I’ve been reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Harari. It’s a fascinating book. I love it. Harari argues that the thing that gave sapiens an advantage over other animals and other human species was something he calls a “cognitive revolution.” (Not to be confused with a development in the study of psychology.)
According to Harari, sapiens are able to organize themselves in huge groups consisting of thousands and even millions of individuals because of their ability to accept mutually agreed upon constructs, or fictions as he calls them, that are not part of the physical world. Constructs such as nations, borders and money.
The interesting thing about these constructs is that they can vary from group to group, and humans are capable of adapting to rapid changes in these group constructs. Thus indicating the ability to understand and accept these constructs might be in our nature, but the individual constructs are contrived by individual groups. (There goes the concept of natural law.) That’s why the French could go from believing in the divine right of kings to the idea that sovereignty rests in the people almost overnight. Religion has played a significant role in helping form cultures and group identity and shared beliefs, and Harari claims that the belief in capitalism and corporations works in much the same way.
That made me think of the Republican Jesus. What if Republican Jesus is actually a completely new religion with the façade of classic Christianity but with capitalism at its core? Something like that has happened before with the Santeria religion, the Caribbean religion that is outwardly Catholic with a West African mythology.
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