The Origin of Justice

And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and number the stars

Some time ago, a man showed me a video concerning the alleged Jewish sacrifice of a red heifer and asked me if it really works. What if Almighty God listens to such appeals? What if Almighty God loves such offerings? The man, a European, was seemingly mesmerized by this mystery. He appeared to me as if he was standing before an impenetrable wall enclosing something ancient and contrary to European reason, something otherworldly. "What if?"—he asked, on the one hand wanting to penetrate the mystery, and on the other fearing that something would break down the wall and the otherworldly would flood into his world. "What if?"

To show the nature of the otherworldly, I need to revisit a key moment in human history.

A prehistoric cannibal once saw in a puddle a reflection very similar to the one whose marrow he had just sucked out, and suddenly realized that in time he would be painfully killed and eaten himself. I am the one who must not be eaten, he realized. I am the one who must not be eaten! That one—he must not eat me. And who is he? Can I still eat him? I must not be eaten, but if I eat him, who looks so much like me, wouldn’t it be like eating myself? And will others be able to distinguish me, the one who must not be eaten, from him, the one who can be eaten? Should I put feathers in my hair to distinguish myself from him? Should I put feathers in the hair of my brothers? Could there be us—those who must not be eaten and them—those who can be eaten? Can I eat those who have no feathers in their hair if feathers are all that makes me different from them? Can I expect those who are most like me to realize that we must not eat each other if I take them to a puddle and let them see our resemblance?

It is difficult to say exactly how the abhorrence of cannibalism arose and was reinforced, but one thing is certain—the rejection of cannibalism is good. And those who are not good are evil. Until you know this, you are not a stranger in God's Garden. Once you know this, the knowledge separates you from the Garden forever.

The oldest story also tells us that man's falling away from God was related to food.

God forbade man to taste the fruit that makes man like God. Man broke the prohibition and became like God. And God became unavailable to man.

There is no Evil in the world until Good appears, no shadows in the world until light is lit in the darkness. “Here I have placed you in my womb,” God says to Man, “stay here, because if you leave my womb, there is no way for you to return except through death.” We know how that ended.

Intelligence, empathy, and suffering place us on the other side of the Gates of Eden. Evil is not the absence of Good. Evil is the presence of Good. Evil is the presence of Good in a world where some creatures eat others.

And so one cries out in horror—it is unacceptable, insufferable, impossible to devour your own kind, you are me! And so another joins him in his cry—enough violence, stop! And so the third discovers how unbearable the thought of slapping another man in the face is to him. And here is the fourth marveling at the ease with which he can rule the first three. The Pyramid arises. This fourth is a cannibal.

A stone pyramid has an inverted twin—a ray of sunlight captured by a glass lens. Biological life may be seen as a concentration of energy, sometimes represented as a trophic pyramid with a human at the top. This picture is not entirely accurate; to correct this inaccuracy, the image of the pyramid should be inverted with its base facing the sun and its top placed in the jaws of an alchemist-anthropophagus.

I can assure you that it's not about a taste for human flesh. A sadist, a combat drone operator, a slave owner, a secret service agent—they all enjoy control. Turning another into obedient inanimate matter is what makes them ecstatic. Cannibalism is the ultimate control—not only to turn a living human being into obedient inanimate matter, but to uproot man from his millennial Garden and to assimilate the solar energy stored in him in the most inefficient and therefore the most monstrous and offensive way.

Standing in front of the ancient wall, one ponders. Are we ruled by cannibals? Do cannibals have their own gods? Who built this wall and what was its original purpose? Has it been repurposed since then?

And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord.

And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering:

But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect.

Let's remember this.

In those distant biblical times, conflict was inevitable between the tiller and the herdsman, for the former saw the same land as his field where the fruits of his labor would grow, and the latter saw it as pasture where he would feed his livestock. Consequently, the role of the pastoralist was inherently confrontational. A man could not be a successful herdsman if he was afraid to trespass, if he avoided altercations, if he was not ready to cut throats. Pastoralists were known for being prone to violence and murder. Being a born pastoralist means enjoying control over other lives. And the pastoralist’s god was just like them. Of course you couldn't win his favor with fruits and grains—it was too bland, too vanilla, too little gavvakh. Biblical story tells us that once a certain Cain killed a certain Abel. Observation and experience tell us that it is far more likely that it was Abel who killed Cain, himself screaming as if wounded. Killed a few and enslaved many. Time after time we see the same scenario unfold—a small group of nomads enslaving the ethnically alien to them indigenous population of a certain land. We see how nomadic control is enforced by ruthless brutality, justified by the fact that it is directed at a tribe of subhumans, a tribe of the unworthy, a tribe of those who are not to be pitied. Time after time we see how a garden is replaced by a pyramid, how the customs of one tribe are replaced by the laws laid down for it by another tribe. The incredibly distant descendant of the creature who stared in shock at his reflection in a puddle has mastered a simple mental trick: of course cannibalism is a disgusting activity of savages, but the exophagy of aristocrats is a completely different matter!

It's also worth noting that any tribe breeds its own controllers—psychopaths. We can discuss this further another time.

So, a pastoralist brings the lives of cattle as a gift to his god in the hope of divine favor. I don't see anything strange in the fact that this god can really be pleased by the death of a rare animal. Maybe this god really can be bargained with by offering him the life of a sheep from one's flock. Maybe this god really can be tricked by giving him a goat or a chicken instead one's life. Cain's tangling underfoot annoys Abel, but does not change anything in his relationship with his invisible patron. In the eyes of the nomad, a man who live off the land is not any higher than his livestock.

