Story Real Gender Studies 203 - Antarctica Chapter 3

[K9Otaku]

This is the third chapter of the book "Antarctica" and the sixth in the series. See below for a list of threads in the series.

---

Chapter 3 (part 1) – Eridu

When I came back, Finn was sitting at the same place in the office. “25 minutes! You walk fast”, he said. From my perspective, I had been absent for two days. When I had exited the station Philadelphia area, I had found the snowmobile where I had left it, in pitch darkness. Fortunately, I had borrowed a flashlight from Finn before I left. I had gone on performing the maintenance task I was supposed to and headed back to Amundsen-Scott. According to the clocks there, I had been out for an hour and a half. While at the station, I pondered whether I should talk about what had happened to anyone, but I quickly decided against it. Nobody would have believed me and I would have been shipped back on the next sanitary flight, headed for a psych ward. I was exhausted, now that the Adrenalin had worn off, and slept for 15 hours straight. I was no longer on night duty so I could take it easy for a little while. When I felt rested, I packed a bag and waited for an opportunity to sneak out. Peter, my fellow RA from the University of Wisconsin, was supposed to be on duty that night but was apparently not feeling like it, so I offered to take his place. After midnight, I logged a bogus maintenance entry into the computer and headed out. Now, there I was, back into the bubble that was station Philadelphia.

After a little small talk with Finn, I started reading binder X-47/02. The first document it contained was the minutes of a debate that had occurred after the end of the Socrates experiment about the direction the next experiments should take. Although these minutes were written in formal language, it was obvious that the debate had been quite heated. One side of it was led by Wittgenstein, Kuhn and Ulam. According to them, the Socrates experiment had demonstrated quite clearly that the idea of objective truth is poisonous, in and of itself. They held that the team should now concentrate on the late XVIIIth century, to observe how this idea had been resurrected by Hegel and his followers, despite Kant’s conclusive remarks on the impossibility of knowing the “things in themselves”. This, they thought, would show how this resurrection had led to the philosophical seduction that Communism represents today. The other side of the debate, led by Quine, Oppenheimer and Turing, argued that the jury was still out on the idea of truth and that the team should instead focus on the XVIIth century in order to observe how the debate between Empiricism and Rationalism had played out. Wittgenstein is recorded as saying:

Why are we philosophers so addicted to navel-gazing ? We know well enough how the debate between Empiricists and Rationalists unfolded. We know that Kant eventually ended it in favor of Empiricism, although he slightly disguised his position by clothing it in rationalist jargon in order to facilitate its adoption. The problem of philosophy is that it can all too easily veer off from reality and degenerate into mental Onanism. We should look at what goes on in society at large in order to pinpoint how philosophy sometimes influences it, for better or worse, not at how philosophers bicker between themselves.​

I suspected that the word “Onanism” meant “masturbation”, but I was not absolutely sure. A quick peek into the dictionary confirmed it. From the contents of his personal logbook, it was evident that Alan Turing felt personally insulted by Wittgenstein’s remarks. He found terms like “Navel-gazing” and “Onanism” to be crude and unnecessarily abrasive. However, he did not publicly express his misgivings about the form in which Wittgenstein’s arguments were couched and he simply stuck to his guns, maintaining his preference for a focus on the XVIIth century. The debate was at an impasse and dragged on for another week or so without much progress. The two sides were now entrenched on their positions.

Then, Wolfram von Soden, who had been mostly silent until then, proposed an alternative. “We should go back to Eridu, in 4000 BC., the place where it all started”. He was talking about the ancient city located along the Euphrates in Southern Iraq. This location was mentioned in a number of Sumerian sources as the place where the Mesopotamian civilization, the oldest in the world, had started. The site was then under excavation by Iraqi archaeologist Fuad Safar and von Soden had heard of some interesting finds through his contacts in the Assyriological community. His argument was that, by focusing on what he called “recent” history (for an Assyriologist, anything after 500 BC. is “recent”), the team was allowing its vision to be obscured by the clutter of cultural surface phenomena generated by long-term accretion. Focusing instead on a very old and technically “brand new” civilization (Eridu being the first city ever, its culture was indeed the first to deserve the label “civilization”) he thought that there would be far fewer layers of accumulated cultural elaboration to sift through and that the picture would thus be easier to discern. This was a suggestion that was acceptable to both sides and so it was easily adopted. Experiment No. 2 was named "the Eridu Experiment".

Von Soden was tasked with the composition of the specialist sub-team which would perform the translation of the Sumerian language that would be heard through the device. This would not be an easy task. In the late 1940s, Classical Sumerian was still not completely understood and what was spoken at Eridu in 4000 BC., nearly 1500 years before the earliest written attestations of Classical Sumerian, would undoubtedly be a substantially different dialect. At his request, Benno Landsberger, von Soden’s erstwhile mentor, was whisked away from his East Berlin apartment by MI6 operatives, in the wee hours of a foggy day in November 1947, and brought straight to McMurdo station and then to station Philadelphia on a specially charted USAF YB-36, the only plane then able to complete the flight from Berlin without refueling. Upon his arrival, the old Assyriology professor started berating his former student for making him endure such an exhausting trip at his age. However, when he was made aware of what was going on at station Philadelphia, his mood changed instantly. The two German scholars then drafted a list of ten other specialists of ancient Sumerian that they thought were best suited for the task at hand. Less than a week later, the team was ready to start work on the Eridu Experiment.

---

Previous thread in the series (in reverse chronological order):

Real Gender Studies 202 - Antarctica Chapter 2

This is the second chapter of the book "Antarctica" and the fifth in the series. See below for a list of threads in the series. Chapter 2 (part 1) – Socrates The following morning, I went to the mess-hall, fixed myself some breakfast and headed to the office. It was empty. Finn was nowhere to...

incels.is

Real Gender Studies 201 - Antarctica Chapter 1

I had already talked about this book in a previous thread. Now I am going to post it here chapter by chapter, with a commentary. Chapter 1 (part 1) – Discovery On July 17th 2022, I was on night shift duty at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station ARA monitoring room. ARA stands for “Askaryan...

incels.is

Real Gender Studies 103 - Before the cities

In the middle of the fifth millennium BC, the Middle East had become entirely dotted with farming villages and agriculture had started to spread to Europe, North Africa and the Iranian Plateau. The spread of farming was the first human large scale technological revolution. It had resulted in an...

incels.is

Real Gender Studies 102 - the Neolithic

This is the second installment in the "real gender studies" series. It follows the one below: https://incels.is/threads/real-gender-studies-101-the-paleolithic.316731/#post-7198873 At the start of the Neolithic (around 10 000 years BC), mankind shifted from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle to...

incels.is

Real Gender Studies 101 - The Paleolithic

From around 2 millions years ago to 10 000 years ago, humans have led roughly the same lifestyle: hunting and gathering. Given the length of time we have lived that way, it is quite clear that it is that lifestyle that determined how we evolved. All of our instincts were shaped by this period...

incels.is

 

[BoramHyunKi]

Yay, a new episode ...

 

[K9Otaku]

Chapter 3 (Part 2)

Initially, the progress was slow. The Sumerian decipherment team first had to “calibrate” its understanding of spoken Sumerian by establishing a baseline around the middle of the 3rd millennium BC., the earliest date for which known written sources were reasonably abundant. To that end, several scribal schools from Larsa and Nippur were observed for a number of weeks. Thereafter, the team worked backwards, in increments of 100 to 150 years in order update its understanding of spoken Sumerian as it evolved through time. Around mid-December 1947, this process was advanced enough to start observing the city of Eridu during its foundational period, around 4000 BC.

