Section 4 – March 1992

Just been reading a science fiction novel (on a writing day too – what a waste of time! But was it? It set me thinking, as everything and anything does, and I came up with two things:

The book had a battle between two versions of the Earth Goddess – one, the ‘dragon’, created ‘antibodies’ intended to cut human numbers down to size – ten thousand – to live as hunter-gatherers and let the wilderness regenerate; the other, the ‘tiger’, was the collected consciousness and intelligence of human-kind which would guide humanity into living sustainably and colonise the universe. I wanted the dragon to win, but I knew it would not. Why do I hate humanity so? Also, like the woman behind the dragon, I would want my little tribe of daughters and their spouses to be amongst the ten thousand. I noticed that the author, as usual, arranges for his pet characters to survive the sticky ends he metes out to millions of others.

Again, I got to wrestle with the question, ‘What am I?’, what is this presumably mortal and transient individual which wants to sort the world out? Why does it matter to me? Why am I writing this book? What sort of book is it, fact or fiction?

I think it’s all to do with the desire for immortality. My thesis guarantees immortality. At one point the author of the science fiction book said something to the effect that perhaps only thoughts are immortal – well that’s what I’m saying. We all (all? – me anyway) desire to be the consciousness that lives forever. But think how lonely, even boring, that would be. Imagine being God – all the consciousness there is gathered together. Suppose I am that. Suppose there is no one else besides me in the universe except as constructs of my own imagination. I wrote a piece once about the deity being so lonely it constructed out of its consciousness a semblance of multiple consciousnesses interacting just to pretend to itself it had company.

Being alive is that lonely. Think how desperate we are to communicate to others, to be received. Perhaps this is because there is no ‘other’, but we (‘I’ really) desperately badly want there to be one, at least one, hence the importance having that one special partner or soul-mate or, of course, Jesus would do just as well for that One Friend.

It is this kind of thinking that has led us to invent God. There is a quantum-mechanical version of the anthropic principle which says that nothing happens unless there is someone to observe it, therefore, before Man, even before the beginning of everything, there had to be a consciousness, a God, otherwise nothing would have happened. But, however logical or comforting such justifications for the existence of God may be, I cannot convince myself, or let the idea in by the tiniest crack. This is partly the result of a deeply-rooted pessimism I have: I cannot believe anything comforting because I suspect that I am kidding myself. I have tried all sorts of tricks to sneak reassuring possibilities into my credulity. One example follows.

To the extent that we know, or fear that it must be so, that we are each of us destined for death and oblivion, we might be expected to feel a considerable degree of detachment from what happens. ‘It’ (life, the universe and everything) shouldn’t matter very much. Since for many (all?) of us ‘It’ obviously matters a great deal, perhaps we have some hidden knowledge that oblivion is not our fate. Perhaps it is that hidden knowledge that has inspired me to write this book. But this too could be wishful thinking. Here I go again, optimism is not allowed, for which I generally blame my father.

I have been haunted for most of my life by the most dreadful fear of oblivion. My father told me the truth about death, ‘Nana has ceased to be. For him it is now as if he had never been born.’ What an abominably cruel thing to tell an impressionable child about one of the few people who had loved her and given her any sense of her own worth! I still boil with rage against my father for telling me that, even though I know he meant well. That sort of stark, scientific, facing up to reality was fashionable at the time. I was also told that religion was nonsense. There is no God or heaven, and anybody who believes that stuff is stupid.

Some people declare, and I do not believe it, that there is nothing fearful about oblivion, that they are only afraid of the processes of aging, illness and death. I do not believe them because I think that most people do not realise the awfulness of oblivion. They have been shielded in a way that I was not. Many people are protected by the comforting tales of ‘so and so’s gone to heaven’ which they believed when they were small children because children do believe what they are told, since they have no reason not to trust. What we believe as children stays with us the rest of our lives, even if we think we have rejected it. Tales of Father Christmas may be an exception. Perhaps children can tell when the tellers do not believe in those tales themselves.