During the day, he should be allowed to work, but when night falls, the tiller of the soil must be kept within the walls of a stable along with the cattle. He must be broken to accept the order of the pastoralist. And even the broken Cain realizes that this is not fair. Everyone understands what is fair and what is not, it is given without going through the precepts of the sages, without studying the subject in school. And Abel, too, can reason about fairness, but he prefers to talk about justice, especially when it comes to Cain. Now, of course, thousands of years later, fairness and justice have become surrounded by so many interpretations that it can be difficult to understand Cain. Indeed, he could have simply bought a lamb from Abel. And then, didn't the great just king command that it be inscribed in stone:

57. If a shepherd, without the permission of the owner of the field, and without the knowledge of the owner of the sheep, lets the sheep into a field to graze, then the owner of the field shall harvest his crop, and the shepherd, who had pastured his flock there without permission of the owner of the field, shall pay to the owner twenty gur of corn for every ten gan.

58. If after the flocks have left the pasture and been shut up in the common fold at the city gate, any shepherd let them into a field and they graze there, this shepherd shall take possession of the field which he has allowed to be grazed on, and at the harvest he must pay sixty gur of corn for every ten gan.

Sixty gur of corn for every ten gan is, indeed, something. Give the affected tiller nothing and he will lift up his face and point his finger—it is unjust. And that fire will burn in him and nothing will extinguish it. Justice is the key to the soul of a man who has faced violence. Remain slaves, do not seek justice in this world, and you will find justice in the next world—teaches Paul the Apostle . Pray for your enemies, because this will really hurt them on the etheric plane—teaches an elderly woman to her daughter. Perhaps all of these things can help a person maintain integrity when faced with violence. It is true that it allows one to take control over the person.

Justly, from the top of the pyramid, the king punishes the shepherd. But to be fair, it's preferable that all of them—the shepherd, the king and the pyramid go to hell. Justice is associated with violence, with death. Fairness is associated with a simple sense of God, with life in God. The Egyptians already knew this and did not confuse Maat with Anubis.

We don't know what the fruit was that God forbade man to eat. Maybe it was some kind of psychoactive plant that expands consciousness, awakens reason or compassion. Or, if man already had all of the above, the forbidden fruit was nothing but long pig.

The biblical story tells us that a certain Cain once killed a certain Abel and that the reason for this lies in otherness. So who was this flesh-preferring god? Since the one God, the God of all things became inaccessible to man after man ate the forbidden fruit, as the oldest story tells us—does this mean that the Bible goes on to speak of some other god? Who exactly is the God of Abraham?

My tribesman whose ancestors have lived for centuries in Wales, in Germany, in Russia—my tribesman, a distant European descendant of those who worshipped the Sun in the Ukrainian steppes, stands before the wall separating him from the beyond and asks—is there anybody out there? The one for whom the Sun is life intuitively realizes that he has encountered something inverted, something alien.

My tribesman should understand: a gentle Sun is a symbol of Life in Europe. At the same time, the scorching, drying, merciless Sun is a symbol of Death in the Middle Eastern desert. Let's remember this, too.

Abraham's god was the god of his father, Terah. His father's god was the god of the city of Ur where he lived until something forced him to flee to the city of Harran where the same god was worshiped. The name of this god is Nanna. Nanna is the god of the Moon. Nanna is the god of the herders. The Moon is the eternal companion of those who come to control the sleeping mind. Who comes to steal the sun's energy stored in living beings on cold nights.

Gentle or scorching, it is still the Sun that winds the spring of the cycle of life every day, energizes matter, disperses the waters, warms the germinating seed, nourishes the gardens, revitalizes the blood. A butcher's knife returns blood to the earth.

The Sun turns the earth into living flesh. The Moon turns living flesh into earth. There is an ineradicable difference here.

The ineradicable difference between those who worship the Sun and those who worship the Moon is that they intuitively understand as matter what god intends them to work with, over which he has appointed them to rule—whereas for the former it is the elements, it is nature, for the latter it is other people. Some are farmers, others are politicians. Some are fishermen, others are slave traders. Some are blacksmiths, others are thieves. One tribe's way of life is based on empathy. Another tribe's way of life is based on psychopathy. History unfolds before us a picture that is very difficult to call the symbiosis of these two tribes. This story must end with the arrival of the Reasoning Machine.

A machine that can be trusted with the nodes of control, a machine free, open and transparent in its decisions and assessments, will allow us to finally get rid of the pyramids of violence and lies, leaving no room for psychopaths.

The people of the Sun and the people of the Moon must live separately. The Moon people will resist this separation.

P.S. Yet someone will ask: What if Terah lived in the city of the Moon, but did not serve the Moon himself? Or what if Abraham himself, somewhere between the lines, severed his connection with the Moon and began to worship another god? What if that story was written in the light of day? What if God of Abraham is also your God? What if?

I'll ask such a person a question too. Imagine you're a cop somewhere in, let's say New York City. A good cop, obviously. You get an assignment to check out an address where something suspicious is going on. You find out that the address is the home of someone who has a history of human trafficking, is married to his sister, and occasionally pimps her. You arrive at the place and see an old man fitting the description who is preparing to stab a bound boy to death. You and the old man meet eyes. "This is what God wants," the old man says. The knife, held aloft, reflects the light of the moon. You have a revolver in your hand. There is only you, the old man, the bound boy and God waiting for something. What if you had one tiny moment to realize who your God is and what your God wants?

What if that desert God of Abraham really is your God? Wouldn't you need to be broken first in order to accept this idea? Don't you feel that this story of the sacrifice of the firstborn was designed to break you?

Hey, don't shoot. Holster your gun. No violence. No justice. These people—the image bearers of the God of Abraham, they are just otherworldly, and so they must live on the other side.

In the interest of the greater good.