Facing our demons

To my surprise I discover that I have been writing this column for almost two years now. Time to reflect on it. Summer in upstate New York is almost over. Patches of leaves that should know better are already turning. That summer hardly seemed to happen at all – so many wet days, so few 90–degree scorchers – adds to the disappointment. We had our vacation, taking our 15–year–old son back to the place of his birth, San Francisco, which we left when he was four and haven’t visited since.

But that’s over and it feels like the new year starts here – the school term, the office grind, the stained–glass fall that fades into the six–month Catskills winter.

So this seemed like a moment to write about what I am trying to do here.

But that’s easier thought than written.

You could say this openDemocracy column is about religion, written by an agnostic. I think it is about much more than religion: it’s about what gives us faith for the future, what gets us up in the morning and what makes us think this world is a reasonable place to bring a child into. It’s about how we learn from the people with whom we disagree.

But isn’t religion yesterday? Isn’t uplift bland? Isn’t listening to the other side wimpy?

Religion is yesterday, but – to genuflect to the first words of my first column – it’s increasingly tomorrow too, whether you like it or not. So one thing this column does is to look at religion around the world and try to make sense of it.

• How come in Iraq it was the defeated dictator Saddam Hussein who was the secular guy, while the Islamists and George Bush have this in common: they talk in religious language?
• If more modern means more secular, then why has the United States been taken over by guys who don’t believe in evolution and think their leader has been chosen by God?
• As the poor countries come up, will they become more secular, or are Falun Gong and Pentecostalism poised for mass conversions in China? Will there be more and worse religious pogroms in India? How come throughout the developing world Christianity is growing faster even than Islam, while secular socialism of the kind Nehru embraced is eclipsed?

The American bible belt and the Arabs have humiliation in common: the American south at the hands of the more industrialised, scientific and free–thinking north in the 1861–65 civil war, the Arabs at the hands of the more industrialised, scientific and free–thinking west over the last two centuries. Know–nothing rejection of evolution, literal embrace of holy texts and jihad crusade are reactions that will fade, given the right conditions, as they have before in other situations.

But what are those conditions?

China was humiliated too. Was Maoism her equivalent of fundamentalist religion, and is she over that phase now? Is worldly achievement the main thing that overcomes humiliations and dissolves magical thinking, whether the magic of secular utopia or apocalyptic religion?

What are the conditions in which Grand Inquisitors become democrats, Jihadists become scientists, Maoists welcome other faiths, Puritans become Unitarians? Half the Massachusetts Puritan congregations went Unitarian in the 18th Century – which means they embraced free thought, a more inclusive democracy and those qualities that made the American constitution and Bill of Rights possible.

But it’s not just religion. Religious language and community address deep needs, fears, hopes. Political ideologies address many of the same.

What politics do you have faith in?

Or if you are cynical about politics and about religion, what gets you to get out of bed to make this world a touch fairer? Does philosophy do it? Music? Bacon and eggs?

Are people worth it or not? Or is it just every person for themselves? Would this world be better off without the human race altogether?

Probably my biggest peeve is when we demonise each other. I have experienced too many cases in which people I loved have demonised the other side: and sometimes I was on that other side they despised, misunderstood and misrepresented.

Clear warning of danger is necessary. Exaggeration – calling Bush a Nazi – kills thought.

Some people on the left don’t like it when I suggest that the people in business suits may be doing as much to end world poverty as the anti–globalisers. But when you look back at how poverty has been reduced throughout the rich countries do you think it happened without capitalism?

A conservative liked that I was giving due credit to the market, the rule of law, the enforceability of contracts, and that I praised the achievements of capitalism and western democracies. But he didn’t like it when I argued that we have the left to thank for many of these achievements.

Not many people on the left like to be told that either. They fear it would “legitimise” the system to show what reforms it has absorbed.

But how did we get as much democracy, freedom and fairness before the law as we have, if not by the struggles of innumerable people who were locked out and did not just worm their way in, but made the system fairer for all? Anyone who does that, by any reasonable definition is on the left in their day, aren’t they? If you have another definition of those people, so be it – it’s the action I admire, not the label.

And what inspired them? That’s the main thing I want to know. What inspires you to make this world better?

And aren’t capitalists and the left, locked in symbiotic conflict, the very thing that brings the most progress, that we know of yet? The recipe only appears to include incompatible ingredients. As long as neither overwhelms the other, aren’t those the ingredients for the kind of achievements that dissolve humiliation and gut the appeal of big magic?

We know it’s futile to try for dialogue across our prejudices: atheists with religious, socialists with capitalists. But we are wrong. We have to keep reaching beyond our prejudices and demonisations, so there is a chance of new thinking when the times can hear it.