The more things change, the more they stay the same. This diary is a reflection on the way that the march of history seems to keep bringing us back to the same infinitely tragic themes. I asked my son to preview it, and he said he hopes people will "read through to what is actually a punchy and poignant ending".
First, there were gardens
Our hunter-gatherer ancestors found their food in the natural world through which they roamed. All able bodied humans were engaged in this activity. Since a wandering lifestyle precludes the accumulation of much material wealth, the societies of hunter-gatherers tended to be pretty egalitarian. But then the Angel drove us out of Eden, and we've had hard luck and trouble ever since...
With the development of agriculture--several of the earliest centers were in what today is called the Middle East--far less roaming and finding was needed, but far more food was available. What a wonderful development! It was no longer necessary for all members of the tribe to be directly involved in food production. Some could specialize in other areas, like pottery, metal smithing, or the arts of war and political obfuscation. Where before all humans subsisted directly off of nature, now some could live off the efforts of other humans. In particular, the warriors and the priest/kings. This social pattern is called civilization.
What civilization does
When Pharaoh sent his troops into the wilderness to capture nomadic tribes and enslave them in Egypt, it was an essential expression of civilization--exploitation of the weak and the wild for the benefit of the strong and civilized. The captive Hebrews, though human, were from Pharaoh's perspective essentially a natural resource. To him they were expendable primitives with no intrinsic value or significance, but with the useful property of being able to be harnessed for the important needs of civilization. In his case, the "important need" was the construction of a pyramid, a vast funeral monument for himself, which he hoped would assure his personal immortality.
Slaves as an energy resource
Before the industrial age, before civilization learned to exploit the power of fossil fuels, before the invention of windmills and water mills, work was done by the power of muscle. All manner of animals were used for this purpose, but there were many kinds of work that only humans could do. Therefore, slavery. Enslaving the Hebrews must have had the same seductive economic logic for the Pharaoh, living 3500 years ago, that drilling in ANWR or blasting the tops off mountains in Appalachia has for us today. Among civilized peoples, the appeal of the institution of slavery (or its functional equivalents) began to fade at more or less at the same time that they developed the technological capacity to use coal and petroleum. Steam engines and the electrical grid delivered so much power to our fingertips that for the civilized, the salient quality of slavery became not economic utility but moral repugnance.
Book learning
The Pharaoh's Hebrew slaves eventually escaped (long story) to wander once more in the hinterland. When they re-emerged into civilized territory, in the land of Canaan, they had attributes that were unique at the time-- they were monotheistic and literate. Moses had ascended the mountain and returned bearing the most sacred object of his people. In an age when illiteracy was... er... widespread, this sacred object was not an image of an animal, a human, a mythical creature, or even a river or storm cloud. It was a written list of rules, using an alphabetic form of writing, commonly known today as the Ten Commandments. Remarkable! Moreover, the religious practice of these literate wanderers included great focus on the study of sacred texts, not just by priests and other elites, but by everyone (well, every male--this was 3500 years ago). These texts included their myths of origination and the story of their ancestors' captivity in and escape from Egypt, and came to include further stories of their conquest of cities and the founding of their own civilization in the conquered lands. Study of texts leads to absorption of the information they contain. If that information is the birth-myth of the tribe, then that is what those who study will remember and internalize.
In today's news
Sometimes nothing ever changes. Today, those who trace their lineage to the followers of Moses are still escaping from Egypt. The cruelty of the Pharaoh pales beside the unspeakable horror of the Holocaust, but the analogy resonates powerfully. "Egypt" is anti-Semitism in all its forms, both monstrous and petty. And descendents of those ancient Hebrews are still trying to conquer, literally, the cities of Canaan. In this case, those who study history seem to be trying to repeat it, or at least selected good parts. Tragically, in so doing they have themselves become a sort of new Egypt to another unfortunate tribe of literate monotheists.
Also today, Pharaoh has been replaced by America as the most powerful empire in the world. And sure enough, we are still sending our armies into the eastern desert to subdue and capture the weak and the wild. We still regard the locals as expendable primitives with no intrinsic value. Our aim is still to seize energy resources--oil instead of slaves, this time--to serve the "important needs" of civilization. Which begs a question: Are we also constructing our own spectacular funeral monument?
Relevant reading
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
The Alphabet Versus the Goddess by Leonard Schlain
Maps of Time by David Christian
Endgame (Vol 2) by Derrick Jensen
(Please use your local library or local independent bookstore if you can.)