02-29-2012, 02:36 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-29-2012, 07:55 PM by Bring4th_Austin.)
The book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn has an interesting take on the Tree of Knowledge as known in the myth from the Bible.
Essentially, he relates eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil with the spread of agricultural society throughout the fertile crescent. The humans who started working against nature by cultivating land and growing society through agricultural means, eliminating the hunter-gatherer tribes which existed alongside nature rather than against it, felt they knew the best way to live, and felt they had the right to absorb the more "primitive" tribes into their own culture and use the land how they wished.
The idea being that these agricultural societies started thinking that there were things which were good and things which were evil in nature, instead of the fact that things just ARE without being inherently being good and evil. Good and evil being human definition applied to nature and giving us an excuse to control it, or applied to humans and giving us an excuse to control them.
Adam and Eve, the first humans who went from hunter-gatherer to agrarian, eating this fruit eventually created a society (which, since the myth was originally written, has spread world-wide) which is incongruent with nature, thus casting humans out of the Garden of Eden (a harmonious existence in-line with the natural order of the world).
Daniel Quinn believed that the myth was created to help tell the story of the destruction of tribal life.
Essentially, he relates eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil with the spread of agricultural society throughout the fertile crescent. The humans who started working against nature by cultivating land and growing society through agricultural means, eliminating the hunter-gatherer tribes which existed alongside nature rather than against it, felt they knew the best way to live, and felt they had the right to absorb the more "primitive" tribes into their own culture and use the land how they wished.
The idea being that these agricultural societies started thinking that there were things which were good and things which were evil in nature, instead of the fact that things just ARE without being inherently being good and evil. Good and evil being human definition applied to nature and giving us an excuse to control it, or applied to humans and giving us an excuse to control them.
Adam and Eve, the first humans who went from hunter-gatherer to agrarian, eating this fruit eventually created a society (which, since the myth was originally written, has spread world-wide) which is incongruent with nature, thus casting humans out of the Garden of Eden (a harmonious existence in-line with the natural order of the world).
Daniel Quinn believed that the myth was created to help tell the story of the destruction of tribal life.
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The only frontier that has ever existed is the self.
The only frontier that has ever existed is the self.