Curiously, I was allowed to believe in fairies. I do not know if my father thought that tales of fairies were so obviously nonsense that he could tell them without the risk I would believe him, or whether he believed in fairies himself. I suspect the latter. He certainly has a strong affinity with nature. He was an environmentalist long before most people had heard of the term. Perhaps it had not even been coined when he adopted his three concerns: the deforestation in West Africa which he had seen when in the navy during ‘the War’; the threat to ‘the heavyside layer’, which we now call ‘the ozone layer’, from high flying aircraft; and the threat to the oygen-producing phytoplankton on the continental shelves by ocean pollution. It is partly from his influence, but also from my lonely wanderings in the woods near our home, that I picked up my preference for plants, especially trees and mosses, over animals, and particularly over humans. But I have always liked birds, and other flying things and, though of course I would not dream of going to check up on them, I do believe in fairies.

It is fortunate that I believe in fairies or I would have no understanding at all of other people’s beliefs, purportedly rational or admittedly irrational. One thing I am sure of is that there are no such things as facts, only different styles of fiction.

I have always been fascinated by the derivation of words we commonly use because it sheds light on what the words originally meant, and how their use has changed as society has changed. ‘Fact’ and ‘fiction’ are good examples. ‘Fact’ comes from the Latin ‘facere’ to make, and ‘fiction’ from ‘fingere’ to shape. As I suspected, not much difference. By pattern! theory, everything is made by, and of, thought, so of course there would be no difference. Interestingly, when the two terms are applied to books, ‘fact’ is replaced by ‘non-fiction’, as if there were no shaping involved in a work of serious information dissemination – perhaps the term is a tongue-in-cheek comment on the poor quality of writing in many serious books.

This book is ‘non-fiction’ in that it is not a story or a drama for entertainment or diversion. It is a serious book. But its style deviates from that of many serious books in that it is a personal communication from me, its author, to you, my reader. I make no pretence that it is objective truth that I have proved by experiment, deduced by logic, or received by divine revelation. It is my truth. If you like it, then fine, it is yours to do with what you will. If you don’t like it, then .... I hesitate because, in one way it doesn’t matter since, by the theory, disbelief is powerless. However, it would mean that I had failed to get across to you a set of ideas that are no threat to your own, whatever they are, and which could be a great help for avoiding conflict and misunderstanding in our troubled world.

Because this is my truth, I have avoided constructing it out of blocks of other people’s truth. There are no references or biobliography here, and I have not intentionally quoted anyone else’s words. On the other hand I do not pretend to originality. All anyone can ever do is rearrange the pieces of their life experience, and all sorts of other people’s ideas have flitted across my consciousness, to be mixed and merged with my own interpretations and reactions. I shall not be dismayed if some knowledgeable person dismisses pattern! with a remark about it being so-and-so’s something-ism which was dismissed as nonsense back in the eighteenth century. Isn’t it curious that the ideas one has can be dismissed because no one has had them before, so there is no authority to back them up, and also because someone has had them before, so they are not original?

13th March 1992

I have neglected this work for nearly two weeks because of colds, OU and lack of energy. I had decided to make a start on the domain of religion and, on re-reading the above, I find that that was what I had already begun. Curious how I forget what it was I had been writing. So here goes ....

Religion

I described earlier the idea of a pattern! domain. It arose out of necessity, because I recognised that pattern! theory is so flexible and all-embracing that it can be difficult to pin it down. As I said then, ‘If, by the theory, thought creates reality, different thoughts creating different realities which may contradict each other but still be true, how can I identify anything which is universally valid, and so characteristic of the model?’ What I decided to do was to show how pattern! applies to various sample sets of thinking; to certain accepted and popular fields of interest and study. In the first chapter after the introduction, I took the conventional model of the physical universe. I then took human experience, thought and behaviour, which resulted in my coming to some new realisations about the theory itself, such as pattern! dimensions. That domain was, I now realise, too broad, since everything I, and others, know is part of our own experience, and so the domain of human experience, in effect, includes everything. I will try to achieve a narrower focus by moving on to the domain of religion.

