The Greek and Roman gods animated the lives of Athens and Rome - visible in temples and statues, invoked in conversations, explanations, and hopes. As those institutions crumbled, so did the gods. The same fate befell Egyptian deities once sustained by pyramids and priesthoods, Norse gods once sustained by sagas and rituals, and countless others now remembered only as myths.Even immortal gods died without their institutions. Temples and priesthoods gave the gods life; when those institutions collapsed, the gods became myths.
It is not just the gods who are created, sustained, or forgotten by institutions. That is also the fate of us mortals.
Institutions separate us from the other animals. You’re no match for a gorilla, bear or tiger when you’re naked and alone. You can’t outrun a lion. You’re not stronger than an orangutan. You might – barehanded – catch a rabbit but the energy you’d consume finding it, catching it, preparing it and cooking it might be more than the calories it would give you, take more energy than it would return.
Most of us would quickly perish if left to survive in a world without institutional structures, norms and supply chains.
The degree to which we thrive or flounder is a function of our institutions. Yet weirdly, most of us most of the time treat our institutions with even less creative imagination than the ancient Greeks or Egyptians treated theirs. We take them as inherited or rail at them as if we were cursing the gods. We don’t have a tradition for calmly, rationally, collectively engaging in the task of defining and redefining the institutions that define us. Because who we are and who we will become is not something we will do on our own, naked and afraid; it is something we will only do through the institutions we create and change.
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