The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth

The world is made of language, and we build it by constructing narratives. Storytelling has always been a feature in humankind, and is older than the technology of writing by a large margin. By narrative, human beings map out individual and collective consciousness. One specific kind of narrative is nowadays derided by our over-rational framework of thought, or sometimes seen as literary affectation: mythical narrative. These stories were - and are - used to make sense of the world before science could see the world through the lens of equations and theories. I propose now a comparative reading of specific points in Greek and Judeo-Christian mythologies; since our current "globalized" world was forged by peoples tributary to those traditions, that should bear a light on present-day societies and allow some speculations.

But first let's have a look on the recent development of so-called Western civilization, specifically the trend of power institutions opposing knowledge. This pattern is a fixture not only of past church-dominated Europe but also of media-intelligentsia-controlled world up to the present, and one cannot help but suspect something must kept hid. Maybe we can surmise what it is. We should start by looking at the heretics. Galileo was persecuted for endorsing Copernicus' challenge of geocentrism, bothering religious views that our planet is at the center of "creation". Darwin is hated by religious fanatics up to today, intriguingly, for showing that our species is not the center of "creation", as a matter of fact, all species evolve in time. Freud caused un uproar in a religious conservative society for attempting to marginalize the concept of soul, and bring human biology upfront; Hannah Arendt observed how the biological process is denied back to Antiquity in Western worldview, while "primitive" cultures not only embrace but sacralize the "thisworldness" of our nature. Marx went beyond in stating this biological process, in the form of labor, is appropriated by the powerful, those with the phyisical means for production, since they can generate much more wealth than what's needed to pay - luckily - a living wage. Needless to say, no greater effort has ever been dedicated to demonize a single writer. If these few ideas bothered Western establishment, it begins to become clear what it is must be kept "secret". But we move ahead.

Or actually back. To comparative mythology as mentioned. The stated aim is to show that while a widespread notion tells us polytheist beliefs are "primitive" or at least "archaic", the complex system of deities and heroes of Antiquity offered a much richer symbolic rendering of reality, at which one may attempt interpretations. In line with Darwin, as discussed above, Greek anthropogony sees not humans as copies of a supreme deity. We are the creation (or at least protegés) of Prometheus, a titan who becomes at odds with the sitting deity, Olympian Zeus, exactly over us: he is punished for stealing the Olympian fire for us, since he thought we seemed so helpless. This fire is obviously that "godlike capability" that despite Hamlet's warnings has basically fusted in us unused ever since: the intellect (well, statistically). His punishment was twofold: his brother Epimetheus, who apparently had left us vulnerable when donning out gifts to the animals, received Pandora as gift, and from her box sprung out all the evils, before the lid was closed leaving only hope inside; then Prometheus himself is bound to a rock in the Caucasus, where vultures would constantly nip at his tasty and ever-regenerating liver. But Prometheus was all-seeing, and he knew his torment, or Zeus's reign, would not last forever; he told the mortal maid Io, desired of Zeus and chased around the world by a gadfly of Hera's sending, that one of her descendants would be the son of Zeus stronger than himself that would defeat him; maybe he meant Hercules by that, he's a descendant of Io and the freer of Prometheus.

In judeo-christian tradition, Zeus becomes basically himself (Latin: Deus) with no jealous wife; the rebellious figure is taken by Lucifer, the castaway angel. His tempting man with knowledge of good and evil is analogous to the stealing of the fire. The promised redemptor is now called a messiah, and there is a moment of truth analogous with Zeus' toppling in the likeness of Armageddon. Apparently, at the inception of monotheism, the belief of being descendants of mythical Io might be attested by linguistical derivation into Yovah, Job, Jesu (later ahead), or even names John and Joseph. Io also settled in Egypt, where hebrews were said to having been kept captive.

