Julie Rowe on Year of Polygamy Podcast

[_Kishkumen]

I view any post here as an invitation to respond, and my response is simply that I don't agree firstly with the current orthodoxy among scholars of the ancient Mediterranean that Zoroastrianism was all that influential on Judaism (so few can actually read Zoroastrian texts, which is a significant problem when what few translations there are obscure a lot and are very old, and still even fewer understand that most of the Zoroastrian corpus on which this claim is based come from centuries after the period in question; in any case, it's probably a more technical a discussion than you want to have). One could better make the argument with Manicheism and Christianity, but even there you run into a chicken-egg dilemma. It is an interesting problem, which perhaps doesn't interest you as it does me, but I find an actual discussion of the mechanism of idea transmission to be absent from any of these discussions and from intellectual history in general. Augustine's example is interesting because it offers a glimpse into the thinking, however refracted through a later lens, of someone who moved around the world of these big ideas; and what I see in him is someone whose acceptance of certain ideas (like Manicheism) was conditioned by the kinds of questions he was asking—but why was he asking those questions and not others? It was not the idea alone but the personality involved that determined the reception of the idea.

Thanks for sharing that. I would have preferred this the first time around, but I am very happy to have it now. I understand that most of these arguments are speculative and problematic. Yes, it's the commonly shared assumption, and I don't have a problem with that. Now I am aware that you do. I guess what took me aback was what seemed at the time to be a condescending reaction based on the apparent assumption that the only thing I have informing my position on this is something I read in passing a few times. In response to what you say above, I am more skeptical of the idea that there were strong boundaries dividing these traditions that we commonly observe as a matter of convenience. Judaism? Christianity? Manicheism? Completely different things? Different versions of more or less the same thing? Is St. Augustine's opinion on the matter definitive? I don't know. And even though Zoroastrianism is significantly different from the other terms here, I don't think that the various communities were isolated or did not share ideas.

The mechanisms by which Julie Rowe makes it back to Zarathustra seem unlikely to me, but obviously it's an interpretive question.

Well, yes, if you continue to articulate the issue in the most ridiculous sounding terms, then of course it looks dumb.

Where we most likely disagree is more fundamental: I don't really think ideas are as significant as they appear.

OK. Good. Yes, we probably disagree. On the cosmic dualism thing, I am granting as true the existence of a dualism in which the morality is an integral element. Yes, there are undoubtedly other kinds. To say that when A met B, C thing happened and that may have been a bad thing is something that ought not to be so exceptionable, in my view, but I seem to have provoked you with my casual use of hyperbole, which admittedly looked very moralizing, although I would still push back if you were to insist that I was viewing these things as absolute evils and existential threats that had to be wiped off the planet in order to save the world.

It is not to say ideas never matter. I just don't think they are very powerful motivators in general and serve other functions.

Ah, OK. Difference of opinion. I am not sure how far apart we are on this. My guess is that you are reacting to my casually hyperbolic language. Fair enough.

I do completely agree, however, with your sage advice to steer clear of people who talk a lot about Satan. I don't really care if people think Satan and his demons exist and I see it as basically harmless as an idea. More dangerous to me are people who are possessed by ideas, whatever the idea might be, because they impose a kind of second reality, which is derived from their numinous obsessions and in which they are the only inhabitant, onto the one derived from the shared experiences of other people, the one which other people inhabit. Those possessed of ideas in this way start by reducing everything to the idea and in the worst cases end by reducing people to it. I don't think the idea that possesses them matters as much as the fact that they are possessed. I know a lot of people, as I'm sure you do as well, who believe Satan is the father of evil and that his evil spirits are out to get us, but they just don't seem to do anything about it. Someone like Julie Rowe, on the other hand, seems rather possessed by the thought.

I love what you have to say here. Very thought-provoking and worthy of reflection. I would say that I have seen lots of people who are possessed of different kinds of ideas. Most of them are harmless and annoying. Fandom is arguably in the mix here. People who are possessed of their vision of a certain musician or movie franchise can be very annoying, too. And, honestly, Julie Rowe is mostly annoying, as are most people who are caught up in these things. Is there a difference between people who are possessed of the idea of Satan and those who are possessed with the thought of Teletubbies? Is the choice of fixations important? That is an arguable point.

