Science and Slavery
How One of Our Greatest Achievements Has Enslaved Us In New and More Terrible Forms of Bondage.
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
It went from magic to religion, from religion to science, and now, it’s going from science to…
For ages, people were in awe of magic. It was revered. But when the dominator impulse donned robes and declared it had a direct link to the ultimate dominator (and thereby all rights to manipulate nature as it so pleased), the rulers had to distract the governed from any conception they may develop regarding the holiness of nature; the perception that they too wielded the capacity to manipulate their world, not by the will of a fictionalized All-Father. By their own will.
But if anyone could do it, than anyone could…be…god?
Magic was considered a means of lifting the veils of perception to see the truth, when the truth needs to be known; to use natural powers (later, known scientific disciplines) to heal and receive guidance from the stars (earliest astronomers) on how to overcome challenges. So the dominators of society HAD to get rid of magic by disallowing it so it wouldn’t usurp THEIR authority. If the fear of the will of the gods was no longer respected because the peasants and slaves would discover that they TOO could manipulate the world to make it a better place for them and others, then the people may…
Question social conventions such as ordination, law, a might-makes-right sensibility, etc.
Break away from the mental bondage of the Divine Rights of Kings that they and their families were enslaved by for centuries.
Recognize that there is no such thing as a divine man; that man was the measure of all things—not gods.
Re-engage their biochemical birth right to meld with the Floral and Fungal Kingdoms, etc.
Choose to live instead of go to war and die at the beck of “leader’s” cause that serves no one but the leaders.
So how did the dominators uproot and stamp out pagans and their magic?
Well, boys and girls, it began in the tenth century BCE (about 3,000 rotations around the sun ago). Magic was positioned by priesthoods as vile, unholy, dark. No less a prophet than Zoroaster ‘the Redeemer’ decried the practice of magic1—that Indo-Iranic, pantheistic, natural, pseudo-science practiced among the people of the Persian Plateau region. If there were pagans2, there was magic. If there’s magic, then the peasants would eventually think themselves as their own gods. So, NO pagans! No magic. God. God good. Magic, natural manipulation…bad. That’s god’s business, after all (“Trust me, he tells me things in my dreams. I swear!").
Panoplia Propheticus
The false deification of natural forces and processes, perpetrated by the dominators of a society3 is what has landed us where we find ourselves in today’s Western modern society. The superstition of the great, invisible All-Father and the need for our absolute devotion to its will (and its designees here on Earth, of course) is more commonly referred to as faith, among modern civilizations. I’ve known the seeding and the amplification of this greatest of lies as the Panoplia Propheticus—superstitions and prophecies implanted by the powerful rulers/dominators of villages and tribes (then, city-states and kingdoms, and now empires and entire civilizations) via 1)hypnotic conduits like chants, song, legends told around a fire, theater, history books, paintings, storytelling, radio, TV commercials, situation comedies, and A LOT OF FORGERIES, 2)fear-driven wielders of dogma in mosques, synagogues, and churches across the planet as well as 3)compulsory education.
That’s right. Schools. Schools are where the programming takes shape. More on that later.
Let’s look at it purely from an anthropological perspective: to contain a group of 100 people or so as a primitive tribe is no easy task when you’re its Chief. How could you possible keep an eye on so many people to make sure they don’t steal or rape or etc.? Or what if you have to convince them to fight a neighboring tribe for resources? No surveillance systems; no real reason for anyone to do anything the Chief wants (unless he’s working with a brute squad more recently referred to as police).
What if the Chief were to create a story by telling his people that the reason he is stronger and a better fighter than the other fellahs is because Lord (insert name here), the Thunder God of the Mountains has spoken to him and commands him to lead the tribe in this way or that way.
The Panolplia Propheticus allows for the arbitrary development of authority from thin air which, then, propogates itself, ad infinitum.4
Maybe, it manifests as the foretelling of a an Adonis or creature that will arrive someday and unite all people and deliver us to blah blah blah.
How about the retelling of some Mesopotamian myths that worked pretty good to keep their slaves in line there, so, with a few names changed during the oral story retelling or the diffusion of the languages and values, viola—Instant Theology! For instance, El, supreme god of Mesopotamia’s early dynastic period, transforms via migration westward and becomes the supreme god of the Jews— El Shaddai, cited HUNDREDS of times in the Tanakh (Moseretic writings).
How about a story/legend about the great Sons of Light that are fighting the Sons of Darkness and our guys, the Sons of Light (the good guys, of course), need us to do exactly as they so decree or we're gonna lose our juice and lose that fight with the Sons of Darkness! We can’t have that!! Think of the women and children that those Sons of Darkness will…kill?
Or the coming of a triumvirate of saviors that will redeem and defend us from the ravishes of the evil blah blah blah; an All-Father that creates everything (but needs angels, for some reason) and, like our real fathers, demands we obey its will, lest he smite us to the ground… blah blah blah.
It’s the same old story, yeah—everywhere [you] go (where my Simon & Garfunkel fans at?). Religion and pagan superstitions helped develop our ethos as a civilization. But they have also been the primary tools of governments: think Ten Commandments, papal bulls, dietary requirements like not eating unclean meats (??) to ensure economic trade control, conscription, slavery guised as duty, etc.
But the pagan impulse, that liberal, lusory outlook, that chemical connection with natural plants and foods that the shamans and magicians and clerics and wizards of antiquity represented wasn’t vanquished. It just went into deep radio silence.
