Civilizations die when they lose faith

Alternate title: "Materialism sucks when applied at large scale"

I’d put an “armchair philosophy” warning here, but many posts from this series ended up like that so… take this in the same speculative fashion as it is given.

I’m a fan of Terry Pratchett, and one of his quotes resonates with me in a way that makes me remember it very often:

“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY.”

There’s no “justice” in nature. There are no good deeds, mercy or glory. Nature is what it is - or even “nature is that it is”. And if there is none of these in nature, then there are no heroes in nature. Like with life’s meaning, we need to make them up.

It’s been said that we are hardwired for stories, but even more, we are hardwired for getting role models through stories. Our heroes.

Historically, gods start as literal entities, then become symbolic / metaphoric, and then get replaced with men. Zeus and the rest of the ancient Greek pantheon started out that way - as literal entities living on Mount Olympus - even though not everyone believed in the same stories, or considered the same stories to be true. As philosophical thought developed, they got relegated to abstract representations of natural laws. Hercules might have started as an amalgam of some living heroes and strongmen, but quickly became an object of actual devotion and aspiration, with temples across Greece and Rome. People wanted to be like him, prayed to get his strength - but he was in the realms of gods, untouchable, unseen, and no living soul has actually met him.

Romans continued the tradition right until they started promoting their emperors to gods. It started with Caesar, and they had the good sense to only do it posthumously as a rule, so the deified emperor / god is still beyond the physical. A target for aspiration and supplication that never responds back. The practice of the imperial cult lasted for centuries, and IMO it has “cheapened” the concept of what a “god” is. Now, instead of gods being symbols of nature and natural laws, they became more ordinary, seen and met in person by many. You can’t really think someone is a literal force of nature if you watched him eat.

Apparently, we function best when our gods and heroes distant and idealized.

(Christianity did much the same cycle - from a person, to ideal, to clergy).

I’ve just re-watched Total Recall, the version from 1990, and my wife noted how lame the 2012 version is for not taking place on Mars.

That observation made me remember Pratchett’s quote again. Literally, in those 12 years, it looks like we’ve lost faith that we’ll ever get there, and the reason we’ve lost faith in that grand plan is IMO that we lost faith in the “little things.”

Who are our heroes now? Who can we look up to?

Even comic book superheroes got de-idealized (de-constructed) into “flawed humans with accidental superpowers”, struggling with the weight of their respective tasks, overwhelmed by difficult decisions they must make.

As if.

In the effort to make them more understandable, approachable and “more human”, they’ve kind of lost their appeal. No one wants to be a super-duper-ultra-being who’s pining for a simpler life (or the fjords) after his wife left him for an accountant.

Real life is grim and dark. We like our heroes and gods to be certain, forceful and shining. By putting realism, the grimness and the darkness on the pedestal, IMO we’ve lost much aspirational options.

Instead of gods and heroes, we’ve come to worship dull men, possibly orange ones.

We need to start believing in the little things again.