Fertility cult:
I have it on good authority that the human understanding of the mind as a single functional unit is an illusion. There are multiple programs, as it were, all running at the same time. The example was the person who gets in a car and drives home thinking about something important. The car arrives safe and sound, having blended with the complexities of traffic competently while the driver, who well remembers the issue of meditation, remembers nothing of the trip. Something other than the mind that cogitates was doing the driving. With me it’s different. I hop in the car and start out for some place while my mind wanders until I realize I am making my way to the wrong destination; the point still holds, but maybe my driving mind needs more attention. On the other hand, driving home is totally captivating. I think of nothing but the remaining route. And to be honest I get more aggressive as I approach my goal. Again, my better angel ought to be more in charge.
As we mature, these different programs are put into place. Getting them to work together is a developmental accomplishment. Many years ago we had the expression, “Getting your act together.” That seems to me to sum it up nicely. The expression was hyped to “Getting hour s***t together.” I don’t find the evolution to be helpful.
As I recently pointed out in a letter to Atlantis Rising, the evidence indicates that just about every civilization has fallen because of a lack of fertility among some element of the population, but there is an eerie silence when we think about it. Nobody seems to remember or record the event even though it should have been very obvious at the time. On the other hand, traditional societies do remember. On Nobabies.net the lead image seems to be of a fertility goddess. I don’t know. At all events she’s got something to do with fertility. And these fertility cults seem to have been very widespread. Very low tech societies made bold to handle any challenge, but they seem to have felt that for fertility they needed supernatural protection.
You needn’t look far for elements of a fertility cult. Try Christianity. The major celebration is the birth of a baby held at Christmas. It’s so much fun that non-Christians join in the tradition. Holiday number two is Easter. The world comes from estrus, a time of sexual interest seen in a number of mammals. And the symbolism includes the empty tomb, rabbits, flowers and eggs. So when I say, “I’m talking about babies, here,” any Christian should drop everything and listen, learn and pass it along. But they don’t.
People do care about babies. Not many years ago some celebrity held his new baby over the edge of a second floor balcony. The baby was safe enough; he wasn’t about to drop it. And even if he had, it would probably have survived and recovered, albeit not in that man’s home. People were furious. He became such a non entity that even I cannot recall a name.
So that’s where we stand. There is no algorithm that can predict what a human will do, and of the presumably countless algorithms that govern us, the “save the baby” one does not talk nor listen to the one that looks at graphs and logical inferences. That’s not really pathological. But in this case it is certainly maladaptive.
There have been 149 visitors over the past month, and YouTube has run “Babies Triumph over Evil” 115 times.