| Age
of Reason Publications |
Dedicated to attaining an Age of Reason in the
application
of rational thought to society’s laws, ethics and
beliefs,
and to entering upon an age of reason in our
individual
lives.
Götterdämmerung
(
In Wagner's Ring cycle, creatively fashioned by his
particular genius largely out of Norse mythology, the world has been
dominated
by the gods—as imperfect as they might be. They direct the fate of all
things,
including various lower races of giants, dwarves (the Nibelungen) and
men.
Forces expressed through myth in magic aid the workings of this world.
Change
is wrought, as it is in most of the world's mythology, not simply
through
death, but death that constitutes sacrifice. This is perhaps the most
deep-seated motif in the human psyche, which is why it finds expression
in so
much of our fantasizing, our story-telling, our myth-making, in which
we try to
explain ourselves to ourselves and to make sense of the life processes
we see
around us: the cycle of the seasons, the decay and renewal of
agriculture, the
passing from generation to generation, and the grief that accompanies
death and
the joy that comes with birth, growth and accomplishment. Since death
is
inevitable, and so difficult to come to terms with at the ground-level
in which
we live as individuals, we seek for ways to transfigure it, to redeem
it, even
though on the larger scale, being an integral part of the stream of
life and
progress, it needs no redemption.
If there is an overarching development in plot and
music
from the beginning to the end of Wagner's tetralogy—16 hours of
operatic
splendor performed over four days, constituting one of the great
artistic
achievements of the human species—it is the gradual, and at first
reluctant,
process undergone by the chief of the gods, Wotan, his insight and
acceptance
that the gods must pass away in order to make room for something new.
More than
simply to make room, it requires their death to allow the promise of
the new
life to be realized. The gods are tired. They have borne too much
responsibility, and they have been corrupted by it all. They have
become the
world's albatross, despite what may have begun with the best of
intentions. Wagner seems to have been an atheist in his own
personal
philosophy (acknowledging no divinity except perhaps himself), but he
was able
to recognize the part that gods and religion had played in human
development,
and to realize that their time had now passed. Had he lived at
the
beginning of the 21st century, he would undoubtedly have written music
to
illustrate that this passing was now long overdue and even imperative.
The cycle of life, death and renewal operates on
multiple
levels. As individuals, we experience it on the small scale, in our own
lives
and the lives of those around us. In history we have seen it operating
in the
rise and fall of civilizations, in the growth and decay of cultures, in
the
migration of peoples and subsequent inundations in turn by other
peoples. On
the geological scale, the evolution of life has been punctuated by even
larger
cycles of growth and collapse, the passing away of old orders and the
ascent of
new ones. Sometimes the changeover is slow and gradual. At other times
it may
be catastrophic: a chance encounter with an asteroid, an exploding
volcano that
wipes out an island civilization overnight; the untimely death of a
powerful
individual whose passing creates a turning point. It may even be
self-induced.
An entire Incan culture was subjugated and eradicated by a handful of
men with
a few horses and a cannon, simply because the Incas initially regarded
the
little band of Conquistadors under Francisco Pizarro as supernatural,
and put
up no resistance when it would have mattered. The taking of a
defenseless Rome
after the battle of Cannae would have been a piece of cake, but
Hannibal
inexplicably failed to march on the city and thereby ensured his own
eventual
defeat and the destruction of his Carthaginian home. Arab failure in
1947 to
accommodate even a modest Jewish homeland led to a state of
The
realists among us have come to recognize that the gods have become more
than an
albatross. They are now the greatest threat to our very progress and
survival.
They can no longer be accommodated, for the truth of the matter is that
they
have been commandeered by that element of human society which is most
unenlightened, most irrational, most fanatical. Liberal religion has
now been
marginalized; it is a spent, largely irrelevant force. It has no
control over
the extremist expressions of the world's major faiths. The latter are
now
calling the shots. Fundamentalist Christianity, within the most
powerful
country in the world, is well on its way to achieving a stranglehold on
domestic and foreign policy. It is to a great extent entrenched in the
administrations of all levels of
Fundamentalist Islam poses an even greater threat.
It is
dedicated, openly and with no holds barred, to the conversion or
destruction of
non-Islamic world society. The concept of dialogue is not in its
vocabulary.
Its adopted method is indiscriminate killing, to the fullest extent
possible.
In this, it envisions the full support of its Deity. It was recently
revealed
on CNN that a few years ago Osama bin Laden consulted with a Muslim
cleric (a
spiritual advisor to terrorists, one assumes) and received permission
from him
to kill up to 10 million infidels in his "holy war" against the West.
