SPIEGEL: Has the crisis in financial capitalism reduced greed to what it was once before, one of the seven deadly sins?

Sedláček: Mankind’s oldest stories tell us that greed is always Janus-faced. It is an engine of progress, but it’s also the cause of our collapse. Being constantly dissatisfied and always wanting more seems to be an innate natural phenomenon, forming the heart of our civilization. The original sin of the first human couple in the Garden of Eden was the result of greed.

SPIEGEL: Not of temptation and curiosity?

Sedláček: Desire and curiosity are sisters. The snake merely awakened a desire in Eve that was already dormant inside of her. According to Genesis, the forbidden tree was a feast for the eyes.

SPIEGEL: Just like the suggestive images of modern advertising.

Sedláček: Eve and Adam grab the opportunity and eat the fruit. The original sin has the character of excessive, unnecessary consumption. It is not of a sexual nature. A desire for something she doesn’t need is awakened in Eve. The living conditions in paradise were complete, and yet everything God had given the two wasn’t enough. In this sense, greed isn’t just at the birthplace of theoretical economics, but also at the beginning of our history. Greed is the beginning of everything.

SPIEGEL: So evil is the result of insatiability?

Sedláček: The demands of people are a curse of the gods. In Greek mythology, the story of Pandora, the first woman, who opens her jar out of curiosity, thereby releasing poverty, hunger and disease into the world, tells the same story as the Bible. In Babylonian culture, the Gilgamesh epic shows how desire rips man out of the harmony of nature…..The economics of equilibrium are doomed to failure. Eve’s desire — in economic terms, her demand — will never subside. And Adams’s offer to toil by the sweat of his brow will never be enough.

If we are talking about the human condition since the advent of agriculture, Sedlacek’s story has a great deal of validity. Sedlacek errs, however, in asserting that greed — always wanting more — is an “innate natural phenomenon” that marks the “beginning of our history.” This is a common error whether we are talking about economic history or religious history.

It arises from the illusion that everything essentially began with the Neolithic transition and “civilization.” As this myth goes, there was no history or society for the people who hunted and gathered for tens of thousands of years before settlements and cities. But these people, and some of their descendants who continued foraging until recently, had history. This history suggests that greed — always wanting more — is not an “innate natural phenomenon.”

Despite its faults, Marshall Sahlins’ classic essay “The Original Affluent Society” remains instructive on these issues. People everywhere and at all times haven’t been driven by greed. Given this fact, we shouldn’t be surprised to learn that supernatural sanctions haven’t always surrounded greed. It was the reformist Axial Age religious movements, responsive to the destructive aftermaths of unfettered greed, that made it a spiritual and hence moral issue.

All this aside, there are less misogynist ways to read the Edenic myth. Sedlacek saddles Eve with the original sin of greed. I read it differently. As I see it (or because it suits my purposes), Eve is the courageous heroine who chose knowledge. She wasn’t the passive victim of temptation or seduction. There is no shame in that.

"Eve in the Garden" by Anna Lea Merritt (1885)

If what you say is true – and I believe the evidence is unquestionable in this regard – then economics is not a science whatsoever. It more so resembles a school of morality or even a philosophical cult. The old Greek Stoics spring to mind. They were a school of philosophy that not only taught certain ideas but demanded that their followers live these ideas in their day-to-day lives. But in economics the students aren’t even told that they’re signing up for a moral vision, a sort of religion or belief system, they’re told that they’re being initiated into an objective science. Perhaps you could reflect a little in that direction and its implications?

In his response, Varoufakis ascertains voodoo in economics:

Quite so. It is a priesthood that truly believes it is not a priesthood but, rather, a community of scientists. How do they manage to maintain this delusion? The simple answer is because their incantations involve rather advanced mathematics and their rituals are steeped in statistical tests and projections….

This is a most peculiar failure: The hapless economist uses the same tools as acclaimed physicists and astronomers. She has trained for years to speak precisely the same language as them, to understand the same advanced mathematics, to deploy most complex statistical methods which are an essential part of the scientific toolbox. It is, understandably, incredibly difficult to accept that her work is a form of higher order superstition; a religion couched in the language of mathematics and statistics. Tragically, this is precisely what it is. Come to think of it, what is it that separates science from mythology? The fact that scientific propositions are not self-referential. That, in science (unlike in mythology), when the facts clash with the theory it is too bad for the theory.

