Mind Nomad Writing

When the conditions are right and smoke from all the burning tires is blowing out to sea, one does not have to strain too hard to see what remains in the major cities. While our eye-like organs take more time to filter images through the dimly lit skyline, with some patience the picture will eventually come into focus. And once it does, one does not need to strain your brain-like organ too much either as you work to deduce what remains of our ancestors’ way of life. Through the haze you will observe a handful of standing structures, those that were preserved beyond their utility. It makes no difference which cities you study – it could be Paris, Rome, Los Angeles, Nairobi, or Dubai – each one will contain some combination of a religious place of worship and a court room, or in some cases a multipurpose building that housed them both.

A review of the written history and cultural artifacts from the past reveals that while our forebearers may have used different terms and definitions for these places, their function and meaning during those times was distinctly similar across varying arbitrary associative groupings. Regardless of the terminology of physical location these settings were constructed to regulate large and unsustainable populations. Similar to the ancient concepts of ‘sun and moon’ of ‘father and mother’ these hubs served to counterbalance one another, just as two opposite ends of a magnet. 

Readers even more practiced in the art of interpreting ancient texts will likely be familiar with many other examples our predecessors relied on to make sense of the world: “dog and cat, summer and winter, peace and war, rain or shine.” While we moderners have no embodied experiences with these strange concepts one only needs to conceptualize these pairings as compliments of one another. Our previous permutations grasped very little of the true nature of our existence. Their brain-like organs were not yet developed enough to tolerate this. Hence, they often relied on rough analogies to help them mentally navigate through life.

This is clearly borne out as one sifts through the mediating forces of the ‘Houses of Worship’ and the ‘Courts of Law.’ Variously known as churches, synagogues, mosques, cathedrals, and so on the former defined morality and outlined humanity’s imaginary relationship to a figure/figures/power that they posited stood above time and created all that is (again, recall here that the brain-like organ at the time was really still quite primitive). The latter, sometimes known as tribunals, justice centers, judicates, and so on, took up their role to administer the legal norms and rules that were meant to manage the population. In tandem, these structures, while seemingly dichotomous, were aligned and worked in concert to arbitrate and determine the ethics of the population.

The fact that these were among the final smattering of buildings left standing when our species finally stepped out from under the crushing weight of ethics tells us all we need to know about the value these structures once provided to ancient peoples. Careful reconstruction of parts of old manuscripts has helped in piecing together the timeline of those final years. During those times we now know that the remnants across the world instituted agreements to use these buildings as shelters. These various associative groupings refrained from raising these centers in some kind of rudimentary reverence for what they had then termed as ‘the sanctity of their purpose in preserving hope and justice.’ While these loquacious ways of reasoning may be difficult to grasp in light of our present cognition and circumstances, our ancestors seemed to be quite loyal to these concepts.

However, we need not harbor too much appreciation nor respect for them because our ongoing analysis of the traces of events we can decipher points to a fairly rapid and ghastly collapse of these structures in practice. As the survival strain grew and resources dwindled, our ancestors eventually made use of their brain-like organs to identify that these structures were both a tool and a trap. Those that acted quickest either fled or assumed their throne as the chief arbiter of ethics, combining the regulatory powers of the separate structures under one new system.

As you’ve likely heard in the oral histories passed down over time, much blood was shed and many lives were lost in the throws of this progression. And, as the oral history also reflects, these were the times in which our species underwent the necessary growth to shed the burden of ethics. While our ancestors were cursed with brain-like organs with shockingly limited functionality, the patterns that played out during these trying times helped cultivate the necessary adaptations. Advanced thinkers (relative to their time) began to pose questions like, “How can a consistent definition of ethics exist if it changes based on region? Language? Belief system? Generation? What makes it just to rape and kill this associative grouping (back then they utilized the old world language term ‘countreymen’) when it is forbidden to do so with another? How can it be decided by one person which newborns will be eaten to preserve the species? Less evolved humans also started to ask questions, wondering about things like the existence of God (God was an important mythological deity/all-powerful being from their folklore). 

As the questions proliferated, so too the necessary evolution adaptations unfurled until our species wisened up and abandoned these remnant structures, leaving them as lonely giants to arbitrate the ethics for whatever still remains there. Previous historians, albeit ones with larger portions of the nervous system still intact, commented that these were ‘ironically sad’ times. They stated that it was a ‘sad irony’ that it took these extreme circumstances of personal experience before humanity could question these structures that had arbitrated on a larger level for millennia. While this stance can be understood, today we maintain that these were the requirements for change. Growth and escaping the unrelenting grip of ethics could only occur with such conditions.

#Vestigial