[2023#2] The Fall: The Insanity of the Ego in Human History and the Dawning of A New Era by Steve Taylor

Pre-fall Era

8000 BCE:
- Hunter-gather: small (no more than a few dozen people)
- Hard life, short lifespan
- 12 – 20hrs/week search for food
- Almost no evidence of warfare, tournament fights to resolve conflicts => contest
- No male domination
- No status differences
  => free from social suffering (war, patriarchy, inequality, opperession)
8000 – 4000 BCE (Horticulturalists)
- Started to abadon hunter-gather lifestyle => cultivate plants, domesticate animals
  - Expose people to host new diseases
  - affect diet (centred around 2-3 types of grain)
- Still no evidence of social suffering

The Fall

Environmental and climate changes (Saharasia – term by James DeMeo 1980 – not widely accepted by scientists)
Exodus => affect way of life, psyche
New Nomads: Indo Europeans (most modern Europeans, Americans and Australians are descended from)
- Evade other Euro and Middle East, war-like people
- Patriarchal people
- Inequality and social oppression
Egypt and Summer:
The second millennium bce to the present:

The EGO explosion:

Myth:
- Iranian myth of the Fall
- Bible: Eve ate a fruit from tree of knowledge (development of a new self-awareness) => god ejected them from the garden => disease and death enter the world
6000 years ago, people develop strong sense of ego, environment change and encourage separation:
- Need new kind of intelligence, problem-solving capacity (seprate mind and body)
- Encouraged spirit selfishness (separate idividual and community)
Historical evidence:
- Changes in burial practices: individual with identity, properties instead of communual, anonymously, no marker or possessions
- Texts and inscriptions from 4000 BCE show a greater emphasis on individuality

Trans-Fall Era

First wave:
- Hermit => Upanishad, Buddishm and Jainism, China
- Meditation to undo the effect of Ego explosion
Second wave:
- Compassion from late 18th century => large scale