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If you are a scientifically minded Christian, you might explain away all the errors, myths, and contradictions in the Bible by arguing that the holy book was never meant to be read as a factual account, but rather as a metaphorical story containing deep wisdom. But isn’t that true of the Harry Potter stories too?
Eventually in 1290 the entire Jewish population of England was expelled.3
Geoffrey Chaucer—the father of English literature—included
Well, some fake news only lasts seven hundred years.
each nation has created its own national mythology, while
propaganda maestro
“A lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.”
agile
For this reason there is no strict division
Human suffering is often caused by belief in fiction, but the suffering itself is still real.
if you want reliable information, pay good money for it.
We certainly need good science, but from a political perspective, a good science-fiction movie is worth far more than an article in Science or Nature.
scientific theories and the most up-to-date technological tools, the
Inside Out
Brave New World
The Matrix
The Truman Show,
But in the twenty-first century, you can’t afford stability. If you try to hold on to some stable identity, job, or worldview, you risk being left behind as the world flies by you with a whoosh.
you will need the ability to constantly learn and to reinvent yourself, certainly at a young age like fifty.
the need to change your profession every decade. What is the right thing to do when confronting a completely unprecedented situation? How should you act when you are flooded by enormous amounts of information and there is absolutely no way you can absorb and analyze it all? How do you live in a world where profound uncertainty is not a bug but a feature?
To survive and flourish in such a world, you will need a lot of mental flexibility and great reserves of emotional balance. You will have to repeatedly let go of some of what you know best, and learn to feel at home with the unknown. Unfortunately, teaching kids to embrace the unknown while maintaining their mental balance is far more difficult than teaching them an equation in physics or the causes of the First World War. You cannot learn resilience by reading a book or listening to a lecture. Teachers themselves usually lack the mental flexibility that the twenty-first century demands, since
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So the best advice I can give a fifteen-year-old stuck in an outdated school somewhere in Mexico, India, or Alabama is: don’t rely on the adults too much. Most of them mean well, but they just don’t understand the world. In the past, it was a relatively safe bet to follow the adults, because they knew the world quite well, and the world changed slowly. But the twenty-first century is going to be different. Because of the increasing pace of change, you can never be certain whether what the adults are telling you is timeless wisdom or outdated bias.
It could happen to you too.
Have you seen those zombies who roam the streets with their faces glued to their smartphones? Do you think they control the technology, or does the technology control them?
When Coca-Cola, Amazon, Baidu, or the government knows how to pull the strings of your heart and press the buttons of your brain, will you still be able to tell the difference between your self and their marketing experts?
know thyself. For thousands of years philosophers and prophets have urged people to know themselves.
Coca-Cola, Amazon, Baidu, and the government are all racing to hack you. Not your smartphone, not your computer, and not your bank account; they are in a race to hack you and your organic operating system. You might have heard that we are living in the era of hacking computers, but that’s not even half the truth. In fact, we are living in the era of hacking humans.
If, however, you want to retain some control over your personal existence and the future of life, you have to run faster than the algorithms, faster than Amazon and the government, and get to know yourself before they do. To run fast, don’t take much baggage with you. Leave all your illusions behind. They are very heavy.
This grand narrative implies that my small but important role in life is to follow Allah’s commands, spread knowledge of His laws, and ensure obedience to His wishes. If I believe the Muslim story, I find meaning in praying five times a day, donating money to build a new mosque, and struggling against apostates and infidels. Even the most mundane activities—washing hands, drinking wine, having sex—are imbued with cosmic meaning.
If I believe in the Zionist story, I will conclude that my life’s mission is to advance the interests of the Jewish nation by protecting the purity of the Hebrew language, by fighting to regain lost Jewish territory, or perhaps by having and raising a new generation of loyal Israeli children.
