as essentially identical, responsive to the same principles, obligated by the same duties, responsible for the collective well-being of creation. There is no separation between nature and culture. Without the forest and the rivers, humans would perish. Without people, the natural world would have no order or meaning, all would be chaos. The norms that drive social behavior would also define the manner in which human beings interact with the plants and animals, the multiple phenomena of the natural world: lightning and thunder, the sun and the moon, the scent of a blossom, the odor of death." Okay, so everything is connected with each other, we're all equals.

Okay, does that make sense, guys? All right, this is what we call animism. All right, so let's talk about hunting. Okay, this is something we talked about last class. If we are the same, if we are the same as animals and plants, what allows us, what gives us permission to kill other animals? Okay, and this passage explains it. "When men go to the forest to hunt or fish, it is never a trivial passage." You cannot just go and hunt, okay, you need permission first. "The shaman must travel in trance to negotiate with the masters of the animals, forging a mystical contract with the spirit guardians in exchange, based always on reciprocity." Okay, reciprocity means give and take. If I give you a present, you must give me a present. "The Barasana compare hunting, too, to marriage, a form of courtship in which one seeks the blessings of a greater authority for the honor of taking into one's family a precious being. Meat is not the right of a hunter but a gift from the spirit world. To kill without permission is to risk death by a spirit guardian, be it in the form of a jaguar, an anaconda, a tapir or a harpy eagle." Okay, this is something that we discussed in the cave paintings.

Why did they spend so much time painting these animals? And we said this, it's because they're trying to pay tribute to the animals, right? If I kill you, I must thank you for taking your meat to replenish myself, but I also must ask for your forgiveness, otherwise the animal soul may seek vengeance. Okay, does that make sense? So this is the essence of the religion: if we hunt, we must first pay tribute. Okay, and that's what explains Çatalhöyük, right? The bull, and the people before they go hunting, they must pay tribute to all the animals. Okay, and you also look at the cave paintings, right? They have all these cave paintings, and what they celebrate is not themselves, what they celebrate are the animals, because it's the animals that give them life, that give them nourishment and meat. Okay, does that make sense? And you can see this in caves all around Europe and around the world.

Okay, all right. "As the ritual begins, time collapses. There are two series of dances separated by the liminal moments of the day: dawn, dusk and midnight." Okay, so the shaman during the ritual needs to communicate with the animals in the spirit world Okay, to do that, "he changes, he changes from fish to animal to human being and back again, transcending every form, becoming pure energy flowing among every dimension of reality, past and present, here and there, mythic and mundane.

His chants recall by name every point of geography met on the ancestral journey of the anaconda." Okay, so as you can see, before the hunt the ritual is extremely elaborate, sophisticated and complex, and its main purpose is to celebrate the unity of life and to ask permission and to ask for forgiveness as the hunters go kill the animals. Okay, does that make sense, guys? And again, this explains, okay, so the shamans will change into animals in order to better communicate with the animals, and this explains all the cave paintings and how 40,000 years ago they were creating dolls of shamans dressed as animals, okay, because for them this is what is. Okay, does that make sense, guys?

All right, so any questions so far before I move on? Are you guys clear about what's going on? Okay, all right. Now let's move to Africa. Okay, we were in South America, and they're still there today, if you want to go visit that tribe you can do so. Okay, now let's go to Africa, and in Africa there's a group of people called the Pygmies.

Okay, the Pygmies, and there's a very famous book by a British anthropologist by the name of Colin Turnbull. Okay, and he discusses how the Pygmies practice the religious beliefs. At the very center of the religion is something called the molimo, which is a trumpet-like instrument, and the molimo allows them to communicate with the forest, it allows them to communicate with the spirit world, and that's how they resolve every issue. Okay, and the molimo also captures the sound and spirit of the forest. Okay, all right, so even though we are in a different part of the world, we're in Africa, and even though the Pygmies have different religious beliefs than the people of the Amazon, what you will discover, what you will notice, is that it's essentially the same religion. Okay, the same idea that we are part of nature and that our job is to help nature maintain balance, and okay.

