And now the shaman gets to start imposing rules. Many of these happen to line up nicely with the king’s needs, but don’t decide to kill anyone on your own.
“Don’t steal stuff.” Again, not bad. Pretty much a necessity for civilization.
“Obey the king, because God says to.” Neat. That one is worth every dime, goat, perfume, oil and priestess the king will pay the shaman from now on.
“Don’t want anything your neighbor has.” On the surface, this one was already covered by the stealing thing. But, we can twist this around to keep those individualists in line. Everyone should just be impossibly happy with what circumstances you were born in or assigned to, and not try to improve your station by learning and things like that.
“Don’t work on Tuesdays.” Everyone has to do something on Tuesdays, but at least this way you get to be guilty of something.
“Come tell me when you do bad stuff and I will ask God to forgive you.” Motherlode. Look what the shaman could twist those tiny minds into doing when he got you to rat out your neighbor’s cough. Getting that information allowed him to tell said neighbor that God told him about the cough, and thus win the neighbor’s compliance. Imagine what can be done with the flood of information this little rule will unleash.
“God hates knowledge.” We can’t let any of those pesky ideas lead to some embarrassing questions for the shaman or the king. You might even make up some stories about how everyone would be all happy-pants right now if some dumbass smart guy didn’t start thinking about stuff long ago. Maybe you could even work in a “hate women” angle while you are at it, if you can show how his primary babe lured him into eating a grape or something.
“The devil makes you do it.” This one lets you off the hook for bad stuff from time to time, but only if you show up and tell all. While we are at it, let’s claim this devil guy is the one that puts thoughts in our heads to learn stuff, especially that dumbass smart guy and his stupid conniving wench. That one is great as it a) shows you the devil IS real or else you wouldn’t be having all those ideas, and b) stop thinking, damn you! Really.
You can also add some great ideas that really do make sense, as these keep the populace alive longer:
“Don’t eat dead people.”
“Don’t have sex with dead people.”
“Don’t have sex with people who eat dead people.”
And a whole bunch of other sex-related rules. Those shamans are horny little one-track-minded bastards, come to think of it. Anyway. Add a few more genuinely beneficial ideas:
“Wash your hands.”
“Don’t let people with pus make food for you.”
Also, mix in some rules to prevent the idiots from doing stuff that people with sense could do just fine:
“Don’t have sex with women that charge for sex.” She can do your laundry, watch your kids, slap you around for a while, wash your car, bring you burgers, etc., all for money. Or, she can demand diamonds and other shiny stuff all the time, but just not money for doing that one thing. If you do want to have sex with her, make sure she gives it away for free to anyone that wanders by rather than her running it as an entertainment industry. Otherwise, she might take pains to protect the inventory.
“Only have sex with people with whom you have reached particular contractual arrangements, which must be approved by your local shaman representative, even if such contracts are decades old.” There’s that sex thing again, but this time contractual arrangements are OK so long the shamans approve in public rituals.
“Don’t smoke that.” More later.
“Don’t drink that.” More later, too.
“Don’t eat that pig or catfish or shrimp.” The shaman could have easily added “unless you make sure it’s cooked thoroughly first.” But, that would have required some individual thinking and responsibility, and that is a can of worms best left closed.
“Don’t judge anybody.” Even the idiot who clearly screwed up every opportunity he had been given. Judgment is just more of that pesky thinking, and you might start judging the king or the shaman if you do. Besides, that’s their bag.
“Trim the penises of little boys.” Hmmm. Maybe that one is only for idiots. Or else it is good as a reminder of what the shaman might do to you if you start using your penis outside of your shaman-approved contracts.
To protect the shaman’s interest, he needed a catch-all rule:
“Stone anyone who gets out of line.” This one pretty much puts the end to that rampant individualism and thought.
With a related:
“If you don’t make your children or your wife or husband follow these rules, you get stoned.”
And the Mother of All Rules:
“Give me ten percent of everything you get.”
The kings should have seen that one coming. Instantly, despite the fact that the king demands more, the shaman becomes the richest guy in the valley. Sure, the shaman has to hire a few malcontents as priests, perhaps even The Chosen Ones that helped launch this new sensation. He also has to put up some special huts to hold court. But other than these things, the shaman really doesn’t have a lot to do with his cash.
The king, on the other hand, is busy building roads to march on, and feeding the masses so they can dig ore and bang out bronze swords. And buying off his allies and foes alike with money he took by force from the productive. The king gets more, but the shaman keeps more of what he gets.
Now, the shaman isn’t stupid enough to just say it like that. No, the words sound like:
“Give God ten percent of everything you get. He said I can hold it for Him.”
