The Real G-d

I've been reading a lot of social theory lately, and I came across this one piece by the great 19th century sociologist Emile Durkheim:The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. In it Durkheim talks about Totems, and how totems are symbols of both the G-d and the society/clan- and makes the claim that G-d and society are one and the same.

His reasoning goes like this: Whether it be Zeus, Yahweh, or animist spirits, worshippers feel themselves to be dependent on and acted upon by some superior force. As social animals, the rules of our society, whatever kind it may be, constrain our behavior. Early people became conscious of this- and sought to explain why they felt compelled to act as they did, have the values they did, the taboos, etc...and since they couldn't conceive that the society is more than the sum of individuals and their individual desires, they sought mythological explanations. "As long as scientific analysis does not come to teach it to them, men know well that they are acted upon, but they do not by whom."

The more I think about this, the more I think it makes sense. Society does to some extent exist outside of us- its more than the sum of its parts. A fascinating field of study, Emergence, deals with how complex systems are built from the ground up. This field is really big in computer programming right now, as its incredibly hard to engineer complex systems, but surprisingly easy to let them evolve on their own from simple interacting agents. An example of emergence is a termite mound. No individual termite carries ALL the instructions for the mound, which is incredibly large and complex, with networks of heating and cooling shafts and special chambers for myriad purposes. No one directs them, plans the building, or organizes it. The queen is just an ovary; she gives no commands. But somehow, a million termites with very tiny brains, all acting on simple individual genetic programs, manage to cooperate to build a large and complex structure. This is an emergent behavior- simple self-organizing agent that produces complex behaviors.

Now take human society, from tribal to cosmopolitan- no one sits down and plans the tribe, and how kinship ties will work, and what marriage practices will be standard, and what rites of passage will be the norm. Instead, the simple instructions coded into the individual-the genes and memes- all interact with those of others to produce a working system. Now the speed at which our system evolves (I don't think termite mounds have changed as much in the past ten thousand years as human society has!) is largely due to the second replicator- the meme. The meme can mutate and spread in the course of an individual's life, unlike the gene. The meme makes Lamarkian evolution possible- we discover something this generation and our children will be doing it.

So human society, built upon two replicators, evolves increasingly fast. As the individual agents increase in number- when agriculture began our population explosion- two things happen. The greater number of interacting agents and the increasing size of the meme pool makes our emergent behavior evolve to incredible complexity in the evolutionary blink of an eye- our termite mounds are New York, Tokyo, London. And like the termite mounds, these complex hives of people function without any specific central planning. They evolve haphazardly- people move here, there, someone starts a business here, someone rich lobbies to have a zoning law changed, a new mayor dedicates a park to win approval. Yet somehow a functioning collective home emerges. The city is like an organism- it has metabolic processes, takes in huge amounts of food and material, excretes huge amounts of waste. Somehow all of this is managed by the sum of individual actions.

Now, back to the original topic. This emergent behavior results in society, which is greater than the sum of its parts. Society becomes a somewhat external force, making us conform to its rules. If you don't believe this, try violating them sometime. Even if you succeed, you'll feel the opposition. I wear pants because heterosexual men in our culture don't wear skirts- and if I started wearing a skirt, there would be some damn strong pressure to conform. So we have early humanity, with its big mammalian meme-filled brain, realizing that there are certain "forces" controlling behavior. Why is sex with someone other than my mate always punished by mutilation? Why do we always roast boar but boil mammoth? Why is it good for the men to wear this head-dress but bad for women? How do I know that stabbing Mujak in the back is wrong?

And thus we have the first concepts of external controlling force, upon which we depend. It is the will of the spirits, the gods. The cultural rules and symbols were already somewhat sacred and unquestionable- they must be the decree of superior beings. Says Durkheim: "If an idea is unanimously shared by a people, then ... it is forbidden to touch it, that is to say, deny it or contest it."

At this point the religion memes are off and running, evolving to go where they may. But they don't really have a niche where they can grow complex and powerful until civilization kicks off - when large masses of people require unifying rituals and more complex rules and taboos. And here still, all the way along, the Gods and society are never far apart. Leaders rule by divine right, some claim to be gods themselves. Yahweh WAS the Hebrew people- everything that happened to them was his will, the lands they conquered they conquered with him, their laws and taboos were Holy Commandments - just as the laws and taboos of any tribe are handed down by the spirits or Ancestors-at-large. The cross wasn't just a symbol of Jesus, it was the symbol of Christendom. The acts of society were still acts of G-d or other unseen forces. The untouchable castes in India weren't filling an undesirable but functional niche to keep their society functioning, they were suffering because Forces were punishing them - Krishna says so.

Now fast forward to a modern nation state, where secularism has taken hold as the political sphere wrests more power from the religious sphere. And here you will see that the sacred things are things that represent society. Take America, which has (in ideal if not practice) a separation of church and state. What is revered? What values does the majority, even many dissidents, share? … a love of country, patriotism, reverence of the founding fathers, etc. We still worship the force that controls us, and in the absence of state religion the state IS a form of religion. Who do we blame when we suffer? The government. Who will help us? The government. We consider burning the flag "desecration", for it is a sacred symbol. What do bickering sides on any political debate in this country constantly reference? The constitution. They return to the revered old document like Fundamentalist turn to the Bible. The original is kept in a vacuum-sealed bombproof case that makes the Ark of the Covenant look laughable. We care for our commandments more than the Hebrews did theirs. We refer to the founding fathers like some refer to the apostles. "Well, Thomas Jefferson believed in G-d" "No, he was a deist". Who gives a shit what a dead man believed? But no, he is Sacred, its very important what he thought, because what he thought is somehow "correct".

So to sum up - society is emergent behavior, evolving quickly because of the replicating power of memes. Society exerts force on us to varying degrees. People noticed this and began to worship whatever force it was, building up myths around it that took on a life of their own. When deprived of religion directly connected to society's rules, people either revere the state more directly or they seek to connect the society with their religion- as when US fundamentalists try exhaustively to prove this place is based on Christianity.

Our behavior is controlled, but now we're smart enough to figure out how. The myth need not be.