The recent BBC-TV special on the US anthrax investigation hinted that behind the anthrax scare was a powerful US biowarfare lobby that staged the episode in order to heighten popular awareness and increase government spending on counter-measures. In other words, it was the US biowarfare scientists who, faced with the passivity of the bureaucrats and the ignorance of the general population took the initiative – and the law -- into their own hands. When the US investigators came close to the truth, they were stalled by high-level interference. What they may have come to recognise is that the rebellious scientists’ action had its own logic: unless the American people and the government were shocked into action, many more lives would be lost in a real terrorist attack. What are five victims against millions of lives potentially saved?
In Russia, 128 captive men, women and children were sacrificed to save the lives of the remaining hostages, but mostly, it seems, to save the face of the bungling security services that allowed Chechen fighters to infiltrate Moscow. It was reported that the Russian Special Forces commandoes who shot unconscious hostage-takers point-blank and left the ham-fisted and under-supplied medics to sort out the rest of the mess were later given a riotous reception in the Kremlin.
In Australia, the perk-obsessed DFAT bureaucrats at first could not even copy-and-paste the timely US travel warnings to their own website, afraid of taking responsibility and offending the sensibilities of the Indonesians. After the fact, they became ever so vigilant – so as not to offend public opinion at home. Hundreds of lives were lost in the process in the Bali terrorist attack.
Welcome to the 21st century where the human primate who stole the fire from the gods – and learned to manipulate statistics and public opinion – seems unable to control the march of his technological genius through the minefield of his moral inferiority.
Which brings us to the question of religion and the so-called “clash of civilizations”.
The putative clash of the Mullah armed with an anthrax spore, the Priest armed with a laser-guided missile, and the Rabbi armed with a nuke should make it clear to anyone but a very obtuse person that any pretense by any religion at some sort of supernatural righteousness is a case of either naked cunning or outright idiocy. In human affairs religions are just ideologies, like Fascism or Communism or liberal democracy, whose purpose is to unite disparate groups of people under one umbrella to improve their chances for survival in competition for scarce resources -- or even simple recognition. “The supernatural justification” while palliating human need for certainty in an uncertain world also attracts thwarted and power-hungry kooks, from Washington snipers, to “sons of Sam”, to bin Ladens, to Bashirs and other “semi-detached ayatollahs” so touchingly described by the British writer Jon Ronson in his both funny and desperately sad book Them.
In our world with millions of ignorant, disempowered but adrenaline-pumped youths and men manipulated by crafty clerics and God-proclaiming rulers any person seriously thinking about the role of religion in society may want to peruse the seminal work of the biologist E. O. Wilson On Human Nature. In the social scheme of things religion is the glue that enhances cohesion and potential survival of its adherents – that is, if you get the rest of your life right.
For there is the downside to the sense of superiority and certainty that religious ideologies give to their adherents. When you get caught with your pants down and get dragged off to an X-ray camp or some sort of a Nuremberg-like trial (or are simply allowed to rot on an old age pension like some retired Communist zealot) it may be a bit late to beg for tolerance and forbearance by pointing out that you are just a poor sucker (like the Pakistani boys caught in the Taliban debacle) who got misled by some Bible-bashing or Koran-reciting demagogue.
Undoubtedly, some ideologies appear more life-supporting, self-critical and other-aware than others. If one had to shop around and get oneself some off-the-shelf religious ideology to placate one’s existential angst, Buddhism would seem to be a reasonable choice. With its emphasis on the “middle way”, non-violence towards all creatures (not just the ones who were lucky enough to be born in your particular country and into your particular ready-made religious ideology), it should generally be less prone to abuse than most other belief systems (Thai monks having fisticuffs about real estate notwithstanding).
Thus, the greatest threat to humankind may come not from the Saddams of this world – there will always be Saddams -- but from some kook who may feel that it is a lot of fun to splice together the AIDS and the flu viruses or an illiterate fanatic who blows up hundreds of innocent people of different nationalities at a holiday resort because he “hates Americans”.
We are back in the jungle and the cacophony of howls we hear at night fills us with dread. All we can hope is that the reason that allowed us to decipher the genetic code and investigate the mysteries of the universe will not desert us, and that the humility and compassion that are taught by all the great religions of the world will temper and humanize it.
7 November 2002
Pyotr Patrushev was born in Russia, Western Siberia, in 1942. In 1962 he had to escape from Russia faced with government persecution for his anti-war views. As a former college swimmer, he was able to cross a dangerous and closely guarded part of the Black Sea to Turkey. After his escape he was sentenced to death on charges of high treason and put on the KGB wanted list.
In the West, he worked as a journalist and translator in England, the US and Germany. He now lives near Sydney, Australia, with his wife and son.Pyotr Patrushev is a Sydney-based freelance writer and translator
pyotr_patrushev@yahoo.com