I need first of all to define what I mean by ‘religion’. No dictionary definition or popular understanding of the word will do – at least, not without examining it carefully – because my knowledge and experience of the subject is not that of a believer or scholar, and I am a highly skeptical though curious outsider as far as the established religions are concerned. I did not have a conventional religious background: I was brought up a disbeliever, an atheist. Nevertheless, I had quite a lot of exposure to Anglican Christianity. Every day of my school life began with a Christian assembly, and there were compulsory ‘scripture’ lessons and hymn practices every week. The social life of my village revolved around the parish church. Most people I knew were, if only vaguely, ‘C. of E.’. Even my atheist father enjoyed Old Testament stories. So although Christianity was something I was taught at home to ridicule and reject, it has been part of my life.

The main reason my father gave me for despising Christianity, apart from a sweeping condemnation of it as being obviously nonsensical to any intelligent, scientifically-minded person, was that persecution, oppression, war and destruction has historically always accompanied it. Other religious adherences apart from Anglican Christian only came to my attention as other silly beliefs that people had fought, died and suffered for. It seemed obvious to me that the solution to conflict in the world was to bring an end to religious belief, rather than hoping for religious tolerance. And, as far as I was concerned, the aim of converting everyone to the same set of religious convictions so that they were ‘saved’ was preposterous and morally wrong.

I have always objected very strongly to the Christian arrogance and smugness which equates goodness and morality with Christianity. Professing Christians have often been immoral, and non-Christians can be good people. I was certainly brought up with an exacting set of moral values which centred on the pursuit of truth, honesty, courtesy and respect for nature. It was a long time before I realised that my upbringing had actually been as religious as anyone else’s, but based on the assumed truths of Newtonian science, instead of those of the established Church.

I think that what I have identified up to this point is one section of the domain of religion: identification with a body or group of co-believers, acceptance of some package of truth, scripture and religious practice, a set of moral precepts, and a shared sense of exclusive ‘rightness’. I have also identified a problem with religion in that it leads to conflict between people whose truths and practices are different. I shall come to a pattern! consideration of these in due course. But first I need to look at what else the domain of religion ought to encompass.

The first additional area is concerned with why human beings seek ‘truth’. What is it that we need to understand and know about, and why? There are, I think, two parts to this.

One part of truth-seeking is the desire to discover some purpose or goal to which our lives are directed. It is not enough, important though it may be if frustrated, to reproduce our kind, pass on our genes generation after generation as, say, sheep do. The search for purpose does not have to be understood in conventional religious terms, partly because what may satisfy it is such an individual thing.

Discovering God, or religious truth, is only one of the many purposes to which human ambition, or desire for fulfilment, may aspire. Living by the standards set by religion can be purpose enough. Other goals include creativity of some permanent or transitory kind. For some people, success in life simply extends the ‘sheep-like’ immortality to doing it well, being good parents, and producing happy and successful children. It can manifest in power seeking which, in turn, may be an instance of a neurotic desire to ‘be right’ and to be listened to or respected. The seemingly accidental circumstances of one’s life constrain what each of us may reasonably aspire to. For some, purpose may come down to surviving each day, or dying well. Even when life fulfilment of various kinds is not obviously religious, it is often referred to as ‘spiritual’, perhaps reflecting the anthropic assumption that purpose is only for humans, who have souls, and not to animals, who have not.

The pursuit of purpose is another area on which pattern! may shed some light. But, before coming to that, I indicated that there was another side to truth-seeking besides the question ‘what am I here to do?’

The other side of truth-seeking can also be regarded as a question, and one which, again, may be very individual. For me it is a question which I cannot even phrase as a question. It is just about ‘the mystery’. I am fully satisfied that pattern!, incomplete though it will ever be, is the full answer to the mystery. I believe pattern! can provide the answer to everyone’s ultimate question, although I have no expectation or desire that they recognise it as such. I can see that it answers everything, whilst imposing nothing – except perhaps tolerance of others.