Okay, so what I want to do now, okay, is compare and contrast the way we think today and how they thought before. Okay, so let's read. "I had no idea of how far we had come or in what direction." So he's following the group of Pygmies around as they hunt, but "I knew we had left the camp far behind.

It was the first time I had known a group of Pygmies to be so silent. Normally, unless hunting, they are deliberately noisy, but now, just at the time that leopards would be prowling about in search of food, they seemed unwilling to disturb the forest or the animals it concealed. Just the opposite, in fact. It was as if they were a part of the silence and the darkness of the forest itself, and were only fearful lest any sound might betray their presence to some person or thing not of the forest. They stood there, quiet and still, and it struck me with a sudden shock that not one of them carried a spear or bow and arrow. As they peered into the dusk and cocked their heads first on this side, then on that, satisfying themselves that we were really alone, it seemed that they felt themselves so much a part of the forest and of all the living things in it, they had no need to fear anything except that which was not of the forest. One of them said to me later, 'We are the children of the forest. What need have we to be afraid of it? We are only afraid of that which is outside the forest.'" Okay, so what I want to do now is, through analyzing this passage, explore how our minds are different from their minds.

Okay, so our mind is what we call modern and their mind is what we consider premodern.

Okay, what's the first major difference between the British anthropologist and how we think and how they think? What's the first difference you notice from this passage? Okay, first of all, what is the word that tells us that he doesn't really understand how these people think and behave? What's the word that tells us he doesn't really understand these people? This is actually a great SAT question if you guys plan on taking the SAT. Okay, there's a word in this passage that tells us he doesn't really understand how these people think and feel. What's the word? Shock. Right, shock. Okay, so he's surprised by their behavior. Why is he surprised? What confuses anyone? Why? What? Yes, exactly. Okay, why does that surprise him? Exactly. Okay, so here's the first big difference. Why do we think nature is dangerous? Why do they not think nature is dangerous? Why? Why, guys? That's exactly right. Okay, he thinks nature is dangerous because there are leopards, they're predators.

Okay, they don't think nature is dangerous. What's the difference? What's the difference? Okay, the first major difference is this: our minds think that we are separate from nature. Okay, man versus nature, man versus nature, but they think they are part of nature. Okay, so let me ask you this question: why do we fear nature? What makes us fear nature? If I put you in a forest, you're afraid. Why? Yes. Okay, why are you afraid of the, okay, you don't know what you'll encounter, but why does that make you afraid? Okay, why would the unknown make you afraid? What is it that we are obsessed with? Excuse me? Okay, we're obsessed with control, right? We have to control everything. We want to know something because we want to control it. Okay, we like animals in the zoo, right? We do not like animals in the forest. We can control animals in the zoo, we cannot control animals in the forest. Okay, so we're obsessed with control. Why aren't they afraid of nature? What's their attitude? What's the Pygmies' attitude? We want to control nature but they, what, therefore they, okay, the word is trust, right? Trust. They don't have to control nature, because they trust nature.

They believe the leopards know them and they know the, okay, does that make sense? Okay, so that's the first major difference between our world and their world. We've been taught that nature is our enemy or nature is outside us, whereas they believe that they are part of nature. Okay, does that make sense, guys? All right, let's move on.

All right, so this is about their religious practice. Okay, so they have a meal together and then they sing, or they use the molimo to make noises, and they sing and dance. Okay, "Everyone ate his fill as and when he pleased. A couple of the older men said they would wait until the youngsters had finished before they ate, but they did not wait for long. I was told, however, that everyone had to eat, just as no adult male was allowed to sleep but to sing while the molimo was singing was in progress. Apparently one of the greatest crimes that the Pygmy can commit, if not the greatest, is to be found asleep when the molimo is singing. When the men stood up and mimed, as all Pygmies love to do, he showed how they used to search for the sleeping man, a spear under each arm, and how if they found one they would spear him in the stomach and kill him completely and forever.

