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Essays | October 2005 Summer Reading
2005
My “light”
summer reading included one look backward and one look forward, equally
instructive and equally chilling despite the season's heat. Edward
Gibbons' original The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
was published in six epic volumes between 1776 and 1787 as the world's
newest large-scale experiment in republican democracy, The United States
of America, was being created. Gibbons' look back offers an historian's
forthright assessment of the causes of the end of the Roman republic and
empire over the course of five centuries.
In his late-2004 book, The End of Faith: Religion,
Terror and the Future of Reason, Sam Harris, now completing a
doctorate in neuroscience, offers a well-researched warning to the world
of the ill-effects of religious fundamentalism – of any stripe – in an
era of weapons of mass destruction. Harris' potentially bleak view of
the future of the human race centers on how religious extremism sets the
stage for a potential – yes - Armageddon-like disaster should
unaccounted former Soviet Union atomic warheads, or other chemical and
biological weapons, ever fall into the hands of those willing to use
them in an effort to turn back the calendar a millennium or two.
First to Gibbon. Although the causes of the decline and
fall of Rome were many, Gibbon more than once observes an apathy and
degeneration of a sated citizenry, which abdicated its personal
involvement in government in favor of a dictator – a “Caesar” - and
which trusted for the defense of its well-to-do lifestyle an
increasingly detached mercenary military which had no vested interest in
the benefits - land, money and slaves - of that lifestyle.
Prior to the death of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE, the
republic's military was reserved for Roman citizens who had a
country to love, property to defend, and some role in enacting those
laws which it was in their interest and duty to maintain. An honorable
military leadership, albeit from a privileged class, commanding
unyielding citizens, possessing “arms, (protective) of property, and
collecting into constitutional assemblies, forms the only balance
capable of preserving a free constitution,” Gibbon notes, and that
“patriotism is derived from a strong sense of our own interest in the
preservation and prosperity of a free government of which we are
members.”
Such sentiment, which had rendered the legions of the
Roman republic almost invincible, he writes, could make but a very
feeble impression on the mercenary forces in the era of the emperors (27
BCE – 476 CE), during which “war was gradually improved into an art, and
(then) degraded into a trade,” as the military became composed more of
hired soldiers from throughout the empire in need of jobs than of Roman
citizens defending a homeland.
Finally, it was during the so-called pax romana (peace of
Rome), roughly between 20 BCE and 180 CE, within which “lay the latent
causes of decay and corruption.” The uniform government of the Romans
“introduced a slow and secret poison into the empire. The minds of men
were gradually reduced to the same level, the fire of genius was
extinguished, and even the military spirit evaporated. Their personal
valor remained, but they no longer possessed that public courage which
is nourished by the love of independence, the sense of national honor,
the presence of danger, and the habit of command. They received their
laws and governors from the will of the sovereign (the Caesar or
“Augustus”), and trusted for their defense to a mercenary army...and
sunk into the languid indifference of private life.”
Those descriptions of ancient Rome may seem like bygone
days of the United States, especially with a war in Iraq that, although
now becoming increasingly unpopular, many Americans treat with “languid
indifference.” How ironic at the time Gibbons was writing, America was
at its creation.
Now “back to the future” to Sam Harris and The End of
Faith, a grim view of what could be the road ahead for the human
race.
“Our
technical advances in the art of war have finally rendered our religious
differences – and hence our religious beliefs – antithetical to
our survival,” Harris writes. “We can no longer ignore the fact that
billions of our neighbors believe in the metaphysics of martyrdom, or in
the literal truth of the book of Revelation, or of any of the other
fantastical notions that have lurked in the minds of the faithful for
millennia – because our neighbors are now armed with chemical,
biological and nuclear weapons.”
Harris argues that a growing worldwide ecumenical
movement of religious toleration and moderation, far from soothing the
fringe elements of extremism, actually exacerbates a tenuous global
situation by providing religious fundamentalists with an excuse to use
whatever means necessary to justify their goal of religious purity. And
Harris is not referring here only to Islam as even Jesus spoke of
spitting out the “lukewarm” as not being worthy of the Kingdom of God
(Rev. 3:16, New American Standard version).
To Harris, it is horrifying that fringe groups of
fundamentalist Islamists who increasingly resort to the
“death-to-infidels” mentality that results in almost daily news footage
of carnage and destruction may yet obtain and use weapons of mass
destruction, but it should be equally horrifying that many
fundamentalist Christians today live in expectation of the end of the
world in their lifetimes,
convinced that growing religious-based and economic conflicts, the rise
of terrorism, and ecological and natural disasters portend the beginning
of the end.
And when one of the hottest recent works of fiction is
the “Left Behind” series authored by Tim La Haye and Jerry B. Jenkins,
selling more than 62 million copies, apparently quite a few expectantly
believe this will happen soon. Regrettably, according to Harris, as
nearly all extremist religious dogmas each insist on being observed as
the one true faith there is very little wiggle room when
humankind possesses the ability to eradicate itself from the planet.
One look backward, and one look forward, equally
instructive and equally chilling. Next summer I think I'll stick to
really light reading.
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