And, here's the thing, I don't begrudge Julie Rowe or the vast majority of the rest of these annoying people the right to engage in their annoying activities. If one wants to drop the equivalent of a night on the town on an energy session with Julie, "you do you," as the saying goes. I don't find that all that entertaining, and indeed I find it really annoying. That does not mean that I, as a general rule, expend a lot of energy on it or seek to oppose it with anything approaching a concerted effort.

That said, I do see the potential for harm, and I have my suspicions that the choice of obsessions matters. How many Jedi do we have running about doing things that end in the murder of innocent children in pursuit of their Jedi objectives? I hope we never have to find out, but maybe we just need the right ones to come along.

[_Physics Guy]

On the transmission of ideas, either longitudinally through time from age to age or horizontally between communities and cultures, one question occurs to me. Language barriers? I realize that ancient scholars did learn multiple languages, but I'm still imagining that ideas might only cross from culture to culture over the isolated narrow bridges represented by one or two interested polyglots who picked up something from one culture and popularized it in another. That kind of narrowing of the interpretive gene pool, as it were—every Latin speaker getting their picture of a Jewish idea from Jerome, or something—might have allowed rapid distortion of the original idea.

[_Physics Guy]

I have a lot of sympathy for Kishkumen's original post. Belief in evil spirits seems to me to be a sort of evil spirit itself.

One of its sources in Christianity, though, is surely the fact that the gospels record Jesus doing a lot of exorcism. Regardless of how authentic those stories are as history, they include plausible ancient descriptions of cases that we would classify today as neurological or psychological illness. The theory of demons and devils may be used to explain all kinds of bad things in the world, but it seems to me that explaining mental illness must have been demon theory's killer app.

In all too many cases of mental illness the demon metaphor is appallingly apt even now. Taking it seriously as an explanation today would only be a culpable waste of resources in actually treating mental illness, but we're largely helpless even today to do much of that treatment. At least the Jesus stories of exorcism set a precedent for non-violent treatment. Jesus cast out demons by talking, not whipping.

I'm not saying this is the only issue in the religious history of demons. I'm just pointing out that it wasn't only a matter of philosophical memes fighting abstract battles for intellectual market share, like a mirror-world War in Heaven that the demons won by losing the first war. There were and are real phenomena that made and make people think, with some reason, that demons are real. I don't think we can accurately understand what people have believed about demons without taking this into account.

[_Kishkumen]

On the transmission of ideas, either longitudinally through time from age to age or horizontally between communities and cultures, one question occurs to me. Language barriers? I realize that ancient scholars did learn multiple languages, but I'm still imagining that ideas might only cross from culture to culture over the isolated narrow bridges represented by one or two interested polyglots who picked up something from one culture and popularized it in another. That kind of narrowing of the interpretive gene pool, as it were—every Latin speaker getting their picture of a Jewish idea from Jerome, or something—might have allowed rapid distortion of the original idea.

Excellent question, PG. Yes, as things move from language to language and culture to culture, things get changed in the process, just as you say. It helps to have insider information from writers like Josephus, who being Jewish, was also sufficiently learned in the Greek language and its literature to convey something about his own culture to others. Still, the vehicle he used ended up distorting the objects of his description. To describe anything as complex as a human culture to others is a daunting task even when it is a living culture; the distance of time, geography, and scant sources makes understanding the cultures of peoples in the past that much more challenging. People get it wrong all the time. It is rarer that they get it right.

So, I sympathize with the frustration others have regarding this problem. If this really grates on you, seeing someone like me swoop into a conversation talking about Zoroastrians, demons, and Julie Rowe all in the same breath is, from one point of view, kind of crazy. If I am going to do so, I should be ready to be blasted by people who know how problematic the exercise is. Doubtless I did not react ideally to the understandable pushback.

[_Kishkumen]

I have a lot of sympathy for Kishkumen's original post. Belief in evil spirits seems to me to be a sort of evil spirit itself.

One of its sources in Christianity, though, is surely the fact that the gospels record Jesus doing a lot of exorcism. Regardless of how authentic those stories are as history, they include plausible ancient descriptions of cases that we would classify today as neurological or psychological illness. The theory of demons and devils may be used to explain all kinds of bad things in the world, but it seems to me that explaining mental illness must have been demon theory's killer app.

In all too many cases of mental illness the demon metaphor is appallingly apt even now. Taking it seriously as an explanation today would only be a culpable waste of resources in actually treating mental illness, but we're largely helpless even today to do much of that treatment. At least the Jesus stories of exorcism set a precedent for non-violent treatment. Jesus cast out demons by talking, not whipping.

