Why Our Ancestors Were Saner Than We Are Today

"The Ghost of a Flea" by Blake (1810s)

There is a fundamental difference between people today and our ancestors that has emerged, and sped up, over the last few decades. In the past we belonged to our communities and barely comprehended what was happening elsewhere in the world. When Rome’s Vestal flame was extinguished by Christian fanatics in the 390s CE people in India were unaware of this great tragedy and shed no tears. When Islamic invaders swept through India destroying Buddhist monasteries and wiping an ancient religion from its homeland in the 12th century CE the people of Europe knew almost nothing of it. When the last Viking settler died in Greenland in the 15th century only a few Icelanders could have guessed what had happened. 

By contrast today, here in Sydney, it seems nearly everyone I know is too interested in what is happening in far away places. For many, now that Game of Thrones has finished, there is a new Westeros (the USA) to think about. It is as if the Democrats are the Starks and the Republicans are Lannisters. It makes sense for Australians to be interested in US affairs up to a point, eg, Australians should want the US to have a strong military to match a strong alliance. But that is not the focus of so many Australians, because they are too invested in the stories which spit out of their televisions, their webpages and their social media. Their minds are not at home, and by living through stories happening in far away places they’ve launched mental and digital crusades in worlds that are basically illusory. 

I have begun to realise this is how I tend to be too. A few weeks ago I was upset because I had seen a television show about how irrigation is doing terrible things to communities living upstream in rural Australia. I saw footage of thousands of fish who had died awful deaths due to poor water quality, and locals expressing their disgust at the horrible situation, and I saw interviews with Aboriginal people who had dreamtime stories about their part of the river, which was now almost dried up. It was indeed upsetting, but what was I really going to do about it? It was in a place I had never been and had no real intention of going to. My angst was impotent. 

Meanwhile, I live near one of the most polluted river systems in Australia; so polluted that people haven’t swam there in decades. A few days ago I realised I have power over that situation. I can join a local community group and help with the continuing efforts to clean it up and encourage wildlife to live there. I can make a difference in my local area, but when I invest myself in stories from far away places I stop living where I am and start half-living somewhere else. 

It is true that we can "take a stand" for what seems right or true, and "raise awareness", but we will be far more powerful at doing these things if we do them within our local area. Supporting causes from faraway lands is not necessarily without merit, but too often it is a waste of mental time and energy. 

Stories from faraway places might be more gripping and dramatic than the ones nearby, but we have agency in the ones nearby. The world we can physically feel and touch is the world that matters and is real. The digital world, with its stories from distant shores, is filtered and intangible and we live in it like wraiths. 

Our ancestors mostly lived in the world they were in. Sometimes they thought overmuch about the afterlife and the supernatural, sometimes they got lost in their own fantasies, but mostly they lived in this physical world, and did not fret overmuch about what was happening in places where they had no agency. 

We are going mad because we think and know too much about what is happening in other domains. We have choices, we can live in the physical world of our here and now, or we can live like bots and half-beings in the digital world. If we know the digital world is a game, like Skyrim, that can be a nice break from reality, but if we fool ourselves into thinking the digital-made world is real (even though it might describe what is real in distant lands) then we risk walking down a path of illusion.

Written by M' Sentia Figula (aka Freki), find me at neo polytheist and romanpagan.wordpress.com