In the early posts of this blog I wanted to prove to myself that interacting with an invisible world is universal to humans. I searched for anthropological, cultural and archeological, evidence that there is something more to living than food and clothing, shelter and sex, and the desire and need to provide for these.
I found ample evidence that satisfied me. Recently I came across another source, the 2009 book by journalist and science writer Nicholas Wade The Faith Instinct. He has a couple of chapters on ancestral religion that include detailed descriptions of rituals in African and Australian aborigine tribes that were fascinating. These peoples focused more on their rituals than on food gathering and shelter. They reached to this interaction with ancestral and supernatural spirits for the health and success needed to provide the material necessities. That greatly impressed me, considering I grew up hearing sayings like: “Economic stability is more important than ideas and emotional experiences.” In my life experience, this seems plain wrong. The two are intrinsically connected and can’t be divided into only one or the other.
The ancient so-called primitive cultures (I’m glad this term seems to be going out of fashion) didn’t act that way. And I don’t think we today act that way, either. Whether we like it or not, whether we admit it to ourselves or not, we are interacting with something more that physical reality. Especially now with the coming of AI, which seems very much like an invisible reality, it is important to know how to interact with this world we have been ignoring for several centuries.
Art and the Invisible 