by I was re-reading random parts of Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature and came across this: In an insightful book on the history of force, the political scientist James Payne suggests that ancient peoples put a low value on other people’s lives because pain and death were so common in their own. This set a low threshold for any practice that had a chance of bringing them an advantage, even if the price was the lives of others. And if the ancients believed in gods, as most people do, then human sacrifice could easily have been seen as offering them that advantage. “Their primitive world was full of dangers, suffering, and nasty surprises, including plagues, famines, and wars. It would be natural for them to ask, ‘What kind of god would create such a world?’ A plausible answer was: a sadistic god, a god who liked to see people bleed and suffer.” So, they might think, if these gods have a minimum daily requirement of human gore, why not be proactive about it? Better him than me. I haven’t read James Payne referenced in the paragraph above, but The Better Angels of Our Nature is a very good book which I highly recommend. Still, the second half of this paragraph doesn’t quite ring true for me.
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Mike Kimel considers the following as important: Better Angels, Pinker, Sadistic Gods, Uncategorized
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I was re-reading random parts of Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature and came across this:
In an insightful book on the history of force, the political scientist James Payne suggests that ancient peoples put a low value on other people’s lives because pain and death were so common in their own. This set a low threshold for any practice that had a chance of bringing them an advantage, even if the price was the lives of others. And if the ancients believed in gods, as most people do, then human sacrifice could easily have been seen as offering them that advantage. “Their primitive world was full of dangers, suffering, and nasty surprises, including plagues, famines, and wars. It would be natural for them to ask, ‘What kind of god would create such a world?’ A plausible answer was: a sadistic god, a god who liked to see people bleed and suffer.” So, they might think, if these gods have a minimum daily requirement of human gore, why not be proactive about it? Better him than me.
I haven’t read James Payne referenced in the paragraph above, but The Better Angels of Our Nature is a very good book which I highly recommend. Still, the second half of this paragraph doesn’t quite ring true for me. Your thoughts?