If I believe in this communist story, I will conclude that my life’s mission is to speed up the global revolution by writing fiery pamphlets to raise class consciousness, organizing strikes and demonstrations, or perhaps assassinating greedy capitalists and fighting against their lackeys. The story gives meaning to even the smallest of gestures, such as boycotting a brand that exploits textile workers in Bangladesh or arguing with my capitalist-pig father-in-law over Christmas dinner.
myopia
Even worse, by the time I was thirteen I knew that the universe was a couple of billion years old and would probably go on existing for billions of years more. Could I realistically expect Israel to exist for such a long time? Would Homo sapiens kids dressed in white still recite poems in my honor after two hundred million years? There was something fishy about the whole business. If you happen to be Palestinian, don’t feel smug.
death.
“Well,” he answered, “I have learned that I am here on earth in order to help other people. What I still haven’t figured out is why the other people are here.”
parsimonious
The universe just does not work like a story.
That particular tiranga was 115 feet long and 78 feet wide, and was hoisted on a 360-foot-high flagpole (what would Freud have said about that?). The flag could be seen as far as the Pakistani metropolis of Lahore. Unfortunately, strong winds kept tearing the flag, and national pride required that it be stitched together again and again, at great cost to Indian taxpayers.11 Why does the Indian government invest scarce resources in weaving enormous flags instead of building sewage systems in Delhi’s slums? Because the flag makes India real in a way that sewage systems do not.
gullible
In March 1839, in the Iranian city of Mashhad, a Jewish woman who suffered from some skin disease was told by a local quack that if she killed a dog and washed her hands in its blood, she would be cured. Mashhad is a holy Shiite city, and it so happened that the woman undertook the grisly therapy on the sacred day of Ashura. She was observed by some Shiites, who believed—or claimed to believe—that the woman killed the dog in mockery of the Karbala martyrdom. Word of this unthinkable sacrilege quickly spread through the streets of Mashhad. Egged on by the local imam, an angry mob stormed the
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pogroms.
The Sabbath starts at sunset on Friday and lasts until sunset on Saturday, and in between Orthodox Jews refrain from almost any kind of work, including even tearing toilet paper from a roll in the lavatory. (There has been some discussion of this among the most learned rabbis, who concluded that tearing toilet paper would break the Sabbath taboo; consequently, devout Jews who want to wipe their bottoms on the Sabbath have to prepare a stash of pre-torn toilet paper in advance.)
In Israel, religious Jews often try to force secular Jews and even complete atheists to keep these taboos. Since Orthodox parties usually hold the balance of power in Israeli politics, over the years they have succeeded in passing many laws that banned all kinds of activities on the Sabbath.
Though they were unable to outlaw the use of private vehicles on the Sabbath, they have been successful in banning public transportation. This nationwide religious sacrifice affects mainly the weakest sectors of society, especially as Saturday is the only day of the week when working-class people are free to travel and visit distant relatives, friends, and tourist attractions. A rich grandmother has no problem driving to visit her grandchildren in another town, but a poor grandmother who has no car cannot visit her grandchildren, because there are no buses or trains running on the Sabbath.
If Judaism is just a fictional story, then it is cruel and heartless to prevent a grandmother from visiting her grandchildren or an impoverished student from going to the beach to have some fun.
By nevertheless doing so, the religious parties tell the world—and themselves—that they really believe in the Jewish story. What, do you think they enjoy harming people for no good reason whatsoever?
A Hindu may engage in tax fraud, visit the occasional prostitute, and mistreat his elderly parents, but he convinces himself that he is a very pious person because he supports the destruction of the Babri Mosque at Ayodhya and has even donated money to build a Hindu temple in its stead. Just as in ancient times, so also in the twenty-first century the human quest for meaning all too often ends with a succession of sacrifices.
Hardly anyone has just one identity. Nobody is just a Muslim, or just an Italian, or just a capitalist.
Fascism insisted that people should not believe any story except the nationalist story and should have no identity except their national identity.
But who said life was easy?