I was told that then his body would be buried under the K," okay, the K is a great fire in which they practice their religion, "and nobody would be allowed to mention his death, even to remark on his absence. The women would be told that the molimo itself, the great animal of the forest, had carried off one of their number, but like the men they would ask no questions and would never again mention the missing man."

Okay, so in this world the greatest crime you can commit is not to kill someone but to sleep during the religion. Can someone explain why that's the case in this world? Okay, the Pygmy world, the worst thing you can do is sleep. Why is that the case? Okay, let's just say that we're having a class and one of you is sleeping, okay, and I get so angry that I want to kill that person. Why would I want to do that? What's my logic? It's disrespectful of what? Okay, it's disrespectful of my authority, that is true, but then I just ask a person to leave my class, right? I shout at that person, but I want to kill that person.

Why? What's happened? Okay, what is a classroom? What's a classroom? Okay, a place to study. What else? What are we doing now? Yeah, but what is class? What is a classroom? What allows a classroom to, what is the ritual we're practicing? Okay, so a classroom you can understand as the collective experience. Okay, a classroom happens when everyone is participating in it. Does that make sense? That's what makes a classroom alive. So why would I be angry if one of you is sleeping? And why does that matter if you're sleeping? What do you mean? Yeah, you, it's not a classroom, it's not real, this discussion is not real, it's pointless. You understand? So that's what's happening here. They sing the molimo, the ritual, it's meant for everyone to recognize that the religion is real, it's more real than reality. Okay, but if you're sleeping you're saying, no, guys, this doesn't matter. Okay, what we're doing does not matter, and therefore what you're doing is you're not committing violence on one person, you're committing violence on the community, you're committing violence on the religion, you're insulting the forest, you're insulting the God. Does that make sense? And that's the worst crime, because reality happens, this religion is only possible if everyone believes that it is true.

If you're sleeping it means you don't think it's true, and therefore you are, first of all, rejecting the community, right? You're telling everyone you're all idiots. Okay, second is that you might endanger the community because you're insulting the forest. Okay, does that make sense, guys?

Okay, so for most of human history people take their religion extremely seriously, so seriously that they think it's more real than reality. As long as everyone believes in it, it's true, but if someone doesn't believe in it then we have to kill that person, because if he doesn't believe in it then it might cause our religion to die. Okay, does that make sense? Any questions so far? Any questions? We're all clear, right? Okay, and what I'm trying to show you is the power of religion. Okay, how once we have the religious imagination we can create things that are actually for us more real than reality. Okay, so that's the second thing that's different about us from other human beings. For most of human history we were spiritual. Okay, we're spiritual, meaning like we believe in the world of the spirits, our soul, it exists. Okay, today the word we use is materialistic, and the idea of materialistic is this: if we cannot see it, okay, it's not real.

Okay, God can't be real because we can't find it, the soul can't be real because we can't measure it, imagination can't be real because we don't know where it comes from. Does that make sense? And obviously, okay, obviously this idea of materialism is wrong. How can you say the imagination doesn't exist? But unfortunately we have structured our society around this idea, all science. Okay, when you go to science class they teach you this: okay, if it's real you can measure it, you can see it, you can feel it. But for most of human history we didn't believe that. We thought, like, okay, there is a spiritual world and that matters just as much as reality. Okay, in fact it matters, it probably matters more than reality. Okay, so this is making sense, right, guys?

