21 Lessons for the 21st Century(59)

On the other hand, it would be na?ve to assume that war is impossible. Even if war is catastrophic for everyone, no god and no law of nature protects us from human stupidity.

One potential remedy for human stupidity is a dose of humility. National, religious and cultural tensions are made worse by the grandiose feeling that my nation, my religion and my culture are the most important in the world – hence my interests should come before the interests of anyone else, or of humankind as a whole. How can we make nations, religions and cultures a bit more realistic and modest about their true place in the world?





12


HUMILITY


You are not the centre of the world


Most people tend to believe they are the centre of the world, and their culture is the linchpin of human history. Many Greeks believe that history began with Homer, Sophocles and Plato, and that all important ideas and inventions were born in Athens, Sparta, Alexandria or Constantinople. Chinese nationalists retort that history really began with the Yellow Emperor and the Xia and Shang dynasties, and that whatever Westerners, Muslims or Indians achieved is but a pale copy of original Chinese breakthroughs.

Hindu nativists dismiss these Chinese boasts, and argue that even airplanes and nuclear bombs were invented by ancient sages in the Indian subcontinent long before Confucius or Plato, not to mention Einstein and the Wright brothers. Did you know, for example, that it was Maharishi Bhardwaj who invented rockets and aeroplanes, that Vishwamitra not only invented but also used missiles, that Acharya Kanad was the father of atomic theory, and that the Mahabharata accurately describes nuclear weapons?1

Pious Muslims regard all history prior to the Prophet Muhammad as largely irrelevant, and they consider all history after the revelation of the Quran to revolve around the Muslim ummah. The main exceptions are Turkish, Iranian and Egyptian nationalists, who argue that even prior to Muhammad their particular nation was the fountainhead of all that was good about humanity, and that even after the revelation of the Quran, it was mainly their people who preserved the purity of Islam and spread its glory.

Needless to say that British, French, German, American, Russian, Japanese and countless other groups are similarly convinced that humankind would have lived in barbarous and immoral ignorance if it wasn’t for the spectacular achievements of their nation. Some people in history went so far as to imagine that their political institutions and religious practices were essential to the very laws of physics. Thus the Aztecs firmly believed that without the sacrifices they performed each year, the sun would not rise and the entire universe would disintegrate.

All these claims are false. They combine a wilful ignorance of history with more than a hint of racism. None of the religions or nations of today existed when humans colonised the world, domesticated plants and animals, built the first cities, or invented writing and money. Morality, art, spirituality and creativity are universal human abilities embedded in our DNA. Their genesis was in Stone Age Africa. It is therefore crass egotism to ascribe to them a more recent place and time, be they China in the age of the Yellow Emperor, Greece in the age of Plato, or Arabia in the age of Muhammad.

Personally, I am all too familiar with such crass egotism, because the Jews, my own people, also think that they are the most important thing in the world. Name any human achievement or invention, and they will quickly claim credit for it. And knowing them intimately, I also know they are genuinely convinced of such claims. I once went to a yoga teacher in Israel, who in the introductory class explained in all seriousness that yoga was invented by Abraham, and that all the basic yoga postures derive from the shape of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet! (Thus the trikonasana posture imitates the shape of the Hebrew letter aleph, tuladandasana imitates the letter daled, etc.) Abraham taught these postures to the son of one of his concubines, who went to India and taught yoga to the Indians. When I asked for some evidence, the master quoted a biblical passage: ‘And to the sons of his concubines Abraham gave gifts, and while he was still living he sent them away from his son Isaac, eastward to the east country’ (Genesis 25:6). What do you think these gifts were? So you see, even yoga was actually invented by the Jews.

Considering Abraham to be the inventor of yoga is a fringe notion. Yet mainstream Judaism solemnly maintains that the entire cosmos exists just so that Jewish rabbis can study their holy scriptures, and that if Jews cease this practice, the universe will come to an end. China, India, Australia and even the distant galaxies will all be annihilated if the rabbis in Jerusalem and Brooklyn stop debating the Talmud. This is a central article of faith of Orthodox Jews, and anyone who dares doubt it is considered an ignorant fool. Secular Jews may be a bit more sceptical about this grandiose claim, but they too believe that the Jewish people are the central heroes of history and the ultimate wellspring of human morality, spirituality and learning.

What my people lack in numbers and real influence, they more than compensate for in chutzpah. Since it is more polite to criticise one’s own people than to criticise foreigners, I will use the example of Judaism to illustrate how ludicrous such self-important narratives are, and I will leave it to readers around the world to puncture the hot-air balloons inflated by their own tribes.





Freud’s mother


My book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind was originally written in Hebrew, for an Israeli public. After the Hebrew edition was published in 2011, the most common question I received from Israeli readers was why I hardly mentioned Judaism in my history of the human race. Why did I write extensively about Christianity, Islam and Buddhism, but devoted just a few words to the Jewish religion and the Jewish people? Was I deliberately ignoring their immense contribution to human history? Was I motivated by some sinister political agenda?