Last night I watched a National Geographic documentary, “Inside North Korea.” A reporter and her cameraman went into North Korea as part of a humanitarian doctor’s team, and filmed under the pretense of making a documentary about his work. The doctor and his staff performed a thousand surgeries in ten days to remove cataracts from blind patients.
The documentary describes how North Korea is ruled by the whims of the Beloved Leader, Kim Jong Il, who enriches himself while his people starve to death by the millions. There were interviews with North Koreans who had defected, including one young man who had been a guard at one of North Koreas concentration camps. Miles square, these camps house the people who express dissatisfaction with the government – and the dissidents’ parents, siblings, children, cousins…
My gut reaction was that the world would be a better place if Pyongyang went up in a mushroom cloud. Of course, that’s not practical, but if even half of what was described is accurate, living in North Korea is nearly identical to living in Nazi Germany.
What was astonishing was the end of the documentary. The blind patients are all gathered in an auditorium, and one by one they have their bandages removed. They shout and cry with joy as they discover they can see, and immediately go to the front of the room and kneel before large pictures of Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung. The crowd waves their hands in the air as the patients shout praises of Kim Jong Il and vow that their children will venerate him, that they will work harder for him, that they will help wipe out America (despite some of the equipment used in the operations having been donated by America and other Western nations).
It hit me. This is where gods come from! North Koreans worship Kim Jong Il as a god. His pictures are everywhere, just like any religious icon. Children are indoctrinated from an early age, just like in any religion. Kim Jong Il knows all, is infallible, and all good comes from him. Just like God. They even have a better theodicy than most religions. All bad things are the fault of the outside world, especially America.
Rulers in the ancient world were often worshipped as gods or the children of gods. The cults of the pharaoh or of the god-kings of Mesopotamia were probably very like the cult of Kim Jong Il. And the cults of dead god-kings were probably very like the cult of Kim Il Sung. In the ancient world, where history was mostly oral and prone to embellishment, how many centuries would need to pass before stories of the late god-kings became stories of the creator gods?
It's only possible to elevate god-kings to the role of creator-gods if the idea of creation needs to be explained. The idea of an original creator remains a viable explanation to this ancient mystery to this day.
ReplyDeleteI’m not sure what your point is.
ReplyDeleteMy point is that the very concept of gods may have evolved from the worship of kings as gods. The king is the supreme and all-powerful ruler of the nation; gods are the supreme and all powerful rulers of the world.
> It's only possible to elevate god-kings to the role of creator-gods if the idea of creation needs to be explained.
Which it does. More precisely, people desire to know the origin of everything.
> The idea of an original creator remains a viable explanation to this ancient mystery to this day.
Sure. “God did it” superficially explains everything. So what?
My point is that I don't think your idea explains the birth of the concept of there being a supernatural creator. It has merit in explaining the human attitude toward the Creating Force and it's worship, but not of the origin of the idea of a Creator.
ReplyDeleteI think you might enjoy Lloyd Demause's stuff (of Psychohistory fame)though. Most people don't agree with his entire thesis, but I think he makes very convincing arguments.
> My point is that I don't think your idea explains the birth of the concept of there being a supernatural creator.
ReplyDeleteAh.
I didn’t mean to imply that the concept of gods as creators is a result of the worship of god-kings. I think that god-kings may have evolved into what we think of as conventional pagan deities. Attributing creation to those deities would have come later. The last sentence in the post is meant to convey that it is a short step from the worship of leaders to the worship of metaphysical gods.
I see.
ReplyDelete> I think you might enjoy Lloyd Demause's stuff (of Psychohistory fame)
ReplyDeleteI poked around a bit online. He has an interesting thesis, but the field seems to lack rigorous, well supported methods. I think that the basic claim that child-rearing influences societies is probably right, but psychohistory relies too much on psychoanalysis, which is of dubious validity. Child-rearing influences societies because one’s childhood influences one’s views and relationship to the world as an adult, not because abuse creates psychic pressure that is expressed in society as wars.
And it is too much of a coincidence that the ideal child-raising method is the one adopted by some parents just around the time Demause was writing. What are the odds that for all of history, everyone was doing it wrong, but we finally got it just right?
Nope, Avromie. It's absolutely possible to have god-kings without discussions about Creation or even believing in a Creation. It betrays a very Jewish/Christian/Muslim bias right from the start.
ReplyDeleteNorth Korean dogma does not talk about how the world came to be. It doesn't say that the Kims created the Universe. It does believe that they are greater than human, supernaturally wise, deserving of obedience and worship. In short, they believe the Kims are at least demigods.
Cambodia had god-kings until recently. Egypt had sorta god-kings. Plenty of countries had rulers whose mom's were supposedly boffed by one of the local deities. Gilgamesh was supposed to be 1/3 god. None of it necessarily has much to do with Creation or a Creator.