Africa, in its past, need not have an intangible God. God existed and was quite clear that it would give and take away. Whether by oral tradition or by experience itself, people must have understood this.
Whether it was drought, floods, famine, disease, or the local predator, the written word was not needed to understand that: humans were just as dispensable and could die just like anything else, essentially we were not as important; God gives with the earth, the soil, the sun, and the rain, in fact God seems to be these things; God takes away with the destructive forces; and that is that.
Humans moved in search of better land or out of need. Eventually, the Middle East, incredible fertile lands, and a different geographic location gives a different “spin” on life. Suddenly, God seems to give more.
God continues to be found in the sun, in the cycle of the harvest, in the destructive force of nature, in the same old things, however, man now has an improved view of the self. Man is more than what it once was; man can be God. At least, some men are God.
The keyword is of course some. When God began to give more, man took advantage of the situation and some would be Gods, demigods, or God’s servants; others would continue in that state of poverty. It might stand to say that once God, in the sense of geographic location, gave more, humans became more selfish, more individualistic, more capable of opressing fellow men.
Nevertheless, in the Middle East, nature’s destructive force of drought and famine was still rampant, and man would return to that former state, from time to time.
Man continued moving and growing.
Europe and Asia were another step up. God, again being in part geographical location, gives more. Man repeats the same equation: increased sense of self; more division of people into the Godly like and the non-Godly like.
Until finally, man has such a grasp and hold on nature’s man-killing and man-opressive force, that man becomes capable of these other activities, activities which are also part of that Godly like section of people. Arts, science, industrial movements, and the like are part of activities which are more afluent when man has that extra time, or when man has more energy with a full stomach and three meals a day.
Man continued moving and growing.
Man continued to divide and divide itself into the Godly and the poor. First Europe and Asia experimented with this; later Europe transposed the model to the Americas, further increasing the dynamic.
The same patterns continued, although in different forms. In one time, one might say the West was dominant in the world; now perhaps it is the global North which dominates and opresses the global south.
The more God gave, the more man looked to itself as the only important thing in the world. The more God gave, the more that man began to live in an unnatural manner. The more God gave, more variability in richness and excessiveness and poverty and misery came.
Imagine that there is a rich man and woman with children, and that the parents are God and their children are mankind.
If we assume that the rich parents give their children lots of presents and spoil them, do the children not developed a heightened and excessive sense of self? Is being “spoiled rotten” inevitable? Perhaps not, but it certainly seems likely.
Such could be the case with mankind. A small percentage of mankind has been spoiled, spoiled to the point of being destructive to its own creator.
It will only be time before God’s other side, the side that takes away, is shown again.
To follow the analogy, in the future there may not be any capability (at least for many in the world) to “spoil” mankind with “presents” and other delights. Might we return to the original African “lifestyle”?