There is a difference between knowing intellectually the answer to one’s mystery question and experiencing the truth of it directly. I am referring here to another aspect of religion which I must include in the domain: religious or mystical experiences, and altered states of consciousness.

So I think I have now assembled the components of the domain of religion: firstly belief in a package of truths and adherence to a set of moral values; then the search for purpose; next the search for the answer to one’s mystery question; and lastly religious experience. Each person may take on all of part of this domain in his or her life. It may be experienced as an integrated whole, or as partially or wholly disconnected. It may be central to one’s life experience, or peripheral and vague. It may involve a lonely quest or be shared with others. It will change and develop as life progresses. For some it does not appear at all until later in life, or when some crisis or disruption occurs. As I indicated above, it may be confused with some kind of neurosis and, if so, can be obsessive, and destructive to the individual and to others.

So far there is nothing very remarkable or contentious in this analysis, but I am undecided how to proceed from here because there is dangerous ground ahead. My choices are: to say more of my own experience of the domain of religion as here defined; or to show how pattern! can help to explain other people’s experience of the various aspects of religion. I am conscious that both of these could be upsetting to some readers, or be misunderstood and dismissed. The reason for this is that people can be very hurt or angry if some cherished belief they have is challenged. I do not, and would not, challenge anyone’s beliefs, but it is almost impossible to make it clear that I am not doing so. The reason for this is that the one categorical imperative of pattern! is that there can be no exclusivity of truth. So, whereas pattern! recognises that an important truth can be absolutely right for someone who believes it, or for some group of believers, it cannot be imposed by them on anyone else. Similarly, I may disbelieve something that others hold to be certain, but that does not mean that either they or I must be wrong or mistaken. We may be, but that is another matter.

20th March 1992

Having embarked on a discussion of disbelief as part of belief, I will go on to say more about my own truth because disbelief is an important part of it in that I am very definately still not a Christian. Furthermore, I am suspicious of Christianity as a body of influence, and I find many people who are professing Christians quite objectionable – curiously though, I have met quite a number of people who are Christians themselves who feel the same way. In fact, there seem to be as many kinds of Christianity as there are Christians, and one might wonder whether these terms mean anything very much. However, focussing on the confusion and variety within the Christian world is just a way of avoiding and excusing my intolerance, which is something I actually feel very guilty and troubled about. So I will describe the nature of my intolerance and examine whether it is in any way justifiable, particularly in view of what I have said about pattern! allowing all truths to be valid.

I must begin by reiterating that I am not arguing that anyone should agree with me. These are my own personal attitudes and opinions and even I feel both convinced and doubting towards them. They are fairly extreme but not all that unusual, and can serve as a benchmark for comparison with other sets of attitudes.

First of all I can state quite definitely that I do not ‘believe in’ God. I have some understanding about what other people mean by ‘God’, and there are some senses of the word that I feel comfortable with, and could even use in communication. But there are other senses that I reject utterly. God as process, as the connectedness of the universe, as the reaching out to embrace the wider world, as the desire for contact and understanding which can be called ‘love’ and ‘light’: all these I feel comfortable with, although I prefer not to use the word ‘God’ to refer to them. God the Father, the Creator, the personal God whose image we share, the all-seeing all-knowing guide, judge and redeemer, God in Heaven, the eternal Spirit: these I want nothing to do with. I also dislike the sentimental relationship with Jesus that many Christians profess, and the jargon used to refer to him: the friend, saviour, baby Jesus, gentle Jesus, son of Man, son of God, Jesu, and so on. I reject the idea of dualism: matter and spirit, mind and body, heaven and earth, transcendent and imminent, even particle and wave.

