Seeker - chapter one - Cause and Effect

Cause and Effect
When humans first began to be human, they started by looking around and seeing the world in a way that was more complex than their former animal simplicity. Thunder was scary, lightning was mysterious, fire could be useful when it wasn't killing them. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes were rare and unusual enough to stand out in their perception of the world. The movements of their prey animals kept them on the move, and the animals that preyed on them had to be watched for, avoided if possible, and fended off if necessary. Seasons changed - usually - and those changes required changes on their part if they were to survive.

The idea of cause and effect may have been one of the first 'ah ha' moments that triggered conscious thought. If a particular piece of wood proved useful in killing prey it might be better to keep it than to have to look for another one the next time they needed to hunt. A particular rock, when accidentally broken, formed a sharp edge that made separating hide from flesh and portioning that flesh simpler. Learn which rocks did this and keep some handy.

If lightning struck a tree, or dry grass, it caused fire sometimes. If that fire was unchecked it could drive them from their camp or kill them, but in small, controlled form it made that camp warm and kept predators away at night. When a piece of meat fell in the embers unnoticed, but was found later by its savory aroma, rather than let it go to waste it was tasted and found to be easier to chew and more flavorful. Keeping fire handy now served an additional use. When lightning did not provide fire, in time, observation of cause and effect led to discovery of another combination of rocks or sticks and tendon which would do so.

If grain was left on the ground it might sprout and create more grain, or it might attract birds or animals which could be caught and eaten, or, much later, kept for eggs or milk or meat at their convenience. Caring for these captured animals and fowl was easier if there was a degree of trust and dependence. Gradual understanding of cause and effect was making their lives easier, so they started looking for it all around them.

Eventually the idea of using the wool instead of the whole hide led to maintaining flocks of creatures which might serve no other purpose but milk and wool, but keeping those flocks under control while making sure they were well fed was too time consuming for a small tribe and perhaps one day, after finding an orphan wolf pup, instead of killing it out of hand they decided to raise it to trust them and work with them, as they had seen wolf packs work together. It's just a thought, since there is no record of precisely how wolves were first domesticated.

Back to cause and effect. A crude sort of pecking order must have stayed with them from their more beast-like times. The best hunter, or the strongest arm, would be looked to as a sort of pack leader, often for no other reason than fear. Survival meant keeping intact as much as possible, and fighting among themselves could mean damage or death. Therefore the strongest might only have to prove his prowess once in many years. If his leadership proved profitable to the tribe - good eating, good homes, etc, he might keep the leadership even after he was no longer strongest. Wisdom, canny thinking, ability to plan ahead and see connections - cause and effect - became as invaluable as brute strength.

At the same time formal tribal life was forming, patterns of behavior - basic rules of how the members interacted - also had to develop. A sort of crude courtesy and awareness of each other's needs would be essential for living in close quarters, especially as the tribe grew. Taking care of the young would of course be vital, but taking care of each other if there was an injury or illness would begin to be practical as the tribe grew more successful, more so as the tribe became more rooted in one place. Where a tribe on the move might have to leave a badly injured member behind, in a stable situation, looking after these tribe members would allow them to retain those skills and genes within the tribe. Observation of cause and effect would have shown them that some parents produced better offspring, so keeping those traits within the tribe was a survival trait. Mating outside of the tribe, however, also kept the tribe healthy, in ways they observed but did not yet understand.

The more cause and effect became useful, vital parts of survival, the more they would see it in their surroundings, sometimes erroneously. Tides, phases of the moon, the yearly solar dance were duly noted over time, and the information was saved carefully, and with increasing accuracy, if not always understood correctly. If one tribe was at war with another and a bright shooting star went by the night before a definitive battle, the tribe which won could be forgiven for believing that it had been a sign that they were meant to win, while the losing side, just as reasonably might develop a terror of shooting stars, seeing them as omens of bad fortune.
From the beginning, as these early humans watched their world change they might have told stories among themselves to explain why lightning struck this tree rather than that one, or the volcano erupted after a particular tribe member was falsely accused and executed, or the crop improved after a chieftain took a bride from another tribe. Stories of ghosts of dead warriors coming back to warn of coming threats, or spirits who must be appeased to ensure the return of the sun after a long winter would be ways of explaining the inexplicable. Cause and effect was an observable phenomenon, but not always clearly interpreted.

As their lives became simpler due to harvesting grain and fruit, and more effective hunting methods were found to provide meat and fish, they had more time to consider cause and effect. Sometimes the chieftain was the strongest arm but not the swiftest thinker . If he or she showed ability toward understanding herbs and the best way to stitch a wound or set a broken limb they might be seen as witch or healer or both. If another was more skilled in weaving stories of cause and effect they might become what we now would call a Shaman. Each of these skilled members would find their time was found more valuable put to these uses than in regular tribal work, and they would find a certain esteem in the tribe. These skilled and unique tribesmen and women might, in time, gain a greater say in how the tribe was run, with more food and better shelter with less work on their own part. This pleasant state of affairs had to have some effect on the outlook of these personages.

The healers, who might have found singing a certain song helped them time the stirring of their potions, in time would "discover" that the melody or words seem to have a part in the efficacy of the outcome. Keeping the information of which herbs, harvested at which phases of the moon their secret would be in their own best interests, and would be passed only to a chosen few who would succeed them. The concept of 'information is power' would have started about now.
The shamans likewise would have started altering their approach. Their stories would start to weave ever more complicated threads of cause and effect, which, amazingly, only they fully understood. If they had already shown themselves correct in some ways, the rest, caught up in the day-to-day grind of survival, might give them credit for seeing what they could not, and depend on them to sort out what they needed to do to stay alive.

