On religion, tribalism, and the madness of civilization
by John MacBeath Watkins Let us think of mankind in the state of nature, a clever, naked primate living in a small troop. It finds a way to communicate better than most mammals, inventing words to describe objects, not just sounds that describe feelings or suggest actions. Consider the word 'tree.' All the aspects of treeness are addressed in the word, yet the word applies to all trees, not to a specific example with its particular shape and smell. Our primate has created a category to think with, a word that holds within it all trees, and which gives each tree an aspect it never had before. For most of humanity's existence, we have not organized our life around reason. We must ask ourselves, how did our primate feel about this new essence of treeness. It would feel as if the tree now had a new, non-physical existence. This might be poetically understood as the spirit of the tree. The next step is to try to understand the spirit of the tree, what it feels, what it desires...
