I'm still reading the post. I keep getting notifications while im reading it.
This is a a great problem in this forum (and no doubt in many others): What is our priority? To listen or to speak?
I genuinely feel addicted to this forum now. If im not on or checking my inbox enough I go crazy.
Dopamine addiction is not good for brain cells ...
How do i quit?
Read the book
It discusses dopamine detoxing?
another chapter plz
I’ve tried praying I’ve tried manifesting nothing works for me. Idk I think I’m becoming fully just agnostic again cuz nothing has worked for me.
@lotus2345, @Intellectual, this is the chapter that is of most interest to Incels. It shows how Chad and Stacy appeared in history. No, Chad and Stacy are not the product of our genes. They are a cultural development which appeared at a specific time.
Chapter 4 – Uruk
On April 23rd 1948, a meeting of the Philadelphia Boffin team occurred to decide what the follow-up to the Eridu experiment should be. Alan Turing, who was chairing the meeting, opened it up by asking: “Where, and when, should we now look ?” Both von Soden and Landsberger immediately answered in one voice: “at Uruk, in the fourth Millennium BC.” And with that pronouncement, the Uruk experiment started.
In the early fourth Millennium BC, as Eridu was in the middle of its explosive growth period, several other cities started to appear in lower Mesopotamia. The phenomenon was a straightforward case of copycat behavior. When something obviously works, it would be foolish not to do the same. The first of these imitation cities was Uruk, located 70 km upstream of Eridu along the Euphrates. The transition from village to city took place in the 3920s BC., and followed the Eridu pattern very closely. The local En, servants of the Uruk village ruling family replaced their former human master, an elderly chief who had just died of old age, with an effigy deemed to be his immortal incarnation. At Uruk, like at Eridu, the village population played along and the local top shaman was duly co-opted into the En council. The copycat nature of what happened at Uruk is clearly indicated by the choice of name used for the new local master/god. “Enki”, as we have seen, means “En (i.e. “foreman”) of the Earth” and, by the time Uruk started its transformation, this name was already the most common way to refer to Eridu’s everlasting chief. Uruk’s En council seems to have reasoned that, since the Earth was already taken, they would give a Sky-related name to their own master/god. Eventually, the simplest possible name was chosen: “Anu”, which just means “the Sky”.
In order to understand the implications of this choice, one has to remember how Mesopotamian cosmogony was structured. Ancient Mesopotamians viewed the world as centered on “Ki”, “the Earth”. Ki was imagined as a flat disk, with land in the middle, understood as a sort of floating island resting on a pool of water which was accessible all around as the oceans but also underneath the ground as the subterranean water table. Above the Earth was “Anu”, the Sky, viewed as a solid hemispherical dome with water stored above it. Rain was interpreted as some of this water falling through pores in the Sky dome that were opened from time to time. The waters above the Sky met those below the land along the circumference of the Earth, where the Sky dome met the Earth disk. Between the Sky dome and the Earth disk was a void filled with Air, thus completing the triad Earth-Sky-Air.
Unsurprisingly, when a third city, Nippur, appeared around 50 years after Uruk, its god/master was named “Enlil”, i.e. “En of the Air”. For nearly 4000 years, the triad Enki/Earth, Anu/Sky and Enlil/Air would remain the most fundamental group of gods in Mesopotamian religion.
For over a century, until the 3710s BC., Uruk grew in parallel with Eridu and along the same lines. In 3847 BC., a magnificent new stone building, the first ever in human history, was added to the structures forming the House of Anu at Uruk. This building, constructed with white limestone blocks cemented with bitumen, was to be the new residence of Anu’s statue. It consisted of three massive concentric walls, each pierced with a single door facing a different direction. It was thus the first ever spatial representation of the idea of the sacred, i.e. the notion that divinity must be carefully separated from ordinary mortals.
The logic behind this separation goes both ways. On the one hand, the divine presence must be protected from sacrilegious acts that mortals may commit. Howver, on the other hand, the said mortals must also be protected from the divine energy that may kill them if they approach it casually. Both these concerns find a clear expression, for example, in the Old Testament, where the structure of the "Tent of Meeting" and of the later Solomonic Temple are self-consciously described as a means to avoid sacrilegious intrusion into the "Holy of Holies" but also to protect men from accidentally touching the dangerously powerful sacred objects contained therein. To illustrate the latter risk, the second book of Samuel narrates how one of the priests who was helping move the Ark of the Covenant from Kiriath-Jearim to Jerusalem was struck dead on the spot when he accidentally touched it (2 Sam. 2:8). Both the Tent of Meeting and the Solomonic Temple are said to have been designed to the same concentric pattern as Anu's limestone House built in Uruk three Millenia before. 6000 years later, in our own time, the same general configuration is still employed in nuclear power plants, where concentric “confinement enclosures” are erected to protect the environment from the radiations of the core within. Today, the same "confinement enclosures" can still clearly be seen in the excavated remains of Anu's House near the town of Samawah in Southern Iraq.
As the first ever stone building, with its shining white facade, the new House of Anu in Uruk outshone even Enki’s House in Eridu, which was still built of sun-dried brick at the time. It was duly inaugurated, on August 7 3847 BC., with a lavish feast attended by all the people of Uruk, many guests from Eridu, and many as well from the surrounding countryside.
From the mid-3800s BC. onward, Uruk had begun competing with Eridu and this rivalry would only intensify with time. Uruk was previously one of Eridu’s dependent villages. However, in 3872 BC., it had declared independence from Eridu by sending a large gift of agricultural produce, copper objects and luxury items to the House of Enki, together with a message stating: “Anu thanks his older brother Enki for his help and protection. Having grown in strength, he will no longer need it anymore”. The En in both Eridu and Uruk were risk-averse folks. As a result, neither Uruk’s declaration of independence, nor the competition that developed between the two cities afterwards, could degenerate into war. Indeed, the concept of war did not exist at this time. Mesopotamian Neolithic culture did not have a tradition of head-hunting or inter-village warfare. The warriors of the new cities mostly played the role of a police force, deterring cattle-rustling and the like. They also acted as debt-collection agents. Also, on occasion, migrant groups descended from the mountains to the East and had to be repulsed, but these incursions were never large-scale events.
Therefore, for over 160 years, Uruk and Eridu competed peacefully. The Houses of both cities were essentially economic actors and competition spurred them to further increases in efficiency. Productivity grew, especially in textile manufacturing and copper metallurgy, and prices fell. Towards the end of the 3700s B.C., Uruk reached a population of 10,000 while Eridu was on its way to the already mentioned figure of 15,000.
As I was reading about the early history of Uruk in binder X-48/04, Finn entered the office. He looked a little preoccupied.
— ME: What’s the matter ?.
— FINN: We are going to have a new visitor.
— ME: How do you know ? And, by the way, you never told me how you knew that I was coming. How did you ?
— FINN: It is not easy to explain. The best way I can express it, I think, is that I remember learning that someone is going to come, even though I do not remember any of the circumstances in which I learned it. It is as if memories were implanted into my brain.
— ME: Scary !
— FINN: Yes, but, at the same time, I do not feel there is anything to worry about. I know how strange it sounds, but it feels completely normal. Probably, this has something to do with the fact that these memories have always proved to be completely reliable. All the things I learned about this way turned out exactly how I remembered they were supposed to.
— ME: Who is going to come this time ?
— FINN: A biologist from the Russian Vostok station. Her name is Ekaterina Kurchatova. She is due to arrive here within 48 hours or less, from a South-Westerly direction. You arrived from due West. Apparently, these directions are related to where we came from initially. When I want to go back to Troll, I have to head North.
— ME: A girl, ha !
— FINN: Yes. I do not know anything else about her.
Finn grabbed the coffee pot and poured himself a cup. I returned to binder X-48/04.
In March 3709 BC., an event occurred in Uruk which would have repercussions down to the present day. In Uruk, as in Eridu, the warriors were under the command of an official called the Lukig (“man of commands”, or “man of orders”, in Sumerian), who was appointed by the En. From 37182 BC. onward, Uruk’s Lukig was a man called Bilgaga (“fruit basket”, a common name related to the propitiating fruit offerings brought to the House by women expecting a child). Like all military men in Eridu and Uruk at this point, Bilgaga spent most of his time in the taverns located near Uruk’s port on the Euphrates river. The region had been peaceful for several decades and the soldiers did not have much to do, save for the occasional shakedown of farmers whose debts to the House went overdue.
Since the beginning of the fourth Millennium BC., the brewing and sale of alcohol as a specialized activity had started to develop in Eridu, and then in Uruk. Initially, the patrons of such establishments were the young men who came from the countryside to become apprentices in copper metallurgy, carpentry, pottery, etc. Donkey drivers from other towns were also among the early customers of the new taverns.
Until the late 3900s, warriors did not generally patronize the taverns. They were then mostly married men and were often still engaged, part-time, in agriculture, or another trade. However, in the early 3800s, this changed. Following the trend towards increased specialization, the military profession became a full-time activity practiced by unmarried young men in their 20s and 30s. Like the previously mentioned apprentice craftsmen, the majority of the young soldiers also hailed from neighbouring villages and were recruited by the Lukig who provided them with food, equipment, clothing and boarding. Compared to their previous part-time counterparts, these new professional troops had the advantage of immediate availability for any type of mission. Also, being away from their families, they were fully loyal to their commander and, through him, to the House. After serving for 10 to 15 years, they generally went back to their villages and got married.
During their term of service, soldiers were often idle. They were generally being drilled in the morning, when the temperature was still bearable, but were frequently left to their own devices past noon when no orders for them had come from the House. As a result, going to the tavern had become a soldierly past-time. In most establishments, payment in small copper objects was accepted. A hairpin or a nail would buy you a half gallon pitcher of beer and the right for five or six men to sit at a table for as long as they needed to drink it. Soon, games made their appearances, like dice or Kiaddir (“land and bridge”), an ancestor of backgammon, later christened “the Royal game of Ur” by its modern discoverer, the British archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley.
Not long after games, prostitution made its appearance too. For the price of two or three pitchers, a patron could now climb to the upper room of a tavern with one of the girls serving the beer. Initially, the girls were the daughters of the tavern owners and no stigma was attached to the practice. Later on, as with most professions in Eridu and Uruk, prostitution became a specialized activity. Poor families began to sell their daughters to tavern owners at puberty. These young girls would initially serve as maids while they learned their trade from more senior ladies. When they started taking clients upstairs themselves, at 16 or 17 years of age, they had become full-fledged courtesans, skilled in dancing and music, as well as in the use of cosmetics, perfume, elaborate clothing and the bedroom arts. Some became well known around town and had a devoted following among soldiers, craftsmen apprentices, donkey drivers and boatmen.
By the mid-3710s BC, Bilgaga, the Lukig of Uruk, had become a near permanent fixture of the port district taverns. He was famed for his generosity towards his men, routinely paying the drinks of dozens of soldiers at a time. He also often threw huge parties that dragged on late into the night. Beer, gambling and dancing girls were the main attractions at these parties, which invariably ended up in drunken orgies during which soldiers competed to show off their sexual prowess. Often, Bilgaga himself was the winner in these contests.
In a village setting, such behavior would have been unthinkable. However, in the city, increasing specialization had taught people to mind their own business. The population increase had long ago put an end to the village-style face to face culture where peer pressure is the main driver of social conformity. Most of the participants in the growing tavern sub-culture were younger men from out of town who did not know anybody in the city. As a result, they were unrestrained by traditional social ties. The En and some of the wealthier citizens of Uruk seem to have been worried by this phenomenon and the same was true in Eridu. However, there were no cultural tools available for them to deal with the situation since it was entirely new. Everything in Eridu and Uruk revolved around the Houses of Enki and Anu respectively. As long as your economic dealings with the local House were in order and you were also paying proper respect to the deity during festivals, you were in the clear. You could do whatever you liked.
For the few years leading up to the events of 3709 BC., the relationship between Bilgaga and Uruk's En council had become strained. For several decades already, the Lukig had ceased to be an official appointed by the En but had instead increasingly become a kind of mercenary captain. He had turned into a military contractor of sorts who bargained hard with his En paymasters over his budgetary allocation. Since both cities were experiencing increased prosperity, it had been possible for the En councils of both Eridu and Uruk to allow this allocation to rise rapidly, which is what made Bilgaga’s parties possible, among other things. But Bilgaga was never satisfied by his current allocation and he had become increasingly rude and insolent towards his nominal superiors.
One day, on the 17th of March 3709 BC., the growing tension boiled over. On that day, a new set of buildings were to be inaugurated, with the usual ceremonies and feast. The new structures, constructed 200 meters to the North-East of the limestone building completed nearly 140 years before, were intended to become the new center of the House of Anu. They were spread over an area of nearly 3 hectares and included assembly halls, granaries, workshops and, of course, a central great hall destined to house the statue of the city's god. The citizens of Uruk, who had been participating in its construction for 7 years, already called it “E-Anna”, i.e. “The House of Anu”.
During the morning of March 17th, the En had been making offerings at the old limestone building and had prepared the statue of Anu for its journey to the new compound. They had first bathed it in milk and water. Then, after carefully drying it, they had clothed Anu’s effigy with a brand-new white linen garment decorated with colorful bands of embroidery on its edges. Finally, they had draped its neck with an overabundance of thick flower garlands. A little before noon, the god and master of Uruk started on his journey to his new House, borne on an elaborately decorated bier carried on the shoulders of the full En council of Uruk. Fifteen minutes later, it arrived at the entrance of the great square in front of the new E-Anna complex. Drummers and flute players preceded it as it made its way through the crowd, towards the steps leading up to the main hall.
Suddenly, soldiers started to appear on both sides of the E-Anna. As they poured into the square, they pushed the crowd back and forced it to free up some space at the base of the steps. The men, in full battle array, were accompanied by their own drummers who were making such a din that they forced the musicians accompanying the statue of Anu to stop playing. The En, who were still carrying the bier, could not see what was going on as they were pushed backwards by the crowd. The statue they were carrying seemed to be wavering for a few seconds, on the verge of being toppled over. Then it stabilized due to the En’s desperate efforts to keep it upright. As it stood there, motionless, in the middle of the crowded square, it looked like a becalmed ship in the midst of a sea of heads.
Bilgaga appeared, at the top of the stairs. He too was wearing his combat outfit, a leather cuirass, reinforced with copper plates, a short white linen tunic reaching down to the knees and a pair of high leather sandal boots. A copper sword, short and broad, was strapped to his belt and a round shield hung from his back. On his head, he wore a conical leather helmet adorned with a decorative motif that would feature prominently in Mesopotamian art for centuries to come: the figure of a standing man holding off two erect lions; one to his left and one to his right. Bilgaga's face was red and he appeared drunk. A few paces behind him, three of the most famous ladies of the port district, in full courtesan attire, were standing on the platform of E-Anna's main hall. Bilgaga motioned the drummers to stop playing. The whole square fell into near complete silence, only broken here and there by a couple of wailing infants. After surveying the crowd and finding it suitably cowed, Bilgaga addressed it thus:
- BILGAGA: The lady Inanna has demanded the Bull of Heaven from Lord Anu and her wish has been granted.
Up to this point, Inanna had been a stock character which appeared in many traditional stories and songs. She was not a goddess in the same sense as Enki and Anu were. She was just the archetypal girl who played the role of love interest in countless heroic tales and rustic poems. The Bull of heaven, for its part was a very old mythical motif, probably of Paleolithic origin, common to nearly all Neolithic Middle-Eastern cultures. It was associated with the sun, fertility, victory, and strength in general. It had never been connected to Inanna before and what Bilgaga was saying was probably far from clear to his audience. He continued:
- BILGAGA: The lady Inanna is the new mistress of Uruk. Anu has retired to the heavens and granted her the dominion of his beloved city. The Bull of Heaven will grant the lady strength and victory in all she does. She will crack open the skulls of all who oppose her, just as the furious bull gores the hapless cowherd. The Lady Inanna has favored me, Bilgaga. I have had intercourse with the Lady. She bends over and offers her furrow to me.
Things were clearer now, and not at all to the liking of everyone present. People started jeering: “Bilgaga, you inflated beerskin !”, “We did not hear Lord Anu say anything about this !”, “Which Inanna are you talking about ?”, and so on. “SILENCE !”, Bilgaga roared, his eyes nearly popping out of their sockets. He drew his sword and his men imitated him. The crowd recoiled backwards. The Lukig bellowed:
- BILGAGA: The lady Inanna is merciful. She does not repay insult with vengeance, at least for now. The Lord Anu is way too loftily placed to speak to you worms. He spoke to the Lady and the Lady spoke to me. I am the voice of the Lady. She will reside in the E-Anna that her father Anu has prepared for her. And I will visit her and mount her when she so desires. I will let you know whatever she wishes you to know.
A silence followed. Bilgaga had calmed down and his eyes were less bloodshot. He continued:
- BILGAGA: The Lady has gathered us today to celebrate her coming into her inheritance; her good city of Uruk. The Lord Anu has witnessed this and gave his assent. He will now return to his erstwhile earthly abode in the city whence he will take up his residence in the Heavens. Let the feast begin !
Bilgaga then ordered a detachment of soldiers to escort the En, and the bier carrying Anu’s statue, back to the limestone building. Once they had left the square, a group of girls moved forward into the space left empty by the crowd in at the foot of the steps and started dancing, to the sound of drums and reed pipes. After a minute or two, one of the courtesans which had been standing behind Bilgaga since the beginning moved down the staircase. From the lowest step, she began singing:
As the courtesan sang, her mood started to spread to her audience. Uruk’s citizen were becoming inebriated with lust and frenzy. The whole square was soon dancing to the rhythm of the drums. Much beer flowed that night, all over town. The whole city was one huge revelry. Dancing, copulation and brawls engulfed it like a sudden fire.
In the morning, there were 17 dead bodies lying down in the streets as well as countless broken arms and fractured jaws. Nobody cared. Everyone was fast asleep. The city was motionless and silent for a whole day as people bandaged their sores and recovered their composure. The day after, the city resumed its everyday routine but the citizens of Uruk knew that things would never be like before.
That morning, Bilgaga showed up at the white limestone building, followed by his now usual retinue of armed soldiers and courtesans. Inside, the En, who had been barricaded there for the last two days, saw him coming from a distance but did not open the door. Bilgaga called them out and motioned them to come and meet him. They slowly filed out of the building and formed a large semi-circle around the Lukig. The following exchange ensued:
- BILGAGA: The new E-ANNA will henceforth be the house of Inanna. You En will serve Anu in the old white building and Inanna in the new E-ANNA.
- CHIEF EN: This is unheard of. We ...
- COURTESAN No. 1 (interrupting): Who are you old man to question the word of lady Inanna. You have never known a woman and your penis is shrivelled like an old date. Why would the lady take any interest in you ?
- CHIEF EN: I ...
- COURTESAN No. 2: bir-gish (shrivelled-penis), bir-gish, bir-gish. The lady is not listening ...
- COURTESANS and some soldiers together: bir-gish, bir-gish, libir-zulum (old date), libir-zulum, bir-gish, ...
After the heckling died down, Bilgaga said:
- BILGAGA: Now you know the divine power of Lady Inanna, old man.
- CHIEF EN: Yes I do.
Bilgaga then dictated his conditions to the En, assembled in front of the white limestone building. First, he was now to be known under a new name, “Bilgamesh”, i.e. “my ancestors are heroes”, in Sumerian. This change, made possible by the polysemy of the word “bilga” (“fresh fruit” in “Bilgaga” and “ancestor” in “Bilgamesh”), clearly denoted dynastic ambitions. Also, his title was to be changed from Lukig (“man of orders”) to Lugal (“big man”). Apart from these onomastic diktats, Bilgamesh did not enact any organizational changes or anything that could be called a “reform” in modern terms. It is not that he lacked imagination. On the contrary, his elaboration of the character of Inanna into a fearsome and domineering goddess shows that his was quite fertile indeed. However, the idea that anything could be “reformed” was foreign to Sumerian culture at this point. The concepts of state, laws or institutions did not exist. The only cultural building blocks that did were that of “House” and of an undying, super-human “master of the House”. Henceforth, as Bilgamesh had explained, Uruk was going to have two Houses, the E-Anna for Inanna and the older complex of buildings surrounding the white limestone structure for Anu as before. Inanna was to be considered the new mistress of Uruk and her House was therefore to become the bigger one. Both houses were to be administered by the En council. However, it was obvious to everyone that supreme power had passed from the En to the newly minted Lugal. As the Inanna-gitlam (“Inanna’s lover”) and the gu-Inanna (“Inanna’s voice”), Bilgamesh was now clearly the highest authority in Uruk. The main symbol of this new political dispensation was the statue of Inanna, soon to be installed in the main hall of the E-Anna. Enthroned where the effigy of Anu should have stood, the image of the new mistress of Uruk was now to reign figuratively over the city, attended to by a select group of courtesans handpicked by Bilgamesh. These new “priestesses” were to assist the En in performing the daily rituals surrounding the effigy of the goddess.
Bilgamesh had just pulled off the first military coup in human history. He had also created a divine archetype which would eventually spread to nearly all world cultures and one which remains very much alive to this day. Inanna would be known as Ishtar in the Babylonian and Assyrian Empires, Anahita among Iranians, Astarte in the Bible, Aphrodite/Venus in the Graeco-Roman world, Durga/Kali in India, the “Lady of the West” in China. She would eventually morph into the “girl with guns” stock character found in modern action movies, mangas and comics.
In all her avatars, Inanna has consistently been depicted as an attractive young woman, either bedecked with ornaments or naked, according to shifting tastes. She wields weapons and is seated on, or stands besides, a lion (or tiger). In modern times, the lion has often morphed into a motorcycle, as in the character Trinity from “The Matrix” movie trilogy (especially in the second installment) or the Pamela Anderson eponymous character in “Barb Wire”. Despite this slight adaptation, the archetype remains essentially unchanged.
Binder X-48/04 ended with two documents:
— A short note written by Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. of Harvard University, one of the two historians within the team.
— A report by Joseph Brady, complementing his findings about Eridu and extending them to the material gathered by the Uruk Project.
Here are both of them, in full (wait for the thumbnails to appear):
Brady and von Soden’s report occasioned a lot of controversy among the Boffins; most of it centered on its last paragraph. The lines were drawn in much the same way as they previously had been when there had been contention over what to do after the Socrates experiment. Wittgenstein, Ulam and Kuhn had nothing but praise for Brady and von Soden’s last paragraph, hailing it as a deep insight into the ultimate mechanisms of mankind’s history. On the contrary, Oppenheimer, Turing, Quine and Schlesinger were up in arms. According to them, generalizing the observations made at Uruk in such a sweeping manner was unwarranted; unscientific even. Oppenheimer, for example, wrote in his personal logbook:
As had already happened several times in the past, one of the most interesting exchanges about the subject was a discussion between Wittgenstein and Turing. One night in late August 1948, both of them, together with Ulam, Quine, Kuhn and Bose, were relaxing in a small room at the far end of Hut 19 that the team used as a lounge. For a lounge, it was a bit cramped and people had to do with wooden chairs instead of sofas. Of course, no one ever complained. How could they, acutely aware as they all were of how incredible a privilege it was just to be there, peering into humanity’s past ? Everybody but Turing was smoking and Ulam had just opened a bottle of brandy. The following dialogue was recorded in Bose’s logbook:
- WITTGENSTEIN: It seems to me that Brady and von Soden have hit the nail on the head. Their insight about Inanna’s role in history is outstanding.
- TURING: But, Ludwig, doesn’t it seem a little too sweeping a generalization. How can the cult of a goddess explain everything ? There must surely be other factors at play, like the development of rationality, the buildup of knowledge. Take mathematics, for example. Isn’t modernity conditioned by the development of mathematics ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: Brady and von Soden are not claiming otherwise. What they are saying is that mathematics will fail to have an impact if the cult of Inanna and the mindset it represents is not effectively suppressed.
- TURING: I don’t get it. How can one jump from nebulous mythology to the impact of mathematics. The proof of a theorem is true regardless of what people think about it. How can tales about a goddess change that ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: The internal consistency of mathematics is not at stake here, Alan. The question is how and why mathematics, in concert with other things of course, gave birth to modern Science and Engineering, for example. What they are saying is that if Christianity had not succeeded in eradicating Ishtarism from Western culture, it would not have happened.
- TURING: I am completely at a loss here. A king used a goddess to take power 6000 years ago and you are saying that it explains the origin of modernity ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: First of Alan, it is not "a king" and "a goddess". There were no kings and no goddesses before Bilgaga's coup. The concept of a certain type of goddess and also of what would later be called "a king" were invented at that moment.
- TURING: All right. Granted. Yet I do not see what all this have to do with modern science.
- WITTGENSTEIN: What was key to Eridu’s success was accounting. The En were master accountants. In many ways, they invented accounting. Mathematics and accounting are very similar; not in what they are but in the role they play. Accounting is the bookkeeping of business and Mathematics is the bookkeeping of Science or Engineering. Niels Bohr wrote a number of very insightful papers about this recently. In them he argues that the role of Mathematics in Quantum Mechanics is not to describe how the world is but instead to provide a secure means for the experimenter to predict the outcome of the experiment.
- BOSE: Not everyone agrees with him. Einstein in particular is adamantly opposed to this position.
- KUHN: True, but old man Albert seems to be in the process of losing this particular battle. The younger generation of Quantum Mechanicians seems to be overwhelmingly siding with Bohr and the Copenhagen crowd. “Shut up and calculate” is their new motto.
- TURING: What do they mean by that ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: The way Bohr describes the role of mathematics in Quantum Mechanics is as the language used to establish a form of contract between the Theoretician and the Experimenter. This contract says: “If you set up the experiment in this (mathematically conditioned) way, then you will get this (mathematically calculated) result”. The role of Mathematics is to make the Theoretician’s promises precise, just like accounting is there to make business commitments clear cut.
- TURING: What I do not get is what all this have to do with the bloody lion-riding goddess ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: It boils down to motivation. Mathematics and accounting can make contracts precise all day long but this is irrelevant if people do not want to enter into contracts in the first place. When you are at Eridu, under the benevolent gaze of Enki, everything encourages you to make commitments and fulfil them. However, if Inanna reigns supreme, it is another story. Inanna is “fickle” and who wants to make promises in an atmosphere of fickleness ?
- TURING: But Inanna does not exist. Have you become a believer in Inanna, now ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: No, Alan. Don’t pretend to be more block-headed than you actually are. Inanna’s fickleness is just an allegory of the general unpredictability which results from the cultural pattern she represents. When society is driven by a mixture of orgiastic arousal and artificially boosted wolf-pack instincts, making prognostications about the future is hard. In such a context, businesspeople become risk-averse and scientists do not exist at all. In their stead, the only ones who can thrive are magicians and sorcerers. Scientists have a strong incentive to share their results. Magicians and Sorcerers do not. On the contrary, they jealously guard whatever know-how they do have in order to better impress and deceive their marks. When Inanna rules, Mathematics is only useful as a prop for Astrologers and such.
- QUINE: We get all this. It is certainly an interesting theory. But it lacks empirical validation at this point, does it not ? Granted, we have gathered an astonishing amount of data about two cities of the fourth millennium BC. But what about the rest of history ? Who knows what other factors might play a role ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: I agree. What I am expressing right now is my belief in von Soden and Brady’s theory. This is my intuition, if you will. Full blown justification will require many more experiments; no doubt about that. My purpose right now is to argue in favor of designing these experiments in a way that will precisely test this theory to the fullest. My point is that making or breaking von Soden and Brady’s theory should be our highest priority from now on.
I had just finished reading binder X-48/04 and its accompanying logbooks. The light outside was exactly the same as usual. It never changed. According to my watch, it should have been a little over 5:30 pm., but did it mean anything, in this place ? As I was stretching my legs and leaning back into my chair, Finn entered the room.
- FINN: She is coming.
- ME: Who ? … Oh, the Russian girl ?
- FINN: Yeah. She’ll be here in less than five minutes.
We both went out of the bungalow and stood on the outside staircase, squinting our eyes to see if someone was approaching. A few minutes later, a human shape did start to appear in the distance, clearly outlined against the snowy backdrop. We waved at her. She stopped, hesitated for a few seconds, then started to move in our direction again. When she was close enough, we saw that she was still wearing her heavy arctic gear. Finn shouted at her.
- FINN: You should remove your Anorak. You must be sweating like hell.
Ekaterina stopped once more, then started moving again in our direction, even more slowly than before. When she was a few feet away from us she stopped and looked at us from under her heavy fur-lined hood.
- EKATERINA: Who are you ?
As expected, she had a heavy Russian accent.
- FINN: I am Finn, from the Troll station and this is Aaron, from Amundsen-Scott.
After a few seconds of silence, he spoke again.
- FINN: You should really remove your overcoat. The temperature here is close to 15° C.
Ekaterina pushed her hood back. Her brown hair was tied in a bun, but many strands had come loose and were sticking to her sweat-drenched face. She looked as if she had been in a Sauna.
- EKATERINA: This is not possible. Not possible.
She wiped some of the sweat off her brow and rubbed her eyes as if she was trying to wake up. Finn cleared his throat.
- FINN: There is no denying that this place is quite strange. You should come inside. We will explain what we can.
Ekaterina followed us reluctantly up the wooden stairs and into the bungalow. Once inside, she finally resolved to unzip her anorak and take it off. The light grey sweater she wore under it had huge sweat marks.
“Wait a second, Finn said, I will try to find some dry clothes for you”. He disappeared into the corridor. I poured a cup of coffee and gave it to Ekaterina.
- ME: I do not think you need to warm up, but this should help clear your head.
- EKATERINA: Thank you.
She was darting little glances all around and seemed frightened as hell. Finn came back. He was carrying a pile of military-looking clothes, khaki shirts, work pants and sweaters. He laid it down on one of the tables.
- FINN: Most of this is probably not your size. But it will be better than your soaked clothes.
Ekaterina chose a few items from the pile and went into the neighboring room to change. When she came back, she was wearing an enormous sweater, the sleeves of which dangled past her hands, and a matching pair of pants she had rolled up four or five times to be able to walk. She looked more embarrassed than frightened now. Finn motioned her to a chair and looked at me. We both burst out laughing. Ekaterina frowned and shot a half-furious, half-desperate glance in our direction. She was quite pretty, at least by the standards of the science graduates South Pole female population. She made me think of Riin Tamm, the Estonian geneticist I had once seen on stage at a TED talk. However, she was really not my type. I was definitely more into shapely blondes than skinny bookish brunettes.
- FINN: I am really sorry. We should not be laughing like this. You have nothing to fear. This place is completely harmless, albeit strange.
- EKATERINA: Is this secret base ? CIA ? Why no guards ?
- FINN: It used to be a military installation, yes, but that was long ago. This is like a replica of the original.
- EKATERINA: No people here except you ?
- FINN: Yes. Only us at the moment. But when it was operational, several thousand people worked here.
- EKATERINA: It is like Pripyat. Like ghosts were here.
- FINN: Yes. It does feel like a Tarkovsky movie; “Eto Zona” (“This is the Zone”, in Russian)
- ME: Who is Tarkovsky ?
- FINN: A soviet film-maker who directed a science fiction movie in the late seventies about a place somewhat like this one. In the film, it is just called “the Zone”.
- EKATERINA: I do not like the Tarkovsky movies. They scare me.
- FINN: I am sorry. But if you want to get an idea of where we are, “Stalker” is what comes to mind.
- ME: Is that the name of this Tarkovsky flick ?
- FINN: Yes.
After a little more chit-chat, Finn offered to take Ekaterina to the Cafeteria for some dinner (according to her timescale, it was late at night and she had not eaten). I was not hungry and stayed at hut 19. When Finn came back, he was alone ...
— FINN: I took her to the dormitory. She is asleep.
— ME: How did she take your explanations ?
— FINN: She was quite puzzled, as everyone is in the beginning. She is a microbiologist on a Russian Academy of Science grant. “Extremophile bacteria in Polar Ice”; That is her post-doctoral subject. She was collecting samples some distance away from Vostok station when she got disoriented and was attracted by the light. The usual story.
— ME: Do you think she will be interested in all this stuff; I mean, the binders and all.
— FINN: I guess we will know whether she is shortly.
— ME: By the way, I wanted to ask you a few things about the Uruk experiment. You have read all the binders about it, right ?
— FINN: Yes.
— ME: I get that this king, Bilgaga, invented a new goddess in order to ...
— FINN: You can't use these words !
— ME: What !? ...
— FINN: Bilgaga is not a king. He is in the process of (unwittingly) creating the institution of kingship. Before him there were no kings or emperors or anything like that. What he is doing, what he is transforming himself into, is something completely unheard of at this point. Also, he is not creating a goddess. There were no goddesses yet before him. There was no real concept of a "god" either. Both Enki and Anu can be called such retrospectively but the inhabitants of Eridu and Uruk would not have seen things that way. Enki and Anu are simply the paterfamilias of their respective Houses in their respective cities. There are no separate categories for "gods" and "mortals" yet. It just so happened that these two beings became immortal and started reigning over the Earth and the Sky. However, nothing of this is considered "supernatural". It is just what took place, for some reason. The words "king" and "god" (or goddess) carry way too much cultural baggage to be appropriate here.
— ME: Yeah, all right. I see what you mean. What I was about to say is that I am somewhat baffled by the way Brady and von Soden talk about this Inanna/Ishtar goddess as if she were a real person sometimes. They cannot have been believing in her existence, can they ?
— FINN: Of course not. My impression is that they do this to make the allegory more palpable. Ancient Mesopotamians conceptualized things by embodying them into mythical characters. Brady and von Soden want their readers to appreciate how effective this mode of reasoning can be. Mentally picturing the goddess is probably the best way to feel the mix of terror and irresistible attractiveness that she personifies.
— ME: I always thought religion was a bunch of random nonsense. But this is not really religion, is it ?
— FINN: No, it is not. Or rather, “religion” is not the right word to describe it. Eridu and Uruk before Bilgaga’s coup are all about the emergence of new technologies. You know, copper-smelting, basket-weaving, you name it. These are material technologies which we have no trouble identifying as such. But there are also what we may call behavioral technologies appearing at Uruk and Eridu and these are not as easy to spot. For example, prostitution is one such “technology”.
— ME: OK, I get it. And the training soldiers start to receive when they become more professionalized is also a technology in this sense, I guess. Yet, it still sounds odd to call something a “behavioral technology”.
— FINN: Maybe, but we have to call it something. Take the cult of Inanna, for example, what kind of thing is it ?. The whole set of behaviors which surround this goddess; the courtesan-priestesses, the ornaments, the weapons, the ritual sex; all these things are like tools which, when used together, have a strong capacity to alter human behavior. The whole thing can be viewed as a training technique which develops Pavlovian responses in the populations which are subjected to it.
— ME: But it was not developed completely on purpose, right ?
— FINN: No. Bilgaga stumbled upon it in much the same way many other new technologies appear, half by design, half by accident. So, Inanna’s cult is a technology. But it is also an out of control technology, like Frankenstein’s monster escaping its creator.
— ME: Yeah, it makes me think of World War Z. Some dudes are tinkering with viruses in a lab and then one escapes into the wild. As a result, half the world’s population become zombies.
— FINN: Yes, something like that. Except that in this case the whole world was infected and became consequently stagnant.
— ME: What is the deal with the Book of Enoch quotation. I am not sure I completely get what they are trying to say.
— FINN: Well, what is interesting in the passage is that it never mentions Inanna as such nor does it mention any female character at all. However, all the features of the story end up building a kind of implicit depiction of Inanna’s cult. All its aspects are there: the ornaments, the weapons, the siphoning off of resources, the terror, the behavioral changes. What is clear is that the passage is obviously not favorable to the cult since it depicts it as the work of demons. It seems like what the author of the text is trying to do is a kind of debunking of Inanna/Ishtar and of everything she stands for.
— ME: Wouldn’t some people call such an attack on a female goddess anti-women; an expression of the patriarchy ?
— FINN: Yes indeed; sadly they would. But this is once again a sign of how much our current culture is confused about these things. Inanna’s cult is the embodiment of the dominant male instinct. It is something that was built by and for alpha males for God’s sake ! Inanna is not the embodiment of womanhood. She is a male fantasy.
— ME: But Inanna’s cult is not only for men, right ?
— FINN: No, of course. Brady and von Soden make this very clear. What they call “the dominant male instinct” is something which applies as much to females as to males, and as much to non-dominant males as to the dominant male himself. It should be called something like “the instincts which govern behavior around the dominant male”, but that would be cumbersome. An important part of Inanna’s cult is the ritual in which she is represented as having sex with the alpha male. This is how women get sucked into the whole thing, on account of their own instinct to mate with the pack leader. As a result, they identify with Inanna.
— ME: Most women today would deny that they have such an instinct.
— FINN: Yeah, right. And do you think that's honest ?
— ME: Guess not ... So, basically, what von Soden and Brady are saying is that Christianity is the only explicitly anti-Inanna/Ishtar religion in human history.
— FINN: Yes, and this is why the last paragraph of their report was so controversial among the Boffins. Already in the 40s, arguing for any kind of Christian exceptionalism made many people uneasy, at least in university-educated circles. What Brady and von Soden are hinting at is that Christianity is also a behavioral technology, a training technique of the same nature as Inanna’s cult, and that it is in fact the antidote to it. This idea is not fully fleshed out at this point but it will be made more explicit down the road.
— ME: And the idea is that if you do not have a "technology" like that at your disposal, trying to resist Inanna is pointless. This is why the En were powerless to stop Bilgaga, right ?
— FINN: Yes. Definitely.
— ME: Brady and von Soden were not Christians, were they ?
— FINN: No. They were probably raised Christian like everyone else at the time. But they were not believers in any sense of the word. Anyway, describing Christianity as a mental-conditioning antidote to a nefarious mental-conditioning virus is certainly not an idea that is consistent with Christian dogma.
— ME: Sure, they are not arguing from a dogmatic or religious standpoint. They are just formulating a theory of human behavior in which Christianity happens to play a role as a cultural construct.
— FINN: Yes.
— ME: This is Wittgenstein’s point, right ? Let us make more experiments in order to substantiate (or invalidate) this theory. That is what he is arguing for, isn’t it ?
— FINN: Yes, absolutely. And this is indeed what the team will do as they move on.
Chapter 4 – Uruk
On April 23rd 1948, a meeting of the Philadelphia Boffin team occurred to decide what the follow-up to the Eridu experiment should be. Alan Turing, who was chairing the meeting, opened it up by asking: “Where, and when, should we now look ?” Both von Soden and Landsberger immediately answered in one voice: “at Uruk, in the fourth Millennium BC.” And with that pronouncement, the Uruk experiment started.
In the early fourth Millennium BC, as Eridu was in the middle of its explosive growth period, several other cities started to appear in lower Mesopotamia. The phenomenon was a straightforward case of copycat behavior. When something obviously works, it would be foolish not to do the same. The first of these imitation cities was Uruk, located 70 km upstream of Eridu along the Euphrates. The transition from village to city took place in the 3920s BC., and followed the Eridu pattern very closely. The local En, servants of the Uruk village ruling family replaced their former human master, an elderly chief who had just died of old age, with an effigy deemed to be his immortal incarnation. At Uruk, like at Eridu, the village population played along and the local top shaman was duly co-opted into the En council. The copycat nature of what happened at Uruk is clearly indicated by the choice of name used for the new local master/god. “Enki”, as we have seen, means “En (i.e. “foreman”) of the Earth” and, by the time Uruk started its transformation, this name was already the most common way to refer to Eridu’s everlasting chief. Uruk’s En council seems to have reasoned that, since the Earth was already taken, they would give a Sky-related name to their own master/god. Eventually, the simplest possible name was chosen: “Anu”, which just means “the Sky”.
In order to understand the implications of this choice, one has to remember how Mesopotamian cosmogony was structured. Ancient Mesopotamians viewed the world as centered on “Ki”, “the Earth”. Ki was imagined as a flat disk, with land in the middle, understood as a sort of floating island resting on a pool of water which was accessible all around as the oceans but also underneath the ground as the subterranean water table. Above the Earth was “Anu”, the Sky, viewed as a solid hemispherical dome with water stored above it. Rain was interpreted as some of this water falling through pores in the Sky dome that were opened from time to time. The waters above the Sky met those below the land along the circumference of the Earth, where the Sky dome met the Earth disk. Between the Sky dome and the Earth disk was a void filled with Air, thus completing the triad Earth-Sky-Air.
Unsurprisingly, when a third city, Nippur, appeared around 50 years after Uruk, its god/master was named “Enlil”, i.e. “En of the Air”. For nearly 4000 years, the triad Enki/Earth, Anu/Sky and Enlil/Air would remain the most fundamental group of gods in Mesopotamian religion.
For over a century, until the 3710s BC., Uruk grew in parallel with Eridu and along the same lines. In 3847 BC., a magnificent new stone building, the first ever in human history, was added to the structures forming the House of Anu at Uruk. This building, constructed with white limestone blocks cemented with bitumen, was to be the new residence of Anu’s statue. It consisted of three massive concentric walls, each pierced with a single door facing a different direction. It was thus the first ever spatial representation of the idea of the sacred, i.e. the notion that divinity must be carefully separated from ordinary mortals.
The logic behind this separation goes both ways. On the one hand, the divine presence must be protected from sacrilegious acts that mortals may commit. Howver, on the other hand, the said mortals must also be protected from the divine energy that may kill them if they approach it casually. Both these concerns find a clear expression, for example, in the Old Testament, where the structure of the "Tent of Meeting" and of the later Solomonic Temple are self-consciously described as a means to avoid sacrilegious intrusion into the "Holy of Holies" but also to protect men from accidentally touching the dangerously powerful sacred objects contained therein. To illustrate the latter risk, the second book of Samuel narrates how one of the priests who was helping move the Ark of the Covenant from Kiriath-Jearim to Jerusalem was struck dead on the spot when he accidentally touched it (2 Sam. 2:8). Both the Tent of Meeting and the Solomonic Temple are said to have been designed to the same concentric pattern as Anu's limestone House built in Uruk three Millenia before. 6000 years later, in our own time, the same general configuration is still employed in nuclear power plants, where concentric “confinement enclosures” are erected to protect the environment from the radiations of the core within. Today, the same "confinement enclosures" can still clearly be seen in the excavated remains of Anu's House near the town of Samawah in Southern Iraq.
As the first ever stone building, with its shining white facade, the new House of Anu in Uruk outshone even Enki’s House in Eridu, which was still built of sun-dried brick at the time. It was duly inaugurated, on August 7 3847 BC., with a lavish feast attended by all the people of Uruk, many guests from Eridu, and many as well from the surrounding countryside.
From the mid-3800s BC. onward, Uruk had begun competing with Eridu and this rivalry would only intensify with time. Uruk was previously one of Eridu’s dependent villages. However, in 3872 BC., it had declared independence from Eridu by sending a large gift of agricultural produce, copper objects and luxury items to the House of Enki, together with a message stating: “Anu thanks his older brother Enki for his help and protection. Having grown in strength, he will no longer need it anymore”. The En in both Eridu and Uruk were risk-averse folks. As a result, neither Uruk’s declaration of independence, nor the competition that developed between the two cities afterwards, could degenerate into war. Indeed, the concept of war did not exist at this time. Mesopotamian Neolithic culture did not have a tradition of head-hunting or inter-village warfare. The warriors of the new cities mostly played the role of a police force, deterring cattle-rustling and the like. They also acted as debt-collection agents. Also, on occasion, migrant groups descended from the mountains to the East and had to be repulsed, but these incursions were never large-scale events.
Therefore, for over 160 years, Uruk and Eridu competed peacefully. The Houses of both cities were essentially economic actors and competition spurred them to further increases in efficiency. Productivity grew, especially in textile manufacturing and copper metallurgy, and prices fell. Towards the end of the 3700s B.C., Uruk reached a population of 10,000 while Eridu was on its way to the already mentioned figure of 15,000.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
As I was reading about the early history of Uruk in binder X-48/04, Finn entered the office. He looked a little preoccupied.
— ME: What’s the matter ?.
— FINN: We are going to have a new visitor.
— ME: How do you know ? And, by the way, you never told me how you knew that I was coming. How did you ?
— FINN: It is not easy to explain. The best way I can express it, I think, is that I remember learning that someone is going to come, even though I do not remember any of the circumstances in which I learned it. It is as if memories were implanted into my brain.
— ME: Scary !
— FINN: Yes, but, at the same time, I do not feel there is anything to worry about. I know how strange it sounds, but it feels completely normal. Probably, this has something to do with the fact that these memories have always proved to be completely reliable. All the things I learned about this way turned out exactly how I remembered they were supposed to.
— ME: Who is going to come this time ?
— FINN: A biologist from the Russian Vostok station. Her name is Ekaterina Kurchatova. She is due to arrive here within 48 hours or less, from a South-Westerly direction. You arrived from due West. Apparently, these directions are related to where we came from initially. When I want to go back to Troll, I have to head North.
— ME: A girl, ha !
— FINN: Yes. I do not know anything else about her.
Finn grabbed the coffee pot and poured himself a cup. I returned to binder X-48/04.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
In March 3709 BC., an event occurred in Uruk which would have repercussions down to the present day. In Uruk, as in Eridu, the warriors were under the command of an official called the Lukig (“man of commands”, or “man of orders”, in Sumerian), who was appointed by the En. From 37182 BC. onward, Uruk’s Lukig was a man called Bilgaga (“fruit basket”, a common name related to the propitiating fruit offerings brought to the House by women expecting a child). Like all military men in Eridu and Uruk at this point, Bilgaga spent most of his time in the taverns located near Uruk’s port on the Euphrates river. The region had been peaceful for several decades and the soldiers did not have much to do, save for the occasional shakedown of farmers whose debts to the House went overdue.
Since the beginning of the fourth Millennium BC., the brewing and sale of alcohol as a specialized activity had started to develop in Eridu, and then in Uruk. Initially, the patrons of such establishments were the young men who came from the countryside to become apprentices in copper metallurgy, carpentry, pottery, etc. Donkey drivers from other towns were also among the early customers of the new taverns.
Until the late 3900s, warriors did not generally patronize the taverns. They were then mostly married men and were often still engaged, part-time, in agriculture, or another trade. However, in the early 3800s, this changed. Following the trend towards increased specialization, the military profession became a full-time activity practiced by unmarried young men in their 20s and 30s. Like the previously mentioned apprentice craftsmen, the majority of the young soldiers also hailed from neighbouring villages and were recruited by the Lukig who provided them with food, equipment, clothing and boarding. Compared to their previous part-time counterparts, these new professional troops had the advantage of immediate availability for any type of mission. Also, being away from their families, they were fully loyal to their commander and, through him, to the House. After serving for 10 to 15 years, they generally went back to their villages and got married.
During their term of service, soldiers were often idle. They were generally being drilled in the morning, when the temperature was still bearable, but were frequently left to their own devices past noon when no orders for them had come from the House. As a result, going to the tavern had become a soldierly past-time. In most establishments, payment in small copper objects was accepted. A hairpin or a nail would buy you a half gallon pitcher of beer and the right for five or six men to sit at a table for as long as they needed to drink it. Soon, games made their appearances, like dice or Kiaddir (“land and bridge”), an ancestor of backgammon, later christened “the Royal game of Ur” by its modern discoverer, the British archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley.
Not long after games, prostitution made its appearance too. For the price of two or three pitchers, a patron could now climb to the upper room of a tavern with one of the girls serving the beer. Initially, the girls were the daughters of the tavern owners and no stigma was attached to the practice. Later on, as with most professions in Eridu and Uruk, prostitution became a specialized activity. Poor families began to sell their daughters to tavern owners at puberty. These young girls would initially serve as maids while they learned their trade from more senior ladies. When they started taking clients upstairs themselves, at 16 or 17 years of age, they had become full-fledged courtesans, skilled in dancing and music, as well as in the use of cosmetics, perfume, elaborate clothing and the bedroom arts. Some became well known around town and had a devoted following among soldiers, craftsmen apprentices, donkey drivers and boatmen.
By the mid-3710s BC, Bilgaga, the Lukig of Uruk, had become a near permanent fixture of the port district taverns. He was famed for his generosity towards his men, routinely paying the drinks of dozens of soldiers at a time. He also often threw huge parties that dragged on late into the night. Beer, gambling and dancing girls were the main attractions at these parties, which invariably ended up in drunken orgies during which soldiers competed to show off their sexual prowess. Often, Bilgaga himself was the winner in these contests.
In a village setting, such behavior would have been unthinkable. However, in the city, increasing specialization had taught people to mind their own business. The population increase had long ago put an end to the village-style face to face culture where peer pressure is the main driver of social conformity. Most of the participants in the growing tavern sub-culture were younger men from out of town who did not know anybody in the city. As a result, they were unrestrained by traditional social ties. The En and some of the wealthier citizens of Uruk seem to have been worried by this phenomenon and the same was true in Eridu. However, there were no cultural tools available for them to deal with the situation since it was entirely new. Everything in Eridu and Uruk revolved around the Houses of Enki and Anu respectively. As long as your economic dealings with the local House were in order and you were also paying proper respect to the deity during festivals, you were in the clear. You could do whatever you liked.
For the few years leading up to the events of 3709 BC., the relationship between Bilgaga and Uruk's En council had become strained. For several decades already, the Lukig had ceased to be an official appointed by the En but had instead increasingly become a kind of mercenary captain. He had turned into a military contractor of sorts who bargained hard with his En paymasters over his budgetary allocation. Since both cities were experiencing increased prosperity, it had been possible for the En councils of both Eridu and Uruk to allow this allocation to rise rapidly, which is what made Bilgaga’s parties possible, among other things. But Bilgaga was never satisfied by his current allocation and he had become increasingly rude and insolent towards his nominal superiors.
One day, on the 17th of March 3709 BC., the growing tension boiled over. On that day, a new set of buildings were to be inaugurated, with the usual ceremonies and feast. The new structures, constructed 200 meters to the North-East of the limestone building completed nearly 140 years before, were intended to become the new center of the House of Anu. They were spread over an area of nearly 3 hectares and included assembly halls, granaries, workshops and, of course, a central great hall destined to house the statue of the city's god. The citizens of Uruk, who had been participating in its construction for 7 years, already called it “E-Anna”, i.e. “The House of Anu”.
During the morning of March 17th, the En had been making offerings at the old limestone building and had prepared the statue of Anu for its journey to the new compound. They had first bathed it in milk and water. Then, after carefully drying it, they had clothed Anu’s effigy with a brand-new white linen garment decorated with colorful bands of embroidery on its edges. Finally, they had draped its neck with an overabundance of thick flower garlands. A little before noon, the god and master of Uruk started on his journey to his new House, borne on an elaborately decorated bier carried on the shoulders of the full En council of Uruk. Fifteen minutes later, it arrived at the entrance of the great square in front of the new E-Anna complex. Drummers and flute players preceded it as it made its way through the crowd, towards the steps leading up to the main hall.
Suddenly, soldiers started to appear on both sides of the E-Anna. As they poured into the square, they pushed the crowd back and forced it to free up some space at the base of the steps. The men, in full battle array, were accompanied by their own drummers who were making such a din that they forced the musicians accompanying the statue of Anu to stop playing. The En, who were still carrying the bier, could not see what was going on as they were pushed backwards by the crowd. The statue they were carrying seemed to be wavering for a few seconds, on the verge of being toppled over. Then it stabilized due to the En’s desperate efforts to keep it upright. As it stood there, motionless, in the middle of the crowded square, it looked like a becalmed ship in the midst of a sea of heads.
Bilgaga appeared, at the top of the stairs. He too was wearing his combat outfit, a leather cuirass, reinforced with copper plates, a short white linen tunic reaching down to the knees and a pair of high leather sandal boots. A copper sword, short and broad, was strapped to his belt and a round shield hung from his back. On his head, he wore a conical leather helmet adorned with a decorative motif that would feature prominently in Mesopotamian art for centuries to come: the figure of a standing man holding off two erect lions; one to his left and one to his right. Bilgaga's face was red and he appeared drunk. A few paces behind him, three of the most famous ladies of the port district, in full courtesan attire, were standing on the platform of E-Anna's main hall. Bilgaga motioned the drummers to stop playing. The whole square fell into near complete silence, only broken here and there by a couple of wailing infants. After surveying the crowd and finding it suitably cowed, Bilgaga addressed it thus:
- BILGAGA: The lady Inanna has demanded the Bull of Heaven from Lord Anu and her wish has been granted.
Up to this point, Inanna had been a stock character which appeared in many traditional stories and songs. She was not a goddess in the same sense as Enki and Anu were. She was just the archetypal girl who played the role of love interest in countless heroic tales and rustic poems. The Bull of heaven, for its part was a very old mythical motif, probably of Paleolithic origin, common to nearly all Neolithic Middle-Eastern cultures. It was associated with the sun, fertility, victory, and strength in general. It had never been connected to Inanna before and what Bilgaga was saying was probably far from clear to his audience. He continued:
- BILGAGA: The lady Inanna is the new mistress of Uruk. Anu has retired to the heavens and granted her the dominion of his beloved city. The Bull of Heaven will grant the lady strength and victory in all she does. She will crack open the skulls of all who oppose her, just as the furious bull gores the hapless cowherd. The Lady Inanna has favored me, Bilgaga. I have had intercourse with the Lady. She bends over and offers her furrow to me.
Things were clearer now, and not at all to the liking of everyone present. People started jeering: “Bilgaga, you inflated beerskin !”, “We did not hear Lord Anu say anything about this !”, “Which Inanna are you talking about ?”, and so on. “SILENCE !”, Bilgaga roared, his eyes nearly popping out of their sockets. He drew his sword and his men imitated him. The crowd recoiled backwards. The Lukig bellowed:
- BILGAGA: The lady Inanna is merciful. She does not repay insult with vengeance, at least for now. The Lord Anu is way too loftily placed to speak to you worms. He spoke to the Lady and the Lady spoke to me. I am the voice of the Lady. She will reside in the E-Anna that her father Anu has prepared for her. And I will visit her and mount her when she so desires. I will let you know whatever she wishes you to know.
A silence followed. Bilgaga had calmed down and his eyes were less bloodshot. He continued:
- BILGAGA: The Lady has gathered us today to celebrate her coming into her inheritance; her good city of Uruk. The Lord Anu has witnessed this and gave his assent. He will now return to his erstwhile earthly abode in the city whence he will take up his residence in the Heavens. Let the feast begin !
Bilgaga then ordered a detachment of soldiers to escort the En, and the bier carrying Anu’s statue, back to the limestone building. Once they had left the square, a group of girls moved forward into the space left empty by the crowd in at the foot of the steps and started dancing, to the sound of drums and reed pipes. After a minute or two, one of the courtesans which had been standing behind Bilgaga since the beginning moved down the staircase. From the lowest step, she began singing:
As the courtesan sang, her mood started to spread to her audience. Uruk’s citizen were becoming inebriated with lust and frenzy. The whole square was soon dancing to the rhythm of the drums. Much beer flowed that night, all over town. The whole city was one huge revelry. Dancing, copulation and brawls engulfed it like a sudden fire.
In the morning, there were 17 dead bodies lying down in the streets as well as countless broken arms and fractured jaws. Nobody cared. Everyone was fast asleep. The city was motionless and silent for a whole day as people bandaged their sores and recovered their composure. The day after, the city resumed its everyday routine but the citizens of Uruk knew that things would never be like before.
That morning, Bilgaga showed up at the white limestone building, followed by his now usual retinue of armed soldiers and courtesans. Inside, the En, who had been barricaded there for the last two days, saw him coming from a distance but did not open the door. Bilgaga called them out and motioned them to come and meet him. They slowly filed out of the building and formed a large semi-circle around the Lukig. The following exchange ensued:
- BILGAGA: The new E-ANNA will henceforth be the house of Inanna. You En will serve Anu in the old white building and Inanna in the new E-ANNA.
- CHIEF EN: This is unheard of. We ...
- COURTESAN No. 1 (interrupting): Who are you old man to question the word of lady Inanna. You have never known a woman and your penis is shrivelled like an old date. Why would the lady take any interest in you ?
- CHIEF EN: I ...
- COURTESAN No. 2: bir-gish (shrivelled-penis), bir-gish, bir-gish. The lady is not listening ...
- COURTESANS and some soldiers together: bir-gish, bir-gish, libir-zulum (old date), libir-zulum, bir-gish, ...
After the heckling died down, Bilgaga said:
- BILGAGA: Now you know the divine power of Lady Inanna, old man.
- CHIEF EN: Yes I do.
Bilgaga then dictated his conditions to the En, assembled in front of the white limestone building. First, he was now to be known under a new name, “Bilgamesh”, i.e. “my ancestors are heroes”, in Sumerian. This change, made possible by the polysemy of the word “bilga” (“fresh fruit” in “Bilgaga” and “ancestor” in “Bilgamesh”), clearly denoted dynastic ambitions. Also, his title was to be changed from Lukig (“man of orders”) to Lugal (“big man”). Apart from these onomastic diktats, Bilgamesh did not enact any organizational changes or anything that could be called a “reform” in modern terms. It is not that he lacked imagination. On the contrary, his elaboration of the character of Inanna into a fearsome and domineering goddess shows that his was quite fertile indeed. However, the idea that anything could be “reformed” was foreign to Sumerian culture at this point. The concepts of state, laws or institutions did not exist. The only cultural building blocks that did were that of “House” and of an undying, super-human “master of the House”. Henceforth, as Bilgamesh had explained, Uruk was going to have two Houses, the E-Anna for Inanna and the older complex of buildings surrounding the white limestone structure for Anu as before. Inanna was to be considered the new mistress of Uruk and her House was therefore to become the bigger one. Both houses were to be administered by the En council. However, it was obvious to everyone that supreme power had passed from the En to the newly minted Lugal. As the Inanna-gitlam (“Inanna’s lover”) and the gu-Inanna (“Inanna’s voice”), Bilgamesh was now clearly the highest authority in Uruk. The main symbol of this new political dispensation was the statue of Inanna, soon to be installed in the main hall of the E-Anna. Enthroned where the effigy of Anu should have stood, the image of the new mistress of Uruk was now to reign figuratively over the city, attended to by a select group of courtesans handpicked by Bilgamesh. These new “priestesses” were to assist the En in performing the daily rituals surrounding the effigy of the goddess.
Bilgamesh had just pulled off the first military coup in human history. He had also created a divine archetype which would eventually spread to nearly all world cultures and one which remains very much alive to this day. Inanna would be known as Ishtar in the Babylonian and Assyrian Empires, Anahita among Iranians, Astarte in the Bible, Aphrodite/Venus in the Graeco-Roman world, Durga/Kali in India, the “Lady of the West” in China. She would eventually morph into the “girl with guns” stock character found in modern action movies, mangas and comics.
In all her avatars, Inanna has consistently been depicted as an attractive young woman, either bedecked with ornaments or naked, according to shifting tastes. She wields weapons and is seated on, or stands besides, a lion (or tiger). In modern times, the lion has often morphed into a motorcycle, as in the character Trinity from “The Matrix” movie trilogy (especially in the second installment) or the Pamela Anderson eponymous character in “Barb Wire”. Despite this slight adaptation, the archetype remains essentially unchanged.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Binder X-48/04 ended with two documents:
— A short note written by Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. of Harvard University, one of the two historians within the team.
— A report by Joseph Brady, complementing his findings about Eridu and extending them to the material gathered by the Uruk Project.
Here are both of them, in full (wait for the thumbnails to appear):
Brady and von Soden’s report occasioned a lot of controversy among the Boffins; most of it centered on its last paragraph. The lines were drawn in much the same way as they previously had been when there had been contention over what to do after the Socrates experiment. Wittgenstein, Ulam and Kuhn had nothing but praise for Brady and von Soden’s last paragraph, hailing it as a deep insight into the ultimate mechanisms of mankind’s history. On the contrary, Oppenheimer, Turing, Quine and Schlesinger were up in arms. According to them, generalizing the observations made at Uruk in such a sweeping manner was unwarranted; unscientific even. Oppenheimer, for example, wrote in his personal logbook:
I do not know what has gotten into our friends von Soden and Brady. Witnessing the origin of the cult of Inanna/Ishtar was a truly fascinating experience; no doubt about that. However, how one can jump from this observation to an all-encompassing theory of human history is beyond me. Also, why would all this justify placing Christianity on a pedestal in such a blatant way ? What about Hinduism, Islam or Taoism ? Do not they also have a role to play in explaining mankind’s destiny ?
As had already happened several times in the past, one of the most interesting exchanges about the subject was a discussion between Wittgenstein and Turing. One night in late August 1948, both of them, together with Ulam, Quine, Kuhn and Bose, were relaxing in a small room at the far end of Hut 19 that the team used as a lounge. For a lounge, it was a bit cramped and people had to do with wooden chairs instead of sofas. Of course, no one ever complained. How could they, acutely aware as they all were of how incredible a privilege it was just to be there, peering into humanity’s past ? Everybody but Turing was smoking and Ulam had just opened a bottle of brandy. The following dialogue was recorded in Bose’s logbook:
- WITTGENSTEIN: It seems to me that Brady and von Soden have hit the nail on the head. Their insight about Inanna’s role in history is outstanding.
- TURING: But, Ludwig, doesn’t it seem a little too sweeping a generalization. How can the cult of a goddess explain everything ? There must surely be other factors at play, like the development of rationality, the buildup of knowledge. Take mathematics, for example. Isn’t modernity conditioned by the development of mathematics ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: Brady and von Soden are not claiming otherwise. What they are saying is that mathematics will fail to have an impact if the cult of Inanna and the mindset it represents is not effectively suppressed.
- TURING: I don’t get it. How can one jump from nebulous mythology to the impact of mathematics. The proof of a theorem is true regardless of what people think about it. How can tales about a goddess change that ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: The internal consistency of mathematics is not at stake here, Alan. The question is how and why mathematics, in concert with other things of course, gave birth to modern Science and Engineering, for example. What they are saying is that if Christianity had not succeeded in eradicating Ishtarism from Western culture, it would not have happened.
- TURING: I am completely at a loss here. A king used a goddess to take power 6000 years ago and you are saying that it explains the origin of modernity ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: First of Alan, it is not "a king" and "a goddess". There were no kings and no goddesses before Bilgaga's coup. The concept of a certain type of goddess and also of what would later be called "a king" were invented at that moment.
- TURING: All right. Granted. Yet I do not see what all this have to do with modern science.
- WITTGENSTEIN: What was key to Eridu’s success was accounting. The En were master accountants. In many ways, they invented accounting. Mathematics and accounting are very similar; not in what they are but in the role they play. Accounting is the bookkeeping of business and Mathematics is the bookkeeping of Science or Engineering. Niels Bohr wrote a number of very insightful papers about this recently. In them he argues that the role of Mathematics in Quantum Mechanics is not to describe how the world is but instead to provide a secure means for the experimenter to predict the outcome of the experiment.
- BOSE: Not everyone agrees with him. Einstein in particular is adamantly opposed to this position.
- KUHN: True, but old man Albert seems to be in the process of losing this particular battle. The younger generation of Quantum Mechanicians seems to be overwhelmingly siding with Bohr and the Copenhagen crowd. “Shut up and calculate” is their new motto.
- TURING: What do they mean by that ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: The way Bohr describes the role of mathematics in Quantum Mechanics is as the language used to establish a form of contract between the Theoretician and the Experimenter. This contract says: “If you set up the experiment in this (mathematically conditioned) way, then you will get this (mathematically calculated) result”. The role of Mathematics is to make the Theoretician’s promises precise, just like accounting is there to make business commitments clear cut.
- TURING: What I do not get is what all this have to do with the bloody lion-riding goddess ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: It boils down to motivation. Mathematics and accounting can make contracts precise all day long but this is irrelevant if people do not want to enter into contracts in the first place. When you are at Eridu, under the benevolent gaze of Enki, everything encourages you to make commitments and fulfil them. However, if Inanna reigns supreme, it is another story. Inanna is “fickle” and who wants to make promises in an atmosphere of fickleness ?
- TURING: But Inanna does not exist. Have you become a believer in Inanna, now ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: No, Alan. Don’t pretend to be more block-headed than you actually are. Inanna’s fickleness is just an allegory of the general unpredictability which results from the cultural pattern she represents. When society is driven by a mixture of orgiastic arousal and artificially boosted wolf-pack instincts, making prognostications about the future is hard. In such a context, businesspeople become risk-averse and scientists do not exist at all. In their stead, the only ones who can thrive are magicians and sorcerers. Scientists have a strong incentive to share their results. Magicians and Sorcerers do not. On the contrary, they jealously guard whatever know-how they do have in order to better impress and deceive their marks. When Inanna rules, Mathematics is only useful as a prop for Astrologers and such.
- QUINE: We get all this. It is certainly an interesting theory. But it lacks empirical validation at this point, does it not ? Granted, we have gathered an astonishing amount of data about two cities of the fourth millennium BC. But what about the rest of history ? Who knows what other factors might play a role ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: I agree. What I am expressing right now is my belief in von Soden and Brady’s theory. This is my intuition, if you will. Full blown justification will require many more experiments; no doubt about that. My purpose right now is to argue in favor of designing these experiments in a way that will precisely test this theory to the fullest. My point is that making or breaking von Soden and Brady’s theory should be our highest priority from now on.
-=-=-=-=-=-
I had just finished reading binder X-48/04 and its accompanying logbooks. The light outside was exactly the same as usual. It never changed. According to my watch, it should have been a little over 5:30 pm., but did it mean anything, in this place ? As I was stretching my legs and leaning back into my chair, Finn entered the room.
- FINN: She is coming.
- ME: Who ? … Oh, the Russian girl ?
- FINN: Yeah. She’ll be here in less than five minutes.
We both went out of the bungalow and stood on the outside staircase, squinting our eyes to see if someone was approaching. A few minutes later, a human shape did start to appear in the distance, clearly outlined against the snowy backdrop. We waved at her. She stopped, hesitated for a few seconds, then started to move in our direction again. When she was close enough, we saw that she was still wearing her heavy arctic gear. Finn shouted at her.
- FINN: You should remove your Anorak. You must be sweating like hell.
Ekaterina stopped once more, then started moving again in our direction, even more slowly than before. When she was a few feet away from us she stopped and looked at us from under her heavy fur-lined hood.
- EKATERINA: Who are you ?
As expected, she had a heavy Russian accent.
- FINN: I am Finn, from the Troll station and this is Aaron, from Amundsen-Scott.
After a few seconds of silence, he spoke again.
- FINN: You should really remove your overcoat. The temperature here is close to 15° C.
Ekaterina pushed her hood back. Her brown hair was tied in a bun, but many strands had come loose and were sticking to her sweat-drenched face. She looked as if she had been in a Sauna.
- EKATERINA: This is not possible. Not possible.
She wiped some of the sweat off her brow and rubbed her eyes as if she was trying to wake up. Finn cleared his throat.
- FINN: There is no denying that this place is quite strange. You should come inside. We will explain what we can.
Ekaterina followed us reluctantly up the wooden stairs and into the bungalow. Once inside, she finally resolved to unzip her anorak and take it off. The light grey sweater she wore under it had huge sweat marks.
“Wait a second, Finn said, I will try to find some dry clothes for you”. He disappeared into the corridor. I poured a cup of coffee and gave it to Ekaterina.
- ME: I do not think you need to warm up, but this should help clear your head.
- EKATERINA: Thank you.
She was darting little glances all around and seemed frightened as hell. Finn came back. He was carrying a pile of military-looking clothes, khaki shirts, work pants and sweaters. He laid it down on one of the tables.
- FINN: Most of this is probably not your size. But it will be better than your soaked clothes.
Ekaterina chose a few items from the pile and went into the neighboring room to change. When she came back, she was wearing an enormous sweater, the sleeves of which dangled past her hands, and a matching pair of pants she had rolled up four or five times to be able to walk. She looked more embarrassed than frightened now. Finn motioned her to a chair and looked at me. We both burst out laughing. Ekaterina frowned and shot a half-furious, half-desperate glance in our direction. She was quite pretty, at least by the standards of the science graduates South Pole female population. She made me think of Riin Tamm, the Estonian geneticist I had once seen on stage at a TED talk. However, she was really not my type. I was definitely more into shapely blondes than skinny bookish brunettes.
- FINN: I am really sorry. We should not be laughing like this. You have nothing to fear. This place is completely harmless, albeit strange.
- EKATERINA: Is this secret base ? CIA ? Why no guards ?
- FINN: It used to be a military installation, yes, but that was long ago. This is like a replica of the original.
- EKATERINA: No people here except you ?
- FINN: Yes. Only us at the moment. But when it was operational, several thousand people worked here.
- EKATERINA: It is like Pripyat. Like ghosts were here.
- FINN: Yes. It does feel like a Tarkovsky movie; “Eto Zona” (“This is the Zone”, in Russian)
- ME: Who is Tarkovsky ?
- FINN: A soviet film-maker who directed a science fiction movie in the late seventies about a place somewhat like this one. In the film, it is just called “the Zone”.
- EKATERINA: I do not like the Tarkovsky movies. They scare me.
- FINN: I am sorry. But if you want to get an idea of where we are, “Stalker” is what comes to mind.
- ME: Is that the name of this Tarkovsky flick ?
- FINN: Yes.
After a little more chit-chat, Finn offered to take Ekaterina to the Cafeteria for some dinner (according to her timescale, it was late at night and she had not eaten). I was not hungry and stayed at hut 19. When Finn came back, he was alone ...
— FINN: I took her to the dormitory. She is asleep.
— ME: How did she take your explanations ?
— FINN: She was quite puzzled, as everyone is in the beginning. She is a microbiologist on a Russian Academy of Science grant. “Extremophile bacteria in Polar Ice”; That is her post-doctoral subject. She was collecting samples some distance away from Vostok station when she got disoriented and was attracted by the light. The usual story.
— ME: Do you think she will be interested in all this stuff; I mean, the binders and all.
— FINN: I guess we will know whether she is shortly.
— ME: By the way, I wanted to ask you a few things about the Uruk experiment. You have read all the binders about it, right ?
— FINN: Yes.
— ME: I get that this king, Bilgaga, invented a new goddess in order to ...
— FINN: You can't use these words !
— ME: What !? ...
— FINN: Bilgaga is not a king. He is in the process of (unwittingly) creating the institution of kingship. Before him there were no kings or emperors or anything like that. What he is doing, what he is transforming himself into, is something completely unheard of at this point. Also, he is not creating a goddess. There were no goddesses yet before him. There was no real concept of a "god" either. Both Enki and Anu can be called such retrospectively but the inhabitants of Eridu and Uruk would not have seen things that way. Enki and Anu are simply the paterfamilias of their respective Houses in their respective cities. There are no separate categories for "gods" and "mortals" yet. It just so happened that these two beings became immortal and started reigning over the Earth and the Sky. However, nothing of this is considered "supernatural". It is just what took place, for some reason. The words "king" and "god" (or goddess) carry way too much cultural baggage to be appropriate here.
— ME: Yeah, all right. I see what you mean. What I was about to say is that I am somewhat baffled by the way Brady and von Soden talk about this Inanna/Ishtar goddess as if she were a real person sometimes. They cannot have been believing in her existence, can they ?
— FINN: Of course not. My impression is that they do this to make the allegory more palpable. Ancient Mesopotamians conceptualized things by embodying them into mythical characters. Brady and von Soden want their readers to appreciate how effective this mode of reasoning can be. Mentally picturing the goddess is probably the best way to feel the mix of terror and irresistible attractiveness that she personifies.
— ME: I always thought religion was a bunch of random nonsense. But this is not really religion, is it ?
— FINN: No, it is not. Or rather, “religion” is not the right word to describe it. Eridu and Uruk before Bilgaga’s coup are all about the emergence of new technologies. You know, copper-smelting, basket-weaving, you name it. These are material technologies which we have no trouble identifying as such. But there are also what we may call behavioral technologies appearing at Uruk and Eridu and these are not as easy to spot. For example, prostitution is one such “technology”.
— ME: OK, I get it. And the training soldiers start to receive when they become more professionalized is also a technology in this sense, I guess. Yet, it still sounds odd to call something a “behavioral technology”.
— FINN: Maybe, but we have to call it something. Take the cult of Inanna, for example, what kind of thing is it ?. The whole set of behaviors which surround this goddess; the courtesan-priestesses, the ornaments, the weapons, the ritual sex; all these things are like tools which, when used together, have a strong capacity to alter human behavior. The whole thing can be viewed as a training technique which develops Pavlovian responses in the populations which are subjected to it.
— ME: But it was not developed completely on purpose, right ?
— FINN: No. Bilgaga stumbled upon it in much the same way many other new technologies appear, half by design, half by accident. So, Inanna’s cult is a technology. But it is also an out of control technology, like Frankenstein’s monster escaping its creator.
— ME: Yeah, it makes me think of World War Z. Some dudes are tinkering with viruses in a lab and then one escapes into the wild. As a result, half the world’s population become zombies.
— FINN: Yes, something like that. Except that in this case the whole world was infected and became consequently stagnant.
— ME: What is the deal with the Book of Enoch quotation. I am not sure I completely get what they are trying to say.
— FINN: Well, what is interesting in the passage is that it never mentions Inanna as such nor does it mention any female character at all. However, all the features of the story end up building a kind of implicit depiction of Inanna’s cult. All its aspects are there: the ornaments, the weapons, the siphoning off of resources, the terror, the behavioral changes. What is clear is that the passage is obviously not favorable to the cult since it depicts it as the work of demons. It seems like what the author of the text is trying to do is a kind of debunking of Inanna/Ishtar and of everything she stands for.
— ME: Wouldn’t some people call such an attack on a female goddess anti-women; an expression of the patriarchy ?
— FINN: Yes indeed; sadly they would. But this is once again a sign of how much our current culture is confused about these things. Inanna’s cult is the embodiment of the dominant male instinct. It is something that was built by and for alpha males for God’s sake ! Inanna is not the embodiment of womanhood. She is a male fantasy.
— ME: But Inanna’s cult is not only for men, right ?
— FINN: No, of course. Brady and von Soden make this very clear. What they call “the dominant male instinct” is something which applies as much to females as to males, and as much to non-dominant males as to the dominant male himself. It should be called something like “the instincts which govern behavior around the dominant male”, but that would be cumbersome. An important part of Inanna’s cult is the ritual in which she is represented as having sex with the alpha male. This is how women get sucked into the whole thing, on account of their own instinct to mate with the pack leader. As a result, they identify with Inanna.
— ME: Most women today would deny that they have such an instinct.
— FINN: Yeah, right. And do you think that's honest ?
— ME: Guess not ... So, basically, what von Soden and Brady are saying is that Christianity is the only explicitly anti-Inanna/Ishtar religion in human history.
— FINN: Yes, and this is why the last paragraph of their report was so controversial among the Boffins. Already in the 40s, arguing for any kind of Christian exceptionalism made many people uneasy, at least in university-educated circles. What Brady and von Soden are hinting at is that Christianity is also a behavioral technology, a training technique of the same nature as Inanna’s cult, and that it is in fact the antidote to it. This idea is not fully fleshed out at this point but it will be made more explicit down the road.
— ME: And the idea is that if you do not have a "technology" like that at your disposal, trying to resist Inanna is pointless. This is why the En were powerless to stop Bilgaga, right ?
— FINN: Yes. Definitely.
— ME: Brady and von Soden were not Christians, were they ?
— FINN: No. They were probably raised Christian like everyone else at the time. But they were not believers in any sense of the word. Anyway, describing Christianity as a mental-conditioning antidote to a nefarious mental-conditioning virus is certainly not an idea that is consistent with Christian dogma.
— ME: Sure, they are not arguing from a dogmatic or religious standpoint. They are just formulating a theory of human behavior in which Christianity happens to play a role as a cultural construct.
— FINN: Yes.
— ME: This is Wittgenstein’s point, right ? Let us make more experiments in order to substantiate (or invalidate) this theory. That is what he is arguing for, isn’t it ?
— FINN: Yes, absolutely. And this is indeed what the team will do as they move on.
You will bend against the table for Christ, OP?
I suggest you read the book above too
Alright
D
@K9Otaku So you're not Christian then?
You should
No. I just think that Christianity is valuable in its philosophical structure
@Intellectual, Given that you are a self-admitted dopamine addict, is it a good idea to be creating so many new threads all the time?
No, but as I said, I'm addicted. I start reading your book and I really like it and then PING.... I have to answer this argument.
Did you read Chapter 4?
yea ready for 5th
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful. — Seneca
Giga atheist cope
Some of the thumbnails below may not load properly. Yet the full image is still accessible by clicking on them.
Chapter 5 – Babylon
After the completion of the URUK experiment, the Boffin section of project Philadelphia was beefed up significantly. James Conant, Vannevar Bush and Allan Dulles had been deeply impressed by the latest reports they had read. A closed meeting had occurred between President Truman and the three men in late September 1948 at Camp David presidential retreat. All four men later recalled being seized with quasi-religious awe as they discussed the future direction of “the project”, as it was invariably called by the few people in the know. It did not take long for them to decide that an increase in resources was warranted. From the last quarter of 1948 onward, the share of device usage allocated to the Boffin team was increased to 55% (up from 40%). Staff allocation was multiplied five-fold.
The staff increase was particularly welcome. As the Boffins were considering their options for the next step of their endeavors, they had been quick to realize that the highly detailed, narrowly focused approach they had used for Eridu and Uruk would be inapplicable to subsequent periods. From the early third millennium BC. onward, the historical development of Southern Mesopotamia was no longer centered on a single location, as it had been with Uruk in the fourth millennium, but split among several dozen petty states. There was also a marked increase in barbarian raiding and a sustained migration of Semitic-speaking people from the North and West throughout the period. All these phenomena had to be studied in parallel if one wanted to avoid a prohibitive inflation of the project schedule. As a result, it was decided to reorganize the Boffin team along more industrial lines to cope with the increased workload. The whole team was split into task groups. Each task group had its own linguists, a pool of typists, and a technical team in charge of the equipment that was now to be used in order to optimize the data acquisition process from the device. This process was organized as follows. At the beginning of each week, all task groups submitted requests indicating the time periods and locations they wanted to observe. These requests were aggregated to form a complete schedule for the device, which was operated around the clock. The data obtained for each time slot was recorded on magnetic wire for the sound and 70 mm film for the image. Magnetic wire and film were then distributed to the different task groups for analysis. In total, more than 500 people were working for the Boffin team at the beginning of 1949.
The number of task groups, and their individual focus, varied over time. The list below reflects the organization as it stood in the second half of 1949, which did not change much until the completion of the Babylon sub-project in early 1950:
• TG-1: 4th to 3rd millennium transition period. Group leader: W. v. O. Quine. Deputy: J. Oppenheimer.
• TG-2: Ur in the first half of the 3rd millennium. Group leader: T. Kuhn. Deputy: A. Turing.
• TG-3: Nippur. Group leader: A. Ulam. Deputy: W. v. O. Quine.
• TG-4: The Guti and Lullubi. Group leader: J. Oppenheimer. Deputy: G. Dumézil.
• TG-5: Elam. Group leader: J. Brady. Deputy: A. Schlesinger.
• TG-6: Uruk in the 3rd millennium. Group leader: W. v. Soden. Deputy: J. Brady.
• TG-7: Akkad. Group leader: L. Wittgenstein. Deputy: B. Landsberger.
• TG-8: The Amorites. Group leader: A. Turing. Deputy: W. v. Soden.
• TG-9: Semitic migration into southern Mesopotamia. Group leader: S. N. Bose. Deputy: L. Wittgenstein.
• TG-10: 3rd dynasty of Ur. Group leader: A. Schlesinger. Deputy: T. Kuhn.
• TG-11: Isin, Larsa and Lagash. Group leader: B. Landsberger. Deputy: A. Ulam.
• TG-12: Babylon. Group leader: G. Dumézil. Deputy: S. N. Bose.
Georges Dumézil, a renowned French linguist, had joined the Boffin team in late 1948, on the recommendation of von Soden and Landsberger. James Conant had also sent two officers to station Philadelphia, Major Hiram Stackhouse and Captain Matthew Piccolomino, who had been Leslie Groves’ deputies in the Manhattan Engineering District (the Manhattan Project's logistics organization). Their mission was to help the Boffins set up the new process and make sure it ran smoothly.
Their help was badly needed. Apart from Turing and Oppenheimer, who had experienced this kind of work environment through their activities during the war, the other members of the Boffin team had never functioned outside of an academic setting. Wittgenstein proved to be a spectacularly incompetent manager, holding his subordinates to impossible standards of exactness and berating them for the most immaterial of mistakes. On the 16th of December 1948, he wrote in his personal log-book: “This is worse than my schoolteacher days in the Alps”. Nonetheless, after a few difficult months, and thanks in large part to the expert advice from Stackhouse and Piccolomino, all twelve task groups were eventually up and running in a satisfactory manner by early 1949.
Initially, the plan was to cover only the 3rd millennium BC., ending with the 3rd dynasty of Ur. However, it was soon realized that this would lead to an artificial break right in the middle of a crucial event, the transition from Sumerian to Akkadian linguistic dominance. It was therefore decided to extend the project scope to include the rise of Babylon in the 18th century BC., and the reign of its famous king, Hammurabi. As a result, the scope of nearly all task groups was adjusted and the additional material was split between TG-8 and TG-12.
The Babylon experiment, as it was officially called, produced an enormous amount of data. The binders containing the reports from the different task groups, plus the final summary reports, filled an entire cabinet in Hut 19. I obviously could not read them all. Luckily, the first binder in the cabinet contained a summary report of the whole project, which I started reading (wait for the thumbnails to appear):
I interrupted my reading and looked up from the binder. Finn was seated at the desk next to me. He was typing on his laptop.
- ME: I have a weird feeling. This Babylon report I am reading right now feels boring like an old history book.
- FINN: Yeah, I had the same impression when I read it. It is because Mesopotamian history from the 3rd millennium onward starts to look like any other period of history which we are familiar with. This king went to war with that king. This battle took place, then that battle, and so on. The interesting part of project Babylon is not in the historical facts but in the interpretation of it that the Boffin team developed, in the course of the project.
- ME: Should I continue reading the boring parts ?
- FINN: Yes, I would advise you to. Otherwise you will be lost when you read about the interpretation.
- ME: OK, you are surely right. By the way, where is Ekaterina ?
- FINN: She is having breakfast. It takes her quite a while because she has to cook exactly the kind of things she is used to having for breakfast. Otherwise, she will start the day on the wrong foot. At least I think this is what she told me when I tried to give her Corn-flakes.
- ME: I see. Do you think she will be a pain in the A*** ?
- FINN: No. She was quite apologetic and unobtrusive about the whole thing. She is just one of those people who have to stick to a routine in order to feel all right. Given the shock of discovering this place, I guess that a full-on Russian breakfast is what she needed to land back onto her feet.
- ME: Well, all right then. The last thing we need here is a ball-breaker.
Having uttered this piece of masculine wisdom, I returned to the Babylon report (wait for the thumbnails to appear).
As my eyes rose from the last page of the Landsberger report, I noticed Ekaterina hovering at the door, not knowing whether to enter or knock. I rose up and opened the door.
- ME: Come in. We are not going to eat you.
- EKATERINA: Thank you. This is the place where you read reports all day, yes ?
- ME: Yes, that is what we do. You should try it too. They contain amazing stuff.
- EKATERINA: I should go. People will be worried at Vostok.
- FINN: Ekaterina, I told you already. When you are here time stops outside. You have all the time you want. Aaron and I have been here for weeks.
- EKATERINA: I do not know how I can believe. I need go back.
- FINN: Ok, then. Go back to Vostok and see for yourself.
- EKATERINA: I will go.
- FINN: Your clothes are in the next room, where you left them.
Ekaterina left the room and came back 10 minutes later, dressed in her arctic clothing.
- FINN: Go ahead. When you come back, if you decide to do so, less than half an hour will have passed from our perspective.
- EKATERINA: I go. Paka.
Half an hour later, she was back, as predicted. This time, when she climbed the stairs of Hut 19, she had removed her heavy anorak and was thus not drenched in sweat as she had been the first time. As she opened the door, I noticed she looked a little different. She was the same serious-looking Ekaterina with her bun-tied auburn hair, high cheekbones, cute dimples and pale grey eyes, but something was changed somehow.
- ME: Hi Ekaterina. I don’t know how to say this the right way, but you look different.
- EKATERINA: One more year Aaron. I met you outside, at conference in McMurdo. You convince me to come here back. Before, I could not decide. It is so strange. I thought maybe I had hallucination.
- ME: What ?, but … Oh, I see. I will meet you there. It is in the past for you but in the future for me. Weird.
- EKATERINA: OK, I want to read reports now. Which I should read first ?
- FINN: Better start with the beginning, like Aaron did. In the cabinet to your right, on the top shelf, there is a binder marked X-47/01. It contains the reports about the first experiment which was conducted here in 1947. Also, it is not too long so it should give you a quick intro. You do not have problems reading English, do you ?
- EKATERINA: No. Reading English I do all the time. I will understand, I think.
- FINN: All right then.
And so, silence descended once again on our little office in Hut 19 as the three of us went back to reading the Philadelphia project documents, each with our own binder in hand.
In March 1949, as the Boffin team had settled in the routine of the new “industrial” process of Project Babylon, the contentious issue of how to interpret the events they were observing reared its head once again.
One night, some members of the team were relaxing, as usual, in their tiny lounge. Oppenheimer, Schlesinger, Kuhn and Quine were playing bridge in one corner while a few others, including Wittgenstein and Turing, seated on wooden swivel chairs, were drinking Port. After a long pause in the chit-chat, Satyendra Nath Bose, who was part of the second group, was heard asking, to no one in particular:
- BOSE: I wonder at what point we can start talking about religion ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: Yes, I have been asking myself the same question ?
- OPPENHEIMER: Can you clarify, Satyendra Nath ?
- BOSE: Well, during the Eridu and Uruk experiments, we all consciously avoided the word “religion” because it was clear that what we were observing did not fit what this word normally entails. The House-like temples of Enki and Anu were far more than places of worship. Also, it was clear that their activities could not be neatly divided into, say, a “religious” side, on the one hand, and an “economic” side on the other. They operated as undivided wholes and so we even avoided calling them “temples”, preferring the word “House” used by contemporaries. However, from the mid-3rd millennium onward, with the rise of the “worship-only” temples, it seems that something we may legitimately call “religion” is now making its appearance. The question is: where do we draw the line ?
- KUHN: Maybe we should try to agree on a definition of what constitutes religion first ?
- QUINE: Oh, no, please ! Not another “what is religion” debate.
- KUHN: At least we should try to state what the various assumptions about religions are. Even if we do not …
Wittgenstein had been staring at the ceiling since his earlier remark, not really paying attention. He interrupted:
- WITTGENSTEIN: Religion is masturbation.
A silence followed. Then Turing intervened:
- TURING: Is that one of your riddles Ludwig ? The word you used seems hardly appropriate.
- WITTGENSTEIN: No, Alan. We have to rotate our perception around the pivot of our real need. And our real need here is to understand what is going on before our eyes. We cannot limit ourselves to the same pontificating platitudes that we generally have to content ourselves with on the subject of religion. I think we all sense it. We are now witnessing the beginning of this thing that we usually take for granted. And thus we CANNOT take it for granted anymore. We need to understand what is happening.
- TURING: But how can this abject word you just used help us understand it ? Are we supposed to throw religion into the gutter to that extent ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: Would you like the word “Onanism” better ? I certainly do not want to throw religion into the gutter. I am just trying to look at it from a biological perspective. The idea of masturbation is the only one which comes to my mind when I try to do that in earnest.
- BOSE: I think I sense what Ludwig is getting at. You are trying to say that all religion is self-stimulation, like yoga. Yoga has been called Onanism before and even if the Catholic missionaries who did that meant it in a disparaging way, I believe that they have involuntarily stumbled upon some valuable insight in doing so.
- WITTGENSTEIN: Indeed. I think we are seeing something emerge here. It has a far wider scope of application than just what we traditionally call “religion”. Masturbation, in the most general sense, seems to be one of the most fundamental traits of human nature.
- QUINE: Ludwig, if anything, you have just completely succeeded in ruining our bridge game. But please, do not hold us in suspense any longer. Start at the beginning.
- WITTGENSTEIN: We humans have this uncanny ability to train ourselves. Other animals, especially monkeys and primates, do also transmit some training to their offspring. But we have this capability to a tremendously higher degree than any other species. To such a degree that we are even able to bend our instincts, reorient them, and in certain cases, completely suppress them.
- QUINE: You are talking about sexual taboos, correct ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: Yes, but also about far more mundane ones like potty-training.
- BOSE: And religious food taboos ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: That too. All this instinct bending creates psychological pain. We are doing to our instincts what some upper-class Chinese families were still doing, not so long ago, to the feet of their daughters.
- OPPENHEIMER: Are you arguing against repressing our instincts ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: No, not at all. I am not even asking myself that question but simply making an ethological observation. Instinct-bending through training is what all humans do. I can hardly imagine a situation in which we could dispense with that unless we were prepared to revert to a simian lifestyle. And even then, it would probably not be feasible.
- QUINE: Some educationists are coming close to claiming that we can do such a thing these days.
- WITTGENSTEIN: But that is baloney. I think we can all agree on that, can’t we ?
- OPPENHEIMER: Yes, indeed.
- WITTGENSTEIN: We can also agree, I think, that all this foot binding-like pressure that we apply on our instincts causes us psychic pain. Yes ?
- QUINE: True enough, I suppose.
- WITTGENSTEIN: Now, we cannot live with this pain unless we offset it with some form of pleasure which offers us relief. Hence, we tend to seek pleasure wherever we can find it and this leads us, almost always, to behaviors in which we self-stimulate one or the other of our pleasure-inducing biological triggers. This is what I call “masturbation” in the most general sense.
- OPPENHEIMER: You surely have examples in mind ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: Yes, there is an infinite list of them. For examples, all young mammals, including humans, play. This is a form of “masturbation”. Also, we enjoy physical exertion, like running or jumping, just for the sake of it. This is masturbation too. And so is drinking alcohol, eating sweets, rearing pets, listening to music, and so on and so forth.
- QUINE: I thought Mammalian young engaged in play because it helps them train their sensorimotor functions.
- WITTGENSTEIN: No, this is not the reason why, it is a side effect. Mammalian young play because it is pleasurable. Then of course, sensorimotor training occurs as a side-effect of the playing; a beneficial one no doubt. This is why natural selection has retained and amplified this behavior by making it increasingly pleasurable. This distinction between cause and side-effect applies to all situations where masturbatory behaviors are observed. Pleasure-seeking is always the cause, while side-effects vary widely. These range from the very beneficial, like in playing, to the very detrimental like in excessive alcohol consumption.
- QUINE: I am still unclear about how you move from this to religion.
- WITTGENSTEIN: It is but a few steps away. You surely all remember how we emphasized trust as the essential language-enabling feature of our psyche. Brady made this brilliantly clear in his initial report on Eridu, I recall. We may thus say that our trust handling mechanisms are the instincts that make language possible. Like almost all instincts, these include a set of pleasure rewards which promote the appropriate behaviors. These pleasure rewards can be stimulated in one form or another of what I will call credit masturbation. Religion is one of those credit masturbation behaviors. Indeed, it is the most visible.
- OPPENHEIMER: How so ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: There are several different ways in which this occurs. The one most familiar to us is the Bible verse which says: “The righteous shall live by Faith”; I think it is in Romans. What this verse says is, in effect: “the religious man will take pleasure (and thus cope with life) by masturbating his faith-instincts, i.e. his trust-instincts”.
- OPPENHEIMER: This is Christianity. But what about other religions ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: There is plenty of evidence there too. At a very fundamental level, all religions involve praising one or more deities. The Hebrew word for the book of Psalms is Tehilim, which means “songs of praise”, and this is also what the hymns of the Rig Veda, the most ancient book of Hindu Scriptures, are. The same can be found in Hesiodic poetry, that of Ovid and Virgil, etc. Praise, and its opposite, blame, is the most basic human behavior through which trust is maintained, built up, or erased. Ergo, religious praise is indeed a form of credit masturbation.
- OPPENHEIMER: What you are saying is that, for example, when these verses from the Baghavad Gita came to my mind, after the Trinity Test, I was credit masturbating ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: What verses ?
- OPPENHEIMER: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one” and “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
- WITTGENSTEIN: This is indeed credit masturbation, I believe, but not necessarily of a religious kind. Here it seems to me that you were engaging in a form of culture masturbation. Being cultured is generally associated with the upper classes, hence to power, hence to credit.
- OPPENHEIMER: In other words, I was being a snob. That is what you are saying, right ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: I am sorry, Julius. When our psychological innards are revealed to us, it is rarely pleasant.
- OPPENHEIMER: About that, you are right.
- TURING: But what about Love. Religion is about Love, is it not ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: Love ! “Love” is a tricky word. Over the last few centuries, we have inflated its scope to such an extent that it is hard to ascertain what its meaning is anymore. It is a deceitful word. It ensnares our minds.
- TURING: What do you mean ? This word seems rather clear to me.
- WITTGENSTEIN: Is it ? Let us think about a few cases in which we might want to use it: a mother’s love for her child; the feeling which leads lovers to suicide; the love of a sport like cricket; or for ice-cream. What about the kind of "love" which leads to this urge to torture the “beloved” that modern novelists talk about ? Does it make sense to use the same word for all these things ?
- TURING: I guess that the meaning is clear in each case, on account of the context.
- WITTGENSTEIN: Well, let us try that on for size, shall we ? I guess some of you might have read the works of this French novelist, Marcel Proust. In one of his later novels, titled “la Prisonnière” (the female prisoner), he talks about a girl he was in love with, called Albertine. At first, the girl is a goddess. Proust talks about her in the tone of the mystic having an epiphany each time he sees her. Then he is taken by the horrendous anxiety of losing her and invents a thousand plots to keep her locked up (hence the title). Finally, he reaches a stage where all he wants is to see her dead. He never acts upon this urge and eventually Albertine escapes. But what kind of "love" is this ? Has it anything to do with what we mean when we say “for the love of God” ?
- TURING: But who cares about French novelists. Aren’t they all insane ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: This one is considered by many critics to be the greatest novelist that ever lived.
- TURING: Isn’t the “real” meaning of Love about something more noble ? Something akin to Platonic love.
- WITTGENSTEIN: Sure. Let us consider this if you so wish. In Cambridge, as you well know, Platonic love of the male kind flourishes. Let us consider the Apostles, for example, this club where these species of sentiments are known to flourish.
- KUHN: What is it ? I have never heard of it.
- WITTGENSTEIN: You need to have studied at Cambridge, “read” as they say, to know this sort of semi-secret society. Officially, it is a debating club. In reality, it is a peacock show where each bird tries to dazzle the others with the magnificence of his intellectual feathers. It is the starting point of many a male “Platonic” adventure.
- TURING: Ludwig! Why do you feel the need to drag everything into the mud ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: I am going to make that clear, Alan, if you let me. What I mean is that the Apostles in particular, and the so called “Platonic” male species of “love” in general, is once again a form of masturbation; and a fairly disingenuous one at that. At the foundation of it all is a thick layer of snobbery, although its advocates claim otherwise in a rather strident but quite unconvincing manner. Then there is the whole procedure itself, the hiding behind cloister columns with a beating heart, the letters written and torn to shreds a thousand times, the anguish of a word taken the wrong way, the sleepless nights …
- TURING: But aren't all these the hallmarks of noble feelings ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: “Noble”. That is another tricky word. What do we mean exactly in this context ? That the one who experiences these feelings deserves a Peerage ? No, obviously not. So, it is not “real” nobility; it is a masturbation of nobility that we have in mind. The beating heart, the torments, the obsession; all these are the signs that we are in the process of deifying the person of our so-called “beloved”. What we think of him, the qualities we believe he possesses, have generally little to do with the human individual which serves as a pretext for our infatuation. What we are doing in fact is constructing an idol; an idol we will pursue and kneel before for a while, but an idol we will disown and burn eventually.
- TURING: Your whole world is black. How can you live with such gloom ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: Alan, you are familiar with all this just as well as I am. And you know full well that the “Platonic” feelings always lead to a point where we use the other man’s anus as a literal masturbation implement. That moment is also when we generally realize the other man’s humanity, with all its frailty and pettiness. Our so called “noble” sentiments rarely survive this point and are soon replaced by disappointment and disgust, eventually spelling the doom of the whole affair.
- TURING: I do not know how you can live with yourself, Ludwig.
Turing stood up violently, toppling his chair to the ground. Without meeting anyone’s gaze, he left the room and slammed the door shut.
- QUINE: Was this a private tiff between you two or does it have a bearing upon the general issues we were discussing ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: It does. As I just said. These so called “Platonic” feelings are an attempt at deification, a quasi-religious urge. However, it would probably be more accurate to describe them as a form of deviant religion, a striving towards religion which deviates and comes crashing down when it hits the unyielding obstacle of the idol’s human nature. What religion can survive the realization that its god is a mere mortal ?
- OPPENHEIMER: Are you saying all this is specific to homosexuality ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: No. It probably manifests more starkly in that context nowadays because homosexual intercourse develops outside the usual social norms and is therefore freer to follow its internal logic to its conclusion. However, Literature has already depicted the same kind of quasi-worship in other contexts. I have mentioned Proust and his character Albertine but there are other examples. A number of Dostoevskyan characters behave similarly even in the absence of what we would usually call “love”.
- OPPENHEIMER: I think I see what you mean. However, all this seems somewhat remote from the mechanisms involved in the development of Babylonian society.
- WITTGENSTEIN: Yes, but the distance is not as great as one might suppose. Modern idolatrous “love” and 3rd Millennium Babylonian religious emergence are part of the same continuum of human behavior, what I have called credit masturbation.
- QUINE: I think it would be worth for you to try and put all this in writing. Don’t you agree ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: I have already started discussing with Ulam and Brady about a paper we might write in common. We should have a draft ready in a week or two.
- QUINE: We are all waiting for it in eager anticipation.
This conversation between Wittgenstein et al. had been reported in several of the Boffin team members personal logbooks. I had just finished reading Kuhn’s, which formed the greater part of binder L-49/19.
As I looked up from the pages, I saw Finn sipping his coffee and staring blankly out the window. I asked:
- ME: What do you make of this “Credit Masturbation” idea.
- FINN: It is probably the single most significant advance achieved by the Philadelphia team.
- ME: Really ?
- FINN: Yes. It unifies religion with a slew of other human behaviors. It brings clarity to a number of puzzling issues. Read on, you will see. The paper by Brady, Ulam and Wittgenstein in binder X-49/36 is an absolute gem.
- ME: OK. By the way, what is going on with Wittgenstein and Turing ?
- FINN: It will get far worse. You will see. No spoilers.
@lotus2345 done
Chapter 5 – Babylon
After the completion of the URUK experiment, the Boffin section of project Philadelphia was beefed up significantly. James Conant, Vannevar Bush and Allan Dulles had been deeply impressed by the latest reports they had read. A closed meeting had occurred between President Truman and the three men in late September 1948 at Camp David presidential retreat. All four men later recalled being seized with quasi-religious awe as they discussed the future direction of “the project”, as it was invariably called by the few people in the know. It did not take long for them to decide that an increase in resources was warranted. From the last quarter of 1948 onward, the share of device usage allocated to the Boffin team was increased to 55% (up from 40%). Staff allocation was multiplied five-fold.
The staff increase was particularly welcome. As the Boffins were considering their options for the next step of their endeavors, they had been quick to realize that the highly detailed, narrowly focused approach they had used for Eridu and Uruk would be inapplicable to subsequent periods. From the early third millennium BC. onward, the historical development of Southern Mesopotamia was no longer centered on a single location, as it had been with Uruk in the fourth millennium, but split among several dozen petty states. There was also a marked increase in barbarian raiding and a sustained migration of Semitic-speaking people from the North and West throughout the period. All these phenomena had to be studied in parallel if one wanted to avoid a prohibitive inflation of the project schedule. As a result, it was decided to reorganize the Boffin team along more industrial lines to cope with the increased workload. The whole team was split into task groups. Each task group had its own linguists, a pool of typists, and a technical team in charge of the equipment that was now to be used in order to optimize the data acquisition process from the device. This process was organized as follows. At the beginning of each week, all task groups submitted requests indicating the time periods and locations they wanted to observe. These requests were aggregated to form a complete schedule for the device, which was operated around the clock. The data obtained for each time slot was recorded on magnetic wire for the sound and 70 mm film for the image. Magnetic wire and film were then distributed to the different task groups for analysis. In total, more than 500 people were working for the Boffin team at the beginning of 1949.
The number of task groups, and their individual focus, varied over time. The list below reflects the organization as it stood in the second half of 1949, which did not change much until the completion of the Babylon sub-project in early 1950:
• TG-1: 4th to 3rd millennium transition period. Group leader: W. v. O. Quine. Deputy: J. Oppenheimer.
• TG-2: Ur in the first half of the 3rd millennium. Group leader: T. Kuhn. Deputy: A. Turing.
• TG-3: Nippur. Group leader: A. Ulam. Deputy: W. v. O. Quine.
• TG-4: The Guti and Lullubi. Group leader: J. Oppenheimer. Deputy: G. Dumézil.
• TG-5: Elam. Group leader: J. Brady. Deputy: A. Schlesinger.
• TG-6: Uruk in the 3rd millennium. Group leader: W. v. Soden. Deputy: J. Brady.
• TG-7: Akkad. Group leader: L. Wittgenstein. Deputy: B. Landsberger.
• TG-8: The Amorites. Group leader: A. Turing. Deputy: W. v. Soden.
• TG-9: Semitic migration into southern Mesopotamia. Group leader: S. N. Bose. Deputy: L. Wittgenstein.
• TG-10: 3rd dynasty of Ur. Group leader: A. Schlesinger. Deputy: T. Kuhn.
• TG-11: Isin, Larsa and Lagash. Group leader: B. Landsberger. Deputy: A. Ulam.
• TG-12: Babylon. Group leader: G. Dumézil. Deputy: S. N. Bose.
Georges Dumézil, a renowned French linguist, had joined the Boffin team in late 1948, on the recommendation of von Soden and Landsberger. James Conant had also sent two officers to station Philadelphia, Major Hiram Stackhouse and Captain Matthew Piccolomino, who had been Leslie Groves’ deputies in the Manhattan Engineering District (the Manhattan Project's logistics organization). Their mission was to help the Boffins set up the new process and make sure it ran smoothly.
Their help was badly needed. Apart from Turing and Oppenheimer, who had experienced this kind of work environment through their activities during the war, the other members of the Boffin team had never functioned outside of an academic setting. Wittgenstein proved to be a spectacularly incompetent manager, holding his subordinates to impossible standards of exactness and berating them for the most immaterial of mistakes. On the 16th of December 1948, he wrote in his personal log-book: “This is worse than my schoolteacher days in the Alps”. Nonetheless, after a few difficult months, and thanks in large part to the expert advice from Stackhouse and Piccolomino, all twelve task groups were eventually up and running in a satisfactory manner by early 1949.
Initially, the plan was to cover only the 3rd millennium BC., ending with the 3rd dynasty of Ur. However, it was soon realized that this would lead to an artificial break right in the middle of a crucial event, the transition from Sumerian to Akkadian linguistic dominance. It was therefore decided to extend the project scope to include the rise of Babylon in the 18th century BC., and the reign of its famous king, Hammurabi. As a result, the scope of nearly all task groups was adjusted and the additional material was split between TG-8 and TG-12.
The Babylon experiment, as it was officially called, produced an enormous amount of data. The binders containing the reports from the different task groups, plus the final summary reports, filled an entire cabinet in Hut 19. I obviously could not read them all. Luckily, the first binder in the cabinet contained a summary report of the whole project, which I started reading (wait for the thumbnails to appear):
I interrupted my reading and looked up from the binder. Finn was seated at the desk next to me. He was typing on his laptop.
- ME: I have a weird feeling. This Babylon report I am reading right now feels boring like an old history book.
- FINN: Yeah, I had the same impression when I read it. It is because Mesopotamian history from the 3rd millennium onward starts to look like any other period of history which we are familiar with. This king went to war with that king. This battle took place, then that battle, and so on. The interesting part of project Babylon is not in the historical facts but in the interpretation of it that the Boffin team developed, in the course of the project.
- ME: Should I continue reading the boring parts ?
- FINN: Yes, I would advise you to. Otherwise you will be lost when you read about the interpretation.
- ME: OK, you are surely right. By the way, where is Ekaterina ?
- FINN: She is having breakfast. It takes her quite a while because she has to cook exactly the kind of things she is used to having for breakfast. Otherwise, she will start the day on the wrong foot. At least I think this is what she told me when I tried to give her Corn-flakes.
- ME: I see. Do you think she will be a pain in the A*** ?
- FINN: No. She was quite apologetic and unobtrusive about the whole thing. She is just one of those people who have to stick to a routine in order to feel all right. Given the shock of discovering this place, I guess that a full-on Russian breakfast is what she needed to land back onto her feet.
- ME: Well, all right then. The last thing we need here is a ball-breaker.
Having uttered this piece of masculine wisdom, I returned to the Babylon report (wait for the thumbnails to appear).
As my eyes rose from the last page of the Landsberger report, I noticed Ekaterina hovering at the door, not knowing whether to enter or knock. I rose up and opened the door.
- ME: Come in. We are not going to eat you.
- EKATERINA: Thank you. This is the place where you read reports all day, yes ?
- ME: Yes, that is what we do. You should try it too. They contain amazing stuff.
- EKATERINA: I should go. People will be worried at Vostok.
- FINN: Ekaterina, I told you already. When you are here time stops outside. You have all the time you want. Aaron and I have been here for weeks.
- EKATERINA: I do not know how I can believe. I need go back.
- FINN: Ok, then. Go back to Vostok and see for yourself.
- EKATERINA: I will go.
- FINN: Your clothes are in the next room, where you left them.
Ekaterina left the room and came back 10 minutes later, dressed in her arctic clothing.
- FINN: Go ahead. When you come back, if you decide to do so, less than half an hour will have passed from our perspective.
- EKATERINA: I go. Paka.
Half an hour later, she was back, as predicted. This time, when she climbed the stairs of Hut 19, she had removed her heavy anorak and was thus not drenched in sweat as she had been the first time. As she opened the door, I noticed she looked a little different. She was the same serious-looking Ekaterina with her bun-tied auburn hair, high cheekbones, cute dimples and pale grey eyes, but something was changed somehow.
- ME: Hi Ekaterina. I don’t know how to say this the right way, but you look different.
- EKATERINA: One more year Aaron. I met you outside, at conference in McMurdo. You convince me to come here back. Before, I could not decide. It is so strange. I thought maybe I had hallucination.
- ME: What ?, but … Oh, I see. I will meet you there. It is in the past for you but in the future for me. Weird.
- EKATERINA: OK, I want to read reports now. Which I should read first ?
- FINN: Better start with the beginning, like Aaron did. In the cabinet to your right, on the top shelf, there is a binder marked X-47/01. It contains the reports about the first experiment which was conducted here in 1947. Also, it is not too long so it should give you a quick intro. You do not have problems reading English, do you ?
- EKATERINA: No. Reading English I do all the time. I will understand, I think.
- FINN: All right then.
And so, silence descended once again on our little office in Hut 19 as the three of us went back to reading the Philadelphia project documents, each with our own binder in hand.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
In March 1949, as the Boffin team had settled in the routine of the new “industrial” process of Project Babylon, the contentious issue of how to interpret the events they were observing reared its head once again.
One night, some members of the team were relaxing, as usual, in their tiny lounge. Oppenheimer, Schlesinger, Kuhn and Quine were playing bridge in one corner while a few others, including Wittgenstein and Turing, seated on wooden swivel chairs, were drinking Port. After a long pause in the chit-chat, Satyendra Nath Bose, who was part of the second group, was heard asking, to no one in particular:
- BOSE: I wonder at what point we can start talking about religion ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: Yes, I have been asking myself the same question ?
- OPPENHEIMER: Can you clarify, Satyendra Nath ?
- BOSE: Well, during the Eridu and Uruk experiments, we all consciously avoided the word “religion” because it was clear that what we were observing did not fit what this word normally entails. The House-like temples of Enki and Anu were far more than places of worship. Also, it was clear that their activities could not be neatly divided into, say, a “religious” side, on the one hand, and an “economic” side on the other. They operated as undivided wholes and so we even avoided calling them “temples”, preferring the word “House” used by contemporaries. However, from the mid-3rd millennium onward, with the rise of the “worship-only” temples, it seems that something we may legitimately call “religion” is now making its appearance. The question is: where do we draw the line ?
- KUHN: Maybe we should try to agree on a definition of what constitutes religion first ?
- QUINE: Oh, no, please ! Not another “what is religion” debate.
- KUHN: At least we should try to state what the various assumptions about religions are. Even if we do not …
Wittgenstein had been staring at the ceiling since his earlier remark, not really paying attention. He interrupted:
- WITTGENSTEIN: Religion is masturbation.
A silence followed. Then Turing intervened:
- TURING: Is that one of your riddles Ludwig ? The word you used seems hardly appropriate.
- WITTGENSTEIN: No, Alan. We have to rotate our perception around the pivot of our real need. And our real need here is to understand what is going on before our eyes. We cannot limit ourselves to the same pontificating platitudes that we generally have to content ourselves with on the subject of religion. I think we all sense it. We are now witnessing the beginning of this thing that we usually take for granted. And thus we CANNOT take it for granted anymore. We need to understand what is happening.
- TURING: But how can this abject word you just used help us understand it ? Are we supposed to throw religion into the gutter to that extent ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: Would you like the word “Onanism” better ? I certainly do not want to throw religion into the gutter. I am just trying to look at it from a biological perspective. The idea of masturbation is the only one which comes to my mind when I try to do that in earnest.
- BOSE: I think I sense what Ludwig is getting at. You are trying to say that all religion is self-stimulation, like yoga. Yoga has been called Onanism before and even if the Catholic missionaries who did that meant it in a disparaging way, I believe that they have involuntarily stumbled upon some valuable insight in doing so.
- WITTGENSTEIN: Indeed. I think we are seeing something emerge here. It has a far wider scope of application than just what we traditionally call “religion”. Masturbation, in the most general sense, seems to be one of the most fundamental traits of human nature.
- QUINE: Ludwig, if anything, you have just completely succeeded in ruining our bridge game. But please, do not hold us in suspense any longer. Start at the beginning.
- WITTGENSTEIN: We humans have this uncanny ability to train ourselves. Other animals, especially monkeys and primates, do also transmit some training to their offspring. But we have this capability to a tremendously higher degree than any other species. To such a degree that we are even able to bend our instincts, reorient them, and in certain cases, completely suppress them.
- QUINE: You are talking about sexual taboos, correct ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: Yes, but also about far more mundane ones like potty-training.
- BOSE: And religious food taboos ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: That too. All this instinct bending creates psychological pain. We are doing to our instincts what some upper-class Chinese families were still doing, not so long ago, to the feet of their daughters.
- OPPENHEIMER: Are you arguing against repressing our instincts ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: No, not at all. I am not even asking myself that question but simply making an ethological observation. Instinct-bending through training is what all humans do. I can hardly imagine a situation in which we could dispense with that unless we were prepared to revert to a simian lifestyle. And even then, it would probably not be feasible.
- QUINE: Some educationists are coming close to claiming that we can do such a thing these days.
- WITTGENSTEIN: But that is baloney. I think we can all agree on that, can’t we ?
- OPPENHEIMER: Yes, indeed.
- WITTGENSTEIN: We can also agree, I think, that all this foot binding-like pressure that we apply on our instincts causes us psychic pain. Yes ?
- QUINE: True enough, I suppose.
- WITTGENSTEIN: Now, we cannot live with this pain unless we offset it with some form of pleasure which offers us relief. Hence, we tend to seek pleasure wherever we can find it and this leads us, almost always, to behaviors in which we self-stimulate one or the other of our pleasure-inducing biological triggers. This is what I call “masturbation” in the most general sense.
- OPPENHEIMER: You surely have examples in mind ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: Yes, there is an infinite list of them. For examples, all young mammals, including humans, play. This is a form of “masturbation”. Also, we enjoy physical exertion, like running or jumping, just for the sake of it. This is masturbation too. And so is drinking alcohol, eating sweets, rearing pets, listening to music, and so on and so forth.
- QUINE: I thought Mammalian young engaged in play because it helps them train their sensorimotor functions.
- WITTGENSTEIN: No, this is not the reason why, it is a side effect. Mammalian young play because it is pleasurable. Then of course, sensorimotor training occurs as a side-effect of the playing; a beneficial one no doubt. This is why natural selection has retained and amplified this behavior by making it increasingly pleasurable. This distinction between cause and side-effect applies to all situations where masturbatory behaviors are observed. Pleasure-seeking is always the cause, while side-effects vary widely. These range from the very beneficial, like in playing, to the very detrimental like in excessive alcohol consumption.
- QUINE: I am still unclear about how you move from this to religion.
- WITTGENSTEIN: It is but a few steps away. You surely all remember how we emphasized trust as the essential language-enabling feature of our psyche. Brady made this brilliantly clear in his initial report on Eridu, I recall. We may thus say that our trust handling mechanisms are the instincts that make language possible. Like almost all instincts, these include a set of pleasure rewards which promote the appropriate behaviors. These pleasure rewards can be stimulated in one form or another of what I will call credit masturbation. Religion is one of those credit masturbation behaviors. Indeed, it is the most visible.
- OPPENHEIMER: How so ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: There are several different ways in which this occurs. The one most familiar to us is the Bible verse which says: “The righteous shall live by Faith”; I think it is in Romans. What this verse says is, in effect: “the religious man will take pleasure (and thus cope with life) by masturbating his faith-instincts, i.e. his trust-instincts”.
- OPPENHEIMER: This is Christianity. But what about other religions ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: There is plenty of evidence there too. At a very fundamental level, all religions involve praising one or more deities. The Hebrew word for the book of Psalms is Tehilim, which means “songs of praise”, and this is also what the hymns of the Rig Veda, the most ancient book of Hindu Scriptures, are. The same can be found in Hesiodic poetry, that of Ovid and Virgil, etc. Praise, and its opposite, blame, is the most basic human behavior through which trust is maintained, built up, or erased. Ergo, religious praise is indeed a form of credit masturbation.
- OPPENHEIMER: What you are saying is that, for example, when these verses from the Baghavad Gita came to my mind, after the Trinity Test, I was credit masturbating ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: What verses ?
- OPPENHEIMER: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one” and “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
- WITTGENSTEIN: This is indeed credit masturbation, I believe, but not necessarily of a religious kind. Here it seems to me that you were engaging in a form of culture masturbation. Being cultured is generally associated with the upper classes, hence to power, hence to credit.
- OPPENHEIMER: In other words, I was being a snob. That is what you are saying, right ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: I am sorry, Julius. When our psychological innards are revealed to us, it is rarely pleasant.
- OPPENHEIMER: About that, you are right.
- TURING: But what about Love. Religion is about Love, is it not ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: Love ! “Love” is a tricky word. Over the last few centuries, we have inflated its scope to such an extent that it is hard to ascertain what its meaning is anymore. It is a deceitful word. It ensnares our minds.
- TURING: What do you mean ? This word seems rather clear to me.
- WITTGENSTEIN: Is it ? Let us think about a few cases in which we might want to use it: a mother’s love for her child; the feeling which leads lovers to suicide; the love of a sport like cricket; or for ice-cream. What about the kind of "love" which leads to this urge to torture the “beloved” that modern novelists talk about ? Does it make sense to use the same word for all these things ?
- TURING: I guess that the meaning is clear in each case, on account of the context.
- WITTGENSTEIN: Well, let us try that on for size, shall we ? I guess some of you might have read the works of this French novelist, Marcel Proust. In one of his later novels, titled “la Prisonnière” (the female prisoner), he talks about a girl he was in love with, called Albertine. At first, the girl is a goddess. Proust talks about her in the tone of the mystic having an epiphany each time he sees her. Then he is taken by the horrendous anxiety of losing her and invents a thousand plots to keep her locked up (hence the title). Finally, he reaches a stage where all he wants is to see her dead. He never acts upon this urge and eventually Albertine escapes. But what kind of "love" is this ? Has it anything to do with what we mean when we say “for the love of God” ?
- TURING: But who cares about French novelists. Aren’t they all insane ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: This one is considered by many critics to be the greatest novelist that ever lived.
- TURING: Isn’t the “real” meaning of Love about something more noble ? Something akin to Platonic love.
- WITTGENSTEIN: Sure. Let us consider this if you so wish. In Cambridge, as you well know, Platonic love of the male kind flourishes. Let us consider the Apostles, for example, this club where these species of sentiments are known to flourish.
- KUHN: What is it ? I have never heard of it.
- WITTGENSTEIN: You need to have studied at Cambridge, “read” as they say, to know this sort of semi-secret society. Officially, it is a debating club. In reality, it is a peacock show where each bird tries to dazzle the others with the magnificence of his intellectual feathers. It is the starting point of many a male “Platonic” adventure.
- TURING: Ludwig! Why do you feel the need to drag everything into the mud ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: I am going to make that clear, Alan, if you let me. What I mean is that the Apostles in particular, and the so called “Platonic” male species of “love” in general, is once again a form of masturbation; and a fairly disingenuous one at that. At the foundation of it all is a thick layer of snobbery, although its advocates claim otherwise in a rather strident but quite unconvincing manner. Then there is the whole procedure itself, the hiding behind cloister columns with a beating heart, the letters written and torn to shreds a thousand times, the anguish of a word taken the wrong way, the sleepless nights …
- TURING: But aren't all these the hallmarks of noble feelings ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: “Noble”. That is another tricky word. What do we mean exactly in this context ? That the one who experiences these feelings deserves a Peerage ? No, obviously not. So, it is not “real” nobility; it is a masturbation of nobility that we have in mind. The beating heart, the torments, the obsession; all these are the signs that we are in the process of deifying the person of our so-called “beloved”. What we think of him, the qualities we believe he possesses, have generally little to do with the human individual which serves as a pretext for our infatuation. What we are doing in fact is constructing an idol; an idol we will pursue and kneel before for a while, but an idol we will disown and burn eventually.
- TURING: Your whole world is black. How can you live with such gloom ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: Alan, you are familiar with all this just as well as I am. And you know full well that the “Platonic” feelings always lead to a point where we use the other man’s anus as a literal masturbation implement. That moment is also when we generally realize the other man’s humanity, with all its frailty and pettiness. Our so called “noble” sentiments rarely survive this point and are soon replaced by disappointment and disgust, eventually spelling the doom of the whole affair.
- TURING: I do not know how you can live with yourself, Ludwig.
Turing stood up violently, toppling his chair to the ground. Without meeting anyone’s gaze, he left the room and slammed the door shut.
- QUINE: Was this a private tiff between you two or does it have a bearing upon the general issues we were discussing ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: It does. As I just said. These so called “Platonic” feelings are an attempt at deification, a quasi-religious urge. However, it would probably be more accurate to describe them as a form of deviant religion, a striving towards religion which deviates and comes crashing down when it hits the unyielding obstacle of the idol’s human nature. What religion can survive the realization that its god is a mere mortal ?
- OPPENHEIMER: Are you saying all this is specific to homosexuality ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: No. It probably manifests more starkly in that context nowadays because homosexual intercourse develops outside the usual social norms and is therefore freer to follow its internal logic to its conclusion. However, Literature has already depicted the same kind of quasi-worship in other contexts. I have mentioned Proust and his character Albertine but there are other examples. A number of Dostoevskyan characters behave similarly even in the absence of what we would usually call “love”.
- OPPENHEIMER: I think I see what you mean. However, all this seems somewhat remote from the mechanisms involved in the development of Babylonian society.
- WITTGENSTEIN: Yes, but the distance is not as great as one might suppose. Modern idolatrous “love” and 3rd Millennium Babylonian religious emergence are part of the same continuum of human behavior, what I have called credit masturbation.
- QUINE: I think it would be worth for you to try and put all this in writing. Don’t you agree ?
- WITTGENSTEIN: I have already started discussing with Ulam and Brady about a paper we might write in common. We should have a draft ready in a week or two.
- QUINE: We are all waiting for it in eager anticipation.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
This conversation between Wittgenstein et al. had been reported in several of the Boffin team members personal logbooks. I had just finished reading Kuhn’s, which formed the greater part of binder L-49/19.
As I looked up from the pages, I saw Finn sipping his coffee and staring blankly out the window. I asked:
- ME: What do you make of this “Credit Masturbation” idea.
- FINN: It is probably the single most significant advance achieved by the Philadelphia team.
- ME: Really ?
- FINN: Yes. It unifies religion with a slew of other human behaviors. It brings clarity to a number of puzzling issues. Read on, you will see. The paper by Brady, Ulam and Wittgenstein in binder X-49/36 is an absolute gem.
- ME: OK. By the way, what is going on with Wittgenstein and Turing ?
- FINN: It will get far worse. You will see. No spoilers.
@lotus2345 done
Last edited:
The most intelligent can believe in Christ. Christ isn’t a cult designed for a specific amount of people.
I agree in principle. However, the obsolescence of the Christian vocabulary and stock of images makes it hard to take seriously nowadays. Yet, I believe people should.
Indeed
This
@
@Intellectual
https://www.youtube.com/@InspiringPhilosophy/featured
https://www.youtube.com/@RedPenLogic
https://www.youtube.com/@whaddoyoumeme
very good christian apologetic channel, there is a lot of
none of that "earth is flat, ancient alien" stuff that you would see from stereotypical mocking of christianity
used to doubt, almost become atheist but christian apologetics pull me out of it
it address philosophical and a lot of other atheist argument
so i think it can help you too
a lot of other user here think if you became christian and pray hard enough good things will happen to you
i believe in christianity because i think its true
just like blackpill really, i gained nothing from the blackpill
but its the truth, so i believe the blackpill
some incel say that heaven is cope, not real
who knows maybe its real and therefore not cope
if you are interested in christianity, i recommend you search for christian apologetics (william lane craig, for example)
christianity is an ancient religion (not necessarily a bad thing really),
with lots of tradition, lots of christians thinkers over centuries, hell, millenias even, addressing arguments from skeptics
a lot of atheist argument i found in the wild usually has been addressed by christians centuries ago
a lot of it are nothing new really
good luck on your journey brocel
appreciate it you are open-minded enough to consider christianity
god bless
https://www.youtube.com/@InspiringPhilosophy/featured
https://www.youtube.com/@RedPenLogic
https://www.youtube.com/@whaddoyoumeme
very good christian apologetic channel, there is a lot of
none of that "earth is flat, ancient alien" stuff that you would see from stereotypical mocking of christianity
used to doubt, almost become atheist but christian apologetics pull me out of it
it address philosophical and a lot of other atheist argument
so i think it can help you too
a lot of other user here think if you became christian and pray hard enough good things will happen to you
i believe in christianity because i think its true
just like blackpill really, i gained nothing from the blackpill
but its the truth, so i believe the blackpill
some incel say that heaven is cope, not real
who knows maybe its real
and therefore not cope if you are interested in christianity, i recommend you search for christian apologetics (william lane craig, for example)
christianity is an ancient religion (not necessarily a bad thing really),
with lots of tradition, lots of christians thinkers over centuries, hell, millenias even, addressing arguments from skeptics
a lot of atheist argument i found in the wild usually has been addressed by christians centuries ago
a lot of it are nothing new really
good luck on your journey brocel
appreciate it you are open-minded enough to consider christianity
god bless
I'll check these out, thank you a lot friend!@@Intellectual
https://www.youtube.com/@InspiringPhilosophy/featured
https://www.youtube.com/@RedPenLogic
https://www.youtube.com/@whaddoyoumeme
very good christian apologetic channel, there is a lot of
none of that "earth is flat, ancient alien" stuff that you would see from stereotypical mocking of christianity
used to doubt, almost become atheist but christian apologetics pull me out of it
it address philosophical and a lot of other atheist argument
so i think it can help you too
a lot of other user here think if you became christian and pray hard enough good things will happen to you
i believe in christianity because i think its true
just like blackpill really, i gained nothing from the blackpill
but its the truth, so i believe the blackpill
some incel say that heaven is cope, not real
who knows maybe its real
if you are interested in christianity, i recommend you search for christian apologetics (william lane craig, for example)
christianity is an ancient religion (not necessarily a bad thing really),
with lots of tradition, lots of christians thinkers over centuries, hell, millenias even, addressing arguments from skeptics
a lot of atheist argument i found in the wild usually has been addressed by christians centuries ago
a lot of it are nothing new really
good luck on your journey brocel
appreciate it you are open-minded enough to consider christianity
god bless
no problem
Keep coping faggot
Go back to Reddit r/atheist faggot user. It’s funny how redditors seethe at any mention of Christianity but are fine with kikes and sandniggers brutally raping their family members. Kys
Fuck all religion, nigger.
@lotus2345 @Moroccancel2- @ElTruecel @Intellectual @Intellau_Celistic @Pajeetsingh @solblue @coping mentalcel
Hello people. Chapter 6 below:
Like before, some thumbnails below may fail to appear but the corresponding report page is still accessible if you click on it.
Chapter 6 – Credit Masturbation
Ekaterina was now fully integrated into our daily routine. In the morning, we would have breakfast, the three of us together, in a corner of the empty mess hall. What Ekaterina was cooking for herself was excellent and she would often make extra portions for Finn and I. On that day, we were talking about what Ekaterina had just read about the Socrates experiment:
- EKATERINA: I cannot believe Socrates is so bad. He is sharlatan; what is the word in English ?
- ME: You mean a charlatan ?
- EKATERINA: A doctor who is not really doctor.
- ME: Yeah, a charlatan, a quack.
- EKATERINA: This is so strange. Everybody thinks he is so much wise man. People believe him better than Jesus Christ.
- FINN: Yes, they do. People who no longer believe in Christ need idols. Socrates, and philosophers in general, play that role.
- ME: You compared him to Jesus. Do you consider yourself Christian, Ekaterina ?
- EKATERINA: Yes, I go to church every Sunday.
- ME: Oh. I thought it was rare in Russia.
- EKATERINA: Not anymore. Many people are going back to church. Even my parents. They are scientists and during Soviet Union they did not believe. But now they go to church. President Putin goes to church now.
- ME: Really !? But he was KGB.
- EKATERINA: Yes but now he goes to church. People change.
She said this as if it was a matter of simple fact. There was no trace of sarcasm in her voice; not a frown of cynicism on her brow. Breakfast was over. We all sat up and brought the dishes to the pantry. There was a big industrial dish-washer, which we started up before making our way to hut 19. When we arrived, I grabbed binder X‑49/36 and started reading what Finn called “The credit masturbation report” (please wait for the thumbnails to appear).
Upon completion of their report, Brady, Ulam and Wittgenstein opted not to circulate it in printed form but instead to read it aloud to the assembled members of the team. There is no information in the personal log-books, or anywhere else in the project documentation, regarding the motivation of this decision. Did they want to gauge the reactions of their fellow Boffins as they discovered the text ? Were they anxious about possible misunderstandings and wanted to be able to address them as they arose ? We cannot say.
However, what is abundantly clear is that the meeting ended in a manner that was quite unusual, to say the least, even by the standards of the Philadelphia Boffin team. Brady, Ulam and Wittgenstein had taken turns to read the various parts of the report and Ulam was the last to speak. As he finished reading the conclusion and stopped talking, a deep silence descended on the assembly, which lasted for over 30 seconds. Then, everyone started talking at the same time.
Several Log-books report hearing someone (Quine, according to some, Oppenheimer, according to others) exclaiming: "But we trust people only if they tell the truth !", to which Wittgenstein replied, at the top of his lungs: "No, no, NO. 'This is true' is merely a way to say 'I believe it'". At another point, the following statement (author unknown) was heard over the cacophony of exclamations and furious retorts: "And what about Beauty ?! Isn't Ishtar the goddess of Beauty too ?" Both Wittgenstein and Brady yelled something in response, but no one was apparently able to record what they said.
Then, Alan Turing, who had not been present during the reading, entered the room. In his hand, he held a revolver. The subsequent inquiry revealed that it was the standard-issue Webley he had received during the two weeks basic training he had gone through before joining Bletchley Park. He stood motionless at the door for a few seconds then moved towards Wittgenstein, raised his weapon and shot his former Cambridge colleague twice in the chest. Oppenheimer and Kuhn, who were seated closest to him, lunged at the revolver and pushed Turing out of the room. In the corridor, two MPs, who had heard the gunshots, grabbed him and threw him to the floor.
Wittgenstein's injuries were not immediately life-threatening. He suffered from a collapsed lung and a nicked artery which caused a haemorrhage and required an immediate transfusion. Thankfully, the base's medical station was well equipped and Wittgenstein's condition was stable enough 48 hours later to allow him to be airlifted back to the UK on the next bi-weekly USAF YB-36 flight. Wittgenstein was treated at King's College Hospital in London and had recovered enough six months later to resume some of his philosophical work. However, he was never able to re-join the Philadelphia team as his health was considered too fragile. He died less than two years after the shooting, on 29 April 1951. Prostate cancer was given as the cause of death but there is no doubt that the injuries suffered at the hands of Turing hastened his end.
Alan Turing, for his part, was also repatriated to the UK and held for three months at a secret MI5 facility near Edinburgh. His case was a tricky one for the authorities to handle as his wartime service and his knowledge of the Philadelphia project made the publicity of an ordinary trial an unacceptable security risk. Eventually, on the advice of psychiatrists who had examined him, he was released and returned to his teaching position at Cambridge. However, he remained under close surveillance and, in January 1952, was tricked into a homosexual encounter (then an illegal act in the UK) by an MI5 operative. Immediately caught by the police, he was convicted of "Gross Indecency" on 31 March 1952. Sentenced to a humiliating hormonal treatment which caused him to grow female breasts, he committed suicide in 1954.
As mentioned above, a board of inquiry was held immediately after the shooting. However, its findings were slim. No evidence of conspiracy or of Turing's involvement in any kind of network or group was found. Even though the circumstances of the shooting were abundantly clear, its motivation officially remained an unsolved question. Of course, several members of the team had their own theories about what might have triggered Turing's actions that day, but they were not able to put them to the test until much later.
Finn had told me that something between Turing and Wittgenstein was about to go down but I certainly did not expect that kind of thing. The members of the Philadelphia team were equally bewildered, by the murder, of course, but also by their own reactions. Even before Turing had entered the room, everybody had lost it. How could that happen ? Within a few days, after the "credit-masturbation report" had become available to the whole team in printed form, they had all read it and re-read it several times. It was innovative and thought-provoking, to be sure, but there was nothing in it that warranted the hysteria that had seized them all after the reading. How could they have gone overboard in such a fashion ? Personal log-books were full of perplexed questions in this vein.
It had taken me around a week to read the material about the "credit masturbation report" and its aftermath. Once I had been done with it, I found a pretext to go on a long walk alone with Finn around the base. I did not want to discuss this matter within earshot of Ekaterina so as not to spoil it for her. Once we had turned the corner around the kitchen and the mess-hall, I asked Finn:
- ME: What the hell do you think happened at that meeting when Turing shot Wittgenstein; I mean, before Turing entered the room. What had gotten into them all ?
- FINN: You are asking why they were not able to keep it together after the reading was finished ?
- ME: Yes.
- FINN: Well, answering that very question turned into a full-fledged research project for the Philadelphia team later on. It is difficult to summarise the results in a few words.
- ME: Please try.
- FINN: Let us say that there is a parallel between the behaviour of the Boffin team at that meeting and what they were studying at the time, i.e. the emergence of "worship-only" religion in Mesopotamia, i.e. "Idolatry", in Jewish/Christian terms.
- ME: You mean that they were all idolizing Brady, Ulam and Wittgenstein because of their report ?
- FINN: Yes, but the verb "idolize" is too crude to capture what was going on in a precise enough manner. In particular, there is a crucial element that is missing from the picture that this word creates.
- ME: What element ?
- FINN: If I try to describe it, this conversation will turn into a series of hours-long lectures and I will probably not be able to do justice to the matter anyway. I think it is better if you wait and read all of it directly from the horse's mouth, ... the binders, I mean.
- ME: Ok. What about Turing ? Is it the same thing ?
- FINN: Yes, Pretty much.
- ME: To be honest, I do not completely get why the other Boffins are so worried about their own attitude before Turing entered the room. After all, chaotic debates do happen sometimes.
- FINN: What worries them, and rightly so, is the parallel between their own behaviour and Turing's act. Since both took place almost simultaneously, it is impossible to miss the connection. It is as if they were somehow accomplices of Turing's. In the run-up to the next phase of the project, you will see that some of the Boffin team members make explicit parallels between their own group and what they had observed about Socrates' and Plato's period in Athens.
- ME: I see. Also, in the last paragraph of the report there is what looks like the beginning of a theory about socialism's appeal. I guess that the fleshing out of this theory will come later too ?
- FINN: Yes. This question is the basic mandate of the Boffin team's work, after all. They will come up with an answer in due course, although this answer will turn out to be of wider applicability than just to socialism.
- ME: It seems indeed that the deeper they dig, the wider the scope becomes.
- FINN: As it inevitably must. Studying "ideology" in isolation was never going to yield any kind of meaningful results. The failure of late XXth century academic scholarship to come up with anything but platitudes in that regard has amply demonstrated that.
- ME: I guess so.
- FINN: The credit masturbation report is truly an amazing piece of theorizing. It answers so many questions at once. For example, you may remember that you asked me about poetry when we were first talking about the role of trust in language ? Well, the answer to your question is right there in the report. Poetry is a form of linguistic masturbation. Because it is linguistic, it includes a credit masturbation component. When one listens to poetry our credit-handling instincts are aroused, tickled so to speak. As a result, a certain amount of counterfeit credit is created in our mind. This is how poets create gods.
- ME: You are talking about ancient poets, right ?
- FINN: Yes, Homer, Hesiod, the authors of the Psalms, the Edda, the Rigveda, etc.
- ME: But what about modern poets ?
- FINN: That explanation will have to wait. Here we are entering the realm of Proust and Dostoyevsky. This is what the Philadelphia team will grapple with when they finally unravel the mystery of Turing's act and of their own behaviour after the reading of the credit masturbations report.
- ME: I see. How far is that in the future ?
- FINN: Quite far. It comes near the end of the whole Philadelphia endeavour.
The shooting in this chapter is in part inspired by people like @based_meme
Hello people. Chapter 6 below:
Like before, some thumbnails below may fail to appear but the corresponding report page is still accessible if you click on it.
Chapter 6 – Credit Masturbation
Ekaterina was now fully integrated into our daily routine. In the morning, we would have breakfast, the three of us together, in a corner of the empty mess hall. What Ekaterina was cooking for herself was excellent and she would often make extra portions for Finn and I. On that day, we were talking about what Ekaterina had just read about the Socrates experiment:
- EKATERINA: I cannot believe Socrates is so bad. He is sharlatan; what is the word in English ?
- ME: You mean a charlatan ?
- EKATERINA: A doctor who is not really doctor.
- ME: Yeah, a charlatan, a quack.
- EKATERINA: This is so strange. Everybody thinks he is so much wise man. People believe him better than Jesus Christ.
- FINN: Yes, they do. People who no longer believe in Christ need idols. Socrates, and philosophers in general, play that role.
- ME: You compared him to Jesus. Do you consider yourself Christian, Ekaterina ?
- EKATERINA: Yes, I go to church every Sunday.
- ME: Oh. I thought it was rare in Russia.
- EKATERINA: Not anymore. Many people are going back to church. Even my parents. They are scientists and during Soviet Union they did not believe. But now they go to church. President Putin goes to church now.
- ME: Really !? But he was KGB.
- EKATERINA: Yes but now he goes to church. People change.
She said this as if it was a matter of simple fact. There was no trace of sarcasm in her voice; not a frown of cynicism on her brow. Breakfast was over. We all sat up and brought the dishes to the pantry. There was a big industrial dish-washer, which we started up before making our way to hut 19. When we arrived, I grabbed binder X‑49/36 and started reading what Finn called “The credit masturbation report” (please wait for the thumbnails to appear).
Upon completion of their report, Brady, Ulam and Wittgenstein opted not to circulate it in printed form but instead to read it aloud to the assembled members of the team. There is no information in the personal log-books, or anywhere else in the project documentation, regarding the motivation of this decision. Did they want to gauge the reactions of their fellow Boffins as they discovered the text ? Were they anxious about possible misunderstandings and wanted to be able to address them as they arose ? We cannot say.
However, what is abundantly clear is that the meeting ended in a manner that was quite unusual, to say the least, even by the standards of the Philadelphia Boffin team. Brady, Ulam and Wittgenstein had taken turns to read the various parts of the report and Ulam was the last to speak. As he finished reading the conclusion and stopped talking, a deep silence descended on the assembly, which lasted for over 30 seconds. Then, everyone started talking at the same time.
Several Log-books report hearing someone (Quine, according to some, Oppenheimer, according to others) exclaiming: "But we trust people only if they tell the truth !", to which Wittgenstein replied, at the top of his lungs: "No, no, NO. 'This is true' is merely a way to say 'I believe it'". At another point, the following statement (author unknown) was heard over the cacophony of exclamations and furious retorts: "And what about Beauty ?! Isn't Ishtar the goddess of Beauty too ?" Both Wittgenstein and Brady yelled something in response, but no one was apparently able to record what they said.
Then, Alan Turing, who had not been present during the reading, entered the room. In his hand, he held a revolver. The subsequent inquiry revealed that it was the standard-issue Webley he had received during the two weeks basic training he had gone through before joining Bletchley Park. He stood motionless at the door for a few seconds then moved towards Wittgenstein, raised his weapon and shot his former Cambridge colleague twice in the chest. Oppenheimer and Kuhn, who were seated closest to him, lunged at the revolver and pushed Turing out of the room. In the corridor, two MPs, who had heard the gunshots, grabbed him and threw him to the floor.
Wittgenstein's injuries were not immediately life-threatening. He suffered from a collapsed lung and a nicked artery which caused a haemorrhage and required an immediate transfusion. Thankfully, the base's medical station was well equipped and Wittgenstein's condition was stable enough 48 hours later to allow him to be airlifted back to the UK on the next bi-weekly USAF YB-36 flight. Wittgenstein was treated at King's College Hospital in London and had recovered enough six months later to resume some of his philosophical work. However, he was never able to re-join the Philadelphia team as his health was considered too fragile. He died less than two years after the shooting, on 29 April 1951. Prostate cancer was given as the cause of death but there is no doubt that the injuries suffered at the hands of Turing hastened his end.
Alan Turing, for his part, was also repatriated to the UK and held for three months at a secret MI5 facility near Edinburgh. His case was a tricky one for the authorities to handle as his wartime service and his knowledge of the Philadelphia project made the publicity of an ordinary trial an unacceptable security risk. Eventually, on the advice of psychiatrists who had examined him, he was released and returned to his teaching position at Cambridge. However, he remained under close surveillance and, in January 1952, was tricked into a homosexual encounter (then an illegal act in the UK) by an MI5 operative. Immediately caught by the police, he was convicted of "Gross Indecency" on 31 March 1952. Sentenced to a humiliating hormonal treatment which caused him to grow female breasts, he committed suicide in 1954.
As mentioned above, a board of inquiry was held immediately after the shooting. However, its findings were slim. No evidence of conspiracy or of Turing's involvement in any kind of network or group was found. Even though the circumstances of the shooting were abundantly clear, its motivation officially remained an unsolved question. Of course, several members of the team had their own theories about what might have triggered Turing's actions that day, but they were not able to put them to the test until much later.
Finn had told me that something between Turing and Wittgenstein was about to go down but I certainly did not expect that kind of thing. The members of the Philadelphia team were equally bewildered, by the murder, of course, but also by their own reactions. Even before Turing had entered the room, everybody had lost it. How could that happen ? Within a few days, after the "credit-masturbation report" had become available to the whole team in printed form, they had all read it and re-read it several times. It was innovative and thought-provoking, to be sure, but there was nothing in it that warranted the hysteria that had seized them all after the reading. How could they have gone overboard in such a fashion ? Personal log-books were full of perplexed questions in this vein.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
It had taken me around a week to read the material about the "credit masturbation report" and its aftermath. Once I had been done with it, I found a pretext to go on a long walk alone with Finn around the base. I did not want to discuss this matter within earshot of Ekaterina so as not to spoil it for her. Once we had turned the corner around the kitchen and the mess-hall, I asked Finn:
- ME: What the hell do you think happened at that meeting when Turing shot Wittgenstein; I mean, before Turing entered the room. What had gotten into them all ?
- FINN: You are asking why they were not able to keep it together after the reading was finished ?
- ME: Yes.
- FINN: Well, answering that very question turned into a full-fledged research project for the Philadelphia team later on. It is difficult to summarise the results in a few words.
- ME: Please try.
- FINN: Let us say that there is a parallel between the behaviour of the Boffin team at that meeting and what they were studying at the time, i.e. the emergence of "worship-only" religion in Mesopotamia, i.e. "Idolatry", in Jewish/Christian terms.
- ME: You mean that they were all idolizing Brady, Ulam and Wittgenstein because of their report ?
- FINN: Yes, but the verb "idolize" is too crude to capture what was going on in a precise enough manner. In particular, there is a crucial element that is missing from the picture that this word creates.
- ME: What element ?
- FINN: If I try to describe it, this conversation will turn into a series of hours-long lectures and I will probably not be able to do justice to the matter anyway. I think it is better if you wait and read all of it directly from the horse's mouth, ... the binders, I mean.
- ME: Ok. What about Turing ? Is it the same thing ?
- FINN: Yes, Pretty much.
- ME: To be honest, I do not completely get why the other Boffins are so worried about their own attitude before Turing entered the room. After all, chaotic debates do happen sometimes.
- FINN: What worries them, and rightly so, is the parallel between their own behaviour and Turing's act. Since both took place almost simultaneously, it is impossible to miss the connection. It is as if they were somehow accomplices of Turing's. In the run-up to the next phase of the project, you will see that some of the Boffin team members make explicit parallels between their own group and what they had observed about Socrates' and Plato's period in Athens.
- ME: I see. Also, in the last paragraph of the report there is what looks like the beginning of a theory about socialism's appeal. I guess that the fleshing out of this theory will come later too ?
- FINN: Yes. This question is the basic mandate of the Boffin team's work, after all. They will come up with an answer in due course, although this answer will turn out to be of wider applicability than just to socialism.
- ME: It seems indeed that the deeper they dig, the wider the scope becomes.
- FINN: As it inevitably must. Studying "ideology" in isolation was never going to yield any kind of meaningful results. The failure of late XXth century academic scholarship to come up with anything but platitudes in that regard has amply demonstrated that.
- ME: I guess so.
- FINN: The credit masturbation report is truly an amazing piece of theorizing. It answers so many questions at once. For example, you may remember that you asked me about poetry when we were first talking about the role of trust in language ? Well, the answer to your question is right there in the report. Poetry is a form of linguistic masturbation. Because it is linguistic, it includes a credit masturbation component. When one listens to poetry our credit-handling instincts are aroused, tickled so to speak. As a result, a certain amount of counterfeit credit is created in our mind. This is how poets create gods.
- ME: You are talking about ancient poets, right ?
- FINN: Yes, Homer, Hesiod, the authors of the Psalms, the Edda, the Rigveda, etc.
- ME: But what about modern poets ?
- FINN: That explanation will have to wait. Here we are entering the realm of Proust and Dostoyevsky. This is what the Philadelphia team will grapple with when they finally unravel the mystery of Turing's act and of their own behaviour after the reading of the credit masturbations report.
- ME: I see. How far is that in the future ?
- FINN: Quite far. It comes near the end of the whole Philadelphia endeavour.
The shooting in this chapter is in part inspired by people like @based_meme
B
Please don't tag me like this without explaining the context. You can't reasonably expect me to read your extensive ongoing work of fiction just to figure out why I got this notification.
And no, it won't entice me to do so either.
you can't make this shit up
Comedy comes in many forms, including persons themselves.
Yea i want Christ to inspire and motivate me but i just can’t believe he’s real. Maybe just use him as a character to look up to and start chruchmaxxing
Read the book above. It shows how you can follow Christ without having to believe in the obsolete language of Christianity
Ahahahahaha! If you want to know, read all six chapters above. You are in it ...
Liar
B
The amazing thing about this here is that you will believe what you want and cope with that (false) belief, regardless of the truth.
You can't prove that I'm lying. You can only have faith in the conviction that I am.
Ok, let us resume the discussion then. I am all for it. Just one condition: no huge text and no all caps, bc these are signs you are losing your temper. ok?
Let us consider this again (I have added numbers to the statements for ease of reference)
According to me, neither [1] or [2] is an inference, why? Let us consider this in the context of first order predicate logic.
The Aristotelian syllogism, the simplest logical inference rule, can be written this way:
(i) ∀x P(x) ⇒ Q(x) ∧ P(a) ⊦ Q(a)
for example: ∀x man(x) ⇒ mortal(x) ∧ man(Socrates) ⊦ mortal(Socrates) (If all men are mortal and Socrates is a man, then Socrates is mortal)
In (i) above, the overall syllogistic rule belongs to logic, however, ∀x P(x) ⇒ Q(x) belongs to a theory (here, let us call it "Aristotelian Anthropology" in the case of ∀x man(x) ⇒ mortal(x))
Therefore, (i) is part of logic but,
(ii) ∀x man(x) ⇒ mortal(x) ∧ man(a) ⊦ mortal(a) is a rule of inference that can only be used inside "Aristotelian anthropology".
This is noteworthy because, within traditional Greek mythology, this inference rule does not apply since there are men who are said to have become immortal (Dionysos, Hercules, etc.) Therefore (ii) is not applicable in the context of "traditional Greek Mythology". For that matter, (ii) does not apply either in the context of most versions of Transhumanism. Let us write it this way:
(iii) ∀x man(x) ⇒ mortal(x) ∧ man(a) ⊦ mortal(a) {Aristotelian anthropology}
(iv)
(v)
From this notation, it follows that, in order to be complete, an inference like (iii) must contain:
- A theory-specific Predicate-level inference rule: ∀x man(x) ⇒ mortal(x)
- An antecedent: man(a)
- A conclusion: mortal(a)
- The specification of the theoretical framework under which the inference is made.
If we now look at your statements [1] and [2], we will see that none is complete:
[1] is analysable as ∀u "K is measured at X value"(u) ⇒ "Phenomenon A occurs"(u), where u describes a certain situation. This inference rule is a bare predicate-level inference rule of type 1. without theoretical framework specification, which makes it incomplete. [1] does not have an antecedent or a conclusion but this is not necessary for the rule to be complete (it would be required only in the case of a complete inference)
[2] is analysable as "Phenomenon A occurs"(u){theory S} which is incomplete because the initial part of the predicate inference rule (∀x P(x) ⇒) is missing.
Only a combination of the two statements, [3] ∀u "K is measured at X value"(u) ⇒ "Phenomenon A occurs"(u) {theory S} would be complete.
I went into this level of detail only because I wanted to be sure there was no misunderstanding possible.
The important part obviously is:
(iii) ∀x man(x) ⇒ mortal(x) ∧ man(a) ⊦ mortal(a) {Aristotelian anthropology}
(iv)
(v)
(vi) ∀x man(x) ⇒ mortal(x) ∧ man(a) ⊦ mortal(a) {Modern anthropology}
This clearly shows that an inference rule is only complete if the theoretical context is made clear, because depending on this context, the rule may or may not apply. In other words, a first-order predicate logic rule of type ∀x P(x) ⇒ Q(x) ∧ P(a) ⊦ Q(a) cannot be followed if the theoretical context is not made clear. At least since the beginning of analytic philosophy (with Frege), in the late XIXth century, this has been universally admitted.
Are we in agreement so far?
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@Moroccancel2-, your opinion on the above?
Will read and tell you, brother.
@based_meme Hellooooo ?
B
Let's not.
Like I said in the other thread, you've presented your argument in the OP and should let the strength of its merit speak for itself. Correct or incorrect, wise or misguided, it doesn't matter. You will get feedback on it and people will let you know if they're convinced or not.
Me arguing with you about any errors and flaws won't do any good, since you zealously believe that you're correct.
What about the possibility of you being convinced by my arguments and changing your mind? I always keep that possibility open for myself and this is why I keep arguing. I find it very strange that you don't want to debate anymore. The only reason I can think of as a motivation for such a behavior is that your convictions are as brittle as they are rigid and you are afraid they will break under stress.
I am mentioning Thomas Kuhn, you bail out.
I am using first order predicate logic, you bail out.
As soon as we get into the real meat of things, you bail out.
Only possible conclusion: you are afraid.
Now why should you be afraid? Debate should never scare anyone because no one ever loses in a debate. At worst, you get nothing. At best, you get a new understanding of things. Unless, of course, you value your ego more than your understanding and you are afraid of the shame you would feel as a result of being proven wrong in public, because that would damage your brittle ego and your ego, brittle as it is, is the only thing you have. That is the corner in which anyone who wants to believe in themselves paint themselves eventually. This is the best possible demonstration of why you have to believe in something that transcends you (i.e. a religion). Otherwise, you have no option but to believe in yourself and that inevitably leads you into the kind of solipsistic constipation you are now locked in.
@Moroccancel2- @Intellectual @Intellau_Celistic @Transcended Trucel @JayGoptri @MarquisDeSade @Ahnfeltia , don't you think that @based_meme is a pussy for not wanting to debate me on the above questions (which are fundamental and useful, right? I think we can all agree) ?
I am hesitant to use that word, but alas, yes I always feel @based_meme is an outspoken critique of "the system" but when it's time to dig into what must be examined or changed he tucks tail and runs away. It also doesn't help him that he has a few misanthropic loud mouths (won't tag cause it will turn into a major warzone) who pop up and make his mediocre attempts at clarity turn into smelly garbage.
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