The History of Altruism PDF
Preview The History of Altruism
The History of Altruism By Robert Villegas The History of Altruism By Robert Villegas ©Copyright 2016 Robert Villegas All Rights Reserved. No part of this book can be reproduced in any manner without written approval from the copyright holder or his legal representatives. ISBN-13: 978-1530844135 ISBN-10: 1530844134 Library of Congress Control Number 2016938863 Published in the United States of America Dedicated to Living Life Introductory Comment Table of Contents Introduction Dissecting Altruism Mankind Under Siege The Prehistory of Altruism The Psychology of Envy – the Witch Doctor The New Reality and Cannibalism The Anti-Conceptual Mentality The Shriveling Self Determinism The History of Altruism Achilles and his Mind/Body Split – A New Man and a New Age Christianity Middle Ages The Rituals of Sacrifice Modern Philosophy - Human Sacrifice Goes Secular Poison, Sickness and Pragmatism Self-Shaming and Miracles The Altruism Bomb Altruism as Mind Control Is Altruism Destroying Free Trade? Is Altruism Destroying America? Terrorism as Human Sacrifice The Global Moral Crisis Introductory Comment The author acknowledges that the term “altruism” (otherwise known as “otherism”) is a modern invention. The term did not exist during several of the eras discussed in this book. However, in view of the fact that altruism and human sacrifice are essentially the same concept (one is necessary for the other), he uses the terms interchangeably regardless of era. Introduction “No man can become genuinely interested in things he has never seen and cannot imagine…”[1] The above quote is another way of saying you don’t know what you don’t know. I would add that you can’t fight an enemy who is hiding in the shadows completely immune to your opposition. Many people don’t realize that their most deadly enemy has seldom been seen and cannot be imagined. In my view that enemy is altruism; and what is not imagined about it is that it is evil. If this is true, they are not aware of the principles that are destroying them. They are practicing a morality that brings only deadly results while they continue to expect things to get better; and even worse, they consider themselves to be moral while they are acting as their own destroyers. Altruism and its precursor, human sacrifice, represent an institution that is still active in virtually every culture on the planet. When men emulate the gods, they engage in ritual human sacrifice which involves the giving up of values (including human life) for the sake of others. Over the centuries, human sacrifice became part of moral living as people sought to act in ways that pleased the gods, who, through their representatives, took human sacrifice and made it value sacrifice. The ritual was based upon the principle that man was owned by the collective and that the only moral act was for man to do as the collective demanded which means sacrificing his values (even his children) on the pyre in order to appease the gods. Nigel Davies tells us: “The gods were squarely ranged on the side of those who found an occasional sacrifice “necessary”. The original members of the Greek pantheon treated each other with a brutality that makes the gods of Mexico seem by comparison soft- hearted. Like the Mexican Rain God, Tlaloc, and like Baal, they preferred little children as offerings. Greek religion derives from a primeval couple, Heaven (Uranos) and Earth (Gaia). Their children were collectively known as the Titans. One of these, Thetis, was wedded to Peleus, who was a mortal and could not, according to the rules, beget an immortal son. Thetis was determined to have a child that was immortal, seven children were born to her and one after the other she threw them into the fire or into a boiling cauldron. But at last Peleus put his foot down, and the infant Achilles was rescued from this fate. The tale of child victims continues with Chronos, the most powerful of the hideous breed of Titans. Uranos and Gaia warned him that he would be overthrown by his own children; he therefore swallowed them as fast as they were born. But when the youngest, Zeus, came into the world, he grew up and made war on his father and his fellow Titans; for ten years the battle raged, but at last the thunderbolts of Zeus triumphed. The Titans were then imprisoned in Tartarus, with the exception of Atlas, whose prodigious strength served for ever afterwards to hold up the sky.”[2] As above, so below. Human ritual, as we will learn, was engaged by traumatized men as they sought to understand and emulate the gods of their religions. How they were traumatized and why they decided to engage in periodic “stage acting” that amounted to mindless, soulless repetition of murder is thought by many to be a question for psychologists. However, I maintain that these questions can be answered, as well as many other questions, not only by science, but specifically by archaeology, anthropology, and other related sciences – but also by epistemology, the branch of philosophy that helps man understand how he develops knowledge and justifies action. Davies also tells us, “In essence human sacrifice was an act of piety. Both sacrificer and victim knew that the act was required, to save the people from calamity and the cosmos from collapse.”[3] Piety connotes goodness and love of God, submission to and reverence for God and the sacred. If a person sacrifices out of piety then, it is assumed that the sacrifice is intended to accomplish some good and even, in some cases, the sacrifice, because it is tied to God, is considered intrinsically good. Yes, terrorists kill piously. They consider their submission to their god to be good and if their god demands that they kill representatives of Satan, then their god will reward them in the afterlife. Tying piety to sacrifice, telling man that his sacrifice is “an act of piety” provides a strong ethical motive, one tied to “the good” and even to love of God and humanity. Yet, notice that even murderous terrorists today consider themselves to be pious. They are always thinking about
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