Noble Lies and the Recurring Withdrawals of Neo-Shamans

There’s a cycle in history, a dynamic between the mainstream conformists and the countercultural rebels. Time and again we see this dynamic play out, as a tribe or society coheres around some sacred symbols and myths, while marginalized outliers are inclined to explain their disenchantment with those established cultural expressions, to justify themselves to their ostracizers or persecutors. Eventually, some of those criticisms are accepted, and the mainstream culture reforms itself, becoming the new establishment for later rebels to reject. This cycle seems necessary once we understand its structure and its conditions. Let’s chart some of the Western iterations, before turning to why we should expect this social dynamic to keep cropping up. <h1>Jewish prophets</h1> We can start with what Karl Jaspers called the Axial Age, the set of moral revolutions in India, China, Persia, Palestine, and Greece, in the mid first millennium BCE. In Judaism, this took the form of a moral critique of the religious norm of sacrificing to a deity without the proper existential inwardness, as Soren Kierkegaard would later put it. Prophets like Elijah, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Jeremiah chastised the corrupt elites and the disobedient Jewish masses who weren’t honest about God’s transcendent majesty. These prophets were uncompromising philosophers, poets, and satirists who posited a covenant between God and his chosen people, and a savior messiah who would announce the apocalyptic end of history. <a href="https://medium.com/grim-tidings/noble-lies-and-the-recurring-withdrawals-of-neo-shamans-6ddce59cba08">Website</a>