Theme: Cooperation

DEFINE: “GOD”

Politically:

An Archetypal anthropomorphic literary figure that provides wisdom, example, law, or commands that assist humans in coordinating their perceptions, feelings, thoughts, knowledge, and actions, by providing a means of decidability between differences in the preferable and not, the good and not, the beautiful and not, and the true and not.

Individually:

A set of measures conflated through attribution to an anthropomorphic character that provides humans with a means of choosing actions by way of intuition, or by emulation, or by rule of thumb (thinking fast) when we are confronted with uncertainty, ambiguity, or complexity in situations where investigation, or reasoning, or discourse, or measurement (thinking slowly) is too inefficient or too costly given our scarcity of resources, time, and physical, intellectual, or emotional energy.

Specifically:

In other words, a god is a standard of weight and measure for human decision making, in the most intuitive form possible for humans: sympathetic experience (empathy).

Sociology:

Gods allowed peoples from different tribes and tribal groups to resolve differences by attributing goods and bads to the opinions of the gods in the same way we make contract provisions today. As such, new gods were invented, and new gods adapted as the people needed them.

Gods take advantage of the normal hierarchy of decision making in families, generations, tribes and polities by providing a means of ‘deciding of last resort’:

A Self > Brother > Mother > Father > Headman > Chieftain > Priest > Gods.

However, most importantly, the portfolio of gods always reflects our group evolutionary strategy in literary terms. And that portfolio does so no by direct statements that would leave that subject open to debate, but by suggestion and secondary consequence thereby hiding it from us, and hiding our debate. the reason being that we do not want people to defect to different group evolutionary strategies, that while they might be better for certain individuals would cause harm to the collective polity. In other words, literary characters are difficult to corrupt and even more difficult to argue against if they are part of a network of characters that all operate by the same group evolutionary strategy.

Psychology:

In addition to their impersonal and political literary roles, Gods can be prayed or spoken to and obeyed or sacrificed to by means of role play. So just as we imagine speaking to the hierarchy of Brother > Mother > Father > Headman, we can imagine contemplating, speaking to, begging from (praying), and trading with (sacrificing to) gods. And because we are so naturally talented at imagining these conversations, if we practice enough and have enough experience with accessing these characters, we can in fact intuit insights just as we can when role playing with others.

Ethical and Moral Synchronicity:

Because we humans are all subject to similar stimulation at similar points in time, and often resort to similar role playing as means of assisting us in decidability, we make hundreds of micro decisions every day, and maybe thousands of micro-judgments or considerations a day using the same ‘tools’ of decidability provided by our literary anthropomorphic characters. In fact, there is fairly good evidence that there is no better way to improve your decidability than expanding the scope of your literary experiences such that you can draw from so many different combinations of those tools.

Political Consequences:

We make uncountable decisions every day. Most of these decisions are unclear. And the vast majority require no difference in cost from us. So we need a means of tie-breaking. In the absence of these normative narratives and normative rules, and normative habits, we can only decide them by the knowledge at our disposal and the interests at our disposal. But by relying on narratives, rules and habits we can, at no cost to ourselves, or at very little cost to ourselves, make very tiny contributions (sacrifices) at all times toward our group evolutionary strategy (gods).

For these reasons alone, gods have profound value to a people. The constitute a literary version of the law by which the people operate. Now it is very likely that just as we have separate courts for political, institutional, civil, family, and criminal law, and just as we have myths, literature, history, economics, law, and science, that we should (and do) have a hierarchy of heroes, demigods, and gods to make it possible for humans of various abilities to advance the group evolutionary strategy in concert with others, despite our wide variation in analytic ability.

And adherence to the wisdom in that literature is as important as adherence to the norms, to the laws, and to the natural law, and to those laws of nature. Because we may come to harm if we do not, and we will likely – although not certainly – prosper as individuals and groups if we do.

Good Gods and Evil Gods:

Just as there are good ideas that assist people in escaping superstition, ignorance, poverty, labor, disease and tyranny, there are bad ideas that doom them to superstition, ignorance, poverty, labor, disease, and tyranny.

And just as there are good gods that transcend people from animal to human to demigod, by eliminating superstition, ignorance, poverty, labor,disease and tyranny, and there are bad gods that prevent people from transcending from beast, to human to demigod to gods by eliminating superstition, ignorance, poverty, labor,disease and tyranny.

The only judge of a god or gods is the relative superstition, ignorance, poverty, labor,disease and tyranny of a people.

The gods possess agency from all but the limits of the universe. A good god seeks to create agency. An evil god seeks to prevent human agency. Good gods and evil gods are easy to identify for these reasons.

Evolution of Gods:

Gods must adapt as our group evolutionary strategy adapts. And it often takes great thinkers to adapt our gods to what we have learned about the laws of nature, the natural law, and our local circumstance, and how we might persist. And in history adapting such laws takes decades, if not a century or more.

As our knowledge and awareness increases, and we are able to cope with ever larger causal connections, “Gods” give way to deconflated direct strategies becoming less and less relevant. And therefore the more power a man has over his life, the less powerful his Gods become.

Unfortunately, there are many false gods, many false group evolutionary strategies, and many foolish, idealistic, and evil people in this world who attempt to modify them for ill.

How do we know the difference? Well. Truth tells us. Because science is the discipline of truth if it is complete. Unfortunately, no science as it is practiced today is practiced ‘complete’.

Thankfully, with Testimonialism, that is something we can repair.

THE RANGE OF DEITIES

Humans demonstrate a range of gods, from those of though to those of feeling. The list below contains the range of gods from those of THOUGHT to those of FEELING.

THOUGHT

8 – Analogy to Anthropomorphic intent (physical/natural order)

7 – Ideal Anthropomorphic design or intent – platonist/ideal

6 – Supernatural (anthropomorphic intent unbound)

5 – Supernormal (anthropomorphic bound, perfect)

4 – Supranormal (anthropomorphic, bound, flawed)

3 – Demigod (mortal or immortal half-god, half-man)

2 – Deified (risen to demigod after death)

1 – Hero (demonstrated excellence against opposing forces)

0 – Man (raw potential)

1 – Saint (demonstrated sacrifice to submission or caretaking)

2 – Woman (borderline supranormal) (women are semi-magical)

3 – Animistic supranormal (animistic, natural)

4 – Animistic host (carries spirit without consciousness)

5 – Beasts of the wild

FEELING

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine