In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." (15)
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Humans must toil for their food - at least, some of us do.
What I found interesting in this section of Genesis was God's punishment for Adam and Eve and their children. Recently, due to some prodding from this class, I've begun to wonder what story we are captive to, what bars are holding me in. And that made me ponder what our purpose is on this planet. It is clear that humans are locked into a system - but what is the system, why was it created, and what is it that we're doing? We have to toil for our food, we must work hard and trudge through the "drudgery" of daily life (though I think life is pretty darn beautiful) and eventually, we will die.
Personally, I've always put my faith in God and gone forth in life with the goal of spreading good. I figured that all religions taught the same basic lifestyle - to make good decisions, to help thy neighbor, and put more into the world and society than you take out. That could be done, right? We can be philanthropic and think of the planet - there are so many problems that need solving, such as world hunger and poverty and human cruelty and warfare and political corruption and the list goes on and on and on. Everyone can have a purpose because there is so much that needs to be done in the world. But the question is, why has human society come to have such terrible problems? The Leaver Societies didn't have to deal with these crises. Why must we?
It is clear that we must trace things back to the source - and the source seems to be the start of civilization. I had my TA session for World Architecture today, and our professor basically explained that when humans figured out that they could build weapons and ride horses, they made the leap and figured out they could use these skills to go after societies in surrounding valleys. They could take their women and food and goods by force, and use their men as slaves. THey could continue to do this to all the peacable societies in nearby valleys, and to keep the accumulated slaves of their rapidly expanding civilization from revolting, set them to task to build huge structures made of earth. THe primary reason was to keep these potential threats busy and tired and too exhausted to rebel - the story for WHY the structures needed to exist could come later. It turned out that power was a pretty good story. So religion was invented to consolidate power in the leaders and in the "gods." Clearly, this was the position of my TA, but it did get me thinking - where did this greed come from? How did humans decide to forget God's sayings about toiling for our own food, and decide to take from others?
Where did human cruelty originate?
I feel like my last couple of blog entries have consisted mostly of questions, but that is really what's mostly on my mind right now. A lot of questions. I don't know if there are any answers really, but accepting that you don't know is much better than pretending that you do and never asking the questions out of fear.
"Ye Eate thereof, your Eyes that seem so cleere,
Yet are but dim, shall perfectly be then
Op'nd and cleerd, and ye shall be as Gods,
Knowing both Good and Evil as they know." (42)
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Do these eyes see the Knowledge?
The other thing I wonder is what exactly the Knowledge is. I know it is the Knowledge of GOd, and that Quinn postulates that it is the KNowledge of who can live and who can die. But is there any religious text that specifies what exactly this knowledge is? It is definitely the knowledge of Good and Evil - but is there a specific definition of what that is?
Apparently God said that if man consumed fruit of this tree, man would die. Adam and Eve were instead sent to Earth. That's either a discrepancy or something I missed because I definitely am not even close to being religiously literate.
"Thy kill was from choice?" (54)
What is wrong with man, i think, is what we choose to do. What is right with man is what we choose to do. We choose to be cruel, or we choose to be kind. We choose to hurt or we choose to help. We choose to kill, or we choose to save. Its all a matter of choice, and I think that is what makes man so different from the rest of the world. Because we have the ability and responisibility to make decisions - and the pressure is on to make good ones. The planet relies on us.
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