Until about 4200 BC., Eridu is nothing more than a large village, with a population of around six to seven hundred inhabitants. In the following centuries, it will experience a period of sustained growth and reach a population of around 15 000 in 3700 BC. However, in 4200 BC., nothing distinguishes it from the many other Neolithic villages dotting lower Mesopotamia and the rest of the Fertile Crescent. Like other such villages, Eridu is ruled by the members of a family of hereditary chiefs known as the Alulim. This extended family provides protection services to the village and to a few neighboring hamlets in exchange for a fee. This fee is called a “gift” in Sumerian, but it has all the hallmarks of a tax. Since there is no monetary unit, its amount is specified in kind. This amount is quite meticulously determined according to the size of each family’s land holdings and the crops they grow. Its collection is performed by a group of 15 to 20 clerks who are servants of the Alulim family. These clerks use a system of accounting in which various kinds of agricultural goods are represented by fired clay tokens of different shapes (A cone for a measure of grain, a cylinder for a jar of oil, etc.). Three or four of the accountants/tax-collectors are called En in Sumerian, a word which, at this point in time, means “foreman” or “supervisor”. The hub of Eridu’s tax system, similar in all respects to what is found at the time in many other Middle-Eastern villages, is the Alulim household. It receives agricultural goods from around 150 family units totaling around 1000 people. It pays out daily or weekly food rations to around 20 families, mostly those of the Alulim dependents who are tasked with providing the necessary muscle to protect the village against raiders and marauders. In times of famine, the reserves kept in the Alulim granaries may also be used to provide emergency rations to the neediest residents.

Once they had fine-tuned their mastery of 4th Millennium spoken Sumerian, the Philadelphia team started to look for a break in the history of Eridu; a foundational event which might explain the exceptional journey that the place was about to embark on. While in 4200 BC. Eridu was ruled by a village chief, in 3700 BC, at its peak, it was headed by a committee of elders who were also the chief priests of Enki, the city’s main god. How was the transition effected from chiefdom to theocratic Republic ? This was the question which the team was trying to answer first.

In January 1948, a breakthrough was made. The team observed that, in 4172 BC., the Alulim chief who was then in power, died. However, none of the customary funeral ceremonies were observed in the following days. What had happened ? The team then started following the behavior of the En, the chief servants and accountants of the Alulim family, before and after the death of the chief. After a few attempts, they located the four En sitting on the floor of a room at the back of the Alulim granaries and talking together. The meeting was taking place on the morning of the chief’s death. This is the transcript of the exchange, as it was recorded by von Soden's translators:

— EN No. 1: The master is not dead.

— EN No. 2: But he is in his bed and not breathing.

— EN No. 1: He is not dead. He will live for ever.

[At this point there is a long pause: 2 minutes and 27 seconds during which nobody talks and they all remain motionless]

— EN No. 2: He is not dead. He will live for ever.

— EN No. 3: He is not dead. He will live for ever.

— EN No. 4: He is not dead. He will live for ever.

The Alulim chief who had just died was exceptionally old; well over 90. As a result, none of his immediate family members were alive. He had also been bedridden for the last 7 years, and the four En were the only people who saw him on a daily basis. They washed him, fed him, asked him for instructions and took care of his every need. The En were also older men, in their 60s and 70s. The Alulim generally acquired their servants as a compensation for unpaid debts. When a family was unable to deliver the specified “gift” to the Alulim granary, it was customary to give a child instead, generally between the ages of 6 and 12. These children were then fed and educated by the older servants of the Alulim household and would eventually become servants themselves. The oldest and most capable of them would then become En whenever one of these died.

What the four En seated in this backroom in Eridu had achieved was a bloodless and silent revolution. They had transitioned the political regime of the village from a chiefdom to a republic without making a sound. For a few weeks after the event, nothing out of the ordinary happened. Nobody had noticed any change as the four En went about their daily business. One day after the old chief had died, his body was buried under the rammed earth floor of his bedroom and a stylized plaster effigy of him was fashioned by one of the En, as was customary in such circumstances. However, it was not shown to anyone just yet.

A month and a half after the chief had died, a new event was observed. The four En had gathered all the Alulim servants in the ancestor room. Normally, this room would have contained plaster effigies of all the previous Alulim chiefs and of some of their relatives and wives. However, before the meeting, the En had carted away all the older effigies into a storage room and replaced them with a single one: the new plaster statue of the recently deceased chief. When all the servants had entered the ancestor room and been seated on the floor, this is what transpired, according to the Eridu experiment report:

— EN No. 1: The master is alive. Behold him. (gesturing towards the plaster effigy)

— EN No. 2: Every day, we bathe him and clothe him and feed him.

— EN No. 3: He is happy with our service and your service.

— EN No. 4: Serve him faithfully and he will reward you like he always did.

— EN No. 1: Behold, he will not die. He will live for ever. This will be for ever and ever.

[pause for 3 minutes and 17 seconds. Nobody speaks or moves]

— SERVANT No. 1: The master is alive.

— SERVANT No. 2: He will live for ever.

— ALL SERVANTS TOGETHER: The master is alive. He will live for ever.

Had the servants realized that a political change had taken place and were they assenting to it ? Did they believe that the Alulim chief was actually alive inside his plaster effigy ? The latter belief was quite widespread and this is why plaster effigies of ancestors were kept by leading families. However, it was impossible to know what the servants thought of what had just happened. The Philadelphia station device could record sound and image but it could not read minds. However, the agreement among the Alulim servants to support the new order of things seems to have been fairly strong as the daily routine of the household went on unchanged.

However, not everything went so smoothly and there was one serious challenge. A few months after the death of the old chief, one of his great-nephews showed up at the house and asked to see him. He was turned away by one of the En who told him that his great uncle did not want to see him. A few days later, he showed up again, accompanied this time by one of the village’s shamans. Both men demanded to be let in the ancestor room so that the shaman could perform the seasonal propitiating rituals meant to coax the Alulim ancestors into cooperating with a local spirit called the Abzu (the embodiment of the lake on the shore of which Eridu stood). The punctual performance of these rituals was considered vital for the welfare of the village, the growth of crops, the fertility of women and beasts, etc. The En refused to let the Shaman and the Alulim relative inside, and a shouting match ensued. Some of the villagers gathered to see what was happening but nothing came of the confrontation. After a few hours of back and forth invective, everybody dispersed.

The challenge from the Shaman was a serious one. If left unchecked it could fracture the village and lead to disaster for the En. As a result, they decided to act swiftly and decisively. The En were the ones who paid out the daily food ration to the village warriors. Therefore, they were quite confident that they could count on their support. In the evening, the four En invited the oldest Shaman of the village, ostensibly to conduct the delayed Abzu ceremony. Once he had entered the house, the En and a few junior servants seized him, tied him up and dragged him to the ancestor room. There, after having repeated the mantra: “The master is alive. He will live for ever”, the oldest of the En addressed the Shaman thus:

— EN No. 1: Will you serve the master? If you do, you will be En together with us in this house.

— SHAMAN: ABZU is stronger than your master.

— EN No. 1: The master fought with the ABZU and he bested him. Now the ABZU is the master’s servant with us. Do you want to serve the master as the ABZU now does?

[Pause: 1 minute 49 seconds]

— SHAMAN: I will serve the master as the ABZU does. I will be En alongside you.

That night, the En’s gamble regarding the the village guards' support proved correct. On the En’s orders, the warriors rounded up the two other shamans who lived in the village, together with their households, beat them up, and escorted them to a point 10 km upstream of the village on the bank of the Euphrates. There they were freed with stern warnings not to come back. They never did and were never heard of again. A few days later, The En organized a feast to which all the village was invited. The people gorged on goat meat and fish, guzzled down beer and danced the usual dances around the bonfires. There was much anticipation as the reason for the feast had not yet been announced. At one point, as the revelry was starting to die down, the four En came forward and motioned the crowd to be silent and sit down. Then, before the whole seated village, the older shaman emerged from the Alulim house, wearing his full ceremonial regalia. He recited the following composition:

ABZU was the son of Heaven (An) and Earth (Ki)
ABZU was Fresh Water and he married Salt Water (TIAMAT)
ABZU and TIAMAT had many sons and Daughters

They were Rambunctious and made noise as they played
ABZU was annoyed at the noise and he complained to TIAMAT
“With the noise I cannot sleep. Make the noise stop
Then Tiamat told her secret lover KINGU:

“Kill the children who annoy father ABZU. I want it.
But ALULIM caught wind of this through his friend ISIMUD
He challenged ABZU to a fight. But ABZU was afraid
Living in the water for so long he was weak

So he ran away and so did KINGU and TIAMAT
Then ALULIM caught ABZU and he bound him tight
Now ABZU is the servant of ALULIM
And the En of the house keep him bound

So that the water will never leave Eridu

— EN No. 1: Long live the master ALULIM

— EN No. 2: He has bested ABZU to keep the waters

— EN No. 3: The master is lord over many waters

— EN No. 4: He will live forever

— THE FOUR EN AND THE SHAMAN TOGETHER: The master ALULIM is lord over many waters. He will live for ever.

The villagers had never heard such outlandish praise being lavished on the village chief before. However, praising the chief was routine in Neolithic village culture. As a result, most of the residents of Eridu probably thought that the En and the Shaman had just decided on this occasion to be a little more sycophantic than usual. They were certainly far from realizing that their leadership had just effected one of the most significant political/religious reforms of all time.

The undying Alulim master that the En and the Shaman had just created was destined to become the first full-fledged god in human history. Before this event, there were ancestors and spirits, which could be wooed by shamans for certain practical purposes, but there were no real gods. Spirits were generally associated to animals or to natural forces. However they were not imagined as having a human form. Ancestors, for their part, were not powerful enough to be considered gods in the full sense either. There were too many of them, for one thing. By contrast, the undying Alulim master which had just appeared at Eridu had all the characteristics that later gods would henceforth generally possess. He was anthropomorphic, he was a leader (“lord”), he lived forever and was powerful enough to bend the forces of nature (here water) to his will. It is doubtful that the En had initially planned to make their undying master such a powerful being. It is only because they had had to find a way to co-opt the senior Shaman into their scheme that they had opted to include the water imagery of the spirit ABZU into the persona of their newly minted fictitious master. This very imagery was destined to a long and successful future, eventually finding its way into the Bible. The Eridu report quoted the following verses as proof of this:

Ps. 29:3 The voice of the LORD is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the LORD, over many waters.​

Ps. 77:16 When the waters saw you, O God, when the waters saw you, they were afraid; indeed, the deep trembled.​

Hab. 3:15 You trampled the sea with your horses, the surging of mighty waters.​

 

[JayGoptri]

Chapter 3 (Part 2)

Initially, the progress was slow. The Sumerian decipherment team first had to “calibrate” its understanding of spoken Sumerian by establishing a baseline around the middle of the 3rd millennium BC., the earliest date for which known written sources were reasonably abundant. To that end, several scribal schools from Larsa and Nippur were observed for a number of weeks. Thereafter, the team worked backwards, in increments of 100 to 150 years in order update its understanding of spoken Sumerian as it evolved through time. Around mid-December 1947, this process was advanced enough to start observing the city of Eridu during its foundational period, around 4000 BC.

Until about 4200 BC., Eridu is nothing more than a large village, with a population of around six to seven hundred inhabitants. In the following centuries, it will experience a period of sustained growth and reach a population of around 15 000 in 3700 BC. However, in 4200 BC., nothing distinguishes it from the many other Neolithic villages dotting lower Mesopotamia and the rest of the Fertile Crescent. Like other such villages, Eridu is ruled by the members of a family of hereditary chiefs known as the Alulim. This extended family provides protection services to the village and to a few neighboring hamlets in exchange for a fee. This fee is called a “gift” in Sumerian, but it has all the hallmarks of a tax. Since there is no monetary unit, its amount is specified in kind. This amount is quite meticulously determined according to the size of each family’s land holdings and the crops they grow. Its collection is performed by a group of 15 to 20 clerks who are servants of the Alulim family. These clerks use a system of accounting in which various kinds of agricultural goods are represented by fired clay tokens of different shapes (A cone for a measure of grain, a cylinder for a jar of oil, etc.). Three or four of the accountants/tax-collectors are called En in Sumerian, a word which, at this point in time, means “foreman” or “supervisor”. The hub of Eridu’s tax system, similar in all respects to what is found at the time in many other Middle-Eastern villages, is the Alulim household. It receives agricultural goods from around 150 family units totaling around 1000 people. It pays out daily or weekly food rations to around 20 families, mostly those of the Alulim dependents who are tasked with providing the necessary muscle to protect the village against raiders and marauders. In times of famine, the reserves kept in the Alulim granaries may also be used to provide emergency rations to the neediest residents.

Once they had fine-tuned their mastery of 4th Millennium spoken Sumerian, the Philadelphia team started to look for a break in the history of Eridu; a foundational event which might explain the exceptional journey that the place was about to embark on. While in 4200 BC. Eridu was ruled by a village chief, in 3700 BC, at its peak, it was headed by a committee of elders who were also the chief priests of Enki, the city’s main god. How was the transition effected from chiefdom to theocratic Republic ? This was the question which the team was trying to answer first.

In January 1948, a breakthrough was made. The team observed that, in 4172 BC., the Alulim chief who was then in power, died. However, none of the customary funeral ceremonies were observed in the following days. What had happened ? The team then started following the behavior of the En, the chief servants and accountants of the Alulim family, before and after the death of the chief. After a few attempts, they located the four En sitting on the floor of a room at the back of the Alulim granaries and talking together. The meeting was taking place on the morning of the chief’s death. This is the transcript of the exchange, as it was recorded by von Soden's translators:

— EN No. 1: The master is not dead.

— EN No. 2: But he is in his bed and not breathing.

— EN No. 1: He is not dead. He will live for ever.

[At this point there is a long pause: 2 minutes and 27 seconds during which nobody talks and they all remain motionless]

— EN No. 2: He is not dead. He will live for ever.

— EN No. 3: He is not dead. He will live for ever.

— EN No. 4: He is not dead. He will live for ever.

The Alulim chief who had just died was exceptionally old; well over 90. As a result, none of his immediate family members were alive. He had also been bedridden for the last 7 years, and the four En were the only people who saw him on a daily basis. They washed him, fed him, asked him for instructions and took care of his every need. The En were also older men, in their 60s and 70s. The Alulim generally acquired their servants as a compensation for unpaid debts. When a family was unable to deliver the specified “gift” to the Alulim granary, it was customary to give a child instead, generally between the ages of 6 and 12. These children were then fed and educated by the older servants of the Alulim household and would eventually become servants themselves. The oldest and most capable of them would then become En whenever one of these died.

What the four En seated in this backroom in Eridu had achieved was a bloodless and silent revolution. They had transitioned the political regime of the village from a chiefdom to a republic without making a sound. For a few weeks after the event, nothing out of the ordinary happened. Nobody had noticed any change as the four En went about their daily business. One day after the old chief had died, his body was buried under the rammed earth floor of his bedroom and a stylized plaster effigy of him was fashioned by one of the En, as was customary in such circumstances. However, it was not shown to anyone just yet.

A month and a half after the chief had died, a new event was observed. The four En had gathered all the Alulim servants in the ancestor room. Normally, this room would have contained plaster effigies of all the previous Alulim chiefs and of some of their relatives and wives. However, before the meeting, the En had carted away all the older effigies into a storage room and replaced them with a single one: the new plaster statue of the recently deceased chief. When all the servants had entered the ancestor room and been seated on the floor, this is what transpired, according to the Eridu experiment report:

— EN No. 1: The master is alive. Behold him. (gesturing towards the plaster effigy)

— EN No. 2: Every day, we bathe him and clothe him and feed him.

— EN No. 3: He is happy with our service and your service.

— EN No. 4: Serve him faithfully and he will reward you like he always did.

— EN No. 1: Behold, he will not die. He will live for ever. This will be for ever and ever.

[pause for 3 minutes and 17 seconds. Nobody speaks or moves]

— SERVANT No. 1: The master is alive.

— SERVANT No. 2: He will live for ever.

— ALL SERVANTS TOGETHER: The master is alive. He will live for ever.

Had the servants realized that a political change had taken place and were they assenting to it ? Did they believe that the Alulim chief was actually alive inside his plaster effigy ? The latter belief was quite widespread and this is why plaster effigies of ancestors were kept by leading families. However, it was impossible to know what the servants thought of what had just happened. The Philadelphia station device could record sound and image but it could not read minds. However, the agreement among the Alulim servants to support the new order of things seems to have been fairly strong as the daily routine of the household went on unchanged.

However, not everything went so smoothly and there was one serious challenge. A few months after the death of the old chief, one of his great-nephews showed up at the house and asked to see him. He was turned away by one of the En who told him that his great uncle did not want to see him. A few days later, he showed up again, accompanied this time by one of the village’s shamans. Both men demanded to be let in the ancestor room so that the shaman could perform the seasonal propitiating rituals meant to coax the Alulim ancestors into cooperating with a local spirit called the Abzu (the embodiment of the lake on the shore of which Eridu stood). The punctual performance of these rituals was considered vital for the welfare of the village, the growth of crops, the fertility of women and beasts, etc. The En refused to let the Shaman and the Alulim relative inside, and a shouting match ensued. Some of the villagers gathered to see what was happening but nothing came of the confrontation. After a few hours of back and forth invective, everybody dispersed.

The challenge from the Shaman was a serious one. If left unchecked it could fracture the village and lead to disaster for the En. As a result, they decided to act swiftly and decisively. The En were the ones who paid out the daily food ration to the village warriors. Therefore, they were quite confident that they could count on their support. In the evening, the four En invited the oldest Shaman of the village, ostensibly to conduct the delayed Abzu ceremony. Once he had entered the house, the En and a few junior servants seized him, tied him up and dragged him to the ancestor room. There, after having repeated the mantra: “The master is alive. He will live for ever”, the oldest of the En addressed the Shaman thus:

— EN No. 1: Will you serve the master? If you do, you will be En together with us in this house.

— SHAMAN: ABZU is stronger than your master.

— EN No. 1: The master fought with the ABZU and he bested him. Now the ABZU is the master’s servant with us. Do you want to serve the master as the ABZU now does?

[Pause: 1 minute 49 seconds]

— SHAMAN: I will serve the master as the ABZU does. I will be En alongside you.

That night, the En’s gamble regarding the the village guards' support proved correct. On the En’s orders, the warriors rounded up the two other shamans who lived in the village, together with their households, beat them up, and escorted them to a point 10 km upstream of the village on the bank of the Euphrates. There they were freed with stern warnings not to come back. They never did and were never heard of again. A few days later, The En organized a feast to which all the village was invited. The people gorged on goat meat and fish, guzzled down beer and danced the usual dances around the bonfires. There was much anticipation as the reason for the feast had not yet been announced. At one point, as the revelry was starting to die down, the four En came forward and motioned the crowd to be silent and sit down. Then, before the whole seated village, the older shaman emerged from the Alulim house, wearing his full ceremonial regalia. He recited the following composition:











— EN No. 1: Long live the master ALULIM

— EN No. 2: He has bested ABZU to keep the waters

— EN No. 3: The master is lord over many waters

— EN No. 4: He will live forever

— THE FOUR EN AND THE SHAMAN TOGETHER: The master ALULIM is lord over many waters. He will live for ever.

The villagers had never heard such outlandish praise being lavished on the village chief before. However, praising the chief was routine in Neolithic village culture. As a result, most of the residents of Eridu probably thought that the En and the Shaman had just decided on this occasion to be a little more sycophantic than usual. They were certainly far from realizing that their leadership had just effected one of the most significant political/religious reforms of all time.

The undying Alulim master that the En and the Shaman had just created was destined to become the first full-fledged god in human history. Before this event, there were ancestors and spirits, which could be wooed by shamans for certain practical purposes, but there were no real gods. Spirits were generally associated to animals or to natural forces. However they were not imagined as having a human form. Ancestors, for their part, were not powerful enough to be considered gods in the full sense either. There were too many of them, for one thing. By contrast, the undying Alulim master which had just appeared at Eridu had all the characteristics that later gods would henceforth generally possess. He was anthropomorphic, he was a leader (“lord”), he lived forever and was powerful enough to bend the forces of nature (here water) to his will. It is doubtful that the En had initially planned to make their undying master such a powerful being. It is only because they had had to find a way to co-opt the senior Shaman into their scheme that they had opted to include the water imagery of the spirit ABZU into the persona of their newly minted fictitious master. This very imagery was destined to a long and successful future, eventually finding its way into the Bible. The Eridu report quoted the following verses as proof of this:

Ps. 29:3 The voice of the LORD is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the LORD, over many waters.​

Ps. 77:16 When the waters saw you, O God, when the waters saw you, they were afraid; indeed, the deep trembled.​

Hab. 3:15 You trampled the sea with your horses, the surging of mighty waters.​

"The EN". Based.

 

[K9Otaku]

Chapter 3 (Part 3)

For the next 50 years, the life of Eridu would not change much. The population increased a little, reaching 1000 by the 4120s BC. As the En died, they were replaced by younger servants chosen by the surviving En, just like it had been done before the old Alulim master had died. As new generations reach En-hood, it seems that the belief that the undying master was indeed alive and well inside his plaster effigy gradually strengthened among the servants of the house and the village at large. The En themselves, seemed to display increasing levels of devotion. Every morning, they dusted off the statue, clothed it with fresh linen garments and adorned it with flowers. Then they deposited offerings of food in front of the statue during rituals which were becoming more and more elaborate as time passed.

In 4118 BC., an unusually ambitious En, whose charisma had propelled him into a position of primus inter pares, managed to convince his colleagues that it was time to rebuild the House on a grander scale. Villagers were drafted, in exchange for a reduced tax payment, and started tearing down the old structure. Then, they began stacking up bricks and hoisting timber to erect the new one. The improved House had an impressive 22 meter-wide facade ornamented with narrow vertical recesses and painted patterns. The rooms inside it were arranged around a courtyard, at the back of which a larger room, with an elevated ceiling, housed the plaster effigy of the master. When the construction was complete, a lavish feast was offered for the benefit of the whole village during which the usual large quantities of goat meat, fish and beer were consumed. After the feast was over, the bones and other leftovers were buried in a pit dug in the middle of the new House’s courtyard as a memento of the master’s largesse. This interment of feasting leftovers would subsequently become a regular custom.

Around this period, the name Alulim was phased out of use as a result of progressive tabooization. Instead, the nickname “Enki” (“supervisor of the Earth”) became the most widely used way to refer to Eridu’s undying master. Among the En, a clearly defined chief-En function began to develop. The man occupying this position was henceforth called the “Ensi”, the “supervisor of the plowland”. He acted as the president of the En council, Eridu’s governing body. From this point onward, Eridu's metamorphosis into a theocratic rebublic was complete. Its center was still called "the House" but it was no longer what we would call a house. It had become a temple.

From 4100 BC. onward, Eridu enjoys a growth in population of approximately 2% a year. This is sufficient to offset the effects of natural catastrophes which hit the town every 10 to 20 years (plagues, crop failures, floods, etc) and yet yield a sufficient growth margin to allow the town's population to steadily increase until it reaches its peak of 15 000 at the end of the 3700s.

The old chiefdom system worked well enough, at Eridu like elsewhere, but it had one well known and quite obvious drawback: dynastic instability brought on by family squabbles. By contrast, the new collegial House system headed by the En council was now impervious to this kind of upheaval. As individuals, the En were anonymous and had no family, apart from the House itself. They were replaced based on merit whenever one of them died. Therefore, there was no cause for infighting at the top anymore. The life of village was no longer disrupted at regular intervals, as it had been when it was governed by a flesh and blood village head. As a result, the House provided a level of stability and predictability never achieved before.

I have called the House a "temple" above. However, this term is not completely accurate because the House does retain many of the attributes of an ordinary household. In particular, it participates in trade. As such, The House provides a steady and reliable outlet for manufactured goods, which it buys at stable rates. This encourages craft specialization. In ordinary Neolithic villages, there are people who tend to make pots or tools more often than average, but there are no true full-time craftsmen. Everyone is still first and foremost a farmer. In Eridu, from the 4100s BC. onward, true craftsmen start to appear, i.e. people who specialize in a single craft (woodworking, basket weaving, pottery, etc.) and pass on their skills to their children. The excess goods produced by these newly specialized workshops are bought by the House which then trades them for agricultural goods from increasingly far-away villages. These goods are in turn used to feed more craftsmen. As a result, Eridu soon becomes able to support a far greater population than its own agricultural production would allow. It is on its way to becoming a true city, i.e. a population center whose manpower’s efforts are no longer primarily directed towards agriculture but instead towards the production of manufactured goods for the beneffit of a wide area around it.

Increased specialization brings about increased quality, due to better skills, and also results in higher productivity. The principles of Adam Smith’s pin workshop are already at work in fith millennium BC. Eridu. These principles are the main driver of Eridu’s successful transformation into the sole producer of manufactured goods within a 50 to 100km radius. The transformation also brings with it the added benefit of pushing farmers within this area to stop producing manufactured goods themselves and focus solely on agriculture, thus increasing their own productivity. Superior craftsmanship skills and rising prosperity also encourages innovation. Around 4060 BC., the first potter's wheels are used in Eridu. Two decades later, the first wheeled vehicles appear. From around 4100 BC. onward, the House had already been contracting specialized donkey drivers to carry the goods it sells to distant villages and bring back the agricultural produce it obtains in exchange. From around the 4040s, these donkey drivers use wheeled carts to carry goods along the level paths of the lower Mesopotamian plain. This increasingly long-distance commerce brings Eridu’s donkey drivers in contact with traders from the Iranian plateau who introduce them to copper objects. The way copper metallurgy is subsequently integrated into Eridu’s thriving economy is a perfect illustration of what makes it truly unique at this point in time.

Initially, the copper objects brought from Iran are crude affairs. They come from a group of villages located in the area of modern-day Shiraz, around 500 km west of Eridu, a mountainous region where copper deposits are plentiful and easily accessible. The small-scale copper smelting industry which has developed in this area over the previous centuries mostly manufactures small objects used primarily for ornamental purposes. These objects are carried to the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates by local village travelers, changing hands more than 10 times before they reach their destination. Once Eridu becomes involved in the copper trade, it quickly and completely transforms the way this economic sector operates. Within 10 years, Eridu’s donkey drivers routinely make the 500 km trip straight to the copper mining and smelting regions on a monthly basis, bringing back copper ingots to the city. This cuts out the middlemen and makes transport more efficient, reducing the cost of smelted copper dramatically. In Eridu, the ingots are worked by a growingly specialized group of craftsmen who quickly develop far better skills than the Shirazi villagers ever had. Soon, increasingly sophisticated objects become available in quantity and at a reasonable price, thus bringing the red metal into the realm of everyday use: scrapers, knives, saws, nails, etc. Success in innovation is not only about doing something new, is it about doing it efficiently. The House of Enki, because of the security it provides in guaranteeing economic transactions, makes this possible. Innovation critically depends on increased levels of confidence; i.e. on trust.

Eridu’s booming copper metallurgy has another consequence: its warriors, now armed with copper weapons, enjoy an undisputed ascendancy over more than 200 villages in the vicinity of Eridu. Around 3700 BC. the population of the city reaches the already mentioned figure of 15 000. Moreover, throughout the villages which have become included in its sphere of influence, the House of Enki is now directly involved in the lives of over 100 000 people. It is not (strictly speaking) a “state” or at least, it does not think of itself that way. As the En and the people of Eridu see it, it is a house; the house of master Enki, who, on account of his superior powers has made his house bigger and more successful than any other. The En council now has 10 to 12 members, while the rest of the House servants number over 500. In order to protect Eridu itself, and the villages within its area of influence, it pays out daily food rations to over 700 warriors. The old tax system is still in place. It contributes to the stability of the House as an economic clearing house by giving it a fixed baseline income.

Beyond copper and wheeled vehicles, Eridu’s craftsmen have made rapid progress in leather working, textile, pottery glazing, wood-working, brick making, dye production, and many other crafts. The clerk servants of the House have developed a rudimentary system of proto-writing consisting of marks incised on the dried leaves of giant reeds (Arundo Donax). These leaves are cut into rectangular strips of 30 by 4 to 5 cm which are more fragile than the old clay tokens but far lighter, and much easier to handle and store. Each transaction that the House underwrites is recorded on such strips which are then tied together with a string running through a hole at one end of each strip. In most cases, a copy of the transaction strip is handed over to the other party for future reconciliation. For example, one strip may say the equivalent of “So and so, from such and such village, received on this date 5 jars of olive oil. In exchange, he will deliver 10 baskets of raw wool after the rainy season”. On the agreed date, the farmer who comes to the House to deliver the 10 baskets of wool, will then hand over his copy of the strip to the clerk. The latter will now find the original strip in the House’s archives. Finally, he will mark both the strip and it’s copy with a sign meaning “transaction completed”.

The final report of the Eridu Experiment in binder X-47/02, which I had just finished reading, contained many annexes featuring a lot of additional data. There were tables giving production figures of various manufactured and agricultural goods, population charts for Eridu proper and its dependent villages, illustrations of manufactured goods and their evolution over time, plans of the House buildings, and so on. The House of Enki was rebuilt five times between 4100 and 3700 BC., reaching a final size of nearly 2 hectares. Drawings of all five iterations were included in the report's annexes, along with illustrations of Enki’s cult image, the final version of which was made of wood, covered with copper, gold and lapis lazuli ornaments. The report ended with a conclusion worded in the following way:

What we have witnessed in Eridu in the period between 4100 and 3700 BC. is almost certainly the first sustained large-scale economic growth spurt in human history. Both the quality and quantity of manufactured goods increased dramatically, while agricultural output was also rising. Many innovations in craftsmanship appeared and were generalized to the whole workforce. The question which remains to be answered was: what specific aspects of the Eridu House model made this growth spurt possible ? Potential answers are:​

- Increased bureaucratization.​

- Political stability​

- long distance trade in prestige goods and metals​

- Hydraulic construction projects increasing the agricultural surplus.​

- Introduction of writing​

- Copper implements​

- Eridu’s strategic location, near the mouth of the Euphrates and on a fresh water lagoon.​

- Specific aspects of Sumerian language and culture​

- Climatic change​

This list of hypotheses is neither particularly original nor is it probably exhaustive. Further discussion and analysis will be required in order to further refine it and come up with a plausible causative scenario.​

 

[BoramHyunKi]

Is that where Authority-L/S enters the picture ?

 

[K9Otaku]

Chapter 3 (part 4)

L. Wittgenstein was in England when the Eridu Experiment report was finalized and he did not contribute to its conclusion. When he came back, on April 17th, 1948, he flew into a rage. During the afternoon of that day, a number of people saw him pacing back and forth in the corridors of Hut 19, the main office building of the Boffin team (which was also the building Finn and I were using). The next day, when someone mentioned the report during a meeting, he exploded:

— WITTGENSTEIN: I read the conclusion of the report yesterday and it made me sick to my stomach. It is a disgrace, a bloody disgrace ! We are supposed to try and understand why people are attracted to Communism; not to think like God-damned communists ourselves ! This conclusion reads like an undergraduate archaeology paper written under the direction of Marxist professors. None of these so called “causes” explain anything. Most of them are actually, and quite obviously, consequences, not causes. Do you think writing invents itself and then causes people to become more reasonable just like that ? And the climate, the bloody climate. Thank God for the climate which is always close at hand when historians or archaeologists have no clue about the reasons for some event. Does anyone think that materialistic explanations are going to get us anywhere ? Is materialism going to magically explain itself ? Do you seriously think materialistic explanation are going to help us figure out why people are so enamored with materialistic explanations ?

— TURING: But Ludwig, there is no need to lose your temper over this …

— WITTGENSTEIN: My temper ! You have seen nothing yet. Alan, I should punch you in the face to wake you up. We are the most fortunate human beings since Adam and Eve. We have the opportunity to SEE OUR PAST. And the only thing we are able to come up with is this drivel ?!

— TURING: But Ludwig, there is no need not to stay civil …

— WITTGENSTEIN: Civil ? CIVIL ?! ...

