Well put, Steven,
I read an interesting study years ago - can't remember where unfortunately - that showed that we humans typically have unrealistically high expectations about perceived positive future events and equally, we have unrealistically bad expectations about perceived negative future events.
The relevance of this to the political arena is that it's in the nature of humans to expect that a win for 'our party' will be wonderful, whilst a win for the other party will be an unmitigated disaster.
The reality is almost always that things are neither as good as we expect, or as bad.
However, these tendency to extreme expectations often leads to - shall we say - overly passionate expressions of opinion for or against.
Anthony
http://www.observationpoint.com.au

Dear Steven,

Some fascinating responses, a few notably defensive in nature.

Why is that so?

I think I was the only one to admit leaning more toward one of the narratives than the other.

Yet I feel if people were honest about it anybody reading these would have had a preference, one that resonated even slightly more than the other, yet there seems a real reticence with identifying which one that might be.

I'm going to point the finger at you though Steven since as the author you should really step up to the plate.

So which of the narratives pushes your buttons the most?

Ha, csteele, you have fairly caught some of us on our own petards.
I'll be the first to admit my bias, although I imagine it comes as no surprise to many of my fellow OLOers.
I, er, lean to the Left.
However, I would add that there is a chasm between preference and expectation.
My preference is for the left to be in power, which means, Labor, although I do wish the current lot would get their act together.
However, my expectation is that the next Coalition government won't change things all that much.
Anthony
htp://www.observationpoint.com.au

Both narratives are a mixed bag.

The first ridiculously places "greed and God" together,
the second places "faith" and even "sanctity" together with "respect for authority and the rule of law".

Whenever people follow God, the rest falls nicely into place - negative elements such as greed and slavery only start where faith is absent.

Once upon a time people did not live in societies - people lived with and focused on God, then societies formed as an incidental by-product and harmed no-one.

Yuyutsu,
You seem to be asserting that a belief in God predates the social evolution of societies.
I would be surprised at that.
Do you have any archaeological or anthropological evidence?
My understanding from reading such books, inter alia, as Joseph Campbell's The Mask of God and The Hero with a Thousand Faces, is that the concept of a god evolved after the development of speech when early gatherings, e.g. primitive societies, searched for and discussed possible explanations for the universe they saw around them.
The answer they came up with was a god, or gods.
I think that your chronology is unlikely as if the idea of a god came first, then each person in primitive societies would have his or her own personally thought up god.
Whereas, all the evidence, as far as I know, is that gods tend to be conceptually defined at the societal or community level, and are societally homogeneous, thus indicating that the society or community came first.
Anthony
http://www.observationpoint.com.au
http://www.observationpoint.com.au

Dear Anthonyve,

You seem to have misunderstood my response:

The CONCEPT OF GOD may indeed be a later product - but I was not referring to a concept, or even mentioned the word "belief". I was not even referring to the dull attempts of people to understand and explain-away the universe: I was plainly referring to when people in fact, were actually following God, not some silly concept.

I also acknowledge that certain societies were also (and still are!) formed by Godless people - however such societies are neither an incidental by-product nor benign - such societies are bound to cause harm and injustice.