Alright, alright. Let’s start over…or at least, set the scene…
I’m trying to better understand my own grasp of why generation after generation, there seems to be a prevailing sense that our civilization is doomed for some techno-apocalypse; that, “we’re all going to Hell in handbasket” sense that permeates much of the educated world.
My working stance is that the problem… is science.
Well, not science itself, but a perversion of it. Scientism.
Limitations and Principles of Science
The success of the science is mostly due to its careful observance of its limitations. These limitations are inherent in its principles and it’s the scrupulous adherence to these principles that’s responsible for the outstanding success of the modern scientific tradition.
There are four principles responsible for the enormous achievements of science in the present age:
quantitative
empirical
mechanical
progressive
The empirical principle refers to the Scientific Method—a process for investigation which begins with observations and experiments carried out over a period in carefully controlled situations. The quantitative principle is that, since the scientific method begins and ends with observation, science can concern itself only with that kind of reality which is observable—physical reality. Because the scientific method aims for precision, it restricts its investigations to that kind of reality which is measurable—quantitative.
The mechanical principle is a limiting one which recognizes that, since science is concerned with repeatable certitude, it’s restricted to the study of behavior which consists of natural cause-and-effect series. Nothing is said by science about the possibility of another kind of behavior (e.g. free, phenomenal, unfalsifiable). As far as science is concerned, phenomenon may occur, but they don’t come into the domain of science. Finally, science deals with physical reality which can be falsified and as such, is infinitely self-correcting. No scientific theory is regarded as final. Every hypothesis that science arrives at is liable to constant revision and even rejection in the light of future discoveries/innovations. This means that its theories are constantly being refined and its techniques improved. This constitutes the progressive principle.
The Dogmas of Science
Because of its accomplishments, science has acquired tremendous prestige. It’s risen (in spite of itself) to a position of predominant authority in contemporary societies, the world over. As a result of this exaltation, science has come to be worshipped as though it’s a source of omniscience, omnipotence, and the bearer of our salvation—a concept I’ve come to know as SCIENTISM. The conception was referred to in the 50s as Scientolatry, a play on idolatry which is what it would be, with those pretenses. Scientism refuses to recognize the limitations of science and claims that its working principles can be used as universal principles, in terms of which the entirety of our reality can be explained and controlled.
As such, Scientism transformed the limiting principles of science into all-embracing dogmas which are regarded as absolute and final truths.
But what of spirit, values, the psyche, love, or freedom? Can science solve THOSE matters, scientifically? Because, another way of looking at the limiting principles of science could be:
The quantitative principle mentioned above ——> becomes the dogma of materialism (i.e., naturalism). It denies the reality of spirit and the objectivity of values.
The mechanical principle ——> becomes the dogma of determinism, which denies the reality of freedom.
At the same time, the depressing implications of these conclusions are avoided by the transformation of the progressive principle ——> into the dogma of Utopianism (i.e., the coming of the ideal society is guaranteed by science and evolution).
These are the same dogmas that are the basis of Nazism and Communism—the social and political fruits of which is the modern slave state.
Origins of Scientism
It’s midway between science and Scientism where we find the source of the more intangible, pervasive, and unconscious influence Scientism has had on Western Civilization. The climate of our opinions or the intellectual atmosphere in the past century has been shaped by science. It’s the tradition of our age—our overall frame of reference for negotiating truth/reality. Science exerts an all-encompassing influence on the development of our philosophies, our political institutions, our economic arrangements, our morals, art, and literature, etc.…
During the Middle Ages in Europe, truths or axioms were derived from the tradition of Christianity. But it was primarily of the Catholic sort and as such, the tradition should more descriptively be known as the Catholic tradition. Why? Because the prevailing assumptions of the Catholic doctrine were not faithful reflections of Christianity.
In this same fashion, our modern tradition of science has borrowed characteristic presuppositions from the science of the early 16th Century in Western Europe and consequently, is called the Scientific tradition—even though its axioms are generalized distortions of the valid principles of true science. In our society, the presuppositions of the scientific tradition have operated for the most part as a semi-conscious, unexamined framework of reality. Where such presuppositions are rationally elaborated, they take the form of pragmatic Scientism aiming for a totally industrialized, technological, scientific society.
Is that where we want to go?
Do we want a Western version of the mass society in which the fate of the individual would be scarcely less hideous than that which has befallen him in the contemporary totalitarian state?
Look, it’s not science that’s taking us there. By furnishing the necessary material conditions in the shape of knowledge and power, science helps us be free.
But when the limits of science are disregarded, when science becomes an absolute authority, when its principles are first converted into the generalized assumptions of a prevailing tradition and then articulated in the all-embracing dogmas of a pseudoscientific meta-physics, then we may find ourselves not free at the end of the age, but enslaved in new and more terrible forms of bondage and tyranny.
Have a great weekend, everybody!
Just kidding. I’m working now on making the case that the Scientism that’s been dominating our civilization for over a century is contributing to the resurgence of a Nazi and Communist impulse in America. Next time on…The Dottore Chronicles!
The reason he was “The Redeemer” is because his devotees attributed the beginning of the end of pagan societies to his teachings and ministry.
Pagans in the case of Zoroaster’s age would mean people who practice a natural religion with incantations, brews, rituals, etc. that was of a polytheistic nature.
E.g., clerics, Chieftains, shamans, the priestly class, the merchant class, Pharaohs, Shahs, Caesars, Barons, Earls, Dukes, Bishops, Judges, Lieutenants, Generals, etc.)
Unless an externality intervenes…