What is "Genesis" really about?

This is a bit of a recap of a fascinating book, "Eve's Seed", by Robert McElvaine. 2001.

I read this about a year after it was out...because there was an excerpt written for the WaPo editorial section the sunday after 9/11. That little bit was weird enough an idea that I got the whole book.


What's Genesis about? Not what you thought...

It is of course a mythology about the origin of humanity. An allegory for some things. Interesting things. But *not* about Adam, Eve, a serpent and an apple.

That story is putatively about "the fall of man", but really it's about "the fall of men", which is a subtle distinction. A fall from grace, yes. Beginning when...

Eve ate a fruit from the tree of knowledge.

What knowledge?

Now for the anthropology history aspects: early humankind are of course wanderers. Hunter/gatherers. As are most "higher" animals. Cows are not, they just eat grass. Chimps are gatherers. Humans are omnivorous, so some hunting and some gathering. Can't be otherwise, because we know too little to do anything else, and besides, food is reasonably plentiful--lots of trees produce fruits and nuts, you can watch what other animals eat and do the same, and occasionally you eat of them.

Gathering of things that fall from trees. Hunting the occasional large beast.

That hunting might actually take a couple of days, days of wandering, finding, shooting, following, and then dragging the thing back to camp. That requires upper body strength, so it's the men doing it. Women are doing the gathering. When you "exhaust" an area, you move on.

When you wander into the area that has A LOT of stuff, you end up staying for a while, because you can't exhaust the area. Men go out to hunt. Women stay behind, with babies, kids. And trash.

When the time comes that they stay in one area for a number of years, what happens? The women are in the same place every day, and have the opportunity to observe something: things they eat have seeds. Seeds which they have thrown away. Seeds sprout in the ground. Sprouts become new plants. New plants eventually make more food.

Hoorah! We can grow it ourselves! Let's dig in the dirt and plant seeds and have more food and stop having to wander all over tarnation.

Eve has eaten from the Tree of Knowledge. Knowledge of agriculture. Men (upper body strength again) now have to do the backbreaking work of tilling and harvesting--they have fallen from grace.

Women must be punished for this. And have been ever since. Because I was once a hunter, but now I'm a slave. A slave to the fields. And my johnson.

All the chatter you read here/there about "it was the tree of knowledge about good and evil" is baloney. The origin of the story is pre-history, when humans went from hard wandering, to find the "garden of eden, where food was plentiful". Good. And then to farming. Evil.

So the story was invented where the snake tempted Eve with knowledge of seeds, of planting, of growth and harvesting.

The book is fascinating, and well worth your time to read. Unless of course you are a bible literalist, in which case it might make your head explode.

- - - -

So why did I encounter this in WaPo? Well, there was the excerpt variant by the author, written as an Editorial essay. About Muslims, for the most part; appropriate a few days post-9/11.

Why do the men grow beards? Why did it become a religious requirement? Because women can't. And therefore having a beard proves that one is "not-a-woman". 

Read the book. Fascinating. I can't hardly do it justice here.

It IS about the nail

My sister sent me this link a few days ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4EDhdAHrOg

which is amusing, and cringe-inducing, at the same time.

The worst of it, I think, from a male view, is when she says "It's not about the nail, I need you to listen to me"...because what we hear is "I am not interested in your opinion or participation", and then we just check out of the conversation. You get head-nods, "mmm-hmm"s, and maybe "how do you feel about that?", but we aren't actually listening any longer. If we internalize that enough, we aren't listening to anything you say after that, ever.

Few of us are clever enough to figure out how to lead her to come to the realization that it IS about the nail, and that we are wired to be suppliers of help if you come with a complaint of some sort.

It's not that we are being dismissive of your feelings (altho I'm sure some are), but that you want to talk about something which is causing you trouble, for which there is a clear and unmistakable cause and effect, and for which there is a clear solution.

and we are unable to imagine that removing the nail is NOT the first order of business.

It's worse for me. I'm an engineer--EVERYTHING looks like it needs problem-solving.

Crytek games

Steam had a sale of their usual style a few months ago, and I got a Crytek bundle:

Crisis 1, 2 + plus some expansions.

I also had a DVD of Far Cry from a while ago that I had not installed or played.

They'd had good reviews, as I recalled.

Far Cry 1: well, it's interesting until you get to that derelict ship (actually, this is fairly early). That was a nightmare for me.

Why? Checkpoint saves. Only. I hate that. That is nearly a complete deal-breaker, because those saves are generally not where I'd want...one of them is right before you climb out onto the top deck of that derelict, which is good, because that is a really really hard segment to run...and when you've cleared it, you have to get into this little dinghy that is hanging, I fell out of it twice all the way to the bottom where there is no way back up, meaning you have to reload the last checkpoint save and try to evade that damn helicopter AGAIN. Quit, and deleted the game--the annoyance is too great.

Crisis 1 is better. Actually, it's REALLY good, for a lot of reasons. 1) the enemies are North Koreans. That's almost as good as Nazis, except that I really wish they'd been wearing those ridiculous bouffant hats you always see them wear in photos. 2) Quicksaves and named saves. 3) The tank battle. 4) You drive the cars, the tanks, the boats, eventually a VTOL (which was weird). 4) It's much more about stealthing your way through some areas. 5) It's not terribly linear. It does get harder as you progress. 6) Lots of open territory. You don't have to go through it the same way every time. 7) There's some semblance of real story there (rescue a science team, discover the NKs, then the aliens, then the BIG aliens).

Crisis 2 is ok. I thought the end was a little disappointing. The aliens were individually interesting, but we're back to checkpoint-saves only. The settings/levels were all WAY too linear--but the setting kinda forces it that way, since it is basically outdoors in NYC. I'd have rather been able to just walk around in NYC, but there's a lot of jumping large distances between levels. Felt a little too episodic. Not much vehicles action--what little there is is unimportant (well, in C1 you can probably do the tank battle on foot, but that wouldn't be as interesting). Too much cut-scenes (arrrrg, if you want me to watch a movie, just make a movie).


I'll play Crisis 1 again (altho probably NOT that final battle on top of the carrier). Crisis 2, maybe. Far Cry, not a chance.