9. RELIGION

“In the year thousand at the assembly of the parliament, Althingi, the Icelandic nation was divided by a deep rooted division about religion and the future of the nation. The chieftain and speaker of the law then, Thorgeir of Ljosavatn ‑ a heathen himself ‑ called the parliament together and spoke the famous words: “if the law is split, then peace will be split”. He then issued a verdict that all Icelanders should be baptised into the Christian faith.”

Text at the arrival hall of Reykjavik airport publicising the celebrations for a thousand years of Christianity in Iceland.

“I believe it, therefore it is true.” All religious convictions are based on this fallacy. The verb “to believe” contains an element of uncertainty; and it is therefore strange that so many people choose to ignore this and unconsciously turn this uncertainty into a certainty.

No religion can be proven. Indeed, nothing can be proven in an absolute way. Every proof, whether in mathematics, in science or in philosophy, must start from a few basic principles. These starting ideas can be the outcome of earlier reasoning. Mathematics for instance uses this system of interlinking proofs. However, to launch such a chain with a first proof, you need to select a few basic ideas which have not been proven.

Let us cite a historic example of the fact that it is impossible to prove something starting from nothing. The French philosopher Descartes wanted to prove the existence of God starting from nothing. For him this “nothing” meant doubting everything. As the starting point of his reasoning he chose the concept “I doubt everything.” He concludes that there is one thing of which is certain: he is certain that he doubts. If he doubts, he must be thinking and consequently, he must exist. He expresses this with his famous phrase “I think, therefore I am.” His starting point is of course incorrect: if he doubts everything, he also doubts his doubt. Even worse: his conclusion is “I am”, in other words “I exist”. From the outset he implies his own existence, for he states “I doubt.” His existence is already contained in his basic assumption and essentially all he says is “I exist, therefore I exist”.

All reasoning is based on a number of fundamental assumptions that are unproven and can never be proven. Absolute proofs do not exist and any conclusion cannot be better than the basic elements that underlie it. The most common mistake in logic is that very often reasoning is based on implicit principles of doubtful value.

Nor can science can’t start from nothing. Every scientist chooses fundamental principles and makes assumptions. One of his primary principles is that nature exists and is the yardstick for everything. This idea seems reasonable and is difficult to challenge. Jacques Monod states in Chance and Necessity “The cornerstone of science is the assumption that nature is correct”. Scientists choose other hypotheses as rationally as they can to establish their theories. But they always test their results by comparing them with what happens in nature. If the results of the tests do not correspond with their theories, they must conclude that nature is right and the theory wrong, not the other way round.

This can often result in Chinese puzzles. A theory can for instance be recognised as almost always correct whilst tests reveal a few small anomalies. What does this prove? Stephen Hawking quotes a nice example in A brief History of Time: some anomalies in the trajectory of the planet Mercury cannot be explained by Newton’s theory and have been a headache to scientists for two centuries. They were finally interpreted by Einstein who refined Newton’s laws with his theory of relativity. Every scientist must be aware that every theory is based on assumptions and that no truth is absolute. We should be vigilant and not be carried away by enthusiasm for our own ideas; all our convictions are based on assumption and thereby on uncertainty.

Theoretically even the existence of nature is a hypothesis. Solipsism is a philosophical movement that negates the existence of nature and for which only the mind of the philosopher exists. It is the theory that the self is the only thing that can be known to exist. In simple words, the philosopher is alone in an empty world, all the rest is illusion. This seems ridiculous, but how can one prove that this theory is wrong without taking account of the evidence provided by nature? All one can do is to say: your basic assumption is wrong, I have a better one and this is of course does not prove anything. Still, one wonders why solipsists write books if they are convinced that nobody exists to read them! The English philosopher Bertrand Russell tells the story that he once received a letter from a solipsist complaining that her theory had been met with scepticism….

My parents were Catholic and I was sent to a Catholic secondary school. Classes in religion were compulsory. In the last year, the course started with a chapter called “Proofs of the Existence of God”. I still remember the smile on the face of our teacher, a slightly cynical priest. He declared that there were no proofs of the existence of God and that religion was a question of “faith”. He then went straight to the second chapter.

If God’s existence can’t be proven, it must necessarily be a hypothesis. Every hypothesis should be compared with nature to check whether it is correct or not. Believers ignore this and, based on what they call their “Faith”, they change the hypothesis into certainty. The important question is to try to understand what is this “Faith” that transforms hypotheses into certainties.

