from The Meaning of Life: Ascending Jacob’s Ladder by Hazy Notion
In advanced hunter/gatherer societies Survival of Self was the highest and, therefore, the dominant Theme of collective consciousness. Hunter/gatherer culture was pre-agricultural and usually involved a nomadic life of foraging for food. It derives its name from the tendency for social groups to be divided by gender roles. The men were hunters of meat while the women were gatherers of edible vegetation. This type of culture was usually dominated by elders.
Age was a dominance factor because older people had more experience in the knowledge of survival requirements. They had seen more cycles of change in climate and food sources and could remember experiences of food and water shortages, and what they had done to solve these problems in the past. Age was also relevant because, in terms of Survival identity, the longer people live the fitter they prove themselves to be.
Figure 15 shows the Status and Fertility levels of hunter/gatherer identity under the influence of the Over-Theme of Territory. The Fertility of Territory part of hunter/gatherer identity was culturally derived from totemic beliefs. Each geographic area or Territory incorporated an intricate map of mythical animal spirits which together made a composite symbol called a totem.
Individual human identity was also incorporated into the totems and hunter/gatherer societies divided themselves along totemic lines. In many hunter/gatherer societies personal totem identity came from a mother's intuition. When a woman realised she was pregnant she identified the Territory she believed she was in when she was impregnated. She was then said to have been impregnated by the spirit of the totem representing that particular location. The resulting child was then said to have been fathered by the relevant totemic spirit. In turn, the child belonged to the particular totem grouping of the spirit and identified with the Territory associated with it. Hunter/gatherer men were not consciously aware of their procreative role, which they delegated to the spirits of the totem. Marriages and sexual relations between men and women were focussed culturally on survival needs rather than on procreation.
Status of Territory identity manifested in individual hunter/gatherers as totem rivalry. Complicated rules — particularly marriage rules — regulated the relationships between people of different totems.
When a man died he was thought to have returned to the totem to which he belonged. Belief in the recycling of spirits through the totem gave hunter/gatherer men the ability to live with the knowledge of their own personal mortality — foreknowledge of death being a condition of Survival of Self identity. However, it is likely that hunter/gatherer women did not always share in this promise of immortality.
In advanced hunter/gatherer societies totemic spirits were usually exclusively male and therefore only male spirits were believed to be recycled through the totems after death. This situation presented hunter/gatherer women with an incentive to evolve higher on the Spectrum. Without any amelioration for the Terror of death they had little to lose by transcending Survival of Self identity and seeking solace in identification with Fertility of Self.
But the hunter/gatherer women of ancient times had a number of things to learn before they could leap-frog over their men and transcend Survival of Self. These things may seem obvious to us now but it is only an unwillingness to recognize relatively simple ideas originating beyond our current identities that prevents all of us from making more speedy evolutionary progress.
The first thing women had to learn was that men, not spirits, were responsible for impregnation and that their children were replicas of themselves and not totem spirits being recycled through their wombs. Once they realised this they could partly free themselves from despair over personal mortality. They could then see that it was themselves, not the totems, that generated human life. And that it was they who therefore had a measure of immortality.
A second part of hunter/gatherer womens’ preparation for upward migration involved learning the basic principles of agriculture. Gathering wild fruits and vegetables eventually taught them how to plant seeds and return later to harvest crops. Perhaps it was the cultivation of food sources that led women to discover their own Fertility identities. Alternatively, perhaps it was the development of Fertility of Self identity that led to the discovery of agriculture. It doesn't matter which came first. The two went together to create a new kind of agriculturally-based society focussed on human fertility.