No doubt many of these Shamans were honestly doing their best for the tribe, but just as likely many more were looking out for their own best interests. Some were able to collect followers who willingly did whatever the Shaman told them and believed whatever they said. Soon they had to decide whether to challenge the chieftains for leadership or settle in a sort of uneasy truce, leaving the 'mundane' running of the tribe to the chief, but retaining 'spiritual' power to themselves. Since their strength was not as obvious as that of the chief, their best means of maintaining their position would, of necessity, involve building on the tribes awe of their ability to see the best path forward, placate the spirits and communicate with these unseen beings. Naturally, the more spirits there were, the more power the Shamans controlled, so in no time there were spirits of trees, of mountains, of streams, of bear and deer and lion and so on.
The tribe was too busy surviving to try to understand why and wherefore, so they left that to those who seemed to understand and simply followed their lead. As time went on they trusted these 'spiritual' leaders to guide them, without giving much real thought to the reasons why they now had to sacrifice some of their food, goods or even livestock or children to the spirits - it seemed to work, so they did as they were told. If a tribesman failed to follow instruction, questioned the orders of the Shaman, or their right to make such rules, and then mysteriously vanished, or had their crops fail or livestock die, it convinced the rest to follow more closely, lest they in turn suffer. Thus the basic needs of the tribe for food, shelter and future generations was combined with the rational recognition of cause and effect to create the irrational rule by fear we know today as religion. The twin rules of secular and spiritual remain in uneasy balance to this day.

For centuries the secular side has remained more or less unchanged in detail and methods, since territorial needs, food, shelter and producing progeny are requirements that have remained essentially unchanged. The spiritual side, however, being insubstantial, and dependant on the willingness of the populace to believe, has undergone many changes. The one common thread has generally been that anyone who threatens the status quo is a menace to be obliterated. If they won't join you, beat them - or kill them, preferably in as public a way as possible, to dissuade others from going astray. Paying members of the populace to turn in suspected heretics, either in preferential treatment, actual gold, or aid to the extended family made this job easier. There are always those who will turn on a neighbor for profit, or revenge. Turning the populace against itself was a sure-fire way of remaining in control, as no one wanted to be the next victim.

Over time there would be those who had different ideas of how the spiritual side of life should be dealt with, some stricter, some more relaxed, some rigidly codified, some encouraging self expression. These off-shoots often produced great upheavals in the predominant hierarchy in existence, which reacted violently to this threat to its power. These branches were often meant to bring the spiritual back into its original purpose of helping the people understand the world and their place in it, but generally degenerated into yet another form of rule by fear. The few which remained truly free of rule by fear are still gaining converts today, even as the others have to fight internal corruption, schism and eroding support.

One of the most likely members of the population to see through the veil of mumbo-jumbo was the third form of power - the Healer. These wise women and men were frequent targets of the Shaman/Church. Despite their obvious usefulness to the community, they also were a threat, because their ability to heal and their way of seeing the world was often totally out of the direct control of the church. Even those who followed all the strictures laid down, attended services, tithed and spoke no ill of the church were likely to be victimized, simply because their knowledge lay outside of the bounds of the sacred. Some of these thinkers were not even drawn to healing, but were interested in the cause and effect of the natural world - the stars, the sun, the moon, the tides, etc. These healers and rational thinkers became the roots of science, and have long had to deal with both persecution by the church and demands for power from the secular government. For obvious reasons they are generally averse to following either a spiritual or governmental path.

These 'thinkers' are not confined to healing and science. There have always been ordinary citizens who cannot find it in themselves to blindly follow the rules laid down by the church. They have an innate understanding of the methods used to keep the 'flock' in check and simply refuse to be ruled by fear. They find the universe too vast and fascinating to be confined by the necessarily 'rural' constrictions of a belief system designed for only one world. The idea of a violent and horrific afterlife for those who refuse to follow rules laid down by mere mortals is repugnant, and a blandly insipid afterlife consisting of everlasting worship is absurd. Humans invented spirits and then gods to explain what could not otherwise be explained. The cause and effect most spirits and gods were devised to explain have long since been clarified, but these fanciful inventions, solidified by habit, surrounded by centuries of ceremony, became entrenched in self-serving rules and cruelty. They lost their credibility among the lucid thinkers.

Many of these thinkers, therefore abandon whatever 'faith' they might have been brought up in, in favor of pure reason, logic and belief in only the tangible. These usually refer to themselves as atheists, and some are content with this rational world view. The 'now' is all there is, and all there ever will be, and once they die they are done and the world will go on without them. They reject any and all suggestion that there is something beyond what they can see and touch and measure.

Then there are the seekers, some call themselves agnostic. They reject the unwholesome rigidity of organized religion, but are not totally convinced that the tactile world is all there is to the universe. They may sense a higher power, a force beyond themselves, but they are not sure what it is, or how to approach it, what to do about it. Some may spend years poring over the rules and ideas of many religions, looking for one which 'fits', or taking bits and pieces from each and building a sort of patchwork belief system of their own. These seekers rarely settle happily into any one existing system, because once a belief system generates rules, it gradually becomes mired in the same sort of codified regimentation as the churches they reject.