Religion is omnipresent in the world. Atheism is a recent phenomenon and only started to spread – mainly in the West – after the humanist revolution. Atheists probably existed earlier than that but they were rather the exception. This scarcity may only be apparent and the result of fear. It was dangerous to oppose religion in the days of Socrates or the astronomer, mathematician and philosopher Giordano Bruno (1548 1600) who had committed the unforgivable sin of being the most brilliant and most independent minds of their day. Only a few years before the French revolution, the young Chevalier de la Barre (he was barely 19) was tortured and beheaded in Abbeville in the North of France for not taking his cap off at the passing of the host in a catholic procession, and to have been singing “impious” songs during drunken student evenings; and this was in the age of enlightenment. The Catholic Church, still powerful and supercilious, has succeeded in 1926 in having the statue of the Chevalier de la Barre in Paris removed to a discreet corner.

As far as we can go back in time, we can always find signs that some form of religion existed. Old texts describe several long disappeared religions such as the Egyptian, Mesopotamian or Aztec ones. Statuettes of goddesses and cave drawings point at the existence of even older ones. Religion exists so widely everywhere and throughout the ages that it is therefore likely that it corresponds to an innate need in mankind.

Today’s most important religions are of the “revealed” type. This means that they were founded by a man who revealed to others how to act in relation to the superior being responsible for their destiny. We have Buddha for Buddhism, Jesus for Christianity, Mohammed for Islam, perhaps Moses for Judaism. Certain authors have questioned Moses’ – and other biblical character’s – historical existence. For Finkelstein and Silberman, in their book The Bible Unearthed, the real founder of Judaism was King Josiah who reigned over the kingdom of Judah at the end of the 7th century BC. Although this theory is revolutionary in respect of Judaism and Christianity, the name of the founder – be it Moses, Josiah or even Abraham – is unimportant for this chapter: Judaism remains a revealed religion regardless of the name of the founder.

Buddha is the only prophet who doesn’t base his teachings on the existence of a supreme being, which sets him apart from other religious founders. All these religions have a starting point: the life of the prophet. Other religions exist with no known origin. We will call them ancient religions. They go back to the dawn of time and we know nothing about their origin or their early evolution. Such religions are still practised today. There are hundreds of them in Africa, amongst the native Indians on the American continent, the Aborigines in Australia etc. Amongst them Hinduism alone has become an important world religion. At the root of our Western Civilisation we find the Mesopotamian, Greek and Roman ancestral religions. We can study them from original documents dating back several millennia.

These ancient religions demonstrate the place humans occupy in the world, tell how the Gods appeared, describe the creation of man and explain why the world is as it is. Regardless of the inconsistencies in modern religions, we tend to smile at what we regard as the unlikely stories in these religions. Yet they are often very coherent and explain many aspects of life. The old religion of Mesopotamia is in this respect fascinating. Its stories intersect well and are told beautifully. This however does not rule out surprising contradictions. For instance, the domain of the dead is surrounded by seven insurmountable walls, but at the same time they believed in ghosts who seem to be able to cross these insurmountable barriers without difficulty…

The structure of these religions improves over time. The Mesopotamian religion is cruder in the writings of Ur in 2500 BC than 1500 years later in Babylon. The myths were permanently being rewritten and theologians studied them in more and more depth. Before the appearance of writing, be it in 3300 BC in Mesopotamia or in the 19th century in Africa, it is impossible to know for sure what these religions were like. We can however guess that the farther we go back in time, the more primitive the religious beliefs.

However these religions all have a common characteristic: they are tribal. Each tribe has its primary God and its secondary Gods, protectors of the group. In those days nobody imagined that the Gods were universal. When travelling to another city one had to fear the local Gods. Implicitly the Bible accepts this idea. Yahweh is a supercilious and jealous God for whom the supreme sin was to worship other Gods. Each time the Jews sinned against this principle he took terrible revenge on the whole group. For the authors of these texts it was acceptable for other people to worship their own Gods: they probably believed in their existence. In the ancient world, each time a King conquered another city, he not only replaced its King, but his own God replaced the local God. Many old texts claim “I have taken city X and have killed its King. I have overthrown the statue of their God and have replaced it with my God.”

These ancient religions probably combine two important elements. The first one is the fear of a hostile environment. The hunter-gatherers must have been in awe of thunderstorms. The omnipotent and uncontrollable forces of nature had to be tamed at all costs. As Desmond Morris says in The Naked Ape: “Religious activities can be reduced to gatherings of large groups of individuals who perform repeated and prolonged demonstrations of submission, designed to appease a dominant individual”. Essentially this is still true today even if we speak of fear of the unknown, rather than fear of thunderstorms. As Jacques Monod said: “it takes courage to confront the cold and emptiness of the universe”.