There are some bits of Christianity I am fond of. I like some traditional carols and hymns and parts of the Bible (before the New English Bible spoilt the language), and I love old churches. I have found most Christian services pompous, ridiculous and embarrassing, but I like the idea of Roman Catholic confession. I welcome images of Mary as counterbalancing the maleness of deity, and I like to see examples of older, pagan cultures incorporated into Christianity. I am rather fascinated by books about the early Christian Church, and by recently discovered documents such as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Anything which questions orthodoxy offers the possibility of some version of Christianity which might be acceptable to me, and allow a reconciliation between my disbelief and the religion of my country and culture. The nearest I have got to an acceptable form of Christianity has been a book which used the study of ancient languages to show that Judaeo-Christianity and classical mythology share a common origin in an ancient fertility cult.

26th March 1992

I took a day off last ‘writing day’ and went to the library to seek a book on religion which might get me into a sympathetic relationship with the subject, and give me some knowledge to build on. I came back with a very large tome on the history and development of religion and civilisation by someone who had dedicated his life to study and personal experience of religion, and had travelled the world in pursuit of an appreciation of its history and geography. I put myself into as receptive a state of mind as I could muster and invited the book to convince me that there is something in religion that I have been missing out on. I also took out a book about Buddhism and sex which caught my eye. Despite my willingness to be persuaded, I found my previous assessments confirmed. I acknowledge that this is probably just another example of ‘the mirror effect’, whereby one sees in any writing only that which reflects one’s existing views and opinions. However, the experience has, I think, taken the understanding I had to a deeper level. I shall now share this insight, again declaring that these are my truths, and are not intended to deny other people’s truths which may seem to contradict them.

During the course of human existence on this planet there have been two main styles of religion which have been part of the two main ways of living. I shall call the two ways of living ‘rural culture’ and ‘city culture’, rather than, say, ‘primative’ and ‘civilised’, in order to try to avoid the conventional attitudes which have often denigrated land-based ways of life. I particularly want to avoid referring to such linguistic nonsense as ‘indigenous civilisation’. The word ‘civilisation’ comes from the Latin ‘civis’ meaning ‘citizen’, so ‘civilised’ means ‘city people like us’, and patronisingly confers our approval of city-based culture onto land-based cultures. That approval is exposed as a pretence because it does not stop our culture disrupting rural cultures and forcing indigenous people into subservient and impoverished positions in our systems. I am including in ‘rural culture’ both hunting and gathering societies and peasant farming societies. And ‘city culture’ refers, not to whether people live in cities, as such, as opposed to towns or villages ‘in the country’, but to the type of society which depends on agricultural surplusses and remote exploitation of ‘natural resources’, culminating in the modern-day capitalistic market system of provision.

There are two sides to religion in any culture: the ‘political side’ and the ‘spiritual side’. The political side is concerned with religion being used to ensure that individuals in the culture conform to the ways of life which have been found to work, either for the common good, or for the good of those in power over the others. The spiritual side is concerned with those experiences which take people out of the practical routines of living into other realms of consciousness. The separation into these two sides is most marked in the religion of city cultures. To explain how this has arisen, I will begin by describing what I believe the spiritual side actually consists of.

I have already covered quite thoroughly the phenomenon of individuation, whereby our species, and perhaps other social animals, has developed a brain function which focusses the consciousness of each person inwards to give the illusion of a separate self. This faculty is useful in freeing the human individual from some of the force of past habits (patterns!) of behaviour, and allowing spontaneous and flexible cooperative team responses to enable new situations to be exploited. The separate self is in many ways an uncomfortable, lonely state. So there is a deep need in all of us to transcend that separation, and experience the reality of being connected to a wider whole. Not all of the ways we find to do this are thought of as being spiritual, but I believe that what we call spiritual or mystical experience is a particularly intense experience of consciousness beyond the self.

An important difference between a rural culture and a city culture is that in the latter a double separation is experienced. The individual self having a consciousness separated from other humans, and from the surrounding world, is compounded by the ‘city self’: the physical separation of people even further from each other and also from the sources of their sustenance. This has the effect of making such experiences as we have of connectedness or togetherness into rare highlights, and the ways we have of achieving them into distinct issues, which can range from such ‘antisocial’ behaviours as football hooliganism and alcohol and drug abuse, to approved behaviours such as church attendance and community service.

