“~Q: How did pre-Christian europe deal with alienation before the monotheistic religions provided it?”
They dealt with it through state(government), nation, religion, and identity, myth, oath, ritual, and festival. Just like the monotheistic religions do. It was just local, regional, and civilizational, before the abrhamic attempt at cross-civilizational religion by the jewish unification in jewish christianity of (a) semitic supernatural mythicsm of good and evil representing the relationship between slaves, their fear, lack of agency, and rulers, and (b) european supernormal mythos and reason of order and chaos representing the relationship between man, his reason, his agency, and the chaos of irresponsible nature. The result is Semitic Slave morality vs European Aristocratic morality.
EVOLUTION OF SPIRITUALISM (SATING THE INTUITION VS NATURE) AND RELIGION (SATING THE INTUITION VS MANKIND)
All religious motive evolves from the pack spectrum of the being-left-behind (alienation) response, the liability (guilt) and the the debt (reciprocity) response, causing the submission response, and the submission response is a remnant of the submission to the pack response, particularly when running or moving as a group. That’s why submission ‘feels good’: provoking the feeling of elation and safety in running with the pack.
All religious intuition evolves from the sedating the feast (positive) and death (negative) response, that suppresses anxiety and inalienation by internal submission to the pack, in the face of either windfall (feast) or loss (death). Grave goods are a debt payment, and a demonstration of loyalty and care. They also serve to warrant to others that one is not responsible for the death, or apologizes for anything to do with it. And more, it serves to bind the group together given their shared risk of mortality – “don’t leave me behind”.
All formal religious ritual (AFAWK) evolved from the initiatic brotherhood of warriors who risked hunt and war together at great risk – where ‘unit cohesion’ (reciprocal insurance) was necessary for both victory and survival.
PAYMENT OF DEBTS
Sacrifice is the means of relieving debt instincts. So in families and tribes we share; with leadership we ‘thank’ with gifts, and with gods we ‘thank or ask’ with sacrifices. For example The word ‘god’ in the west indo european languages is the word for ‘pour’. Meaning the ritual sacrifice of beer to the gods.
LEADERSHIP
All religous leadership evolves from specialization in those myths, oaths, rituals, feasts and festivals, and all religious nuance evolves over the pretense of knowledge and compentency demonstrated by these priesthoods.
CLASS RELATIONS
In european natural religion (vs abrahamic sythetic religions) aristocracy demonstrated loyalty to the people by the performance of rituals, and the priesthoods were responsible for knowing and arranging those rituals. In the semitic religions, the priesthood demonstrated and reinforced loyalty to and among the people against the ruling aristocracy.
ANCHORING BY RELIGION
Abrahamic religions, were created by and spread by the lower classes who were increasingly left behind by rise of trade and in particular imperial trade, just like the lower classes were left behind (or felt it) by the industrial revolution – despite that both greco-roman trade, roman administration, roman peace, and the industrial revolution primarily benefitted the lower classes at the expense of the power of the upperclasses.
GROUP STRATEGY
( … )
UNIVERSAL ANTHROPOMORPHIC SYSTEM OF MEASUREMENT.
( … )
SUMMARY
( … )
(More as this sequence on the evolution of religion continues … gotta exit the cafe now. 😉 )
Reply addressees: @RealLouisPrince