The second element is the linked to the laws of evolution. Beliefs had to be common to all members of the tribe. The terrors were deep-rooted and the dangers of nature were omnipresent. Life was precarious and more than one tribe disappeared after big or even small small incidents. The human race has often been on the brink of disappearing. In this hostile environment, the tribe had to be as united as possible. Differences of opinion concerning these superstitious terrors would have endangered the unity of the group and increased the risk of disappearing. The need for religious unity in the tribe finally became part of our instincts. As Thorgeir of Ljosavatn said: “if the law is split, then peace will be split” or, as Desmond Morris says in The Naked Ape, “religion has proven extremely valuable to help social cohesion and our species probably would not have progressed without it”. Professor De Duve says roughly the same thing in "A l’écoute du vivant": “Humans who believed in something were more likely to survive and propagate their own chromosomes than those who did not believe in anything. That the object of their belief was true or not was irrelevant.”

Probably very early on in our evolution, the shaman – the man who is in contact with the higher authorities and who alone can appease them – became a second power in the tribe in addition to the chief hunter. His influence was however more mystical. The members of the tribe probably consulted him each time there was a risk of interference from the Gods. He was asked to drive out demons who made people sick or to forecast the intentions of the deities before important decisions were taken. Sometimes he even took the initiative to proclaim the Gods’ displeasure.

The intellectual development that followed settlement made the old beliefs look outdated; mankind needed a new level of thinking. The first philosophers and the first religious thinkers appeared in a relatively short time span: the oldest Greek philosopher Thales was born in 624BC, Buddha probably around 550BC; most scholars believe the oldest books of the Bible were assembled around 500BC. The fundamental renewal came from the philosophers. They are the ones who, from Thales onwards, charted the road that would lead humanity to the humanist revolution and to the world as we know it today. Some of these thinkers were brilliant – Epicurus or Bertrand Russell for instance – others are questionable like Plato, who defends absolute dictatorship, or Berkeley who with his solipsism is a typical inventor of useless ideas. But all of them participated to some extent in the development of Western thinking.

Their main quality was that the new philosophers started from scratch and tried to overcome the old prejudices. But the religions could not remain unchanged in this evolving world. However, all religions are based on dogmas, i.e. points that cannot be questioned. These of course limit their scope for progress and condemn them to sticking to old ideas. Nor have Philosophies always been immune to dogmatism. The two most recent – and most dramatic – examples are Communism and Nazism. Both theories use the ideas of philosophers as their starting point, but both have transformed these ideas into creeds with the consequences we know. Many thinkers consider these movements to be religions without Gods.

Religions have had revolutionary thinkers as well. The most surprising amongst them is probably Buddha who is placed somewhere halfway between religion and philosophy. The Collins dictionary defines religion as “… belief in a supernatural power considered to be divine”: no religion without divinity. Yet Buddhism is generally considered to be one of the great religions of the world. It has many characteristics that are typical of religions. There are Buddhist monks and monasteries, prayers and a series of creeds, for instance reincarnation. In any case, after his death his followers turned his teachings into creeds, creating a real religion. Still, Buddha himself promoted individual thinking and several of his ideas are worth closer study.

The road followed by the other “revealed” religions is quite different.      We will start with the oldest one, Judaism.  Although it has a relatively small following, it has had a tremendous influence on both Christianity and Islam.

Its holy book, the Bible, is essentially an epic. It is the story of the “chosen people” and their troubles with their God.

As the story of the Jews evolves, the Bible demonstrates an important change in its philosophical content. Initially Yahweh is a bloody warrior God who commands the conquest of the Promised Land for his tribe: he is the guarantor of the hunting grounds. Conquered tribes are exterminated, women and children included, for the sole reason that they are not Jews. This is a hunter-gatherer religion in its crude brutality. Let us quote one example amongst the many included in the first books of the Bible. “And the Lord hearkened to the voice of Israel, and delivered up the Canaanites; and they utterly destroyed them and their cities” (Numbers 21 3). Much later, after the deportation to Babylon, the prophets started to humanise the wishes of Yahweh. But even today, Judaism is still a purely tribal religion aimed at guaranteeing that the tribe will have its hunting grounds to nourish all its members and from which all competitors must be removed. It is important to keep this in mind when trying to understand what is happening in present-day Israel.