I'm not saying this is the only issue in the religious history of demons. I'm just pointing out that it wasn't only a matter of philosophical memes fighting abstract battles for intellectual market share, like a mirror-world War in Heaven that the demons won by losing the first war. There were and are real phenomena that made and make people think, with some reason, that demons are real. I don't think we can accurately understand what people have believed about demons without taking this into account.

Yes, what exactly is going on here with demons? I don't get it, honestly. So much there to look into, and I don't know how to explain it. It is fun to read Pliny the Elder for similar reasons. When you see what passed for medicine back in the day, it becomes less surprising that people blamed demons for illnesses and unusual behavior. But you are definitely right that there were real phenomena that came to be explained as caused by demons. In order for that to happen, there had to be a belief certain entities (spirits, angels, demigods, gods, etc.) that could influence human beings.

The Ancient Greeks, had such beliefs. A daimon was thought to have the power to influence someone's thoughts, emotions, and actions. So, too, could nymphs and gods. A person could be "seized" by a nymph or god and made to do things they otherwise would not do. I have not been able to find any consistent characterization of the kind of influence these supposed entities had. Different Greeks had different ideas, and even one author, such as Plato, might use the term daimon differently at different times. But, there does seem to be a widespread belief in the existence of such things and in their influence--sometimes dramatic--on human beings.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

PG,

Are you being literal or... metaphysical when discussing evil spirits and mental illness? It's a really interesting take, To be honest.

- Doc

[_Physics Guy]

I don’t believe in evil spirits, no. I’m just saying that belief in evil spirits is understandable if you think of mental illness. Some people with mental illnesses have dramatic and disturbing personality changes. Some hallucinate communications from entities that aren’t physically there. Pre-modern people trying to account for such things weren’t just being dumb when they thought of demons.

Some features of the demon theory might even be useful in a modern understanding. We don’t know exactly what brain phenomena generate normal psychological phenomena, so maybe some illnesses really do involve another personality taking over. Whatever it is could be the same kind of thing that I think of as my consciousness and personality—just a different one. Using the label “demon” for such a phenomenon might be apt.

What I don’t buy is that a “demon” in that sense could leap immaterially from my brain into somebody else’s. Or that it would have entered my brain from outside. Or been a fallen angel.

[_Kishkumen]

Understood. I did not take you to be saying that you believed in literal demons. Those are all interesting thoughts. There is an episode of the Brititsh crime drama "Wire in the Blood," in which investigators mistakenly believed that a perp had multiple personalities when he just had someone contacting him with instructions on what crimes to perform. There are so many different ways we can imagine "demons" operating, be they imaginary, other people imposing control, etc. What a fascinating realm of possibilities!

In any case, spirit warfare against demons is pretty popular with a certain set of Christians these days. I was surprised to find this was the case beginning about 10 years ago. I am talking about my own awareness, however. I have no idea what the history of this current phenomenon is.

[_Physics Guy]

I don't know how far back it goes, either, but a significant fraction of evangelicals seemed to be big on "spiritual warfare" back in the 1980s. It's an appealing kind of idea, after all. It turns real life into a sort of live-action role-playing game.

The science-fiction novella "The Miracle Workers" by Jack Vance presents a fallen colony world in which material technology has been almost totally forgotten, and is despised as primitive and irrational superstition, by humans who have developed psychological manipulation into an advanced art which they think of as the only real science. The new scientists are practitioners of hoodoo, and their stock in trade is demons, which are essentially just powerful memes. It's entertaining in the rather boyish way that all Vance's work is: all the characters are thin but the dialog is acerbic, the plot is tight, and the setting is mind-boggling.

[_Kishkumen]

I don't know how far back it goes, either, but a significant fraction of evangelicals seemed to be big on "spiritual warfare" back in the 1980s. It's an appealing kind of idea, after all. It turns real life into a sort of live-action role-playing game.

The science-fiction novella "The Miracle Workers" by Jack Vance presents a fallen colony world in which material technology has been almost totally forgotten, and is despised as primitive and irrational superstition, by humans who have developed psychological manipulation into an advanced art which they think of as the only real science. The new scientists are practitioners of hoodoo, and their stock in trade is demons, which are essentially just powerful memes. It's entertaining in the rather boyish way that all Vance's work is: all the characters are thin but the dialog is acerbic, the plot is tight, and the setting is mind-boggling.

Sounds like a fun summer read! Thanks!