Feeling Connected To What? Human Evolution and Shamanism

Spurred by a post a bit unhinged and indulging wildly about fantasied scenarios of human cultures millions of years into the past. Ni Koek Modern humans have only been around for about 200 000 years. And what you suggest never happened, there have been extinctions before but not remotely as you suggest. *** · Mark Rego Monteiro Ni Koek Based on archeological evidence. Spiritual desires for feeling connected are another thing. Shamanism has existed at least since 40,000 years ago. ·*** Nico Koekemoer Mark Rego Monteiro Archeological and DNA evidence. Desires for feeling connected to what? · Reply · Share · 2h Mark Rego Monteiro Nico Koekemoer Evidence-wise, there are category issues and overlaps, since archeological, paleontological, and biochemical evidence incorporate broad levels of analysis in physical terms. Radiographic is also key, as is other forms of stratigraphic analysis, and interpretation. As for feeling connected, that is a psychological and anthropological disciplinary insight and knowledge domain, to be clear. Quick point, Durkheim studied such human events as suicides, and developed the term "anomie" for a sense of anxiety at social disruption. To be fair, Marx had formulated an observed alienation in workingpeople (the "proletariat") when being exploited. Spinoza, even earlier, had observed the process of emotional identification and understanding in introspection, all before Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung´s kinds of crucial developments. All that reflects two basic leading questions. First, that of human nature and why and how people do things with each other, with tools for hunting and gathering, symbolic communication and reasoning, and the meaning of history. Why would biologist R Dawkins go from nasty, angry, and poor stereotyping scholarship in "The God Delusion" to a similar position using such "woo" words as "The Magic of Reality"? Why would ND Tyson speak without basic scholarship about spirituality, and then say, "We are IN the Universe. It´s so spiritual!" or the like? They are starting to experience positive emotions in existential issues, instead of merely operating according to cognitive analytical assertions. Second, the metaphysical question has been posed as Christian scholars revived, reformed, and modernized ancient Greek philosophy. Why is there something instead of nothing? Aristotle answered that a First Cause must exist, but he fooled himself by going with his assumption that the Universe is Eternal. There is only, he thought, an Unmoved Mover. At least he had that insight. The monk Thomas of Aquinas had Jesus Christ´s legacy and the Bible to work with, which feed a clearer understanding of history, cosmology, spiritual practice, divine agency, and the locus of eternity in the higher order divine entity identified as the "Creator." Not, as some mythologies, intelligently if with less and insufficient explanatory power, hypothesized, something like the Greek merging of Uranus and Gaia. As someone who was getting a degree in Biological Anthropology, I quickly learned that my interests in psychology were amplified and undergirded in studying the interface of human bio-psychosociality and culture. Just as humans relate to each other and one another, they relate to the natural world, and to the cause of the natural world that includes us. Just as relating to the natural environment has been overshadowed by prevailing Western industrial practices following both scientific mechanicism and economic business profiteering, ecological biological science has formulated the concepts that support more spiritual expressions with feelings like Francis of Assisi, or indigenous practices. Ecologists alone, however, are illuminating in that University classes often virtually remain so mechanistic and economically influenced that they ignore the very real dangers of modern industrial degradation of the environment. "Environmentalism", thus, represents a philosophical view of human relating to the environment in a qualitatively distinct way than scientific ecological science. Social science antipositivism and interpretivism is related, in making self-awareness relevant. Since Piaget, we also have terms based on constructivism, how humans take action to create truths like "sustainability eco-social justice activism, (sub-)culture, and innovating spirituality." Ecopsychology, based on the Freud-Jung sequence and legacy, has also emerged as of at least the 1990s, although expressions go back through John Muir, Wordsworth, and so on. Then we come to the meaning of human interaction, which in Western culture have a unique spiritual-religious tradition that proposed UN human rights to the world after WWII, and was accepted by much of that world community. Pre-modern Shamans were at a preliminary stage in relating to the Universe´s natural forces, processes, and interacting components, its Causal Creator Entity, and similar factors. In fact, it´s all kind of a litmus test. If you have to ask so basic a question, you´re pretty much overspecialized, which is pretty much the standard fare under scientific materialism. It would be a good time to broaden your horizons. I might recommend Fritjof Capra´s Systems Theory of Life, the legacy of his original Tao of Physics, and Comparative Religion scholars like Huston Smith, Robert Bellah, and Ninian Smart.