The First Human

“I was Hurt in a FALL, You Might Say.”

ABRAHAM, 

The Father of Nations :

[Sighs] 

I like the way you call bullshit. 

So let me return the favor. 

The next thing you're gonna tell me is that you'll go and that I can stay. 

Because I know you didn't like hearing yourself just say that,

"Maggie's gotta take care of Maggie." 

I know those words are gonna choke in your ears a good, long while and you're gonna wanna make up for even thinking that. 

Am I right? 

Yeah. 

ABRAHAM, 

The Father of Nations :

We lay our Big Meaties across the chopping block ahead of someone else's. 

It's ALWAYS for Someone Else. 

Both of us know, if we're gonna kick, there sure as hell better be a point to it. 

So maybe we feel there was a-a point to all of this. 

Alpha to Omega. 

Whether it's on The Battlefield or The Beach or somewhere out there today. 

Maggie -- She's carrying The Future. 

You're right. 

[Sniffles] 

I knew how this was gonna end. 

ABRAHAM, 

The Father of Nations :

C'mon. Layin' your ass on the line for someone else, tearin' it to shreds for 'em -- 

You said it before. 

Oh, my, that is living. 

[Chuckles] 

You're an idiot. 

ABRAHAM, 

The Father of Nations :

I never said otherwise. 

[Sighs]

Thou elvish-mark'd, abortive, rooting hog!

Thou that wast seal'd in thy nativity

The slave of nature and the son of hell!

Thou slander of thy mother's heavy womb!

Thou loathed issue of thy father's loins!

Thou rag of honour! thou detested--

GLOUCESTER

Margaret.

QUEEN MARGARET

Richard!

GLOUCESTER

Ha!

QUEEN MARGARET

I call thee not.

GLOUCESTER

I cry thee mercy then, for I had thought

That thou hadst call'd me all these bitter names.

QUEEN MARGARET

Why, so I did; but look'd for no reply.

O, let me make the period to my curse!

GLOUCESTER

'Tis done by me, and ends in 'Margaret.'

QUEEN ELIZABETH

Thus have you breathed your curse against yourself.

Well, The First Human Being is a Murderer, 

and not only a Murderer, but a Murderer of his own brother. 

And so, you know, the Old Testament, that’s a hell of a harsh book. And you might think, well, 'Maybe that’s a little bit too much to bear.'

And then you might think, 

And 

'Yea, and maybe it’s true, too.'

"And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord."

This is after Adam and Eve have been chased out of the garden of Eden. What’s really cool about this—I really think that the Cain and Abel story is the most profound story I’ve ever read, especially given that you can tell it in 15 seconds. I won’t, because I tend not to tell stories in 15 seconds, as you may have noticed. But you can read the whole thing that quickly. It’s so densely packed that it’s actually unbelievable.

Ok, so the first thing is that Adam and Eve are not the first two human beings. Cain and Abel are the first two human beings. Adam and Eve were made by God, and they were born in paradise. It’s like, what kind of human beings are those? You don’t know any human beings like that. Human beings aren’t born in paradise and made by God. Human beings are born of other human beings. That’s the first thing. It’s post-fall. We’re out in history, now. We’re not in some archetypal beyond—although we are still, to some degree. Not to the degree that was the case with the story of Adam and Eve. We’ve already been thrown out of the garden; we’re already self-conscious; we’re already awake; we’re already covered; we’re already working. We’re full-fledged human beings. So you have the first two human beings: Cain and Abel; prototypical human beings.

What’s cool is that humanity enters history at the end of the story of Adam and Eve, and then the archetypal patterns for human behaviour are instantaneously presented. It’s absolutely mind boggling, and it’s not a very nice story. They’re hostile brothers. They’ve got their hands around each other’s throats, so to speak, or at least that’s the case in one direction. It’s a story of the first two human beings engaged in a fratricidal struggle, that ends in the death of the best one of them. That’s the story of human beings in history. If that doesn’t give you nightmares, you didn’t understand the damn story.

Now, in these hostile brother stories, which are very, very common, often the older brother—Cain—has some advantages. He’s the older brother, and, in an agricultural community, the older brother generally inherited the land, and not the younger brothers. And the reason for that was, well, let’s say you have like eight sons, and you have enough land to support a bit of a family, and you divide among your eight sons, and they have eight sons, and they divide it among their eight sons. Soon, everyone has a little postage stamp that they can stand on and starve to death on. And so that just doesn’t work. You hand the land in a piece to the eldest son, and that’s just how it is. It’s tough luck for the rest of them, but at least they know they’re gonna have to go and make their own way. It’s not fair, but there’s no way of making it fair.

Well, you might say the oldest son has an additional stake in the stability of the current hierarchy. He has more of a stake in the status quo. That makes him more of an emblematic representative of the status quo, and, perhaps, more likely to be blind in its favor. It’s something like that. That motif creeps up very frequently in the hostile brothers archetypal struggle. The story of Cain and Abel fits this pattern, because Cain is the one who won’t budge, and who won’t move. He’s stubborn. Whereas the younger son, who’s Abel, is often the one who’s more…Not so much of a revolutionary, but, perhaps, more of a balance between the revolutionary and the traditions, whereas the older son tends to be more traditionalist-authoritarian—in these metaphorical representations, at least.

"And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord." 

There’s the first human being: Cain. I told you that the Mesopotamians thought that mankind was made out of the blood of the worst demon that the great goddess of chaos could imagine. Well, the first human being is a murderer, and not only a murderer, but a murderer of his own brother. And so, you know, the Old Testament, that’s a hell of a harsh book. And you might think, well, maybe that’s a little bit too much to bear. And then you might think, yea, and maybe it’s true, too. So that’s something to think about.

Human beings are amazing creatures. To think about us as a plague on the planet is its own kind of bloody catastrophe—malevolent, low, quasi-genocidal metaphor. But that doesn’t mean that we aren’t without our problems. The fact that this book, that sits at the cornerstone of our culture, would present the first man as a murderer of his brother, is something that should really set you back on your heels.