Fishing for words

It is not impossible to imagine, what our forbears faced. It is just impossible to prove. But where good questions go unrecognized, it is worth an essay, for if just the question is outlined, there is gain. That is the methodological premise for a question really about how is it the idea of a god came to our species.

The pack behavior still extant today in people and in many other mammals can only have been stronger when our parents were more centered in the physical, and that centering really prevents a lot of lingering in illusion. This meant, and this is not the speculative part, there was a vigorous nonverbal link between the people. My guess is that this included a stronger psychic component than is extant today among men who are ruled by the verbal.

Regardless, the origin of the idea of a god may have come from an individual, part of something larger, the rest of the pack, his family and farther relations-- the origin of god may have lain in the awareness of this extensiveness beyond oneself, a larger something than oneself which was perceived, and which was recognized as being a protection and aid that was more than one, by oneself, could have supplied or guaranteed.  

Perhaps this awareness came about like this: These early folk hunted in packs too, but surely, there were times, times of hardship of a variety of sources, or, perhaps when one was some kind of outlier, some times, when a person had to hunt by himself. Then it may have come to this individual that he needed and depended upon, something greater than he himself was. 

That he gave, and many times, across the planet, men did this again, a name of what we call a deity to this, is not surprising. Whenever a verbal ability grew, what Jan Cox said, was a "falling upstairs," it would be convenient to mention something stronger than oneself, something which worked for one's benefit. Whether or not this calling of a tribe, by a word which we call some deity, is the whole story of the origin of god, this story is not meant to preclude the later reality of what people said about their deities. My account of a individual in a larger tribe, appreciating this sense of being part of something larger, need not be the whole story, to be of interest. 

the old maps we clutch

The ordinary consciousness, that of scientific popularizers and on down the demographic rungs-- see the unknown, like on an old map, as a separate area, separate from the continents of knowledge. But is it? Can it be, so delimited, if we do not know it, and why else call it the unknown, -- so how can we say, how can we point on the map, under the dragon? 

In fact there is evidence to suggest the unknown surrounds and interpenetrates us constantly. Rather than terra incognita, should we be saying, usus incognitus? 

How howling

The eye of the hurricane is calm, it is a quiet space while the hurricane winds encircle. Words and meaning might show a similar pattern. The meaning is the quiet space, with minimun verbal volume, the sense is just-- appreciated. The verbal thread that leads to this (ideally leads to it) is where the winds blow, blowing everything offcourse according to a pattern controlled by geographies unconcerned with one's -- sentence; one's breath is grabbed and winds into an unmeasurably small component of that which is blown. Beyond any consideration of authorship or cogency. Small shock then that so little of use is ever encountered. The possibility remains, of, communication. Slim, possibility.