E.E. Evans-Pritchard (the famous anthropologist) once offered a brilliant insight into the social success of the priesthood within the Azande society. The question he asked is similar to yours (regarding economists): If they get it so wrong so often, how should we explain their continuing dominance? When the Azande priests and oracles failed to predict or avert disasters, why did people continue to believe them? His explanation of the Azande’s unshakeable belief in witchcraft, oracles and magic goes like this:

Azande see as well as we that the failure of their oracle to prophesy truly calls for explanation, but so entangled are they in mystical notions that they must make use of them to account for failure. The contradiction between experience and one mystical notion is explained by reference to other mystical notions. Evans-Pritchard in his Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande, 1937

Economics, I submit to you, is not much different. Whenever it fails to predict properly some economic phenomenon (which is more often than not), that failure is accounted for by appealing to the same mystical economic notions which failed in the first place.

It reminds me of this prayer algorithm (by LOL god), which Craig Martin describes as impervious ideology: “it can’t be dented or contradicted by any empirical data. Or, rather, incoming data is slotted into existing categories (God’s work or God’s mysterious ways), and in such a way that anomalies aren’t allowed.”

• Exempted from military service;
• Exempted from work or employment;
• Arranged marriage at very young age;
• Supported by working wife; and
• Supported by working parents.

The “job” of ultra-Orthodox males in Israel appears to consist of two things: inseminate wife and study Torah. While they are considered “scholars,” these studies don’t include math, science, languages, and humanities. It isn’t scholarship when the only thing studied is Jewish religion.

While Gershom Gorenberg characterizes this as an “economic disaster” in his new book The Unmaking of Israel, the cultural and political implications are more profound. When non-working radicals out-reproduce the rest of the population, bad things happen.

Although there are several striking parallels between the Levantine and Chinese Neolithic transitions (Underhill 1997), one Chinese tradition was early developing and distinctive: ancestor worship. In The Archeology of Ancient China, K.C. Chang asserts that burials dating from 3,000 BCE indicate such worship: “The probable lineage arrangement in the village cemetery and the regularity of the individual burials within the cemetery in many cases make it highly likely that the cult of ancestors to symbolize lineage solidarity had already been initiated.” Over the next several thousand years, parental reverence or “filial piety” became a cornerstone of Chinese culture and metaphysics. It remains so to this day.

In “The Place of Filial Piety in Ancient China,” Donald Holzman examines the early history of ancestor worship in China and traces its development over succeeding millennia. It is a fascinating history that seems completely foreign. As might be expected, Chinese rulers and elites found it expedient to have the microcosm (household) mirror the macrocosm (empire). Just as one must obey and revere one’s parents or elders, one must also obey and revere the emperor or state. As Holzman explains, this relationship was elevated to sacred status:

[A]t the very earliest stages in their history, the Chinese gave filial piety an extremely exalted position — treated it as something one might almost call an absolute, a metaphysical entity, something so exalted in their minds that it becomes difficult for us of another culture to appreciate it today. A brief discussion of the origin of filial piety in China will show that this phenomenon seems always to have been central in Chinese life and very seldom, if ever, called into question.

While Westerners may find this exceedingly odd, Holzman does not and compares it to Western belief:

It is a truism that the Chinese are, philosophically, down-to-earth, immanentists, uninterested in transcendence, whereas in the West God is felt to be transcendent, above and beyond us. It is also well known that the Chinese have not been interested, in their philosophies, in the origin of the world, in a Creator.

The only creators the Chinese know are the parents who gave them life and thus it is not surprising that those who have saintly natures have reacted towards their parents as men and women in the West have reacted towards the God they consider to be their Creator.

[F]ilial piety in China came to be seen as having absolute value and the worship of one’s parents (that is, one’s creators) can be compared to the worship of God in the West.

One question remains unanswered: Why did ancestor worship or filial piety arise in the first place? My guess would be that early millet and rice agriculture led to increasing social stratification — with unequal and potentially conflicting claims on land/water — and that certain families established priority for such claims. Under these circumstances, it becomes expedient to establish lineages and worship ancestors.

References:

Holzman, D. (1998). The Place of Filial Piety in Ancient China Journal of the American Oriental Society, 118 (2) DOI: 10.2307/605890

Underhill, A. (1997). Current issues in Chinese Neolithic archaeology Journal of World Prehistory, 11 (2), 103-160 DOI: 10.1007/BF02221203

“There’s not a new idea in The Purpose Driven Life that hasn’t been said in 2,000 years of history. It’s been said all before. If I had a 15-word sentence, how could I say it in nine? How can I say it in five?”