As if God doesn’t own it all, anyway. But even that isn’t good enough. So he adds:
“Oh, and make it the best ten percent, too. He doesn’t want to think you are holding out on Him.”
So much for Tithing, and the genetic miracles that brings. Prosperity gets in the way of all that desperation and the attendant obedience anyway.
Related is:
“Give stuff to poor people.” Without any judgment calls about whether they deserve it or are just a bum, of course. This one is really neat in that it kind of sidesteps the original selling point for the ten percent. It also promotes the interest of all those people that listen to the shaman and outnumber you. You don’t expect the shaman to be dipping into his till for those waifs, do you? That’s your problem, not his. Besides, he and his boys are too busy listening to the juicy gossip.
For a while, this one was:
“Let the widows and orphans root around in the fields after the harvest so they can pick up what’s left and help trample that leftover stuff into mulch.” But that sounded too much like work and fair exchange of value. Worse, if the widow has her kids out working they might pick up some skills and a work ethic. Here come those damnable thoughts again! Stop it!
The shamans eventually transformed the way in which men viewed their relationship with God. After a sufficient number of individualists, who saw themselves in direct connection with Him, had been butchered or intimidated into silence, nothing stood in the way of the shamans inserting themselves between God and His creatures. What had previously been an exploration of God’s creation became labeled as Occult, or Witchcraft, or Paganism, or Satanism. Or, any number of easily named and capitalized heresies, suitable for burning or stoning.
After a sufficiently long reign of terror, a shaman of sufficient authority need only point at an individualist and name him or her as one of these. And then lean back, smiling righteously upon them, as the swarm attacked in their religious zeal, certain that God smiled upon them as well. Over time, the fear of such retribution silenced dissent or discussion. Celebrations of God’s bounty, such as out tribe’s annual berry fight, would have served as sufficient evidence for ritualistic execution of the proponents or attendees.
The battle was considered won when the only theological choice available in the landscape of ideas was simple. One side of this simple choice was adherence to and promotion of silly rituals that could only demean the awe of an Infinite Creator. The other side of the choice was atheism or other evil-sounding labels. The third possibility, that of the most simple relationship of man as an individual creation of his God, was stamped out where ever it happened to spring up.
Eventually, some of those shamans became a little too big for their britches. In some cases, some barbarian king had enough of them and decided to whack them and start his own shaman subsidiary. In other cases, the shamans took over the kingdom and went into the barbarian business.
The most successful shaman racket of all time grew larger than a whole bunch of kings. One day, some shamans got together and decided to resolve their differences. To do so, they lumped all of their compliance rituals into one big mash, which might seem a little inconvenient at first. But, this turned out to have a couple of great advantages.
First, the ritual mush became so confusing that the guy on the street had no idea what the hell was going on with God, to put it bluntly. The common man was left with no choice but to either listen to what the regional shamans told him to do, or to think for himself and get stoned.
Second, all those gossip chambers now had the potential for revealing some really good stuff that had real political power. Imagine if some minor functionary in one kingdom blurted out some tidbit that meant some other kingdom was about to get invaded. Then, just like the whole “I had a dream” thing that got it all started, the shamans could use that information as some kind of “God told me this” type of kingdom-vs-kingdom scam for hire. Or, the shamans could get together and decide whether or not to tip off the invade, and possibly sell that information to the highest bidder. Or, they might just let some jerk king they didn’t like get invaded. Or get wiped out while invading someone else. Lots of ways that one could turn out, all of them great for the shaman pocketbook.
On the flip side, this organized shaman glaze had a major flaw. Just as this mondo-shaman thing was getting touched off, the top shamans realized they had a problem. With all those little believer cults out there, each with their own scam going on, someone had to come up with a great common story or else the whole thing could blow apart in no time. All it would take to rattle apart is for one of those lower-level guys to decide that their version of shamanism should predominate.
For a while, things seemed to stagnate. And then, one day a shaman showed up that had been visiting another cult trying to get them into the fold. This other cult was notoriously known as the predominate dick-snippers, they not liking anyone named Richard, and had refused to join up. The snippers, as it turned out, had their own thing going like gang-busters.
The shaman reported that the snippers seemed, in a way, to value individuality, despite their shaman tradition being the one that whole “knowledge is bad” thing. More oddly, the whole collective of them sometimes acted like an [sic] single personality. These qualities allowed the snippers to infiltrate most of the barbarian Kingdoms and assist them with handling a lot of the administrative and media needs all around. Unfortunately for them, a few centuries previously their host barbarian king had decided they had grown a little too powerful and decided to disperse them around. It turned out that this dispersion had happened a couple of times before, too.
You get the idea...Clever conceit...Anyway...FWIW... }
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