By this point, Wittgenstein's eyes had become injected with blood. His whole body was convulsing as if under the effect of an electric current and he was sputtering left an right. He continued:

— WITTGENSTEIN: ... Do you even know what this word means, Alan ? No, you don’t. “Civil” means “of the city”, as opposed to those hicks from the countryside. And are we in a city right now ?! We are bloody well not ! We are at war; at war with ourselves. We have come to blows twice this century, nearly bringing ourselves to extinction, and we are now armed with the most dreadful weapons ever wielded by man; in danger at every second of using them and wiping ourselves from the surface of the globe. Western civilization has been giving birth to monster after monster which threaten to swallow it whole at every turn. And we do not know what is going on ! We do not know why people are attracted by monstrosities like Nazism or Stalinism. We have no time. We HAVE to find an answer right now. What is going on ? What is happening to us ? And civility ? No, we do not have time for that. We should be behaving like soldiers, shouting at each other to overcome the din of battle. We are on campaign. Do you know what the word “campaign” means, Alan ? It comes from a French word meaning “countryside”. We are not “in the city”, exchanging pleasantries over tea. We are right in the middle of the wilderness, trying to find a way out, on pain of death.

At this point, Wittgenstein stormed out of the room and slammed the door. Several team members had noted in their logbooks that for a few weeks already, Alan Turing was starting nearly all his sentence with “But Ludwig, ...” It was obvious that he had an enormous amount of admiration for Wittgenstein and yet he could not help crossing him. As a mathematician, he was not well equipped to understand the subtleties of human nature and he knew that, at this juncture, it would have been wise to keep his mouth shut on most issues. But he couldn’t. As soon as Wittgenstein was within earshot, he had to make his opinion known somehow; and face the consequences of Wittgenstein’s annoyance at the naïveté of most of his remarks.

After Wittgenstein had left the room, a few minutes of silence followed. People were looking at their shoes, out the window, or at the copies of the report spread out on the conference table. Then Adam Ulam muttered, as if to himself:

— ULAM: He is right, you know. What we have seen so far of Eridu's history is the clearest possible rebuttal of Marxist historical theory ...

Alan Turing interrupted:

— TURING: Ah, the base and superstructure ? ...

— ULAM: Yes. According to Marx, the "base", i.e. the "means and relations of production", is the determining factor of social reality. Religion, besides being "the opium of the people", is included in "the superstructure", i.e. the smoke and mirrors that the ruling class uses to keep the workers quiescent. However, in Eridu, it is obviously the "superstructure" (the newly introduced cult of Enki) that creates the "base", which, in this case can be identified as the House and its nexus of economic interactions. It is this purely immaterial idea of an undying village chief that causes all the rest to develop. Furthermore, the En do not fit the bill of the "oppressive ruling class" or "cunning priests" archetypes of Marxism either. They are obviously not aware of the consequences that their innovation will have because they cannot even imagine them. In Eridu, the "superstructure" creates the "base"; the god creates the temple and the temple creates the city. This is as un-Marxist as it can get.

— QUINE: I am sure Marxists could find a rebuttal to that.

— ULAM: Of course. Marxist theory is to honest inquiry what military music is to music.

— TURING: Who said that ?

— ULAM: Groucho Marx (not Karl). But the original quotation was about military justice. I am making this one up in the same vein.

After some more chit-chat like this, the room fell back to silence. Eventually, Joseph Brady, the psychologist from Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, decided that it was time someone showed leadership. He said:

I think we should look at the problem like a primatologist would. After all, what is Eridu if not a group of primates ? The question we should be asking ourselves, I believe, is this: What changed in their behavior ? What evolution occurred in their collective interactions which could explain this change in behavior ? Like with all animals, we should be starting with our instincts. What do our instinct push us to do ? How does culture, which is specific to us hairless primates, manage to curb those instincts in order to make us adopt different behaviors ? Within a few days, I think I should be able to present to you an analysis of the material we have collected about Eridu built on these methodological assumptions.​

Everyone was relieved to have a pretext to adjourn the meeting and they all gladly agreed to Brady’s suggestion. A week later, a new meeting took place, dedicated to Brady’s presentation. What exactly transpired at this meeting is not well documented in the logbooks or in the project papers. However, Binder X-48/02 contained a short report penned by Brady himself and presenting his theory. Here it is in full:

Spoiler: Brady Report on Eridu 01

Spoiler: Brady Report on Eridu 02

Spoiler: Brady Report on Eridu 03

Spoiler: Brady Report on Eridu 04

Spoiler: Brady Report on Eridu 05

Spoiler: Brady Report on Eridu 06

Spoiler: Brady Report on Eridu 07

Spoiler: Brady Report on Eridu 08

Spoiler: Brady Report on Eridu 09

 

[BoramHyunKi]

Fuck Turing. That faggot is dumb as a rock

 

[K9Otaku]

Chapter 3 (Part 5)

On May 1st 1948, 3 days after the Brady report had been circulated, Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote in his personal logbook:

Brady has just come up with some truly illuminating insight. I am glad that my outburst has served this purpose. Poor Alan, I hate to do this kind of thing to him but he should realize that he is just getting in the way.​

I have been convinced for quite a while that language is primarily prescriptive and not descriptive as logicians tend to assume. The shopping list example I have used in class so many times is designed precisely to make this prescriptive nature palpable. I will repeat it here just for the sake of clarity:​

I send someone shopping. I give him a slip of paper marked “five red apples”. He takes the slip to the shopkeeper, who opens the drawer marked “apples”; then he looks up the word “red” in a chart and finds a color sample next to it; then he says the series of elementary number-words (I assume he knows them by heart) up to the word “five”, and for each number-word he takes an apple of the same color as the sample out of the drawer. It is in this and similar ways that one operates with words.​

Language is operative. Its purpose is to make us do things. Of course, trust is the necessary ingredient here. It is the fuel that powers the engine. Language traces a path; a series of steps to be followed. Naturally, we will follow these steps only if we have this “desire to follow” that Brady talks about. Interpreting trust, and belief in general, as a “desire to follow” makes a lot of sense. It meshes perfectly with the idea that language is prescriptive.​

Another example which crossed my mind just now is the kind of instructions one often reads about in novels of the treasure-hunting genre. There will be some kind of parchment on which words like these will be written: “go to the big tree on top of the hill, then take four steps towards the mouth of the river, then turn 90° clockwise, etc.” In this case, the words literally trace a path in physical space and the reader, the hero of the novel, has a strong “desire to follow” them which is due to the value of the treasure, of course, but above all to the fact that he trusts the author of the instructions. Both the prescriptive nature of language and the role of trust as “desire to follow” are clearly apparent, I think, in this example.​

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-​

When I had finished reading all this, my head was buzzing. It was clear to me that project Eridu had resulted in some groundbreaking discoveries. But I was not sure I fully understood any of them. Three days had passed since I had come back from Amundsen-Scott and I had spent my time reading the binders almost continuously, except for some snack breaks and a few hours of sleep here and there. I was exhausted. My eyes could hardly focus on the page anymore. I stood up from my swivel chair with a grunt, stretching my legs, and went over to the half-height filing cabinet on which Finn had set up a coffee pot. It was one of those 1940s Pyrex and Bakelite vacuum coffee makers with a small electric heater underneath it to keep the coffee warm. I drank a cup slowly. It felt good. After a few minutes, my head felt clearer and my eyes were able to focus again.

Finn was seated at the desk next to mine, reading a binder with the label “X-51/23”. I cleared my throat and asked:

— ME: Did you read the Brady report in binder X-48/02 ?.

— FINN: Yes I did.

— ME: There is one thing I do not get. Brady says that a Neolithic village like Eridu before the death of the last Alulim chieftain, is a group of primates headed by a dominant male, i.e. the said chieftain. But shouldn't this chieftain then have sex with all the women in the village ? It does not seem to be the case. How come ?

— FINN: Yes, this is not made clear in the Brady report, but this question was raised later on and a separate sub-project devoted to it was conducted in late 1949, I think. They were looking for the earliest signs of monogamy and they were able to pinpoint it at the transition between the PPNA and the PPNB in Syria.

— ME: What are the PPNA and PPNB ?

— FINN: They are two periods in Fertile Crescent Archaeology and the transition from the former to the latter occurred near the end of the 9th millennium BC. Actually, the terms PPNA and PPNB are not used in the Philadelphia papers. They were coined later by the archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon when she was digging at Jericho in the mid-1950s. But the dates mentioned in the monogamy investigation report correspond to the transition between them.

— ME: What did they find, regarding monogamy ?

