Widespread brother-sister incest in Roman Egypt and Zoroastrianism

The incest taboo is strong among humans, but in two cases, it has been overcome, or so it seems. The first case is in Roman Egypt, where for over 250 years, there was a tradition of full brother-sister marriages. The second case is in Zoroastrianism, where brother-sister (and other close-relative) marriages are considered a sacred duty called Xwedodah.

Roman Egypt needs no introduction, though Zoroastrianism might need some, so here's my summary:

1. There are two cosmic principles: good and evil, light and dark. They are equally powerful.
2. Ahura Mazda is the one true God that is all good. There are smaller gods, some working for Mazda and some against him.
3. Originally, the world was all good, as Mazda intended. But then evil appeared and since then has been a battle of good and evil.
4. Ahuras are good gods, and Daevas are evil gods.
5. Humans should choose to side with the good and reject the evil.
6. The Avesta are the sacred texts of Zoroastrianism.
7. Eventually evil will be eliminated and the world will be as good as Ahura Mazda intended. Evil creatures will either be destroyed or be purified (depending on who you ask).

Menstruation taboo in Rome, Judaism, and China

Ancient Rome

Menstruation taboo is popularly held throughout history. Here's a selection of quotes.

Pliny the Elder, the most famous naturalist of ancient Rome, stated that:

Contact with [menstrual blood] turns new wine sour, crops touched by it become barren, grafts die, seed in gardens are dried up, the fruit of trees fall off, the edge of steel and the gleam of ivory are dulled, hives of bees die, even bronze and iron are at once seized by rust, and a horrible smell fills the air; to taste it drives dogs mad and infects their bites with an incurable poison.

-- Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book 7, Chapter 13

Basically, menstruation blood causes rabies in dogs. Not to worry though, later in Book 28, Chapter 28, Pliny stated that a strip of cloth dipped in menstrual blood can cure rabies in humans... because homeopathy! In the same chapter, he also quoted (without agreeing) other magical beliefs about menstruation:

hailstorms, they say, whirlwinds, and lightning even, will be scared away by a woman uncovering her body while her monthly courses are upon her. The same, too, with all other kinds of tempestuous weather; and out at sea, a storm may be lulled by a woman uncovering her body merely, even though not menstruating at the time... If the menstrual discharge coincides with an eclipse of the moon or sun, the evils resulting from it are irremediable... if a woman strips herself naked while she is menstruating, and walks round a field of wheat, the caterpillars, worms, beetles, and other vermin, will fall from off the ears of corn... this is not done at sun-rise, for if so, the crop will wither and dry up. Young vines, too, it is said, are injured irremediably by the touch of a woman in this state; and both rue and ivy, plants possessed of highly medicinal virtues, will die instantly upon being touched by her.

Causal Anthropocentrism

There is a pattern of thinking that has annoyed me. Today I found the name for it: "causal anthropocentrism".

What triggered this post is a quote by Xi Jinping:

There is no such thing as the so-called Thucydides Trap in the world. But should major countries time and again make the mistakes of strategic miscalculation, they might create such traps for themselves.

The Thucydides Trap describes this unhappy pattern: as a hegemonic power grows weaker relative to an emerging power, war often results. This concept worried Graham Allison a lot, and you can find him talking about it in books and lectures. This does not concern this post.

What annoyed me about Xi's quote is the part

they might create such traps for themselves

Let's Read: Homo Deus (2015), by Yuval Noah Harari, Part 3

Part 3: Homo Sapiens lose control

Chap 8: The Time Bomb in the Laboratory

Liberal humanism assumes every human has a free, unified self. It's threatened by scientific discoveries that suggest that such a self doesn't exist.

Split brain humans seem to have two selves. The experiencing self and the narrating self has different ideas as to what's good in life. For example in childbirth, the experiencing self suffers horribly, but the narrating self feels like it's a great plot event. 

The self that gets into the books and into the stories is the narrating self; the experiencing self doesn't make stories. If someone says "I did this", it's the narrating self speaking. The idea of a single free self is a myth made by the narrating self, and is full of errors just like all its other stories.

We identify with the inner system that takes the crazy chaos of life and spins out of it seemingly logical and consistent yarns. It doesn’t matter that the plot is full of lies and lacunas, and that it is rewritten again and again, so that today’s story flatly contradicts yesterday’s; the important thing is that we always retain the feeling that we have a single unchanging identity from birth to death (and perhaps even beyond the grave).

Let's Read: Homo Deus (2015), by Yuval Noah Harari, Part 2

Part 2: Homo Sapiens Gives Meaning to the World

In this part, we study the history of Sapiens's meaning making, and in particular, the history of humanism. Still nothing new from Sapiens.

Chap 4: The Storytellers

The ancient gods were quite similar to modern companies. 

In ancient Uruk, Lagash and Shurupak the gods functioned as legal entities that could own fields and slaves, give and receive loans, pay salaries and build dams and canals. Since the gods never died, and since they had no children to fight over their inheritance, they gathered more and more property and power. An increasing number of Sumerians found themselves employed by the gods, taking loans from the gods, tilling the gods’ lands and owing taxes and tithes to the gods.

