Introduction: The Reward-Punishment Model

In traditional societies (by which I mean preindustrial societies in which religious notions were still authoritative, dominant cultural forms and where customary behaviour or ‘morals’ contained a strong component of psychological and social threat), good conduct on this earth was to be rewarded either by some form of life after death or by a beneficial release from the suffering of this world. By contrast, transgression of customary norms was threatened by eternal punishment, damnation or a miserable and indeterminate existence as a ghost or, literally, as a lost soul. There was a strong element of resentment in these conformity–reward moral systems in which the rich, who were seen to be proud and haughty, would suffer extreme miseries cheered on by the erstwhile poor. This spiritual resentment was expressed in the biblical maxim that it is more difficult for a rich man to enter heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.