In order to show how such apparently unrelated and morally opposite behaviours could be motivated by the same need, I shall describe the pattern! influences behind them. I shall begin by repeating the essentials of pattern! theory in order to make the point that much of it echoes what we think of as relating to religion or spirituality. So, as I have said before, pattern! is not new; it is a way of bringing together knowledge that is very old and really rather obvious, but which has become distorted by the unnatural culture which has become increasingly dominant over the past five thousand years of human existence.

The essentials of pattern! theory are:

• everything is interconnected;
• entities or ‘things’ are patterns! of consciousness which resemble and recognise each other;
• there are no fixed boundaries between entities; every entity is a whole of many parts and a part of many wholes;
• entities are created and drawn into their typical form by other entities which resemble them which exist in the ever-present past;
• space is the dimension of form; time is the dimension of influence;
• the universe of patterns! has no existence independent of the consciousness of the patterns! of which it is constituted;
• since consciousness creates reality, and thought does not have to be consistent, apparently contradictory realities can coexist, and still be absolutely true to the conscious entities creating and experiencing them;
• consciousness is not attached to individual entities; it floats and shifts;
• every being has many modes of consciousness which, in human individuals may be thought of as various sub-personalities.

This leads on to aspects of pattern! theory which relate specifically to human experience as follows:

• the dominant mode of human consciousness is a restricted consciousness: inward-looking to create the sense of an isolated ‘self’, and with the influence of past patterns! pushed into another mode of consciousness which we think of as ‘unconscious’ or ‘subconscious’. I have called these two modes of consciousness ‘solscius’ for the dominant, inward-looking consciousness, and ‘comscious’ for the unrestricted consciousness which includes the so-called ‘unconscious’
• experiences of the solscius are lonely and insecure. Experiences of the comscius, though rarely penetrating the solscius mask, are reassuring and empowering, and can become so alluring that they result in individually or socially damaging or disruptive behaviour
• experiences of transcending the solscius are variously interpreted as: spiritual or mystical experiences, enlightenment, altered states of consciousness, peak experiences, highs, crowd consciousness, being in touch with nature, contact with deity, and many other experiences of the ‘supernatural’ and of being caught up by forces and attractions beyond oneself. Elaborate stories and myths have grown up around collections of such experiences
• human groups and cultures are themselves patterns! and, as such, are conscious entities which are aware of, and are influenced by, the patterns! of the past which resemble them
• each human being is a ‘cell’ of at least one group or cultural consciousness, and is strongly influenced by the whole of that consciousness in the present past, and by other cells with a similar role within that wider ‘being’.

I can now build on the pattern! picture I have drawn in order to show how the influence of, and need for, comscius experience has affected ‘civilised’ society. I will concentrate on the effects which are recognisably religious, since that is the subject of this section. However, as I have mentioned before, intense, unquestioning conviction towards any set of beliefs is a kind of religion. There have been three main religious phases during the course of European civilisation: the first based on the Christian Church, the second based on Newtonian science, and the third, and current phase, based on economics.

I said earlier that there are two sides to religion: the political and the spiritual. But the two sides are closely connected. Although it may seem as if a package of beliefs is used to enforce conformity to an organisation of society which benefits certain vested interests, it is also true that the people need a package of beliefs to believe in, and it almost doesn’t matter what the package consists of. The package is often only resisted at a time of change, because loyalty to an earlier set of beliefs is being broken. We can see this in connection with the Marxist critique of capitalism. During the middle of the last century, economics had not yet fully taken hold as the dominant religion, so it was possible to criticise it, and to have that criticism considered. Today, over a hundred years later, and following the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, Marxist criticism has no credibility outside the Social Science Departments of academic institutions. It has become merely a way of analysing social phenomena, and has been rendered respectable by ignoring its original revolutionary aims, and even re-naming it ‘structuralism’. Few people today question that healthy economic growth and paid employment are desirable. To do so would be regarded as heretical, if unquestioning belief in economics had not taken such a strong hold that no contrary belief stands a chance even of being frowned upon.

