Just in case you're wondering what the new widget is, it's Miranda's little run to raise money for cancer research. Every little helps, as Tesco would say!
It seems to me that one of the hardest and easiest things to do is to put yourself in somebody else's head. Think what they're thinking. Determine what their motivations might be. Why they do, say, act the way they do.
We do this all the time. We don't always necessarily get it right but the fact that we can do it at all is testament to it's survival value; and most times we do in fact get it right. It's a fundamental part of the 'glue' that binds societies like ours together. The ability to draw a distinction between altruism and self interest, between deception and honesty, between love and hate, in someone other than yourself. True, it is not unique to humans, most apes and monkeys seem to have the same sense, albeit at a lower, reduced level but it seems to be a crucial part of what holds us together; in kin groups, extra-kin groups (friends, acquaintances, colleagues), religious or political groupings and so forth.
However this only has survival value if we are dealing with contemporaries; after all being able to empathise with a long dead relative is likely to be of only marginal survival value unless the circumstances with relate to the contemperous also relate to the historical. So we find this difficult.
I was reminded of this in researching why 'Lucifer' became an alias for Satan/Shaitan. We won't go into the reason why I was researching this except in so far as to say that it was tenuously connected with a hoax perpertrated in the late nineteenth century by one Leo Taxil against Freemasonry. (Interesting how my brain works, ay? The Penguin and I have a lot in common!)
Now the reason I became interested was 'Lucifer' means 'light bringer', from the Latin 'lux, lucis' meaning 'light', and ferre, 'to bear, bring'. I was intrigued. How did the 'Bearer of Light' suddenly, or not so suddenly, come to refer to 'the evil one', the 'fallen angel', Satan? After all, is this not a contradiction in terms? Satan can, in Judaic/Christian terms, only bring darkness, loss of enlightment, loss of God's glory; it is no accident that Sauron in LOTR is named 'the Dark Lord'. In what sense could Satan be termed a 'Bringer of Light'?
I traced it back to a translation of the Old Testament (Isaiah 14) in which the King of Babylon (never the Israelites' favourite person whoever individually he happened to be) is referred to as 'How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn!', as a 'taunt' which the Israelites could use when they finally overcame said King. It is also referred to in Ezekiel but in this case it is the King of Tyre who is subject of the insult. (Makes you wonder, did the Israelites get on with anybody? Do they now? Except as an expedient to acquire high-tech weaponry?)
Now Lucifer is Latin for the planet Venus, as it appears as the 'morning star'. All fine and dandy so far; it is a literal translation of the Hebrew. So how did it get metamorphosed from the King of Babylon, who must have seemed to the Israelites a pompous, power-hungry, repressive tyrant, to Satan. This is the bit which I find hard to fathom.
At some point (likely in the first or second centuries CE), a learned theologian came up with the idea that was represented in Isaiah's little rant was not the King of Babylon per se but the 'power behind the throne', Satan. After all, if Satan was the root of all evil in the world it stood to reason that he was blame. The King of Babylon is evil, ergo he has been corrupted by Satan. Quod erat demonstrandum!
One reason could be that Satan was traditionally seen as being cast out of Heaven, the fall. However Middle Eastern kings of the period, and before, were often revered as 'Gods', either when they died or at times when still alive, ancient Egpyt, Sumeria etc. Why is not Isaiah seen to be referring to this, which it seems to be exactly what he was doing, ie you will be 'laid low' (as a false 'God' just as soon as the real 'God' (of the Israelites) shows you what real omnipotence is!)
I am quite sure it all made sense to the 'theologian' at the time, and to subsequent theoologians, in the early part of the Christian era. I just can't seem to get my head round the mind set! After all, Satan was already blamed for everything anyway, why rub it in?
So, from a bringer of light, we now have a bringer of darkness. Funny how words twist and turn over the centuries; most times, I think, through sheer happenstance,
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