Then, writing and money were invented, allowing efficient bureaucracy, helping these god-companies to grow into Sumerian empires, headed by priest kings. The priest kings were to gods like the CEOs to the companies. The company is powerful, but without a body or mouth, and needs to be represented by CEOs and such.

Let's Read: Homo Deus (2015), by Yuval Noah Harari, Part 1

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2015), by Yuval Noah Harari, is about how Homo Sapiens would become gods.

Chap 1: The New Human Agenda

(There is no preface. This chapter is the introduction.)

Humans have mostly solved the problems of famine, plague, and war. That's 3/4 of doom horses defeated. Next up, humans would try to solve death, sadness, and humanity.

Death is most obviously solved by keeping the biological body alive, but can also be solved by becoming cyborgs. Sadness can be solved by reengineering the human psychology. Humanity will be enhanced as a result of attempts to solve death and unhappiness. Homo Deus is the result. Or, many kinds of Homo Deuses, since there are many different ways humans can become transhuman.

Happiness is hard. Recall the theories of happiness in humans and see why historically, humanity's happiness has not improved much at all.

Yet studies have shown that American subjective well-being levels in the 1990s remained roughly the same as they were in the 1950s... The Japanese in the 1990s were as satisfied – or dissatisfied – as they were in the 1950s.

Let's Read: Sapiens (2011) by Yuval Noah Harari, Part 4

Let's review: There were three revolutions: cognitive, agricultural, scientific.

Part 4: The Scientific Revolution

Chap 14: The Discovery of Ignorance

Our ancestors put a great deal of time and effort into trying to discover the rules that govern the natural world. But modern science differs from all previous traditions of knowledge in three critical ways:

1. The willingness to admit ignorance. Modern science... assumes that we don’t know everything. Even more critically, it accepts that the things that we think we know could be proven wrong as we gain more knowledge.

2. The centrality of observation and mathematics. Having admitted ignorance, modern science aims to obtain new knowledge. It does so by gathering observations and then using mathematical tools to connect these observations into comprehensive theories. 

3. The acquisition of new powers. Modern science is not content with creating theories. It uses these theories in order to acquire new powers, and in particular to develop new technologies.

Let's Read: Sapiens (2011) by Yuval Noah Harari, Part 3

Part 3: The Unification of Humankind

Chap 9: The Arrow of History

Cultures are giant memeplexes, but since the memeplex could have memes that don't play well together, they could compete and struggle, and this causes a culture to change.

For example, in medieval Europe, Christianity advocated humility and meekness, but the nobles also valued glory and honour and fame and stuff. To reconcile these contradictions, they went on crusades and stuff trying to make a compromise, and culture changed as a result.

Western politics after the French Revolution is based on equality and freedom, but they don't play well together. To be equal, the better-off are forced to help the worse-off, that is, to infringe on the freedom of the better-off.

discord in our thoughts, ideas and values compel us to think, reevaluate and criticise. Consistency is the playground of dull minds.

The tendency of history is that cultures merge and memeplexes get more universal. There are three ways:

1. Economically, by universal use of money.
2. Politically, by imperialism.
3. Religiously, by universal religions.

Let's Read: Sapiens (2011) by Yuval Noah Harari, Part 1

Part 1: The Cognitive Revolution

Chap 1: An Animal of No Significance

In this book, "humans" denote all creatures in the homo genus. The modern human, Homo Sapiens, are called "Sapiens" in particular.

2 million years ago, humans started having more brain power, but they were still in the middle of the food chain. 100k years ago, Sapiens appeared and they rose to the top of the food chain.

There used to be many species of humans, but only Sapiens remain now. The others got killed off or outbred. There are two theories: Interbreed (the humans interbred and merged into one species) and Replacement (Sapiens outcompeted the other humans who went extinct).

Let's Read: Sapiens (2011) by Yuval Noah Harari, Part 2

Part 2: The Agricultural Revolution

Chap. 5: History's Biggest Fraud

At Year 9000BC, humans started farming. The main farming creatures were under human control before 3500BC. 90% of modern human calories come from species domesticated during that time. Modern human diet is ancient.

Farmers were on average worse off: they got sick from backbreaking (literally) labor, they suffered malnutrition from the monotonic diet, they were far more vulnerable to famines, bad health from bad diet, diseases from crowdedness, violence from defending their farmlands against other farming communities (unlike hunter-gatherers, they couldn't just run away, since they need their land and granaries to live).

Humans started farming from a series of small "improvements" that end up trapping them into a worse life. A bit more productivity -> a bit more to eat -> a bit more people -> a bit less to eat -> etc. 

It's like how emails made people more anxious, and productivity gains made people work more. Perspective makes people never satisfied.

Farmers suffered, but farming communities gained power and conquered the world by sheer population density. 

Farm animals suffered even more greatly, even though after domestication, they spread all over the world and can be considered "successful", for most individuals, their domestication was a disaster. 

What makes a species successful can be completely unrelated to what makes an individual's life good.