• Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    19 hours ago

    Society ≠ hierarchy.

    In fact, hierarchical authoritarianism (both religious, political, and mixtures) IS the proverbial pyramids.

    If not for the pyramids and the exploitation they represent, the Egyptians could have been a much more egalitarian and thus successful society.

    So yeah to have complex organized societies it seems a few pyramids were necessary

    Nope! Complexity and organization does NOT necessitate strict and often arbitrary hierarchy.

    That being said now in the modern period religion isn’t necessary

    🧑‍🚀🔫🧑‍🚀

    but it does seem to have been very important in the past to building complex society

    Nope. They just hadn’t invented better systems of government yet. In fact, every time social progress has been achieved, it’s been in SPITE if religion, never because of it.

    as we know it.

    Yeah, very much the warts of it all.

    • arrow74@lemmy.zip
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      18 hours ago

      We have hierarchy, always have. Even chimpanzees have a social hierarchy.

      Every human society has had a hierarchy of some sort. What changes is the distribution of resources. Historically as societies become more complex social stratification increases and resources become less evenly distributed. Defining complex society is a bit well complex but I can go into the anthropological paradigms currently being used in the field if you want.

      Unfortunately you have taken a conversation focused on an anthropological/archaeological break down of human society’s relation to organized religion and tried to match it to your political philosophy. I regret to inform you it does not.

      Now that being said what was does not necessitate what must be. I think we have to ask ourselves why as a species every time we developed a complex society we included stratification, religion, and an uneven distribution of resources if we ever want to move past those things. Is the answer truly as simple as “we just hadn’t invented better systems of government yet”? Or is there something about our inherent being that causes us to repeat this pattern independently across multiple unrelated societies?

      I don’t have the answers to these, no one does. And they are the subject of much academic debate.

      Now moving into the realm of personal opinion. I do agree that we have progressed and can form a much better form of governance. I do however believe that religion was an important factor in the creation of ancient socities and to the eventual progression to us. I do agree though that religion has caused a lot of harm and is not necessary for modern society. But in the times past where we were just beginning to write and raise crops there is an undeniable repeating pattern of religion and its relation to societal structure.

      So to sum it up politically and as it applies to modern times I’m with you. But as an archaeologist I have to disagree with your interpretation of the past.