— FINN: Apparently, during the PPNA (which means ‘Pre-Pottery Neolithic A’) early agricultural practices were exclusively undertaken by women. Men, for their part were still fully occupied with hunting. The sexual behaviors were still mostly those of an ordinary primate group, with a single dominant male having theoretical access to all females. However, secret encounters in the bushes were also quite widespread.

— ME: What happened in the PPNB ?

— FINN: The PPNA social structure was a hindrance to the development of agriculture because it did not provide a strong enough incentive for land improvement and seed selection. At the beginning of the PPNB, the social structure appears to have completely changed. Now there were monogamous couples each in control of a “farm” with a house and a certain amount of dedicated land. In other words, private property seems to also appear at this moment and it is probably linked to monogamy through the practice of inheritance. With inheritable private property, the incentive to increase yields is much higher than when all land was worked in common by the women as in the PPNA.

— ME: What happened to the dominant male ?

— FINN: He is still present during the PPNB, in the form of the village chief, and he still has access to more than one woman, although not to all of them.

— ME: How did both men and women come to accept the monogamous couple ?

— FINN: Good question ! This is where it gets really interesting. Between the PPNA and the PPNB, the key change seems to be a marked lowering of the status of women. During the PPNA, women all submit to the dominant male, just like the non-dominant males do. They are therefore more or less on an equal footing with them. In the PPNB, each woman submits to her husband, who, as a non-dominant male, submits in turn to the dominant male. From the perspective of the woman, her husband becomes her own “dominant male”, thus satisfying her instinct to mate with a dominant male. She has been demoted in the overall social hierarchy but her sexual instincts are still satisfied and therefore her capacity to have an orgasm during sex is preserved. The more women are “oppressed”, the more likely they are to find sex satisfying in a monogamous context because the stronger the ”oppression”, the stronger the feeling that their husband is indeed a “dominant” male.

— ME: Obviously, there were no feminists during the late 1940s.

— FINN: Indeed there weren't. None of these findings seem to have been considered controversial among the members of the Boffin team. In fact, my opinion is that they should not be controversial even today. There is plenty of evidence still available (and there was even more so in the 40s) that monogamous marriage relies on the granting of an aura of "dominant male-ness" to the husband. For example, in all cultures, the wedding ceremony mimics a courtly protocol in which the newlyweds are treated as king and queen. This is in effect an aphrodisiac for the wife who gets to have sex with the “king” on the wedding night. The amount of resources invested in wedding ceremonies all over the world is a testament to the importance of this aspect.

— ME: Is the perspective of hot sex the only reason women accept the new order of things in the PPNB ?

— FINN: No. The biggest advantage from their perspective is that their husband is now tied to their house (the etymology of the word “husband” is “house-bound”) and that he invests most of his time in agriculture. As a result, there is a dramatic increase in yields and therefore, in food safety. This benefits both the woman and her children. In exchange for a demotion in social standing, women have redirected men’s energies to their own food collection strategy, plant gathering. Helping the transition is the fact that domesticated animals start to appear in the early PPNB, thus increasingly satisfying the community’s meat needs independent of the hunt.

— ME: For his part, the dominant male, i.e. the village chief, continues to have sex with more than one woman, right ?

— FINN: Yes. Apparently, the details vary. But the most common situation is a “legitimate wife + concubines” arrangement in which the children of the legitimate wife inherit in priority. The village chief remains a classic primate dominant male in the sense that he has authority over the other males. The only limitation is that he forgoes access to the wives of the other males (although there must have been all sorts of exceptions to this rule). Also, the fact that he appropriates several women for himself creates a deficit of marriageable women. As a result, an underclass of unmarried men appears, generally called “rubbish men” or something equivalent. These underdogs generally serve the village chief and act as errand boys and flunkies. Some of them eventually evolved into bards who sang the praises of the chief during feasts. This was pretty much the general situation all over the Middle East before the Eridu innovation.

— ME: What about shamans and warriors ?

— FINN: These were not rubbish men, of course, but ordinary married farmers who progressively developed specific skills because they were able to obtain food from another source than farming. The shaman was paid in kind by his customers and the warrior by the village chief. This is what triggered the development of the quasi-fiscal system we found in place at Eridu before the change. Initially, the men who eventually evolved into the En must have been some kind of rubbish men.

— ME: OK. It makes sense. What you are saying is that, prior to what happened at Eridu, Middle Eastern Neolithic villages still followed the classic dominant male-lead primate group model with the only limitation being non-dominant male monogamous marriage. Correct ?

— Yes.

— ME: Now, what is this “desire to follow” business. I don’t quite get it

— FINN: Well, let us start with reptiles, for example. Among them, there is no leadership of any kind; no dominant male. As a result, there is no “desire to follow” either. Each individual’s behavior is the result of his own desires and anti-desires. He will run towards food (desire) and run away from predators (anti-desire). If we now consider mammals, we see male competition for females appear, probably because the number of offspring had decreased markedly and therefore the need to secure the fittest possible genetic material for each of them has become more acute. Initially, there is no “desire to follow” here either. Males simply compete for females and the winner gets to copulate with all of those that are present. However, this simple competitive behavior runs into difficulties when the number of individuals rises, as it does in mammalian species which live in social groups. If the top male must constantly ward off competitors to ensure his exclusive access to females, the amount of energy he has to spend on this task quickly becomes prohibitive, eventually threatening his own survival. As a result, the fully developed dominant male instinct evolved to make dominant male-ness a status rather than just a state of fact.

— ME: A ‘status’ ? What do you mean ?

— FINN: Something which persists over time and continues to have an impact on behaviors without requiring periodic reinforcement. Among species which possess the fully developed dominant male instinct, an aspiring male only needs to fight a relatively small number of adversaries at a specific period of the year in order to be granted the status of dominant male for a full year. Until the next male-fighting season, a number of instinct-driven behaviors among all members of the animal group will guarantee that this status will not be challenged. These behaviors generally take the form of an urge to follow the dominant male. Females will follow him closely, in order to make themselves available, while other males will follow at a greater distance in order not to get in the way. This is the simplest mechanism possible to guarantee that the group will not disperse while granting privileged sexual access to the dominant male without forcing him to spend excessive amounts of energy defending his position. Once this set of instincts is implanted in a given species, it has the side effect of giving a leadership role to the dominant male. Wherever he goes, everyone goes. Thus, leadership appears as a side effect of sexual selection, in the form of a basic and literal “desire to follow” the dominant male which affects, in various ways, all the other members of the group.

— ME: What does this have to do with language ?

— FINN: This is the whole point of Brady’s argument and of Wittgenstein’s enthusiastic reaction to it. Firstly, Brady argues that the “desire to follow” associated with the dominant male instinct evolved, among certain species of mammals and especially primates, into a desire to be supportive of whatever the dominant male does and an anti-desire to thwart him in any way. In other words, individuals in these species have developed a “desire to follow” the dominant male in what is now a figurative sense, like when we say: “I follow his lead”. The idea of “following” is no longer taken in a literal physical sense but rather as a general disposition to be agreeable. For example, this is what enables the dominant males of many species of primates to act as arbiters in conflicts, as Brady points out. Secondly, this “desire to follow”, understood in the figurative sense, is also how we can describe trust, and trust is the basis of language.

— ME: Wait ! What ?! … Language exists independently of trust. Doesn’t it ?

— FINN: Yes, but it serves no purpose if trust is not present.

— ME: I don’t know. Is trust really necessary when it comes to fiction and poetry ? Do we really need to trust the poet to enjoy the poem ?

— FINN: Well this a very difficult question and we cannot tackle it right now. But it will be done in due course. Some later projects of the Philadelphia team were specifically devoted to answering it. However, it is quite clear that language did not initially evolve to make poetry possible. Early language was quite certainly used only in very short statements like “give me this tool” or “there are delicious nuts behind this rock” and the like. It is quite clear, I think, that this kind of statement does not work if trust is not present.

— ME: I understand the role of trust in the context of the second statement. I will certainly not waste my time looking behind the rock if I do not trust the person who utters this sentence. However, I am not sure about the first statement. It is simply an order. What kind of trust is involved here ?

