- Origins of Thought -

The foundations of our society: Religion, understanding and the dynamics of Power

Human beings, or HOMO SAPIENS SAPIENS, are believed to have evolved from apes. We are the last descendents of a complex line of primates (hominids) that learned skills no other animal has ever learned. Hominids could use tools to hunt and fire to keep themselves warm and to cook food. After thousands of years of evolution the homo sapiens sapiens, modern day humans, appeared in our world. They could use tools and fire and clothing, and they started to understand the world around them like no other creature.

Given that they depended on animal meat and fruit in order to survive, humans had to travel constantly looking for food and water. They were nomads, that is, people that move constantly in order to survive.

The Spirit and our first leaders: At some point during the early history of our beautiful species we came to understand something no other animal in the planet (to our current knowledge) understands: that there is something more to this world than what we can perceive through our senses, something beyond our comprehension. By attempting to understand the world around us we gave birth to religion. In order to explain the various phenomena of nature we created, in our minds, the many Gods that once “inhabited” our world. And the greatest question of them all, “what is life?” and its answer howsoever close or far from the truth, allowed us to develop the most complex animal society in the planet. We sought to understand why we lived, what made us move, what allowed us to think and reason, and love, and hate. We wanted to know the purpose of our existence in this reality. It was then that we started to believe in the Spirit of things.

The spirit… something we cannot perceive and yet something most of us believe in. This idea spread like a virus through our minds and soon we used it to explain everything in the world. With it we created the Gods and gave them control over the world. We were humbled at the power of the Spirit. Soon it was this idea what explained nature itself. It explained the rain, the sun, the river, the ocean… the cosmos. It even explained love and hate. Everything in the world was determined by the Spirit  or Spirits of the universe. 

But not everyone understood the most profound complexities of this idea. Some knew more about the spirit than others, comprehending this idea to a profounder level. These individuals were spiritual leaders, shamans, priests of the ancient world. They were the first human leaders to use reason and not violence in order to organize our societies. Since life is the epitome of existence and females have the power to give birth, our first spiritual leaders are thought to have been (for the most part) females.