Starting Over

Facetiously, Gloria Steinem has suggested that we consider the last five thousand years of history as a loss and start over in building the society that we want. It is something to smile about. But starting over again would mean emptying our minds and returning to ideas such as sacrificing to the gods and eating the flesh of a good or strong person in order to ingest that person's goodness or strength. It would mean returning to a belief in evil spells and beginning again strings of brutal dominations and wars for empire. We can't separate from human history the development of attitude and belief. The people in ancient times, including those in various societies who described Creation, were not people with modern minds stuck in ancient times. And modern minds are a product a past that goes back centuries.

And given the level of agriculture 5,000 years ago, if we start over, we would have to reduce our number to a small fraction of what it is today.