Imagine a mountain made of gold. This process involves forming a hybrid between two familiar things being a mountain and gold. Our minds have the ability to form these hybrids between almost anything. This is not a new thought but bear with me. First of when we speak of creative processes, we do not mean creative as in creating new but rather creative as in forming new hybrids through combination. Creative processes are nothing more but the combination of existing impressions and experiences.

Forming hybrids is not just possible between two objects but can also be between experience and current situation. By doing this the human can form a hybrid which is the prediction of how the future will look like. If we as humans are threatened by a lion but have used fire before to repel it, we can form the hybrid of experience and current situation. This hybrid will show us that the lion will run away and with this knowledge we light the torch. The ability to form both kinds of hybrids so between impressions and between experience does not seem to be a feature only humans possess. Other animals will stay away from places where they repeatedly experienced pain forming the same hybrids as humans, however humans do have two advantages. First, we can form very complex hybrids, almost so complex that one might confuse them with something new, but it remains solely a hybrid. Imagine how many parts and hybrids are necessary to conceive a concept such as God. Second the ability to communicate experience and impressions as well as the consequently formed hybrids in a fairly effective way which enables us to form the hybrid of the mountain of gold without ever having to have seen mountains or gold. Someone can simply tell us how it looks and feels and how much it weighs and so on. Being able to form complex hybrids made of different parts and communicate them could therefore be the reason why humans were able to “outperform” all other animals.

It is however also a tool to explain human development. Coming back to the hybrid of God, which hybrids does that actually involve? If we consider the life and consequent beliefs of early tribal communities (these beliefs exist until today having avoided to form large civilizations and surviving both colonialism and globalization) we find that humans, see themselves within the cycle of nature despite maybe having a slightly set apart role. To put it simple sometimes the lion gets the human and sometimes the human gets the lion. Moreover, there was much that was unexplainable and needed explanation, so God filled that gap. These represented both parts of nature so humans and all other animals and plants. We can see remnants of these primal gods both in south American civilizations as well as Egypt and even in Greek mythology. Here however humans are the centre of control. It is in some way the only period where humans thought they were actually on top (well with the exception of the gods). The Greek Gods are as human as it gets but the fact that they have more power. This is because some natural events were still unexplainable, they were however put under the domain of human gods: Poseidon controlled the see and storms; Demeter made the plants grow and so on. The belief that humanity was above nature translated to the Gods in the sense that they were outside of nature controlling it. There was still a remnant of the more primal Gods including the God Pan as well as Dryads, Nymphs and some other I cannot think of right now. They were by definition the spirits of nature but at the same time were in a very real sense a bit of the spirit of nature remaining in the perception of the world. The shift in the perception of the human role on within the cycles of this planet changed the experience of humans and therefore the hybrids they would form. Therefore, when humans were conquering nature and perceived most things to be about humans the Gods, they formed reflected this. The consolidation of this thought happens during in the early years of the Roman Empire. Nymphs and Dryads are almost completely gone and those gods closer to nature like Poseidon have fallen out of favour. However, we see a last shift that has shaped much of the world today.

With the start of Philosophy and sciences in civilizations around the Mediterranean Sea the role in which humans see themselves in changes again. We see that more abstract concepts of rationality and logic gain more traction. Moreover, humans realize that apart from the animal or the flood there are also more abstract forces the human has not yet conquered such as time and space. Whereas in Greek and Roman Mythology the Gods conquered nature, in monotheistic religions God conquered these abstract concepts being transcendent and eternal as well as omniscient and omnipotent and well the last one would be omnibenevolent, but I feel like in most cases that is quite a long stretch. The human is centre of creation but only in the imagine of God not like God and therefore we do not have complete rationality, we do not always do good, and we die. Our state is our actual experience, humans are often good and fairy rational that is true. This was only possible by establishing these abstract concepts of eternity or omniscience which we do not fully fulfil and create a hybrid that can. In this case monotheistic Gods. Interesting is that as humans we are not even able to create this kind of abstract entity of God in our thought because we do not know what omniscience really means. If there were a God (which I cannot disprove) it would probably be impossible to grasp anything of it which for some reason most religions also admit only to then give a concrete description why God’s omniscient and omnibenevolent nature mean that people cannot get an abortion. Aristotle’s understanding of God is a good example of which experience, and perception, was necessary to form the idea of God. His thought of God being a Prime mover who initiated everything and keeps it moving was the first time this perception of God was voiced and gained traction around the Mediterranean. 400 years later this idea was incorporated into monotheistic religion.

A quick side note: there were plenty of earlier examples of all these kinds of religions I am merely mentioned the ones that I know well enough to write about and that seem relevant to the argument. If you know something about Buddhism or Hinduism or whatever other religion, see if the experience of the people who initiated the religion was reflected within it and how Gods changed over time due to a change in human experience and the role, they saw themselves in.

This leads us to the religions of modern times. Here it gets much more complex, and I do not want to make this much longer so I will include this in the conclusion and come back to it another day. Using the experience of humans to explain or predict future development of human societies can be a valuable tool. Studies on narratives employ this tactic to some extent but looking at narratives is equivalent with looking at hybrids, it ignores however that these are already limited by the experience and impressions that can be used to form them. When considering modern religions like early capitalism or growthism that worship capital accumulation and growth as the new prime mover, this framework of looking at the experience and impressions of people and the consequent hybrids that can and are being formed could be a valuable addition to studies involving narratives as their core research method.

Quick last word: I just thought of this and did not know where to put it. Philosophy or more broadly speaking structured thought and pondering are nothing but combination of existing experience to gain new insights. The idea that philosophy will be able to produce a perfect ethical code is therefore just as impossible as it was for humans to create a perfect God. But we can get close to it I guess and always adapt out understanding to our current experience.