EVOLVING EVIL

Worrying about Heaven and Hell is an old debate ever since there was a civilization in the West, and it swirled. The swirling was an old obsession among the Celts, found in a lot of their jewelry. It is now known as the Ying-Yang (in a strange philosophical re-engineering; yes Rome sent a senatorial delegation to the Middle Kingdom, and used Chinese silk).

Recent bibliographical and archeological discoveries show that “the important thing is that in the milieu of the Western imperial élite the “yin-yang” was well known”. It is of the Greco-Roman empire one is talking about here (See Giovanni Monastra, 2000). No wonder: the Celts camped in Northern Italy (Gallia Transalpina) for centuries, before the Romans more or less momentarily subdued them.

Roman republican civilization was hard, tough, uncompromising: “Dura Lex, Sed Lex” (Law Hard, But Law).  Roman republican philosophy brandished:”Homo homini lupus.” (Man wolf for man). Under the Principate (“empire”), this revelation turned to plain cruelty, as the plutocrats turned into wolves, and men into sheep. All was black, or red. What happened to the yellow, or white?

Roman “Ying Yang” symbol (somehow I could not copy it at this point).

The law had insured the loving side in republican Rome. Under the Principate, a lot of the law had been superseded through superstition (first imperial cult, then cult of the emperor as enforcer of God). So the law could not bring enough love. There was a love deficit.

It was time to re-establish humanism, and fundamentalist Christianity, interpreted as a religion of love, allowed to do just that (for example the law ordered to execute highway bandits, and the Christians forgave them instead: it was an ethical rebellion; drawback: highways became too dangerous for normal trade and travelling) .

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The Franks readjusted the love-hate mix better, by eliminating slavery from the Greco-Roman civilization, but enforcing the fascism of the Dura-Lex-Sed-Lex in the German civilization. That was best demonstrated when they nationalized the church to pay for a giant “European” army to crush the “Saracens“. The Christian hierarchy wanted to excommunicate Charles (Martel), but reminded itself it was not the boss (in subsequent conflicts with kings and emperors, the Church never came out on top).

The Franco-Greco-Roman blend was also a blend of heaven and hell, as Nietzsche more or less pointed out (in vaguer terms, since specific historical coordinates escape him, as he is more a philologist than an historian).

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Fast forward 12 centuries. Maupertuis introduced natural selection and evolution  (attributed by many Anglo-Saxons to Darwin, 120 years later, because Darwin spoke their language, and also because Darwin  loathed to quote his predecessors, including his own grandfather, something which was reproached to him at the time; Wallace, publishing a year before Darwin, insisted many of the ideas of evolution were due to Lamarck, so he became  less known ). These questions of priority are not to be neglected, as they are the coordinates of the functions which depict the evolution of thought itself.

It is the of the evolution of the thoughts about heaven and hell this treatise will entertain, and it is of the essence of the matter how they came about. Because within the chronology, logic is to be found (a principle that ought to be adopted by logicians, let it be said in passing).

As Maupertuis put it: “Chance one might say, turned out a vast number of individuals; a small proportion of these were organized in such a manner that the animals organs could satisfy their needs. A much greater number showed neither adaptation nor order; These last have all perished — thus the species which we see today are but a small part of all those that a blind destiny has produced.” [Vénus physique (1745).]

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The fundamental idea and conclusion of the considerations of the present author is that heaven and hell are thought systems which arose through the evolution of biological systems. (As we know that biology uses the most subtle aspect of Quantum Physics, delocalization, and the application of Maupertuis’ Principle of Least action that Feynman called “Sum Over Histories”, biological systems address the greatest subtleties known to science.)

Some may object that I talk about “thoughts” when there was no thinking yet. Well, I guess that Descartes’ famous “I think, therefore it rains”, will have to be reconsidered by the competent authorities…

Heaven and hell have the strongest reasons to be. Those reasons are deeper than all other organizational principles of life. Even the Will to Power (even in the most general, metaphysical version of Nietzsche).