Do they teach this at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop?

It surely was no coincidence that later in the year, Nebraska experienced a sharp drop in tourism and state troopers issued record numbers of tickets to drivers in a hurry to pass through the state. Who can blame people for wanting to avoid scythe-wielding Corn Children with a pagan penchant for ritual murder:

You know things are bad when post-apocalyptic berserker Linda Hamilton (aka Sarah Connor) cannot avoid a corn crucifixion:

Now that is a high intensity ritual! But if Quentin Atkinson and Harvey Whitehouse are correct, it is not true to form.

In “The Cultural Morphospace of Ritual Form: Examining Modes of Religiosity Cross-Culturally,” Atkinson and Whitehouse use the latter’s mode of religiosity theory to predict ritual forms. This theory proposes that two different kinds of cognitive memory systems — episodic and semantic — are linked to (and subserve) two broad categories of religion: “imagistic” and “doctrinal.”

The imagistic mode of religion is based on rare, climactic rituals that are extremely intense. The doctrinal mode revolves around frequently repeated rituals (or teachings) that are relatively sedate. The theory predicts that rituals associated with imagistic religions will be low frequency and high arousal, whereas rituals associated with doctrinal religions will be high frequency and low arousal.

To test these predictions the authors used a sample of 74 randomly selected societies drawn from the Human Relations Area Files, a well known and highly respected ethnographic database. They coded the rituals for frequency and arousal. As predicted, they found that ritual frequency is negatively correlated with ritual intensity. Ritual intensity levels were highest for once in a lifetime rituals and lowest for daily ones. There is a big arousal difference, in other words, between the Native American vision quest and attending Mass or performing Salah.

When the authors analyzed the variables associated with ritual intensity and arousal, they found that “reliance on agriculture is a key predictor of variation” and that agricultural intensity best predicts ritual intensity. Hardcore farmers prefer lowkey rituals. Hunter-gatherers, by contrast, tend towards the hardcore:

These findings are not surprising. If we suppose that “religions” can in fact be roughly divided into two types and follow Whitehouse’s division, it seems that “imagistic” religions describe the beliefs of most pre-state or small-scale societies, and that “doctrinal” religions entail the beliefs of most agricultural and industrial societies.

If this is the case, then religion-ritual variation (“imagistic” or “doctrinal”) might be better explained as a difference in political economy. The basic difference, in other words, is that pre-state and small-scale societies generally lack the kinds of elites, institutions, and technologies that promote “doctrinal” modes of religion. They also tend to lack writing and books, which may be prerequisites for “doctrinal” forms of religion.

We can also observe that until 10,000 years ago (i.e., before the Neolithic Revolution) all “religions” were shamanic and therefore imagistic. The domestication of plants and animals led to the development of city-states and resulted in a shift to more organized, systematic, and “doctrinal” forms of religion.

Thus while it may be true that “imagistic” religions draw primarily on episodic memory and “doctrinal” religions draw primarily on semantic memory, this cognitive association seems to be an historical effect rather than a biological cause. As Marx and Engels suggested long ago, a society’s mode of production generally determines its form of religion.

What does this have to do with deranged Corn Children? Assuming they planted the endless and eerie corn fields in the movie, we would predict their rituals to be mellow or even bookish. Ritual crucifixions and bloody murders don’t fit the predicted pattern. Either Stephen King missed the memo or he used the maize-loving Aztecs as his model.

Reference:

Atkinson, Quentin D., & Whitehouse, Harvey (2011). The Cultural Morphospace of Ritual Form: Examining Modes of Religiosity Cross-Culturally. Evolution and Human Behavior, 32 (1), 50-62 DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2010.09.002

This, I suspect, is about as much as most people know about Mesopotamian religion. It certainly constituted the extent of my knowledge through the 1980s. But do we have good reason to learn more (e.g., that Gozer is a fictitious Mesopotamian deity)? If we heed Professor Alan Lenzi, the answer is yes.

In “Dead Religion and Contemporary Perspectives: Commending Mesopotamian Data to the Religious Studies Classroom,” Lenzi makes a compelling case for the study of Mesopotamian religion. He begins with a simple observation: religious people are reluctant to think about their religion in historical terms. Although all religions have histories, considering them in the context of human affairs is inevitably corrosive. Many resist.

We can overcome this resistance, at least in theory, by using “dead” religions to cast light on “living” ones. The past can be used to illuminate and think critically about the present. In his classroom, Lenzi uses Mesopotamian religion to illustrate three concepts applicable to all religions: (1) the social and cultural embeddedness of religion, (2) the role of mythmaking in politico-religious ideology, and (3) the insider versus outsider perspective.

