What does it mean to be Saved?

“…and this is the similarity in their spiritual outlook. Again, it’s commonplace to imagine that an enormous gulf separates East and West in this regard, but the two of them look like twins to me, because they’re both obsessed by the strange idea that people need to be saved.” In western psychology, there is aContinue reading “What does it mean to be Saved?”

Agricultural revolution?

“…about ten thousand years ago, people began to abandon the foraging life in favor of agriculture.” “Many different styles of agriculture were in use all over the world ten thousand years ago, when our particular style of agriculture emerged in the Near East. This style, our style, is one I call totalitarian agriculture, in orderContinue reading “Agricultural revolution?”

Prehistory

What is the inherent challenge with the historical approach to understanding the human experience? “In this way human history is reduced to the period exactly corresponding to the history of our culture, with the other ninety-nine-point-seven percent of the human story discarded as a mere prelude.”

The great forgetting

“Paleontology made untenable the idea that humanity, agriculture, and civilization all began at roughly the same time. History and archaeology had put it beyond doubt that agriculture and civilization were just a few thousand years old, but paleontology put it beyond doubt that humanity was millions of years old. Paleontology made it impossible to believeContinue reading “The great forgetting”

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