English to Polish Art/Literary Philosophy Philosophical

The Fragmented Mind
Sometime in the fourth millennium BC, writing and mathematical measurement emerged in human culture and with it the idea of cosmic order. With this magnificent intellectual achievement, ultimately leading to our twenty-first-century ability to use computers and at least try for the stars, came the rise of concepts of civil order, and allegorical identifications began to be taken seriously. Probably for the first time, mythology, which had coalesced with reality yet was immediate in its individual and communal interpretation, became codified with institutional agendas. A system was formed that took advantage of and enslaved the primitive by attempting to abstract the mental deities from their objects; as Blake has observed, “Men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast.” Thus began the priesthood. Metaphors were misread and misplaced, denotation trumped connotation, the messenger was mistaken for the message, and life and thought were thrown off balance.
A further sundering of the cognitive structure of myth, as culturally divisive as the division itself, emerged with Zarathustra (628–551 BC), also known as Zoroaster, whose writings date back to the sixth century BC. With Zarathustra, the sacred also bore the profane. After receiving a vision from the Wise Lord, Zarathustra preached his monotheistic teachings to an essentially polytheistic Iranian society. The Wise, all-good Lord had an adversary, the principle of evil, and it was up to man to decide, out of free choice, whether to follow the good or the evil. Thus the conception of an absolute distinction between good and evil emerged, giving birth to the catastrophes that ensued over the next three thousand years. Good gods were contrasted with the bad, and good people and their behaviors and rituals were juxtaposed against evil. Mankind, acting from free will, became fallen; light was contrasted with dark, and life with death. Time became a significant component of eschatology as well, the past progressing to a future, the fall leading to resurrection and the old world to the new.