Even in cases where there is no possible derivation or contagion, similarities between mythologies are observed. One example is the narrative of a great flood, which is indeed present in both seen above. That must be a simple consequence of the fact all individuals of our species have the same brain, and the same structures and archetypes will be realized by diverse semantic layers, which means: the same story is being told by the same brain. It's as if our genetic memory, the fact that our own genes are part of a gigantic system spreading over millennia, store some kind of "master narrative". One might be reminded that two percent of our genome actually encode proteins, almost all of it seeming "inactive". Besides, this system is entangled with the rest of the universe, that is, it is embedded in a greater system, so by predicting the behavior of the heavenly bodies, and with the aid of some plants and fungi that alter consciousness, and open the "doors of perception" in Huxley's terms, myths and oracles could really foretell the future. In current Physics research, quantum gravitation theory abandons the concept of a time dimension, meaning all there is is a pulsating "quantum machine" or covariant field. It seems only a matter of time to see that physical relations determine chemical phenomena, and thence biological ones, and thence human consciousness, social relations and the flow of History. We are but parts of that "mad machinery" after all.

But let us delve further and examine a few other traits of both Western mythical narratives and the evolution of these societies that might help us recognize or clarify a pattern. What we call "primitive" or, more aptly put, neolithical societies were nomad and matriarchal; maybe that's what was called the Golden Age in Greece and later Paradise. Nomadism helped better manage natural resources, is in line with a natural yearning for novelty, and allowed for greater genetic variance. Sedentary societies are the seed of imperialism and ultimately capitalism, since after established a given people sacks and enslaves its neighbors, inters treasures, alienates labor. Take the difference, for instance, between, highlands empires such as the Incas and lowlands nomadic tribes in what was deemed to be called South America. Then we see the fact that our hierarchic, violent societies are patriarchal or male-dominated; it is speculated at least that primordial societies were matriarchal. The least that can be said is that such form of social organization makes much more biological sense, since we carry in each cell a structure containing matrilineal genetic material, the mitochondrion, which also provides the cell energy. From an evolutionary standpoint, the centrality of the female is expressed in the fact that it is the egg, and then the womb, that allowed animals to thrive out of water. In a free society, women should choose their mates because it's their biological prerogative; in capitalist societies, the control of women is manifest both in the power exerted over them by means of wealth concentration and in controlling their wombs, since endogamic matings led to generational accumulation (if to genetic degeneration also).


Now we go back to the question of the great "secret". At some point in the development of monotheist tradition, new narratives appeared claiming that the messiah had indeed come, and spread a word of peace and equality, of rejecting money (the root of all evil or Pandora's box), being then eliminated by the authorities of the Roman Empire. A gregarious anarchist religion started to develop upon those principles, and as it grows, the authorities of the Roman Empire, this time historically, act to sabotage the movement by adopting Christianity as official imperial credo. From thence, this "church" worked as a leverage for power and hindrance to knowledge, as seen. Very curious. It should be reminded that Socrates was sentenced to death by the powerful, pretty much like the messiah-character, for peddling truth or independent thinking. Or that presently Marxist ideology and ideologues are persecuted for opening people's eyes to the fact that they are being lied to so they go on serving their masters game, when all they have to perpetuate the game is precisely that consent. Curious and curiouser.


It should be clear by now that only one thing is being kept secret: there is no secret whatsoever. All there is is a perennial, if ever transforming, system of mystification that dupes people into accepting power structures as inevitable, so the production game keeps going, war efforts are justified on very flimsy grounds, oppressive relations are reproduced. A very well crafted collective illusion is established, and as in Plato's Cave, those that can see it for what it is are deemed insane by those who choose to believe the shadows are true. So if we see the prediction of a communist society by marxist historic materialism tenet in tandem with this now-proposed unified physical mechanism and also mythical narratives of the end of the reign of Zeus, End of Times and Paradise Regained, it follows that if the meek should stand a chance at inheriting the Earth, all that is needed is dismantling a propaganda system. In more prosaic, economic terms, it suffices that the powerless realize they are falling for a gigantic Ponzi scheme in which they feed their vital energy in trade of bare survival, and maybe some illusion of prosperity. Every Ponzi scheme collapses when people lose faith in it and stop joining at the bottom. From that realization to building new horizontal structures is a matter of consequence. But there is no reason to doubt Prometheus when he foretells the Zeus and all he represents - tyranny, imperialism, oppression, patriarchy, hierarchy, thought control - will come down eventually. If any word must be spread it should be this: QUESTION!