— FINN: It is in the case of such statements that the relationship between the dominant male instinct and trust appears most clearly. I think there is another text in which Brady explains it very well. Let me see. Here it is:

Spoiler: Brady Desire to Follow 01

Spoiler: Brady Desire to Follow 02

Spoiler: Brady Desire to Follow 03

 

[JayGoptri]

Is that where Authority-L/S enters the picture ?

This Authority S & L seems to be a good way of breaking down all society into categories..

 

[BoramHyunKi]

This Authority S & L seems to be a good way of breaking down all society into categories..

Yes. It is the cause of the incel problem as well

 

[K9Otaku]

Chapter 3 (part 6)

After reading Brady's text, I felt that things were starting to make a little more sense. However, I still had questions.

— ME: I do not fully see how one can equate trust with a form of authority. Isn’t trust only possible between equals ?

— FINN: This is one of the most tragic misunderstandings that our culture is suffering from today. In the real world, trust is not this wish-washy cuddly feeling that we tend to imagine. For example, if you ask anyone today “Do you trust your bank ?”, most would answer “No, are you kidding !?” Yet they keep all their money and their life savings in that bank 24/7 and they fully expect that all of it will be available for them to use whenever needed. This demonstrates that they actually do trust their bank. They just have forgotten what the word means. Trust is a much more hard-nosed notion than we generally realize. It is simply the expectation that promises will be fulfilled with a high degree of probability. You do not need to like someone to trust him. If you expect that he will deliver on his promises, that’s it, you trust him. Now, regarding the relationship between authority and trust, let us assume you know a trustworthy computer support person. If you have a computer problem, you will call him on the phone and you will do everything he tells you to do. In other words, you will accept his authority when it comes to fixing your computer problems.

— ME: Is it always like that ? Does trust always equate with authority ?

— FINN: Think about it and you will see. There is no situation in which trust actually exists and in which one cannot view it under the prism of authority. And vice-versa.

— ME: But, let us suppose I have a good friend, and I hang out with him a lot. I trust him. However, he is never in a position of authority over me or me over him.

— FINN: This is a misuse of the word “trust”. In the situation you describe, you do not trust your friend, you just enjoy his company. It is not the same thing. When push comes to shove, many people discover that they do not really trust their so-called "friends".

— ME: I see what you mean. Maybe you are right. I will think about it. One more thing. I am not sure I fully understand the biblical allusions at the end of the last text by Brady that you gave me. Are “the Word” and “the Logos” the same thing ?

— FINN: Yes and no. Both are linked with the first verse of the gospel of John, ”In the beginning was the Word”, which Brady quotes at the end of both of the reports we read. This gospel, like the rest of the New Testament, was written in Greek, and the word which is generally translated as ”the Word” in the verse is ”ho Logos” in that language. However when the expression ”the Logos” appears in modern English, it generally does not refer to the Bible but to other uses of the same word. In the ancient Greek philosophical tradition of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc. ”ho Logos” is also used quite frequently, but with different connotations. As a result, the expressions “the Word” and “the Logos” now refer to different things even though they correspond to the same Greek word. “the Logos” is generally understood to mean “reason”, in a philosophical sense, while “the Word” is one of the names by which Christians call Jesus Christ.

— ME: Does it mean that Jesus Christ is considered to be "the Word of God" by Christians ?

— FINN: No, and this is indeed confusing. The expression “The Word of God” usually refers to the Bible, i.e. what Christian theology also calls “Scripture”. However, “the Word”, by itself and in the context of the Gospel of John, properly refers to “the Son”, i.e. the second member of the Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit), who is called “Jesus Christ” in his human incarnation.

— ME: But why does this Gospel calls Jesus in this way ?

— FINN: There is no doubt that the use of ”ho Logos” by John bears some relationship to how this word was used by Greek Philosophers. It is probably a way to say something like “You claim to have wisdom but we have Jesus Christ who is true Wisdom incarnate” or “You claim to be rational but this is foolish because no one can be rational unless he follows Jesus Christ”. However, none of this is made explicit in the Gospel and the reason why it calls the Son “the Word” remains quite mysterious.

— ME: What does Brady make of all this. I do not quite get it.

— FINN: Brady’s claim is that what happened at Eridu is the key to the meaning of “the Word” in John. According to him “the Word” is what he calls Authority-L, i.e. what language can do, in terms of human cooperation, when it is properly supported by trust. Before Eridu, Authority-L’s capabilities were restrained by the superior position then held by Authority-S, i.e. dominant male-based leadership. After the change in Eridu, Authority-L is freed from the shackles of Authority-S and can thus yield its full potential. According to Brady, the victory of Jesus Christ over Satan is an allegory of the triumph of Authority-L over Authority-S, which the Bible equates with Satan.

— ME: Why did the Bible have to express this in such a cryptic manner ?

— FINN: Probably because a lot of what had happened at Eridu had been forgotten and was only remembered as myth. Also, a half-veiled expression like “the Word” probably has more impact on people’s imagination than a lengthy explanation.

— ME: Why is Brady making these negative remarks about philosophy ? Why does he say it is “wide of the mark” ?

— FINN: Come on, don’t you get it ? Western Philosophy since Plato has been saying that the fundamental opposition is between Rationality (the Logos) and Irrationality; between Knowledge and Ignorance. But it turns out that this is not at all what matters. What Eridu demonstrates is that the crucial dichotomy is between Authority-L (which can be called “the Logos”) and Authority-S, i.e. between linguistic trust-based cooperation and dominant male-centric leadership. Western Philosophy completely missed that but the Bible did not. The Bible, in its allegorical vocabulary, keeps intact the fundamental dichotomy which was made apparent by what happened at Eridu.

— ME: After how Socrates & Co. fared during the Socrates experiment, this is a second body-blow to philosophy's reputation, isn’t it ?

— FINN: Yes, absolutely. In the 1940s Philosophy’s prestige was at its peak. Among University-educated people like the Boffins, it was taken for granted that Philosophy held all the answers while the Bible was regarded as nothing but an obsolete relic of the Dark Ages. And then bang ! Socrates turns out to have been nothing but a manipulative sycophant and, double bang !, the Bible turns out to retain the most accurate memory of the foundational moment on which all subsequent forms of civilization depend. Everyone in the Boffin team must have been completely floored by these discoveries, even someone like Wittgenstein who had already anticipated some of them during his pre-Philadelphia career. Even if Marxism has hardly been scrutinized yet, we are starting to discover why it is so noxious. The problem does not lie with Marxism per se but with the entire Western Philosophical tradition from which it stems.

— ME: OK, I get it, … I think.

That said, I went to my bunk in the dormitory building, crashed on it with my clothes still on and slept straight for over 10 hours.

---

This is the end of chapter 3

 

[JayGoptri]

Yes. It is the cause of the incel problem as well

Like how ?

 

[BoramHyunKi]

Like how ?

Authority-S (S for sex) is what the Chad has, and also the tribal chief, and the king. For societies to advance, Authority-S has to be suppressed so that Authority-L (L for language) can thrive. Giving a wife to every man (monogamy) is one of the traditional ways that has been used to suppress Authority-S for the benefit of Authority-L. That is why strictly monogamist societies like protestant Christians had more success than others in the past.

What this means is that incels' interests and those of society as a whole are aligned. Both benefit from strict monogamy (no cheating) and Chad suppression.

Today's situation is detrimental to society's well being and therefore unjustifiable.

 

[JayGoptri]

Authority-S (S for sex) is what the Chad has, and also the tribal chief, and the king. For societies to advance, Authority-S has to be suppressed so that Authority-L (L for language) can thrive. Giving a wife to every man (monogamy) is one of the traditional ways that has been used to suppress Authority-S for the benefit of Authority-L. That is why strictly monogamist societies like protestant Christians had more success than others in the past.

What this means is that incels' interests and those of society as a whole are aligned. Both benefit from strict monogamy (no cheating) and Chad suppression.

Today's situation is detrimental to society's well being and therefore unjustifiable.

Thanks for the detailed explination. The chapters make more sense now.

Chad suppression" I like that terminology...

Btw. I have been coming up with some new CelVocab which I'll share with you and then introduce on the site.