(I guess it's comforting to know that religious moralists these days
are
receiving guidance from the ultimate divine authority, in contrast to
us poor
atheists who only have our weak and subjective human consciences to go
on; we
all know how submission to a higher power tends to guarantee superior
moral
behavior. But I digress.) Nor can fundamentalist Christians
consider themselves any more
enlightened or less sanguinary in their ambitions, for they expect an
equally
horrendous holy war and 'religious cleansing' in the near future, aided
by
heavenly forces revealed in parts of the New Testament.
In
In theocratic Iran (not to be confused with
"democratic," despite the illusion of free elections in which true
moderates, let alone liberals, are not allowed to run for office),
where its
president has declared the avowed extermination of a neighboring state
in many
of his speeches ['Israel esse delenda'], they are hard at work
developing
nuclear weapons and the missiles to carry them, funding and equipping
terrorists abroad who also subscribe to the holy war philosophy. (One
wonders
what an 'unholy war' would look like.)
To borrow the title of Richard Dawkins' most recent
book,
"the God Delusion" has seized the mentality of a significant portion
of the human race, a growing share of which has become deranged by it,
and at a
time when the technology and science and culture it ostensibly derides
has
enabled it to wreak unprecedented and catastrophic effects. The
apocalyptic
mentality is now in a position to create a veritable apocalypse.
Religion
in one form or another has been with us from time immemorial. For most
of that
period it may have served a purpose (evolutionary features which
survive that
long usually do), perhaps for community cohesion and even mental
stability in
the face of an inscrutable, frightening, death-ridden world. That is no
longer
the case. In much of recorded history, religion has created more death
than
life, more misery than hope, more stagnation than progress, more lunacy
than
sanity, and that imbalance is increasing. We now have other avenues,
human-based ones, to understanding and enlightenment, to ethics,
cooperation
and good will. These are no longer achievable by competing and mutually
exclusive convictions that one particular brand of unverifiable belief
in
fantastic otherworldly dimensions, in gods who are as prejudiced,
divisive and
irrational as we are capable of being, constitute eternal and inerrant
truth.
The so-called liberal believer has to realize that
the traditional
faith in any form has become rationally and pragmatically
unsupportable, that
belief in gods and the supernatural has mutated into a cancer that can
kill the
human organism. Neither Bible nor Koran will actually support the
liberalized,
moderating interpretations and 'spins' which the more rational of the
faithful
try to put on them. Unfortunately, the fundamentalists do have it
right. The
sacred writings of almost any faith declare that the unbeliever will
perish
eternally. They prescribe the fiercest of penalties for often outdated
transgressions, death to infidels and heretics, conquest of Holy and
Promised
Lands. (In these regards, the Bible can be more bloodthirsty than the
Koran.) Such writings have been used to justify the most objectionable
behavior, from animal sacrifice to slavery to the worst of misogynist
sexism.
They stand in often direct opposition to modern science and our
understanding
of human nature; they contain contradictions and primitive ideas that
cannot be
rationalized or allegorized away. And they are a colossal distraction
from the
focus we ought to be placing on this world and its betterment. The
liberal
believer must realize that the cost of rescuing his holy book, and the
tenets
of faith that are based on it, comes at too great a cost.
Before religious fundamentalism pulls the house down
on us
all, it needs to be challenged by as many as possible, including the
moderates
who in supporting a more humanized religion in their own lives are
reluctant to
speak out against what others are making of it. Too many politicians,
fearful
of their conservative colleagues and the voters who place them in
office, also
remain silent. Too many academics of all stripes are similarly afraid
to rock
the boat. In the Muslim world, speaking out is more difficult, since
criticism
of the faith can be seen as tantamount to apostasy and may result in
persecution and even death. Yet what of Muslims in the "free world"?
Why is there not more vocal outrage expressed over Islamic extremism,
over the
bloody sectarianism in
That means turning on our rational faculties. It means
questioning, if not abandoning, gods and religion entirely. An
impossible
expectation? Maybe. But nothing less is likely to do the trick. Wagner
had it
right. It is time the gods passed away, to make room for a world
society free
of divisive and destructive superstition rooted in a primitive age and
ignorance we are well on our way to dispelling and outgrowing.
Preferably, the
gods should pass into fossilized history through rational and civilized
discourse and scientific investigation, rather than the fiery collapse
at the
end of Wagner's Götterdämmerung,
which could engulf us all.