“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Art as painting or drawing was then an important element in what you think of as man’s evolution. When several different persons of a given tribe, say, dreamed of and drew similar animal images, then the people began to look for the physical materialization. Men dreamed their own maps in the same fashion, one man dreaming perhaps a certain portion, and several dreamers contributing their versions, drawing in sand in the waking state, or upon cave walls.

(9:48.) In those previous “decadent” European centuries, a man’s or a woman’s worth was indisputably settled by the circumstances of birth. Nothing from that point on could change the intrinsic value of the individual. There were endlessly complicated, multitudinous religious and cultural justifications for such a situation, so that the entire affair seemed, often, even to the most intelligent of men, self-evident.

The peasant was poor because he was basically brutish as a result of his parentage. The gentleman was accomplished because a certain refinement came into his blood because of his royal—or nearly—parentage. The ownership of land of itself provided not only built-in social status, but an entire built-in world of privileged beliefs. A man of property, whether he be a scoundrel or a fool, was first and foremost a man of worth.

God made the wealthy and the poor, the privileged and the non-privileged, and therefore it was obviously up to man to continue that status quo. If a man had wanted—I am sorry: if God had wanted all men to be rich, he would have them all born in castles. That was more or less the reasoning.

A person’s sense of worth became connected with the acquisition of land, though to a lesser extent, even as it had in Europe. Later the acquisition of technology’s objects became an added embellishment. A man proved his worth as he moved through the new society’s levels—an exhilarating experience after centuries of a stratified society.

(10:12.) If men were considered equal, however, the ideas of Darwin and Freud came along to alter the meaning of equality, for men were not equal in honor and integrity and creativity—or heroism: —they were equal in dishonor (louder), selfishness, greed, and equally endowed with a killer instinct that now was seen to be a natural characteristic from man’s biological past.

A man’s purpose seemed to be no more than to put bolts together to make an automobile, to spend hours in a factory, working on an end product that he might never see—and because many such people felt that there was little intrinsic value to their lives, spent in such a fashion, they began to demand greater and greater compensation. They could then buy more and more products, purchase a house and show through their possessions that their statuses meant that they must be the men of worth that they wanted to be.

In many past societies, soothsayers, dream experts, poets and artists were the most revered members, for they constantly replenished man’s creative abilities, allowed him to see his position within society and in the natural world with fresh eyes. He, or she, helped form the pattern for the society’s future developments, for its growth, for its give-and-take with nature.

The artist portion became outraged, so that the better husband you were, in that regard, the poorer it seemed the artist became—but (louder) at least you were seen to leave the house every day, as a good man should (with sly amusement).

—in your thoughts. Try to realize that even in your terms there have been multitudinous cultures upon the face of the earth, each one defining for all time, with great moral rectitude, the roles of men and women. There have been freer, more exuberant beliefs systems, and there have been more limiting ones, so look at those of your culture as they influence you as simply one of the ever-varying social fabrications by which a man colors his days.