The next stage we move beyond instinct and attempt to influence those around us by using our will. This is no more evident than when the toddler speaks. Among the many words a 1½ year old has learned there is just one which is crucial to the child’s first forays into autonomy and independence– that word is ‘NO’. This stage in the infant’s life, 1½-3 equates to the early Bronze age to the Late Iron age, from the Sumerian civilization 5000 years ago to the fall of Rome in 400 CE. Now, in terms of behaviour what have ancient civilizations got to do with a three-year-old? The analogy here with technological development namely, the inventions of the wheel, plough, sail and the big one which, catapults humanity out of pre-history and into history, writing, equate to physical dexterity such as being able to convey food more or less efficiently into the correct orifice, walking and the acquisition of 250-500 words to convey nuanced desires. Chief among those desires is to achieve a sense of independence. Those early farmers also must have felt a sense of independence from the environment as they leveraged new skills to conquer scarcity and organize more complex social arrangements in much larger populations. Like the toddler they had more confidence to assert their will on the world.
However, there are limits to the sophistication especially of the means of conveying certain desires in an 85cm tall human. The classic example is, of course, the screaming tantrum while lying prone on the floor of the supermarket. The Mesopotamian or Egyptian or Minoan equivalent is their inability to empathize with the conquered and the unalloyed barbarity meted out to subject peoples. Sounds harsh, I know but fair.
Another major aspect shared by both toddlers and the Ancients is their shared love of an enchanted world. The pagan beliefs of early civilizations invested nature with divine properties– later coopted by monotheisms– as well as inventing gods of love and war. The toddler’s imagined world might not be as comprehensive as Zeus et al but Father Christmas, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny do a good job along with teddy bears and other ‘transitional objects.’
Just as the toddler begins to get a bit suspicious of Santa’s ability to pop up in multiple shopping centers so, analogously, cracks began to appear in the Greek pantheon. An Assyrian writer, Lucian, in the second century penned an immensely popular bawdy parody of internecine squabbles and jealousies between Zeus and Ganymede and Hera; Hermes and Helios and Pan; Apollo and Hermes and Dionysus. His Dialogue of the Gods, according to Nicholas Jeeves, initiated “… the permanent decline of belief in the gods themselves.” Not only did he imbue the Gods with the venal and carnal appetites of humans but also, he mocked the nascent Christian religion. However, before the ascendance of the science of nature and the philosophy of Nietzsche combined to declare God dead, all three monotheisms did at least give humans a conscience– albeit one based on guilt.
Moving from an enchanted world of eco-friendly pagan gods to a monotheism whose chief tenet is an unknowable deity who can only be accessed via a set of dogmatic rules officiated by an elite clerisy, might seem like a backward turn. However, if you’re building an empire or want to keep your existing empire, it is a great way to culturally glue disparate regions together. However, for the purposes of illustrating human moral progress, paradoxically moving from a geocentric belief system to a heliocentric one the natural world became an object open to scientific scrutiny which eventually led to the unknowable deity becoming an unbelievable deity. The other positive aspect to emerge out of the ethical turn in Christianity was the idea that the individual take responsibility for doing good in the world.
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