Trees!

The Christmas tree and Yule log are throwbacks to the ancient Germanic beliefs. They're mini representations of the cosmos as understood by ancient man. When you look up at the pole star at night, it's like you're looking up through the bottom of a Christmas tree, where its trunk is the axis mundi, and the lights are the stars. It's an allegorical representation of the cosmos and the rhythm of the seasons.

If you overlay a map of religions on a physical map of the world, some startling patterns emerge. Religions tend to line up with broad geographical areas. There are numerous potential interpretations of the patterns--country boundaries tend to line up with physical features, which in turn define national ways of life, and those tend to correspond to religion.

World Religions

Physical Geography

The monotheistic cults of Christianity and Islam originated in the desert and followed the well worn example of imperial expansion. In the early days of Christianity, the ancient religions of northern Europe and the Germanic peoples were seemingly erased, along with their sacred forests.

Arguably, though, when Christianity went out of the desert, the trees and the gods of the forest initially shaped the religion, and then, perhaps, ultimately rejected it.

It's an interesting question if arbitrary belief systems are compatible with a given environment, and the gods of that particular environment (browse through the blog to see what I mean when I use the word 'gods'). If you are surrounded by trees and natural abundance, you're probably not going to be a monotheist for long. If you live in a city, which is a man made desert, or actually in a desert, monotheism might make more sense.

Sand People, Sea People, Steppe People, Tree People

Lately, I've been spending a lot of time in the forest, much more than I have in most of the previous years of my life, many hours a week. The forest where I hang out clings to narrow plateaus between steep ravines where glacial deposits and top soil slip down toward the Big Creek valley, and eventually Lake Erie, then eventually to sea level.

Of course, the forest is a completely different place than the desert, or even the Eurasian Steppe. The trees limit sight lines and paths through the woods are narrow and frequently interrupted. Local knowledge, obtained only with experience is required to really navigate. It's very easy to get lost in such an environment. The forest is three dimensional. Creatures are everywhere. That environment insists on letting you know that you are just a part of a much bigger living system.

It's not so surprising that the sand people gods are so much different than the forest people gods. A stark environment with open horizons and sparse life amplifies the city, and the men of the city.

The god of the sand people maybe is the god of sand, which is then finally embodied in silicon--animated clay tablets that scribes, bureaucrats, and ledger keepers of babylon would readily recognize.

Logan's Run Rule

Logan's Run is a classic SciFi movie from the 1970's. It depicts a dystopian future where some people live in a completely managed and artificial society that's enabled by technology. The apparent utopia of beautiful, sexy people masks a cold reality: people's lifespan is also managed. At age 30, every member of the society participates in a ceremony called "The Carousel" where they are all immolated for the purpose of renewal. Eventually, of course, Logan escapes the utopia and discovers it's all bullshit, which is sufficient to destroy the whole thing and free everyone trapped inside.

It seems, though, that the message of dystopian Sci-Fi novels and movies from the 70's through today is lost on people. Inevitably, when faced with a choice that will give them more freedom, or take us all closer to total technocratic control, they'll pick control. Rather than toil in a garden, they'll line up at the Soylent factory and won't really care if they end up eating people or end up being eaten.

Off the Grid

In the United States quite a bit (something like 30%, now) of the economy is directed by the federal government. What does that mean in practice?

Rather than people making improvements to their own homes, or infrastructure improvements in their towns, enormous resources, engineering talent, and other expertise is absorbed into federal sponsored projects, for example the F-35.

The USA seems to be following a pretty typical pattern for empires. For some time, the conquering nation extracts wealth from its subjects, which seems to make expansion via military conquest worthwhile, but then it passes a point of diminishing, then negative returns. For the US, that negative return point probably happened decades ago. The Korean War? Vietnam? Who really knows?

Anyway, the US economy is pretty far from thriving, and the sectors that are thriving are bullshit. Facebook? Meh.

Consequently, I think the only place there will be future growth is in the unofficial economy--the gray and black market. They'll thrive because of no regulation and no taxes. Those businesses won't look anything like their official market counterparts, mainly because an official business is really completely structured by "the system". It's a cog in a big machine.

It's also easy to imagine as the official world turns completely digital, the unofficial world goes the opposite direction, reviving old techniques for encoding information abandoning ledger books for "memory palaces" for example, or using cant languages instead of encryption.

Fixation on Simulation

If you start with the premise that nature's symbolic, that is, it's a string of symbols and algorithms, then you can conclude it can be decoded. If you work hard enough, get enough support for your work, eventually you'll figure it out, that is, you'll come up with a grand unified theory that explains everything. Then you'd be able to build a computer that simulates everything. It could create a whole new universe in a box.

That belief is pervasive among adherents of scientism, even though lots of scientists even all the way back to Descartes have much more subtle view of their work and are candid about its limits. They're too aware of the Cheshire cat nature of reality, or the "I know that I know nothing" nature of philosophy to make such claims.

It's a really much more interesting question, at least to me, to ponder how the symbols themselves are sort of a prison for our perception and consciousness. How do you transcend them and get a little closer to the real divine stuff?

Stress and Simplification

For many animals (and even plants) in nature, a life ending attack can come from any angle at any time. Many songbirds, for example, keep their head on a swivel even when they're in a relatively safe spot. They nervously look around for signs of predators all the time and fly away at the slightest provocation. Much of their time is spent looking for food, eating, or trying not to be eaten. (But not all of it, here's a video of a crow sledding down a roof.)

For most people, life's pretty tame. In most places and most times, there aren't any predators, except potentially other people, and our stressors are mostly social--job stress, relationship stress, or just low level social stress that comes from being around other people and keeping up appearances. A few, for example Richard Proenneke, have even opted to live in the wilderness rather than deal with civilization and other people. For most, there's a vague urge, or dream for the nonsense of civilization to be swept away so we can be free.

Lush, flourishing nature, even in the tame environment of a place like Northeast Ohio can be overwhelming. The mind of a man is incapable of perceiving her in all her complexity. Cities and towns, and even private homes and farms are the solution to this. People remove themselves from nature by eliminating her complexity by planting lawns and removing habitats and other predators, or by paving her over entirely. Dominion over nature is really removal from nature.

It's really striking how differently native people in the USA solved these problems before European settlers arrived. They had a pretty low-impact set of solutions, maybe necessitated by a lack of literal horsepower and steel, and by a completely different set of gods.