The extraordinary thing to someone who is able to look at the phenomenon of the religion of economics objectively, is that the most severely exploited are amongst the most loyal. They can be persuaded that their own interest groups, trades unions, are a bad thing and must be disempowered. No political party can have any hope of being elected unless it adheres to the faith. What has happened is that people have become cells of the comscius of economics, and they transcend their narrow selves as they carry out their particular functions, however menial and personally limiting, as part of a great being of global proportions.

Those who have a cellular function in the economic being often desire little else. Many of those who cannot get in, or have been sloughed off, are content enough with their loyalty to the associated beliefs. But there are many who, for one reason or another, cannot get their comscius experience that way. They are the people who will turn to drink or drugs, or to the religions of the past.

Of course, many people belong to more than one wider being. A popular category is crowd consciousness: football matches, pop music gigs, Billy Graham rallies and protest marches provide the desired altered state for a brief time at least, and may be kept going by feelings of loyalty.

(This bit left over from an earlier writing session.)

There is a marked contrast between the polarisation that exists in city cultures between the alientation of individuals and their often desperate attempts at coming together, and the interplay between the individual and the social in rural cultures. In any typical land-based society there would exist a range of interactions between the individual, the social and the natural which is called upon according to the needs and possibilities of particular situations. So, for example, attention is given to personal development by the provision of rites of passage through key stages of life. The individual makes sense of him or herself according to social roles and responsibilities. Those roles and responsibilities involve direct interaction with the natural world which is providing for the needs of the people. Social roles are reinforced by symbols and rituals which echo the patterns! of cultural life. Each individual manifests both a self-reflexive consciousness and a group and ecological consciousness.

In such a culture, it is difficult to distinguish the religious side of life from the practical side. The myths and ceremonies reinforce the social cohesion that ensures that people conform to the ways of life which benefit everyone. They also provide opportunities for the ‘spiritual experience’ of connectedness which saves the people from the loneliness of individual consciousness. To the extent that one can separate out what is ‘the religion’ in such a way of life, it would be very much concerned with aspects of life which are vital for survival, and with the real world in which life is enacted. Everything which mattered would have a powerful spiritual essence which would have to be communicated with and appeased as necessary. The religion would ensure harmonious relationships between all the spiritual beings: the humans, the plants and animals, rivers and mountains, wind and rain and celestial bodies.

In contrast, the religion of a city culture is a very peculiar phenomenon. From a practical point of view it is an optional extra, even if some adherence to it is customary or made mandatory by those in power. It is often the province of an exclusive group, usually male, who conduct esoteric rites, and who may live separately from the rest of the people who are obliged to provide for their needs. Secular power ensures material provision for the citizens via taxation or coercion of land workers away from the city. Sacred power is concentrated in a remote male deity who has little to do with day to day life. The priestly class have traditionally often been celebate, or officially so, since sex is regarded as shameful and corrupting. Women have generally lower status than men in all aspects of the society, and may be excluded from full participation in religious ritual.

City culture is a relatively recent development in human history. It dates from around five thousand years ago, whereas our species has existed for at least a hundred thousand years. Even over that five thousand years it has not been the dominant organisation of human society except in the past few hundred years when the European Empire extended its influence, if not its dominion, throughout the world.

A major component of city culture is the division of society into groups and classes with different roles and privileges. At its simplest, there are two classes: citizens and slaves. In the global city culture of the present day there are, broadly speaking, three groups: the beneficiaries, the workers and the dispossessed. However, there are many gradations within the groups, particularly in the first two. Because of these divisions, city culture is about power. Historically, religion has been one of the major agents for wielding power. Its political role as a cohesive agent in society, keeping people to their necessary duties, has become much more important than its spiritual role.

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