The newspapers of late have been full of portentous events, from the artificial, such as the Pathfinder landing on Mars, to the natural – volcanoes in Mexico and on the island of Montserrat. Approximately half the citizens of Montserrat, in the Caribbean, have fled the island, which is a good idea – when you share an island with a volcano, you need to keep your options open. In Mexico, on the other hand, people living on the slopes of Popocatepetl have been reluctant to leave their homes, even though they are getting buried in ash. The last time they evacuated, their houses were looted while they were gone. So they stay, choosing to face natural disaster rather than risk the perfidy of the human heart.
I’ve been scanning the news reports to see if anyone has suggested throwing a virgin or two into the volcanic craters in an attempt to quiet their eruptions. I did see where the Mexicans have a history of offering shoes and blankets as a tribute to Popocatepetl. It may be time for some more. The virgin-in-the-volcano story comes to us from volcanic islands in the South Pacific, but appeasing the gods with sacrifice is an old idea, going back in western culture all the way to Cain and Abel, to Abraham and Isaac. It continues today. Historian Conrad Cherry of Penn State has called Memorial Day celebrations the “cult of the dead” in our national religion. By their deaths, our war heroes have purchased some measure of political transcendence for the rest of us. Political transcendence is one thing, but most of us turn a patronizing smile on the thought of Mexicans trying to hold back lava flows with gifts of shoes. In the United States we sacrifice not shoes, but the wearers of shoes. Once they are dead, we remove their shoes and run away.
Theologians say primitive sacrifice is based on a “do ut des” thesis, which is Latin for “give to get.” It implies a bargaining relationship between humanity and the divine. The god gets a virgin, or a new pair of shoes, and humans are spared destruction and are given bountiful harvests, good hunting and prosperity in general. The “give to get” also survives in our national religion. Pacific Islanders would select a virgin, a representative member of society, and put her to death so others may prosper. In America, the Environmental Protection Agency allows chemicals to be used in industry or agriculture as long as no more than one person per million dies from cancer each year as a result of the use of each chemical. There are 250 million Americans and 2,000 chemicals introduced each year, so under the precepts laid out by our national religion, we willingly sacrifice up to a half million people each year to ensure good harvests.
The citizens selected to represent their communities in the mouth of the volcano were virgins because virgins represented a sacrifice of purity and, I suppose, innocence. I doubt if many of the victims we sacrifice to the gods of industrial chemistry are virgins, but they still hold a certain quality of innocence in that most of them go to their graves without knowing for what or why their lives are taken.
There is one difference between the two groups and this is it: before being fed into the volcano, virgins were the center of elaborate ritual and ceremony. The community came together to acknowledge and thank the victims for the sacrifice they were about to undertake for their people. Our victims receive no such ceremony; their sacrifice is preceded by pain and suffering, their illnesses are often the financial ruin of their families.
So it goes in the current phase of our evolution as a civilization.
Virgins and Volcanos
The newspapers of late have been full of portentous events, from the artificial, such as the Pathfinder landing on Mars, to the natural – volcanoes in Mexico and on the island of Montserrat. Approximately half the citizens of Montserrat, in the Caribbean, have fled the island, which is a good idea – when you share an island with a volcano, you need to keep your options open. In Mexico, on the other hand, people living on the slopes of Popocatepetl have been reluctant to leave their homes, even though they are getting buried in ash. The last time they evacuated, their houses were looted while they were gone. So they stay, choosing to face natural disaster rather than risk the perfidy of the human heart.
I’ve been scanning the news reports to see if anyone has suggested throwing a virgin or two into the volcanic craters in an attempt to quiet their eruptions. I did see where the Mexicans have a history of offering shoes and blankets as a tribute to Popocatepetl. It may be time for some more. The virgin-in-the-volcano story comes to us from volcanic islands in the South Pacific, but appeasing the gods with sacrifice is an old idea, going back in western culture all the way to Cain and Abel, to Abraham and Isaac. It continues today. Historian Conrad Cherry of Penn State has called Memorial Day celebrations the “cult of the dead” in our national religion. By their deaths, our war heroes have purchased some measure of political transcendence for the rest of us. Political transcendence is one thing, but most of us turn a patronizing smile on the thought of Mexicans trying to hold back lava flows with gifts of shoes. In the United States we sacrifice not shoes, but the wearers of shoes. Once they are dead, we remove their shoes and run away.
Theologians say primitive sacrifice is based on a “do ut des” thesis, which is Latin for “give to get.” It implies a bargaining relationship between humanity and the divine. The god gets a virgin, or a new pair of shoes, and humans are spared destruction and are given bountiful harvests, good hunting and prosperity in general. The “give to get” also survives in our national religion. Pacific Islanders would select a virgin, a representative member of society, and put her to death so others may prosper. In America, the Environmental Protection Agency allows chemicals to be used in industry or agriculture as long as no more than one person per million dies from cancer each year as a result of the use of each chemical. There are 250 million Americans and 2,000 chemicals introduced each year, so under the precepts laid out by our national religion, we willingly sacrifice up to a half million people each year to ensure good harvests.
The citizens selected to represent their communities in the mouth of the volcano were virgins because virgins represented a sacrifice of purity and, I suppose, innocence. I doubt if many of the victims we sacrifice to the gods of industrial chemistry are virgins, but they still hold a certain quality of innocence in that most of them go to their graves without knowing for what or why their lives are taken.
There is one difference between the two groups and this is it: before being fed into the volcano, virgins were the center of elaborate ritual and ceremony. The community came together to acknowledge and thank the victims for the sacrifice they were about to undertake for their people. Our victims receive no such ceremony; their sacrifice is preceded by pain and suffering, their illnesses are often the financial ruin of their families.
So it goes in the current phase of our evolution as a civilization.