The world is immensely complex. Since we can grasp only a small part of reality, we must concentrate on those things which are most important to us. Alone and together, we rationalize, simplify, and abstract, building world pictures to make sense of how things work.
Edward Harrison, in “Masks of the Universe,” makes this point vividly. “The universes are our models of the Universe. They are great schemes of intricate thought—grand cosmic pictures—that rationalize human experience; these universes harmonize and invest with meaning the rising and setting Sun, the waxing and waning Moon, the jeweled lights of the night sky, the landscape of rocks and trees and clouds. Each universe is a self-consistent system of ideas, marvelously organized, interlacing most of what is perceived and known. A universe is a mask fitted on the face of the unknown Universe.”
Society builds a model of the universe out of conflicts between our world pictures, mirroring the skills, learning, and vocation of all who make up society. As we undertake more complex tasks and grow more powerful, our universe becomes more complex and more powerful.
Early people developed languages and talked to each other about their experiences and surroundings. They imagined that everything in their world lived and thought as they did. As they became aware of each other as conscious beings, they personified everything else—the storm spirit, the tree spirit, the rock spirit. They grew. “The more the early people spiritualized the magic universe, the more humanlike they became themselves.”
They developed moral codes of behavior, discovering that untruthful, abusive, disobedient, excessively selfish, and homicidal people had about as much chance of surviving as the proverbial snowball in hell.
In “The Creative Explosion,” John Pfeiffer described how people living in southern Europe 20,000 years ago handled the stresses of belonging to hunter-gatherer societies.
Humans followed the migratory animals and learned to live off of them. Larger and larger groups of hunters assembled for mass hunts. These hunters had to devise rules for the distribution and the storing of a huge amount of meat after the kill. It’s very likely that the first large-scale social organizations in history started this way.
They learned to face “the old problem of people living continually under the tension of needing one another and at the same time keeping their distance…” in order to achieve a reasonably stable society.
Mathematicians have devised a simple algorithm to measure the potential for conflict among people. Conflict increases exponentially with the rise in the number of two-person relationships. This explains why traditional villages and tightly knit extended families, such as the Hutterites, split apart when the group’s population nears 100. At that point, the potential for conflict becomes too great for a small society to handle. But, most human societies didn’t remain small.
Bands of hunter-gatherers established their own territories while remaining in contacts with other bands in informal networks extending over large areas. Flint, jasper, amber, and seashells were carried for hundreds of miles and traded. Marriages were made. As a result, networks of bands exchanged valuable information from many sources on a regular basis. Networks of networks—supernetworks of Upper Paleolithic people—formed. At some point, the networks were forced to specialize in order to avoid excess conflict and information overload. Hierarchies evolved. The decision-makers became the priests and shamans of the new, more complex community.
Toolmaking shaped the emerging society. “Standardization seems to have been restricted to relatively limited areas. Within these areas, tools tended to be shaped according to distinctive local designs. On the other hand, definite tool-kit differences existed between areas. In other words, tool-making diversity decreased locally and increased regionally. The pattern is significant, suggesting a shift from the lifestyle of small hunter-gatherer bands to something rather more complicated.
As human societies grew, human images of the spirit world gained power. The human world and the spirit world became rigidly hierarchical. Some spirits took on the attributes and power of entire human societies. The greater spirits ran the universe, showing humans its complexity and grandeur, giving them greater control over their world through insights into the vastness of space and time, and the ability to plan and undertake great quests of discovery. Societies combined into larger societies, often through the use of force, acceding to the demands of the superior godling and its society. These became nations and empires, and their people worshipped powerful gods. The mythic society was born.
The myths tell of great battles between gods and their human followers—the stories of new cultures triumphing over the old. They tell of the creation and destruction of the world. And they tell of the human role in the universe—the kingdom founded, the war fought, the child nourished, the city raised, the tale told, the song sung—all at the behest of the gods.
Once in a while, a society appears that glorifies one god at the expense of all the others in the cosmic pantheon. The people become monotheistic. Creator, ruler of the universe, fount of goodness—the One God becomes everything to its people. The concept of “the universe” takes on a new reality. It leads people to the universe of science. They begin by asking the question, “What hath God wrought?” Then they get answers.
Technology extends our ability to act on nature and to interact with one another by allowing us to master a wider range of energy and material resources, which can then by transformed into useful social structure. A technological innovation makes the miraculous normal. It reshapes our values and mores as it charges our imagination with the possible. Technology becomes the driver of societal change.
Laszlo shows how our needs and wants drive the development of society. “As the needs of survival become filled in society, people experience other needs, including the ‘higher’ needs for aesthetic enjoyment, intellectual satisfaction, and ultimate meaning. And as people pursue the satisfaction of these needs, society acquires a cultural superstructure, connected with, but no longer subservient to, the feedback and catalytic cycles that maintain a social system in its environment.”