Okay, "For a month I sat every evening at the Kam moo, listening, watching. Okay, if I still had little idea of what was going on, at least I felt that air of importance and expectancy. Every evening when the women shut themselves up, pretending that they were afraid to see the animal of the forest, every evening when the

men gathered around the fire, pretending they thought that the women thought that the drainpipes were animals, every evening when the trumpet, drum, drainpipes imitated leopards and elephants and buffaloes, every evening when all this make-believe was going on, I felt that something very real and very great was going on beneath it, something that everyone else took for granted and about which only I was ignorant." Okay, clearly he does not understand these people. What word tells us he doesn't understand these people, he doesn't know what's going on? Why? What word tells us this? Excuse me? Why is he ignorant? There's a word in here that tells us he doesn't understand these people at all. This word shows that there's a chasm, okay, a huge difference between the Pygmies and us. What is this word? What word would the Pygmies not use here? They'd be insulted by this word. What's a word you use over and over again, right? There's a word here that's, no, what word here in this passage would the Pygmies find insulting? So if another teacher comes into my class and he says, "Wow, your class is a lot of fun," I'd be insulted. Why would I be insulted? No, well, you guys have so much fun in this class, you play a lot, I'd be insulted.

Why? Excuse me? You, yeah, this is not study, okay, this is not serious academic work, this is playing, it has no significance, no meaning, right? So what word implies that here? It repeats itself over and over: pretending. Right, pretending. We think they're playing. What do they think? We think they're pretending, we think they're playing, what do they think? They think it's all true. You understand? For them their religion is more true than this world. Okay, that's the power of the human imagination. You can imagine a world, and this world, as long as many of you are imagining it together, it's more true, more powerful, more real than this world. That's the power of religion, okay, what we call the religious imagination, and we'll see this over and over again in human history. Okay, does that make sense, guys?

Okay, so we've been taught that, oh, you can't see it, it must be pretending, it must be make-believe. But for most of human history, for most people, this is not playing, this is not pretending, it's true, it's real, it's what allows us to be close to God. Okay, God is real, this world we live in, it's not real. Okay, does that make sense, guys?

All right, okay, so let's look at the last paragraph and then we'll finish for the day. "He went on to tell that the Pygmies called the molimo whenever things seemed to be going wrong. It may be that the hunting is bad, he said, or that someone is ill, or, as now, that someone has died. These are not good things, and we like things to be good, so we call out the molimo and it makes them good, as they should be." Okay, so this is very similar to the shaman going into the spirit world when things are bad. Okay, things are bad because the spirits are unhappy. "Normally everything goes well in our world, in our forest, but at night, when we are sleeping, sometimes things go wrong because we are not awake to stop them from going wrong. Army ants invade the camp, leopards may come in and steal a hunting dog or even a child. If we were awake these things would not happen. So when something big goes wrong, like illness or bad hunting or death, it must be because the forest is sleeping and not looking after its children. So what do we do? We wake it up. We wake it up by singing to it and we do this because we want it to awaken happy.

Then everything will be well and good again. So when our world is going well, then also we sing to the forest because we want it to share our happiness." Okay, do you understand? So this is like them going to the spirit world and communicating with the spirits, so it's almost the same religion. Okay, maybe the details are different but the idea is the same. The idea is that we're all interconnected, animals, plants, humans, all the same. This is not the real world, the spirit world, the forest, they're the real world, and for us to maintain our health and our happiness and our safety we must communicate with this other world and make sure they're happy. Okay, does it make sense? And because of this belief it means we shouldn't go to war with other people, okay, because then that causes mayhem and chaos in the spirit world. Our job is to maintain harmony and balance in this world, we're caretakers. Okay, it means we should not be in conflict with each other, we should be egalitarian, we should be equal because we're all from the same mother goddess, we're all from the same forest, we're all from the same woman shaman.

Okay, it means we have to be artistic because we have to celebrate and worship the spirit world. Does that make sense?

Okay, so again, for most of human history we were like this, and even today in a lot of cultures around the world they're still like this. So now the question is, what changed? Why do we have war? Why do we have hierarchy? Why do we have patriarchy? Why are men superior to women? Why do some rich people have all the power? Okay, this clearly goes against this religion, and what I will show you starting next class is the beginning of a new religion, and how this new religion that worships wealth, power and war conquered everyone. Okay, does that make sense? Okay, questions before we break? Is anything unclear? Okay, okay.