Steve Taylor is a British psychologist and author whose book The Fall (2005) argues that, around 4,000 BC, human beings went through a sudden change of consciousness he calls the “ego explosion”, which brought war, patriarchy and inequality into the world. Therapeutic Shamanism takes its name for this turning point from him, along with his idea of a slow “post-Fallen recovery” over the last few hundred years. It also adds to his picture, tracing the roots of the Fall further back, to the start of farming, and giving it a shamanic and animist depth of its own.
Who is Steve Taylor? #
A psychologist who writes about human consciousness, spiritual awakening and what has gone wrong with the modern mind. His recent books describe him as a senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Beckett University.1 His books include The Fall (2005, with a new edition in 2018), Waking from Sleep (2010), Back to Sanity (2012), The Leap (2017) and Extraordinary Awakenings (2021).
A British academic and the author of The Fall. Paul Francis found it a huge relief to read, as the dominant cultural narrative had just never quite felt right to him, and at last he felt he was reading things closer to the truth.2 See What is the Fall?
What is Taylor’s idea of the Fall? #
That for most of our history human beings lived relatively peacefully and equally, and that this changed quite suddenly about six thousand years ago. Taylor says that three things then appear together, as parts of one sickness: “War is the first of these; the second is patriarchy, or male domination; and the third (which we’ll examine in a moment) is social inequality.”3 Behind all three, he says, lies a change in the human sense of self, which he calls the ‘ego explosion’: a hardening of the separate, walled-off ego. “The Fall has been characterised by the expansion and inflation of the ego; ‘egomania’ as Steve Taylor calls it.”4
What is his evidence? #
Mostly archaeology. Taylor’s case rests on the Neolithic, the period “from 11,000 B.C. to 4,000 B.C.”, when farming spread. Of the many settlements from that time, “not one has been found built in a place that is militarily defensible.” “None of the artwork in the Neolithic era depicts warfare”, and “no weapons designed specifically for the killing of humans are found”. There is “little or no evidence of patriarchy in Neolithic times, nor of matriarchy.”5 In Therapeutic Shamanism’s view, it may not have been a golden age, “but it certainly compares incredibly favourably” with what came after.6
In the new edition of The Fall, Taylor adds more recent research. He reports a survey by the anthropologists Jonathan Haas and Matthew Piscitelli of 2,900 prehistoric skeletons, which, apart from one massacre site, “found only four skeletons with signs of violence”.7
Why does he think it happened? #
He suggested a change in climate. “Around four thousand B.C. the world entered a period of rapid global warming”, bringing crop failures, raiding, and warlords who gained power by being the most ruthless.8 Therapeutic Shamanism accepts this, but only up to a point: “Steve Taylor’s explanation about the Fall being instigated by rapid climate change is, I think, almost certainly true. However, it is only a partial explanation, for it leaves a major question unanswered.”9 The climate has changed many times, and humans had coped before without turning on each other in this way. For the deeper answer, Therapeutic Shamanism turns to the writer Daniel Quinn and his account of Taker cultureTaker culture. Daniel Quinn’s term for the totalitarian agricultural, owning, surplus-driven way of life that takes everything and leaves nothing, and calls itself ‘civilisation’. Cultural, not innate, which is why it can be changed. Used interchangeably with ‘Fallen culture’. Read the full answer. See What are Taker and Leaver cultures?
Taylor himself later stepped back from the climate explanation. In the 2018 edition he writes that “the exact causes of the Ego Explosion aren’t so important, and that I spent a little too much time focusing on” them.10
What is the post-Fallen recovery? #
Taylor’s hopeful idea that, over the last few hundred years, we have slowly been regaining our empathy. His examples include “the abolition of slavery, universal suffrage for both men and women, equal rights for women, child protection laws, the right to free education, access to healthcare, care of the elderly, environmental legislation”, and more. From a shamanic point of view, it is then not at all surprising that in the last few decades we have also seen the return of animism and shamanism to places where it had been eradicated.11
Therapeutic Shamanism sees itself as part of this recovery. The new kind of shamanism now emerging “is very much part of what Steve Taylor describes as the post-Fallen recovery, the regaining of our sanity and compassion for each other as humans and for the more-than-human world.”12
How does Therapeutic Shamanism build on Taylor’s idea? #
In three main ways. First, it traces the roots further back. For Taylor, the Fall begins around 4,000 BC, and Therapeutic Shamanism agrees that the first seven thousand years of farming went “reasonably well too; maybe not a golden age, but a silver one.”13 But Therapeutic Shamanism sees the start of farming itself, from around 11,000 BC, as the first break from animism: even the early farming peoples “still represent the beginnings of a broken relationship with the Earth, a relationship characterised by dominance and ownership.”14
Second, it adds a shamanic and animist depth. Hunter-gatherers did not set out to wipe out competing species, because “Hunter-gatherers experienced the world shamanically. Shamanism gives us a deep sense of the sacredness and interconnectedness of all life.”15 What was lost, beginning with domesticationDomestication. The process by which, in domesticating other species, we domesticated ourselves. When dated precisely, Domestication begins with the Neolithic era, before the Fall proper, which begins with the first city-state cultures around 4000 BCE. What rewilding works to undo. More about this and accelerating at the Fall, was not only peace and equality, but that sense of kinship with the whole living world.
Third, it brings in psychotherapy: “in the process of our post-Fallen recovery, we have also learnt a lot. The last hundred years or so have seen the development of psychotherapy.” Used together with shamanism, “we have a cure not just for the symptoms of the Fall, but for its underlying causes too.”16 See Can modern humans recover an animist way of seeing and undo domestication?
Is Taylor’s picture of the past too rosy? #
Some think so, and the question is still open. The opposite view, that early humans were violent and warlike, is put forward by the American academic Lawrence Keeley in his book War Before Civilization (1996), among others. Keeley’s book is “controversial”, and “The question as to whether he is right or not is far from settled.”17 The likeliest answer is a middle path: “The likelihood though is that the actual truth (as with most things) probably lies somewhere in the middle.” Paul personally leans more towards Taylor, but also fully accepts that some tribes would have been more aggressive and less empathic than others.18
What both Taylor and Therapeutic Shamanism hold on to is the central point. War, patriarchy and inequality are not simply human nature. They have a history, and what has a history can change. See What is the myth of human supremacy? and Isn’t the Fall just “noble savage” romanticism?