First Christianity, then Islam will try to break this tribal straightjacket to become universal religions. Up to a certain point they seem to have succeeded. Both send out missionaries to convert the world regardless of tribal boundaries. However in reality these religions continue to be tribal glue, the link that holds the tribe together. The broader views of their founders are lost in the tribal instincts of men. Christianity still accepts the Bible as a holy text, despite its primitive tribalism and its barbarity. Jesus himself says that no letter of the law of Moses should be changed. Islam on the other hand inherited the oral legacy of the tribes of the Arabian Peninsula where Mohammed was born (he was only influenced by Judaism later in life.) Both Christianity and Islam are based on tribal traditions that will never completely disappear.

Very soon the authorities understand that to acquire supreme power you have to combine both worldly and spiritual control. Not many traces are found of this combination in hunter-gatherer tribes. However it appears as soon as humans settle. Jacques Maquet gives a detailed description of sacred kingship in the area of the great lakes in Central Africa as he saw them in the early 20th century. We discover priest kings and deified kings as soon as scripture is invented. Julius Caesar was also Pontifex Maximus or high priest. When these two sources of power are not in the same hands, they will collaborate. Whenever temporal and religious power compete with each other, problems arise. For example the German emperor Henry IV had to do penance in Canossa in 1077, standing three days bare-headed in the snow, in order to reverse his excommunication by Pope Gregory VII. In the 14th century BC Akhenaton introduced a new monotheistic religion (i.e. with only one God), against the will of the Egyptian clergy. His immediate successors were forced by the priests to revert to the old beliefs. Moses and Mohammed were conquerors and most historians

agree that Jesus was probably put to death for the worldly aspects of his action. The establishment of the Anglican Church by Henri VIII is a more recent example, as is the removal of the popes to Avignon by the French kings.

The tribal function of religion is found throughout the world, from Bosnia all the way to Indonesia. For Ian Paisley, a Free Presbyterian Church Minister and leader of one of the Protestant loyalist movements in Northern Ireland, there is no difference between nationalism and religion. He was leading a crusade against Catholic infidels and at the same time he was defending the Protestant classes of the area. After the attacks on the twin towers in Manhattan on 11 September 2001, the nationalist religious fervour of the Americans reached new heights. President Bush asked all people to unite behind him to combat terrorism, but at the same time he finished all his speeches saying “God bless America”. For his crusade he wanted the whole American population to stand behind him united, including in its religious beliefs.

We find the tribal aspect of religion everywhere. In most countries the festivities for the national day include both a military parade and a religious ceremony. In both World Wars, the German soldiers had “Gott mit uns” (God with us) inscribed on their belt buckles, and the SS swore fidelity to Hitler saying “I swear by God…” Most Christian churches are decorated with national flags, they contain graves of military leaders and plaques on the walls bear the names of soldiers who died for their country. It seems very difficult to separate Church and State, even in our democracies. During their investiture the Presidents of the USA take their oath with the right hand on the Bible regardless of their personal convictions and their national anthem claims “God bless America”. How can they ask a universal God to become a nationalist and to protect one particular nation without taking into consideration the deeds of the individuals composing it? Many countries have political parties with religious programmes, be they Christian, Hindu or Muslim. Religious symbols hang in city halls, in schools and in courts. Religious feasts of the main religion of the country are national holidays. In short, religion is never separated from the tribe. In Northern Ireland, two factions of the same Christian religion, both claiming they are universal and peaceful, are at the base of the tribal war. Saint Joan of Arc, who was ordered by an anglophobe God to throw the English out and to put the noble king of France on the throne, is a French national heroine. The United Kingdom has a Church of England, a Church of Scotland and a Church of Ireland. At the end of the football world cup in 2002 the complete victorious team knelt in the middle of the field to thank Jesus and the Virgin for their victory. Is the Christian God a supporter of the Brazilian football team?

Religions also have an important social function. All in the village go to worship together and those who don’t go are identified as outsiders. We belong to the same religion as our parents and are educated accordingly. All religions organise ceremonies for the important moments in life: birth, puberty, marriage and death. The community organises festivities and they are treated as significant social events.

This all illustrates the same thing. The faith that turns hypotheses into convictions is a social instinct inherited from our ancestors the hunter-gatherers. To belong to a tribe you must share its beliefs. All is not bad in religions. Most of them have a responsible moral base, alas little applied. Most of the time all they do is maintain stability in society, most often by supporting the leading classes against the demands of the lower classes. This stability is often a mere facade and it is difficult to see the moral base underlying the recent religious murders in Algeria, in Ireland, in Bosnia, in the Philippines, in Indonesia or the earlier campaigns of witch hunting, Inquisition, crusades or religious wars. The positive points in religions are annihilated by their tribal aspect and by their tendency to identify with the ruling classes. The only religion that escapes these reproaches is Buddhism. As far as I know, Buddhism has never waged war. However, as already pointed out, it is strongly linked to philosophy and many consider it is not a religion at all. But even Buddhism sometimes plays a tribal role. In Tibet, prior to his eviction by the Communists, the Dalai Lama was at the same time the religious and the political leader.

