/lit/ - Literature

I'm currently studying Chinese because after landing a useless bachelors I have no other marketable skills and need to stave off the noose for a while.

>>11586107
I studied both in HS, it's 100% easier to find a list of 500 common roots and then use them to springboard you into a heavily influenced second language like Italian or Russian.

The most obvious answer is to suggest philosophical perennialism. An educated reader can identify common elements in the religion and soteriology of the Aztecs, Egyptians, Hindus, all flavors of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and various animist priests from Japan, Tibet, Greece and Namibia, and furthermore, that these elements can be divorced from the "sociology of religion" that atheists more readily identify with literature such as the Golden Bough, using an organized religion as a form of worldly governance rather than an actual connection to the Numinous. That is to say, the exoteric and the esoteric (the worship) are separable elements.

When people across the world and across time are demonstrated to actually experience esoteric religion in the same way even when their exoteric governance and signifiers are totally different, is it more rational to chalk it up to coincidence or determine that there is a common underlying vein of truth to their behavior?

Think of it like this:
>exoteric
Imam says fapping is bad, because without fapping the lay people make lots of babies, which means more workers, more tithes, and a more comfortable life. This explains why religions tend overwhelmingly to be vehemently anti-masturbation.
>esoteric
The druid faps but doesnt orgasm, because ejaculation depletes a subtle physical resource that he needs to use in conjunction with elaborate rites and invocations in order to establish contact with the numinous Otherworld he seeks. This is less intuitive, and it begs the atheist to wonder if there's a biochemical reason why Druids, Lamas, Orthodox Monks, Rabbis and so on care so much about retaining their semen.