Lenzi demonstrates the social and cultural embeddedness of Mesopotamian religion (and by extension, all religions) by discussing changing conceptions of deity:

The earliest form of Mesopotamian religion indicates that the people of this region imagined their gods as elements of the natural world. As human security increased against the forces of the natural world via technology (e.g., agricultural surplus) and as social organization was increasingly centralized around human leaders in order to protect society against threats from other humans, the gods began to be conceived in anthropomorphic terms and were given positions within a divine, cosmic government.

In other words, people’s ideas about the divine powers of the universe began to reflect the new configuration of human political powers in society. It is no surprise, therefore, to learn that about the time the human institution of kingship was created so too was the notion of the kingship of the gods.

Lenzi illustrates the second point with a discussion of the most widespread cultic celebration in Mesopotamia: the Akitu or New Year’s Festival. In its earliest form, the myth celebrated the Babylonian national god’s defeat of of Tiamat, a Gozer-like god who embodied the forces of chaos. When Assyria defeated Babylon, the myth was revised:

[Assyrian king] Sennacherib implemented an Akitu festival in his own capital city after he destroyed the city of Babylon in 689 BCE and replaced the Babylonian god Marduk, who was central to the Akitu in Babylon, with Assyria’s supreme god, Ashur.

In order to maintain continuity with the tradition, Sennacherib decided to create a new Akitu festival with a new divine hero. Moreover—and this is probably the real intention of the Assyrian Akitu—holding the Akitu in the Assyrian capital would exalt Assyria’s position to that of a New Babylon. Thus, the re-tooling of a traditional myth supported a political program.

Lenzi’s final point is that people who profess belief in a particular faith privilege their own views while denigrating conceptually identical views from other traditions. He presents students with Mesopotamian prophetic proclamations which purport to be divine messages, and then asks if they believe the Mesopotamian deity actually spoke those words. Of course none do (Gozer is after all a fictitious deity) but it forces them to think critically about prophetic texts and divine sayings from all religions.

These pedagogical points are well-taken. We can study Gozer, in other words, to learn about religion more generally. Or as Lenzi puts it:

Religion is fully entrenched in human activity; it is a product of human beings. As such, any particular religious activity or system may begin, evolve, develop, and cease like any other human phenomenon. [O]ne may study religion without the invocation of supernatural forces, revelation, or other ideas that privilege a particular view and place it outside the realm of human scrutiny and verification.

Reference:

Lenzi, A. (2007). Dead Religion and Contemporary Perspectives: Commending Mesopotamian Data to the Religious Studies Classroom Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 19 (1), 121-133 DOI: 10.1163/157006807X222550

This concerned me given that I was in a plane for most hours on May 21 and wondered whether the rapture would result in turbulence severe enough to bring down the plane. Alas, I am safe.

Camping’s followers now must put their lives back in order after doing silly things like selling property, quitting jobs, and wasting assets. Camping, for his part, has not been seen in public nor issued a statement. Perhaps he alone was righteous and has ascended to heaven.

Lost in all the laughter over Camping’s most recent failed prediction is the fact that almost immediately after Jesus’ death, Christians have been predicting the soon to come apocalypse and eagerly awaiting rapture. There have been tens of thousands of such predictions in Christian history, and all of course have been wrong.

A two thousand year series of failed predictions constitutes a data set of sorts. But rather than learn from such failures, Christians will continue to believe the end is near and predict a coming judgment. Indeed, a third generation evangelist from the Billy Graham tree has already offered solace to the disappointed believers, announcing that Camping’s date was wrong but his prediction is right.

Some people never learn and Christian eschatology will continue to be big business.

Heaven is for Real currently occupies the number one slot on the New York Times bestseller list and is Amazon’s number one seller. As of today, 1.5 million copies are in print but with a heavy promotional tour underway, expect that figure to go much higher. The book retails for $16.99.

Covering the story for the New York Times, Julie Bosman interviewed Colton’s father, who attempted to deflect any suspicions that money was the motive: “People say we just did this to make money, and it’s not the truth,” Mr. Burpo said, referring to anonymous online comments about the book. “We were expecting nothing. We were just hoping the publisher would break even.”

