Alright boys lets look at some facts. We are mammalian bipedal great apes. We live in a natural world that can be as brutal as it can be beautiful.
So heres my question. Are religions just ways for our egos to pacify the fear of death and non-existence?
Perhaps they were used as rules and laws to control mass amounts of people to prevent things like crime.
Our nature is simian. We came from the apes. Thats why we have these ape hands with fingernails. We're beasts.
Do we just make up all this stuff and larp as a way of dealing with the brutality of nature, something that our intelligence has allowed us to escape? For now.
No, this is my view of religion now - it’s a bit nuanced and I don’t hear too many people speaking of similar views
Yes we are apes, but imagine tens if not hundreds of thousands of years ago. At some point there was a moment where our ancestors went from acting like crabs - unable to recognize ourselves, unable to communicate, unable to understand who or what they are and what they are doing.
But at one point, our ancestor apes got woke and they got woke very quickly, the transition must have been absolutely wild and I’m sure legends about the first individuals undergoing these changes gave rise to many religions
Liam Allen
Yes, since no other creature, much less an ape, can even understand that there is such a thing as an ape, or that there are things that make one kind of ape different from other types of ape. Only we can understand abstracts like that
Jayden Rivera
we don't come from apes, evolution is total nonsense. We are creatures with souls who are stuck on a planet that is stuck in some sort of truman show un-reality. Evolution plays a big part in maintaining our clown world un-reality.
Evolution was pushed because it puts people in a state of delusion, making them easier to manipulate in other facets, and more importantly, because its a demoralizer. It is demoralizing to believe that there is nothing more to life than just the material, and that there's no higher realms of existence. Evolution might be the most effective tool the elites have used to enslave humanity.
They ate magic mushroom, it expanded their contagiousness. They began tripping together and sharing the experience. They formed language and it all led to this.
Also I forgot to mention, they saw their refleciton and became self-aware.
Na I know that is a black mirror. He whos name shall not be spoken open the lips of men is not welcome amongst and we shall cast him away with are honesty in are dealing with others and daily actions. For he speaks only in falsehoods and rules by the presence of chaos.
Julian Morris
consciousness*
Kevin Fisher
Hard to say really, but I think a lot of what you're saying is correct.
I think religion as a system of population control evolved sometime before the great civilizations of antiquity came into being, since they were the cornerstone of civilization and most of what survived from antiquity is of a purely religious origin.
As you said, were nothing more than apes , and apes are naturally curious beings. Burial of the dead probably coincides with the first existential crisis of humanity facing the certainty of death.
The primitive religions of native people's, who worship elemental beings were probably the origin of religion as we understand it, but rather than fear death they seemed to embrace it as a natural thing.
In short, civilization was the worst thing that's ever happened to humanity.
Grayson Long
i dont think so, cause the fear of death is still there and its actually the main point of most of them, what i think is first of all religions are a mythologization of metaphysical premises, ritualization and other phenomenas of it being taken literal i think that is entirely another topic that pertains to politics and occult practices, but the main literary body i think what it is is a science of trying to find hidden in reality a symbolism for moral correctness, moral correctness being what saves your soul after death
and inb4 "saving it is a fairytale", i think its something that was decided existed when observing the different approaches from morally different people to death, like the last moments of different people, seeing some go calmly, some agitated
from here i think someone must have deduced "some ways of living produce calm deaths" -> "how do we create a social technology that produces most calm deaths?" and then -> "this seems also to work for peaceful cohabitation in earth, must be rules for well living" , here you have an infussion of some eastern religions that have that as a goal, from the synthesis of all that you get modern humanism
Nolan Campbell
Ok, McKenna
Though, who really knows what could have triggered such a change. There must have been some point where suddenly 50% of humans were sentient enough to think in the abstract about existence. What these people thought may have been passed down into religious origin stories
Evan Mitchell
I think our intelligence came from hunting and getting more protein as well as psychoactive ethnogens.
Religion is okay, theres nothing wrong with it. Im just looking at the alternatives. Seems a bit selfish. Ill be good so I can get eternal happiness as a reward. In this material world of scams and psy-ops I find myself questioning everything.
Jack Garcia
If you question everything then maybe you should question over whether religion is actually selfish. Just look at basically any Saint, for example. Hardly people you could describe as selfish
Aiden Gomez
Well said
Nathan Williams
>Seems a bit selfish it is and isnt selfish at the same time cause the selfish action becomes service
its a carrot if youd like
Jeremiah Parker
A lot of people cant or dont want to come to reality with it. I cant argue with those people because to me and my life experience, I can say openly that I came from apes. Im kind of a proud simian. I dont mind my ape form. Not too shabby. Not metallic skeletal form best form but not bad.
Samuel Gomez
Koko the Gorilla would beg to differ. youtube.com/watch?v=1ihC6QHS_m0 Seeing as we're talking about animals and psychedelics, jaguars consume ayahuasca like humans do, and get high. People on ayahuasca trips often report they encounter jaguar-entities while tripping.
Ethan Allen
It is simple. Aliens made us, and we recall them. They lived among us for many thousands of years, we have many stories of them, they were benevolent teachers. They created us to help mine gold. But they grew old and returned from where they came. The younger ones who remained, who were part human, corrupted the relationship into worshipful religion in order to gain ascendance through human armies. Some of them may still be alive. Some of their blood may be in your veins.
>Are religions just ways for our egos to pacify the fear of death and non-existence? Perhaps they were used as rules and laws to control mass amounts of people to prevent things like crime. I think about this a lot too and I think it's the first reason. Most popular religions came about in times where people were really fucking retarded and just not able to think up some dystopian mind control doctrine and call that the new religion. I think it's just something that came about naturally because as you said people don't want to face reality. Also, would ou want ro face 1st century realioty? That shit was insane. I think it just took oover because it's a really ueful tool to be happier and also to control the masses, not by design but more by coincidence.
Fear of death is definitely not what muslims feel... but you have an interesting thought
Hunter Edwards
We were created by God.
Believe in Islam, Christianity or Judaism, but I guarantee it, we were created by God.
The problem is that most people choose not to see what's right in front of them.
Lucas Stewart
I didn't say that animals can't be trained, of course they can. They are trained to act in certain ways in response to certain situations, and in many cases (like with Koko the gorilla), the trainers project the qualities that they want to see into the animal. It's not even close to abstract reasoning
Parker Turner
Science is a religion based on the observation of the Pyramids and the uncovering of the laws of masonry from within. We are creatures of ether reigning over our domain in between. Humans have a choice in making beasts of themselves, or living rationally. No where else in our world can we see this dynamic.
"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun."
were not apes you fucking fag, and those arent facts thats a theory...god damn your a loser...we arent slaves to our animal instincts like niggers, we are masters of our intent, masters of our instincts and thats what makes us sentient life forms unlike monkeys, niggers, and abos
Leo Wood
Did you watch the video? The other gorilla they have recalls the murder of his mother.
so by that metric we can give a monkey mushrooms and watch him evolve, you can give a nigger mushrooms and watch him become le black science man......stoned apes is joe-rogan tier psuedo-intellectualism god damn back to plebbit with that shit
Jonathan Thompson
You are straying too far into the blackpill, you might awaken la inner creatura
i don't know enough about the metaphysical logistics of suicide attacks, but i think i once read that the act "cleansed them" when explaining the degenerate past lifes of many suicide attackers, and we all know about the virgins being promised; and the kamikaze kind of got honourous deaths from the act
i would say the suicide attack is a sort of treaty with death in which you take it NOW, under X cause, and in return death offers you an easy pass; its kind of the ultimate fear of death, you are so sure of it you are willing to do a pact
Ayden Williams
Were trying user. We went from cannibalizing each other and rolling heads down the pyramid stairs to wear we are now. Sure theres a few bad apples. Okay a lot of bad apples. Its our selfish nature. We're consumers.
Personally I think well be alright. Vegans will get more traction over time and slowly but surely humanity will become symbiotic with the planet.
Jayden Thompson
That's what I was saying, it's a case of the trainers training the gorilla to do things (like make signs) and then to project what they want to see into the gorilla. The video doesn't show the prompts that the trainers gave the gorilla to get him to tell the "story," because I'm sure if they did it would be much more obvious what was going on
Liam Thomas
>Are religions just ways for our egos to pacify the fear of death and non-existence? Partly. They're also meant to instill morality through archetypal myth, as well as being massive culture influencers.
I think we might be something like manifestations of whatever consciousness is. We each have one manifestation of the thing that can pay attention, eye of horus, etc.
Ryan Wood
Religion seems to me to be a natural extension of the way human motivation works.
It's not about reward, it's not about alleviating fear (many ancient religions' beliefs regarding the afterlife were pretty horrifying regardless of how good you were).
Religion gives context. Religion answers the reducto-ad-absurdium question of "why"... Why do we make war? To get more money. Why do we want money? To buy food and shelter. Why do we want food and shelter? To live. Why do we live? Because because because.
You wouldn't need religion if life were all about hedonistic pursuit of pleasure. We might have evolved to be wired up so that everything that we needed to do to promote our existence-- work, planning for the future etc-- was as pleasurable as food and sex (I think this is the case for honey bees, for example) but then that would give us no reason to go outside of our genetic program, it'd hamper our adaptability. Often you have to do things that are scary and unpleasant, even explicitly dangerous, to promote survival for our species as a whole.
So we need something that can convince us to give everything up, to do unpleasant things, something beyond pleasure. Even if illusory, we need some belief in some higher purpose to make us want to have children and continue our line.
Without it, we wither and die. Without a purpose that rests on something infinite, we have nothing to base any of our other motivations on. We fall victim to an infinite regress, and slide into nihilism.
There can be no purpose in being that comes from being in itself.
Angel Phillips
They’re complements of one another for sure. Fear is an irrational response, believing in something you can’t prove exists is irrational as well. If fear (negative) of death can be suppressed by just nothing more than belief or faith (positive), I’m talking bare bones, no worship etc., then why should someone try to destroy that? Fear of the inevitable is the biggest waste of limited resources that humans own and is a distraction. I’d personally rather have death be a passive comfort rather than something that rests up like a repressed memory and obsess over it, detracting my time (remaining life) from productive endeavors. The elite found a way to control the meek through religion, in my opinion, moreso due to lack of literacy rather than religion itself, it was just a convenient and effective medium
Parker Wood
>It is simple. Aliens made us, and we recall them. They lived among us for many thousands of years, we have many stories of them, they were benevolent teachers. They created us to help mine gold. But they grew old and returned from where they came. The younger ones who remained, who were part human, corrupted the relationship into worshipful religion in order to gain ascendance through human armies. Some of them may still be alive. Some of their blood may be in your veins. This is very plausible. And on top of that we might have lost our history in some kind of global event, so we were back to square one in many ways. Dawwww.. Koko is awesome.
baby chimpanzees coddle sticks like babies, impersonating the mother, elephants recognize themselves in a mirror
Michael White
the only things that exist are electricity and magnetism
were are all literally just toroidal waves it in infinite fractal or toroidal waves.
Brayden Morgan
Ok, and? He's a charlatan. I said look at the Saints.
Justin Foster
Would make sense, a bit like ripping of a band-aid. Doing it faster or slower is going to have the same effect, or here that you will die either way, but if you take control of it it will be perhaps less painless plus you're guaranteed that you'll be in heaven or have virgins etc..
Jayden Nelson
Well, we don't remember being babies and forming the concept of the self, but all of that stuff is learned. It isn't inherent. Babies get confused by mirrors the same way apes do. We're trained to think abstractly by our parents and families. Babies rarely just spout the word "dada" without prompting first, and even then it's pure mimicry before they assign meaning to it. And leave a human in a room without communication, they won't learn to communicate. Our longevity is what allows us to reach such heights of thought.
David Miller
Well if you believe that, that annunaki, the nephilem, the space battles, enki, the giants, agartha, the flat earth. Need proofs.
Carter Anderson
I too find this theory very interesting.
Imagine it's the pre-neolithic. Human beings have existed for a hundred thousand years already, and we've done some pretty cool shit, we figured out primitive tools, learned to not fear fire but to use it. Since we're so smart, we spread like a locust plague out of Africa and things are great, lots of food, lots of fucking, etc. Then something happens and 99% of existing humans are wiped out quite suddenly. We're physically the same as now, or at least really close, but we haven't attained the sense of self yet, were still apes mentally, pack animals like chimps, albeit with sharp rocks. In the chaos of Armageddon, isolated pockets of humanity struggle through the long cold and dark. Food dwindles, things are bad, bit still we don't have reason, so we just go about our lives, scraping by on the primal urge to survive and procreate. One man, driven increasingly far from his nesting place in the search for food finds some lovely looking mushrooms which he immediately eats, he is starving after all. Some time passes, and he's not feeling too good. His stomach hurts and he's probably thrown up the meagre contents of his stomach. Like a cat seeks a small dark place to die, he crawls to a nearby cave then down into the underground labrinth. But he doesn't die. The sickness passes, and in the dark of the cave he has visions unlike anything that's ever been seen on the planet. He sees animals, the forest, geometric patterns and designs that escape his ability to comprehend. For hours he is trapped in this trance like state, and as the effects begin to wear off and he stumbles out into the sunlight, he catches his reflection in a standing puddle and for the first time in history, the basic thought "Me" crosses his mind.
Xavier Phillips
>baby chimpanzees coddle sticks like babies, impersonating the mother
Imitation of what the mother is doing doesn't require abstract reasoning
>elephants recognize themselves in a mirror
This also wouldn't require abstract reasoning, though I'd be curious about how the elephant trainers got the elephant to recognise itself in the mirror and whether or not this is just another case of projection on their part
Oliver James
Interesting as accelerating one’s one death as an easy way out faces damnation in other faiths, double-whammy if you stacked on a lifetime of fuck ups
Andrew Campbell
Well yes they did find a way to control the masses, look no further than the muslim world or the middle ages, but religion didn't come into being because of this property, and it sure as hell wasn't invented for that purpose. Christianity in it's roots had to fight against the roman empire, and not with it from square 1.
Easton Collins
If abstract reasoning isn't inherent, then why does it develop in everyone?
Landon Gonzalez
>the Middle Ages were bad
Read a book
Thomas Stewart
Yeah youre right dude, shit was wild. People could just come kill your family for some jam. They likely gobbled religion to calm them of the impending doom around every corner.
Sebastian Martinez
You are children of God created in his image. The mystery will be over at the moment of your death. Jesus is waiting for you to turn to Him. He will never stop loving you
Hudson Hall
Yes, several global events. Multiple times due to both natural and warlike disasters. Also, powerful knowledge/language and math was intentionally obfuscated at a global level. It continues to be so. Both the flood and the tower of Babel both have historical basis in cuneiform writings, simply without the "insert modern religion" overtones placed upon them by later plagiarists.
electricty and magnetism create each other, though there is not a proper term to differentiate. it's like the polarization of the aetheric flux creates different polarizations of aetheric flux.
there is a sort of consciousness that binds it together, but this consciousness is nothing like how we'd describe our own.
>Our nature is simian. incorrect. our true nature is that of creative consciousness, currently constrained within the simian form. we are basically piloting avatars within this construct, but that does not imply our avatars are our true nature.
Xavier Rogers
Abstract thinking isn't trained. Most of the way you think is built-in. Just because people locked in dark rooms have minds that seem blank doesn't mean that's what happened with them-- what really happened is that their mental structures, like a tree starved of light, died without the information input from which they'd build their concept of the world-- upon an armature laid down by biomechanics.
The real "ego", the part of your mind that makes decisions,. the part you think of as "you" (it isn't, at least not as you're trained now) and steers your destiny is both smaller and much more powerful than you imagine. It's small because it's mostly overshadowed by automatic, reflexive processes. It's more powerful because, if you learn to actually use it, pay attention, and MAKE REAL DECISIONS, you can change things in much greater ways than you realize. A single grain of rice can tip the scales, and all taht shit.
Connor Hall
I said religion was used to control the masses during the middle ages canuck
Jose Howard
Correct, but Judaism was around before Christianity alongside a plethora of pagan religions at the time. Nearly every known power followed one
Matthew Stewart
I don't believe in the psychedelic shit, i think that is a hilarious theory but also very naive. I think it's more obvious that the reason we can't find the missing link that all of a sudden turned human beings from monkey like to imagining these insanely complex and elaborate things and dreaming of going to space, was the combination of mixing simian dna with something else that was incredibly advanced, and accounts for this ridiculous quantum leap, they can't find the missing link because it's not fucking there. Whereas the psychedelic theory says they imagined these beings. And you have in all religions recorded two things. a) A cataclysmic event, either a flood or something else. b) powerful beings that reside in heaven/in the sky, which we now know is space filled with billions of fucking galaxies and so vast that we can't even see to the end of it, and is now understandable how someone could COME from the sky, but at one point it wasn't so whoever came from the sky was obviously godlike. If one has the guts (cause it really takes guts) to put two and two together it's extremely obvious what's going on here. And for whatever reason there's been a massive coverup with destruction of artifacts and concealment of history about this matter. So i'm totally with this guy here for the most part. >It is simple. Aliens made us, and we recall them. They lived among us for many thousands of years, we have many stories of them, they were benevolent teachers. They created us to help mine gold. But they grew old and returned from where they came. The younger ones who remained, who were part human, corrupted the relationship into worshipful religion in order to gain ascendance through human armies. Some of them may still be alive. Some of their blood may be in your veins. In that i think they abandoned us, and THEN we had the cataclysm on top of it, for super extra funtime.
It does require abstract reasoning as it requires a concept of 'self'. I don't know about the elephants but the way it was done to chimps was to drug them until they passed out and add a paint dot on the forehead. When they wake up, provide a mirror. When given the mirror they would see and start poking at their new dot, showing that they have a concept of 'self', unlike a number of other animals.
Anthony Richardson
It's an information system. It could have been booted up with apparent age.
Aaron Morgan
Wew tfw Dino’s were alien livestock
Jose Collins
Better proof than the oldest cuneiform tablets on earth, is hard to come by. Simply studying the impossibly fluent use of mathematics and geometrics present in ancient structures is enough for me. It is not the work of men, nor built for them. youtube.com/watch?v=EWW1uLX3ClY&index=24&list=PLvMQZMrXkBBj7rNwfO0ulGxmf_bDuzMNg
i would put it under postmodern marxist islam, cause ive heard jihad in that way is sth new, postmodern, cause of the rhetoric and semiotic tricks it uses to justify itself, marxist, cause of its dialectic en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihad
Nolan James
I was joking haha they were just jolly fellas having a good time. Under the control of a foreign empire, fucking goats, having 10 Kids and 0 of them living past 5, not having medison, not knowing how literally ANYTHING works was so fun, enlioghtening and inspiring to them. They didn't want an explanation, their IQ was probably over todays 200.
Benjamin Turner
I could get down with it dude, but I personally feel if that he is real, then he did create us. But through the right processes, as in we had to go through the proper channels. Being that it took ape ancestors to get to where we are now.
Im dont think im THAT much greater than the animals. Our cells the same. Heres something thats interesting. Mushroom cells are more animal than plant. Their spores are made of chitin and they can travel through space.
Jonathan Ward
IT KEEPS [[[THEM]]] ALIVE MATE. IT KEEPS 'WE' ALIVE MATE.
>Apes are devolved genetically modified species. Humans are advanced but devolving genetically modified species. :|
Xavier Fisher
Except it doesn't. You assume it does because of how widespread it is across the world, but without social interaction we wouldn't develop at all in the same way as most modern humans do. There aren't many specific examples of people who've never experienced any kind of real human contact, so this argument's not gonna go far.
Also, seeing as elephants have been brought up, they're capable of dying from depression when they enter mourning. They mourn their dead. That at least means they have a concept of life and finality.
Christopher Barnes
the cataclysm was induced when they brought the moon into orbit. fucked up the planet's orientation. the experiments / funtime had gone too far for some's taste, so it was decided to wipe the slate clean.
Parker Wright
also found this
>Hear St. Augustine: “But, they say, during the time of persecution certain holy women plunged into the water with the intention of being swept away by the waves and drowned, and thus preserve their threatened chastity. Although they quitted life in this wise, nevertheless they receive high honour as martyrs in the Catholic Church and their feasts are observed with great ceremony. This is a matter on which I dare not pass judgment lightly. For I know not but that the Church was divinely authorized through trustworthy revelations to honour thus the memory of these Christians.” (City of God I.26)
Bentley Long
>something bad happens
illogial/religion: why did this happen to me? god must be punishing me
logical/non religion: how did this happen & what can I do to avoid it happening again?
humanity* had a chance to be something better but thanks to the short sighted greed of the kikes it's fucked beyond saving
Actually the story is quite sad. To them, a day on earth was a month of their planet. The dizzying progression of light and dark and the strange rhythms of earth, caused them to age prematurely. They spoke of god in the end as they recalled all the troubles on earth. They saw that they had been but tools of destiny, able to alter fate only in tiny ways. So even this ancient race knew as little of god as we do.
some peopke are rational. most are braindead fucking idiits
see: normies
Cameron Murphy
We are sentient beings, we were created as our own species, we did not come from monkeys, or fish, or anything thing else some faggot scientist hypothesized about. Evolution is a retarded theory pushed by atheist scientists, especially when pertaining to the involvement of an entire species, there is zero evidence of such absolute bullshit, zero. God is real, everything else is a lie, including the simulation theories that are currently being pushed by "great minds", it all has roots deep within Luciferian teachings. You're in for a real shock when you pass on.
Benjamin Howard
>We are mammalian bipedal great apes. I am not a nigger thank you very much
Chase Carter
Fpbp
Elijah Brooks
>Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process where general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples A female chimp sees her mother coddle their baby, understanding how a baby is protected. Shes isn't born with this instinct, although a predisposition towards cute faces might help. She learns it through spending time with the mother and mimicking. >This also wouldn't require abstract reasoning, though I'd be curious about how the elephant trainers got the elephant to recognise itself in the mirror and whether or not this is just another case of projection on their part news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/10/061030-asian-elephants.html
Chase Hall
Give them a few thousand years yeah. They only reason they aint doing shit now is human interference. Basically just trying to surive us.
t. never tripped.
Hudson Stewart
You have Ape DNA
Wyatt Brown
No. It's both.
It might just be a collection of slight impulses (an impulse to grab the baby and hold them close) but it gets refined through imitation and experience-- i.e. don't hold too tight or the baby cries, hold it from below so its weight is supported etc.
Some things are difficult because there's NO archetypical guidance for them-- like riding a bike or programming a computer. But walking down a busy street is little different than walking in the woods would have been in the animal past.
All animals have a concept of being one animal and not another animal. It doesn't involve grasping at abstracts
It's kind of silly to claim that it isn't universal if you can't provide an example of a person, anywhere, who doesn't have abstract reasoning (and that didn't appear to lose it because of injury or illness)
>Also, seeing as elephants have been brought up, they're capable of dying from depression when they enter mourning. They mourn their dead. That at least means they have a concept of life and finality.
And that's compatible with what I said. Of course animals have emotions and they feel loss. But they can't do abstract reasoning (things like logic or mathematics)
Mason Smith
I think conciousness is like pure light in the form of all the colors. At least thats what I thought on lsd.
What if religion is supposed to be about balancing the force. If theres too much light you go blind. The two most primordial forces, light and darkness. Suns and blackholes.
Jordan Cruz
But what if dealing with true reality makes humanity stronger or better. Like an iron ore in a furnace.
Eli Williams
darkness is not a force, it is the absence of light.
Hudson Stewart
Rational in the sense that they have the capability to reason. Not that they actually act like it.
>A female chimp sees her mother coddle their baby, understanding how a baby is protected. Shes isn't born with this instinct, although a predisposition towards cute faces might help. She learns it through spending time with the mother and mimicking.
I never said that animals can't learn. Just that they learn in a more primitive way than we do because it's basically just training
Eli Gray
>things like logic or mathematics youtu.be/ZerUbHmuY04 Crows are tremendously good problem solvers and even understand water displacement. They can figure out that the larger a stone is, when dropped into a container full of water, the water will rise higher than if a small stone were dropped. I get that they can't do sums or form arguments, but they can grasp basic physical laws.
Isaiah Rogers
This fact is more important than people realise
Justin Roberts
Tell me everything you know about toroids. You are probably right. I kind of know what youre talking about. Its not a coindince the toroid is shaped like an infinity symbol. A perpetual engine is supposed to be a myth. Nothing comes for free. Not here in the material world.
Ian Thompson
Of course animals understand the world they live in to a certain degree, and they can learn things through trial and error like the stone experiment you mentioned. They just can't develop abstract theories out of the things they learn
Maybe we are devolving. Maybe we have become stagnant.
Christopher Watson
Isn't it more logical to assume that there were ancient humans who had a better understanding of things than the people who came after them? After all, this was briefly the case as the Roman Empire was collapsing, and that's on record
