Tomatoes, Ecosystems, and Personification

A follow-on point regarding causality, tomatoes, and ecosystems:

When you assign causality in an "enlargist" way -- that is, to something larger than the event you're trying to explain -- it tends to make the causal link rather opaque. Since the relationship between cause and effect spans multiple holarchical levels in a downward direction, it's hard to see (or think about) exactly how the large cause led to the small effect. This kind of answer gives us a great answer to "What caused this?", but a very poor answer to "Why did it cause this?" (at least without more details.)

Perhaps because human beings are so curious, we have a tendency to ask "Why?" anyway. When there's no easy answer to that question, we have a tendency to personify whatever we think the cause is. In the case of the volunteer tomato plant I mentioned, we might say that the ecosystem is the cause.

Why did the tomatoes grow while the zucchinis withered?

[More below]
Maybe the ecosystem doesn't like zucchini. Maybe it's punishing them! But then, why did the ecosystem cause an extra tomato plant to grow? Maybe it likes tomatoes better than other plants, and wants to spread their kind around the world. (A scary thought...)

This kind of personification starts at purple with spirits, and is carried through red with power gods, but finds its "ultimate" (ahem) expression in blue. In order to make the transition from red to blue, blue needs to be structured in such a way that it can reign in those who exercise their power to the detriment of the group. Since those people are very often the leaders, there needs to be someone even more powerful to enforce the rules. To fill this role, blue injects a supremely big and ultimately powerful authority -- someone who can squash you if you disobey, no matter how powerful you think you are. Combine the need for an ultimate authority with a "enlargist" sense of largeness, vastness, and inscrutability and you get...

Monotheism! Ta-da!