Before you begin thinking this was a homespun effort, with Colton patiently telling his dad all about heaven while the pastor faithfully transcribed, think again. The book’s “co-author” is the high-powered Lynn Vincent, author of Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue. Vincent does not sign on for just any book and does not work for charity. She is a writer of great skill who knows how to push all the right buttons for a Christian audience. This one appears to be a home run.

What are to make of all this? Besides the obvious (American Christians are a credulous lot), we have to wonder about Colton and his father. They seem like good people and I will give them the benefit of the doubt: they probably believe what they are saying. The question then becomes: How can this be? It would be a mistake to underestimate our evolved powers of self-deception, especially when coupled with a brain-mind that naturally generates beliefs in the supernatural and strong cultural support for such beliefs.

We can find some additional clues by watching this astonishing interview:

“Wow!” That is Gretchen Carlson, a Stanford degree holder who is clearly smitten by Colton’s story. Because Colton’s parents are both pastors, we know that in the seven years since his surgery he has been hearing stories about God, Jesus, John the Baptist, and Heaven. Some of these sound a bit familiar.

What is God like? He’s really big and can “fit the entire world in his hands.” I wonder where Colton got this idea? What about Jesus? Despite his non-European heritage, he has “sea blue eyes.” Hopefully, Razib over at Gene Expression will give us a rundown on this remote possibility. What about people? Everyone is “young again” and can fly — wings are apparently given out on arrival. Angel races anyone?

Here is the rub in all this: Why is it that when Hindus have near death experiences (NDE), they meet Krishna or Vishnu in an ornate temple? Why is it that when Buddhists have an NDE, they meet Buddha under a tree? Why is it that when Muslims have an NDE, they meet Mohammad in the garden of virgins? Why is it that when Crow Indians had one, they visited the happy hunting grounds?

There must be different kinds of afterlives and heavens for different kinds of faiths.

What could be wrong with a large-scale movement that emphasizes meditation, morality, and mingling? Apparently quite a lot, if a recent “Photo Essay” over at Foreign Policy is any indication. The essay’s title contains all kinds of code words calculated to set off alarm bells: Close Encounters of the Buddhist Kind: An Exclusive Look Inside a Booming Multibillion-Dollar, Evangelical, Global Thai Cult.

It obviously took a bit of hard work to insert all the allusions, because this has just about everything. Far out and crazy, akin to UFO beliefs and Heaven’s Gate or Scientology (“Close Encounters”)? Check. Secretive and shadowy, but we have the Enquiring scoop (“An Exclusive Look Inside”)? Check. A dubious spiritual profiteering scheme (“Booming Multi-billion Dollar”)? Check. Enthusiastic, zealous, and irrational (“Evangelical”)? Check. Expansive, dangerous, and conspiratorial (“Global”)? Check. And the inevitable kicker, bringing to mind Jim Jones, David Koresh, and Reverend Moon: it’s a “cult.”

As if these clumsy connotations were not enough, the caption “essayist” (Ron Gluckman) absurdly trots out the Nazi analogies, complete with “scare quotes”:

Picture this: millions of followers gathering around a central shrine that looks like a giant UFO in elaborately choreographed Nuremberg-style rallies; missionary outposts in 31 countries from Germany to the Democratic Republic of the Congo; an evangelist vision that seeks to promote a “world morality restoration project”; and a V-Star program that encourages hundreds of thousands of children to improve “positive moral behavior.” Although the Bangkok-based Dhammakaya movement dons saffron robes, not brown shirts, its flamboyant ceremonies have become increasingly bold displays of power for this cult-like Buddhist group that was founded in the 1970s, ironically, as a reform movement opposed to the excesses of organized religion in Thailand.

Take cover! These mass-meditating Buddhists are poised for world domination! If Dhammakaya practitioners were carrying Mausers instead of flowers and clamoring for more meditation Lebensraum, the connection would be complete. Or not.

The photos in this feature are arresting and beautiful (excellent work by photographer Luke Duggleby), but caption “essayist” Gluckman tells us virtually nothing about Dhammakaya. It amounts to a hatchet job, which may or may not be deserved. One thing is for certain: Gluckman has not provided us with any information by which to judge the issue. His non-stop train of pejorative cliches and negative connotations speaks to an agenda. Instead of providing us with analysis, we are given only Gluckman’s judgments.

Whatever else it might be, Dhammakaya appears to be a dream come true for cultural anthropologists looking for a field site or subject. If anyone is aware of ethnographic work that situates this movement in a meaningful or informative way, please let us know. In the meantime, we can all channel our inner Leni Riefenstahl while contemplating scenes from the main temple complex: