Invented History, Fabricated Power

Invented History, Fabricated Power begins with an examination of prehistoric beliefs in spirits, souls, mana, and orenda that provided personal explanation and power through ritual and shamanism among tribal peoples.

On this foundation, spiritual power evolved into various kinds of divine sanction for kings and emperors, including Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Indian, Chinese and Japanese. As kingships expanded into empires, fictional histories and millennia-long genealogies developed, portraying imperial superiority and greatness.

Supernatural events and miracles were attached to religious founders—Hebrew, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Islamic. A unique variation developed in the Roman Church, which fabricated papal power through forgeries in the first millennium CE and the later "doctrine of discovery," authorising European domination and conquest around the world during the Age of Exploration.

Elaborate fabrications continued with epic histories and literary cycles from the Persians, Ethiopians, Franks, British, Portuguese, and Iroquois Indians. Both Marxists and Nazis created doctrinal texts that passed for economic or political explanations but were in fact self-aggrandising narratives that eventually collapsed.

The book ends with the idealistic goals of the current liberal democratic way of life, highlighting its limitations as a sustaining narrative and the numerous problems threatening its viability over the long term.