The birth of gods, the death of reason

The birth of the hero. The obsession with fame is as old as humanity itself. Campbell had an interesting theory about how man switched from worshiping gods to worshiping gods-substitutes (in the form of men) when the gods were not present all the time.

They started giving goods to the earthly gods as a form of worship. The more “stuff” the earthy gods seem to have, the more worshiped and important they were. According to Campbell, some “normal” humans decided that that wasn’t fair, that the earthly gods were not different from themselves. So, they started all kinds of schemes to get “stuff” for themselves and wage war against the established “earthly gods.” And this is how the endless wars, killing for “stuff” and status and geographic expansion started.

Campbell didn’t have a precise area where all these started. It’s impossible to pinpoint it both in terms of time and geography. The recorded history of wars and conflicts goes back several millennia. Maybe not quite 10,000 years, which is the estimated date for humans leaving the caves and starting agricultural settlements, but close enough.

The theory is interesting and explains the original cause of war: greed. But it doesn’t explain what triggered the need for gods. The conventional wisdom says that gods were created to explain the unexplainable natural phenomena. But — again — it still doesn’t explain the creation of gods. Gods as humans with superpowers.

Why do we need gods? I tried putting myself on the ancients’ shoes, and I admit I can’t think the way they did. I cannot not use reason. That’s the biggest difference. The Classical Greeks talked about questioning everything, including the gods. Their gods were not above anything, and they were constantly scrutinized by humans. The Greeks tried answering all these questions logically, even with the limited knowledge at hand. They might not have gotten it right, but they didn’t use supernatural explanations if they could find a rational one, precisely the rational ones they strived for.

Where did this thinking methodology break down? Where and when did reason get replaced by fake stories and fantasies? Hilary Mantel has a line in the “A time of greater safety,” “We tell ourselves stories so we can live.” Why do we need stories, and most importantly, how were the Greeks able to live without stories and rely only on facts?

The Classical Greeks were the first documentarians without opinions; the first journalists from a time when only truth and facts mattered.

The strangest thing is that period lasted for only 200–250 years. And then, it disappeared. They, too, went to storytelling and dropped reason and logical explanations for supernatural ones. Was this just an experiment? And why did it not last? What caused its collapse, and what/who triggered that collapse? What event or person was so powerful that it changed the way an entire civilization thought? How come Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, and Thucydides thought and reported events and analyzed situations in a logical, factual, realistic way and then, all of a sudden, everything collapsed, and people went back (is it back?) to believing in supernatural things and understanding reality only through the lenses of storytelling?

Herodotus has a great section in his Histories. He tells a detailed story about the impact of the river Nile on Egyptian mythology and history. That story, he says, it’s written word-by-word as he was told by a high priest who was his host in Egypt. After relating the story, he then has his own explanation for each of the stories and the priests’ points. He breaks down every single one of their explanations as being erroneous and offers the reason — scientific reason — for each.

Reason reigned supreme then. Now, not so sure…