Simplicity

As a human I can appreciate how funny we are as a species. Aliens, when they're not busy probing us or creating crop circles, may have quite a different take.

In some ways I think we're little changed from very primitive times. Before we came up with the notion that angry gods caused floods and other misfortunes, we thought it was because of something we did or didn't. Since, if you slapped me it hurt and if I threw a rock in a pond it splashed, we wanted everything to be neat and orderly and to have simple causes produce immediate effects.

Thus, our ventures into magic. If we just knew that it was our watering a little plot of land that caused the heavens to bring welcome rain, like it did that one time, we'd be set. Trouble is, of course, sometimes we watered the little plot and the drought continued. In that case we strove to find another single cause, and came up with everything from dances to festive, particular clothing.

None of that worked, but we became very good at coming up with excuses. Later, the witch doctors lost their power to the priests, who told us how the gods were responsible and which seemingly random and arbitrary acts we should perform to please them. This resulted in the priests having the upper hand as far as tribal doings went, so they were pretty damn happy.

Yesterday I washed my dog, but today he's avoiding me. It's easy and second-nature for me to draw an association based on those two facts. Since my household lacks both magicians and priests I pretty much have to figure out for myself if this behavior is a cause and effect or just a coincidence.