In practice all religions find their origin in the basic social instincts that differentiate between tribes and maintain their identity. Professor De Duve, still in "A l’écoute du vivant" stated “Faith would not be so powerful without human credulity. It was probably retained by natural selection because it was more beneficial to believe in something than to be “taken for a ride”. … There is not the slightest doubt that our aptitude to believe is much stronger than our capacity to listen to reason.”

Faith is a way to transform hypotheses into certitudes without ever having to question them again. History shows that humans can have faith in anything, from Nazism to Fundamentalism. Somebody who has no faith is certain of nothing and knows that he is always searching for truth. Humans have always killed and tortured when they “knew” that they were right, not when they were searching for truth. This religious certainty often leads to delaying human progress. Great ideas of the modern world – democracy, free enterprise, equality of the sexes, education for all, social justice, contraception, euthanasia – have all originated outside religion. On the contrary, most religions fight these ideas. As an example I would like to quote a text by Monseigneur d’Astros, Archbishop of Toulouse in France. He proclaimed in 1872, one year after the bloody repression of the Paris Commune: “The inequality of conditions, object of so many attacks, is in fact the fundamental law of society. Without it, arts, sciences and agriculture would infallibly perish and we would all be shorn of all necessities of life. This law was proclaimed by God’s wisdom. He wanted to give to the rich the opportunity to help alleviate the sufferings of the poor, and to give to the poor a powerful reason to be thankful to the rich. In this way he made sure that the bonds within society were strengthened through the double link of needs and charitable kindness.”

We must remember that progress never came from religion but always originated in the free exercise of thought, outside all creeds and established certainties.

10. MONARCHY

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“Truly I desire the people’s liberty and freedom as much as anybody whomsoever; but I must tell you their liberty and freedom consist in having of government those laws by which their life and their goods may be most their own. It is not for having a share of government.”

Charles I at the foot of the scaffold

The King is the direct successor of the kings who appeared after the first hunter-gatherer tribes started to settle. In the absence of written documents it is impossible to know exactly how and when the first King appeared. However, primitive settled tribes still exist or existed until recently and have been studied by anthropologists. It is possible to extrapolate the behaviour of their members. We must be very careful in our conclusions for they all have been in contact with our own civilisation and have therefore possibly been influenced by us. Their behaviour could differ from what it was in Neolithic times.

Other scientific branches are helpful. Several psychologists have studied human obedience and we have already mentioned the test on torture led by the psychologist Milgram. But we can also look at how children behave in the absence of adults.

The younger children are, the less they are influenced by education and the more their actions will be instinctive, even more so when there are no adults present. An example of this is at school during recreation. The pupils play in little groups. Each of these little groups has a natural leader. His authority is undisputed except when another pupil arrives who has the same type of natural authority. This will result in a fight for leadership in which the other children do not participate. The authority of these little chiefs on others is absolute and the others follow obediently. When a new child wants to join the tribe, he has to ask the leader. The reply will generally be negative which shows that even at a young age the difference between the tribe and foreigners already exists. Two tribal instincts exist in these youngsters: unconditional obedience to the leader and rejection of foreigners.

The position of the chief in hunter-gatherer tribes, as they existed until fairly recently, has substantial advantages. All hunters receive their share of the hunt and the pickings, a share that takes into account the size of each hunter’s family, but the best goes to the chief who is in addition entitled to the surplus. His hut is situated in the nicest spot in the camp; and he has other benefits – including sexual advantages – which are important in these poor societies. The leader generally has a strong personality and is competent. However regardless of this authority, the society is relatively egalitarian and obedience is mainly achieved by social pressure. When the chief dies, he is replaced by another strong personality who is generally not his son. There are no dynasties.

Soon after settlement the function of leader becomes hereditary. It is not easy to understand how and why this change took place. There are however a few interesting pointers. After settlement, society becomes more and more complex. Members of the settled tribe become specialised. Fathers teach the tricks of their trades to their sons. The children grow up in the family circle and learn how to live from their parents whom they help from a young age. The profession of soldier also passes from father to son. The King’s role is not the only one that passes from father to son. Our instinct to protect our offspring promotes the creation of these dynasties. Other essential trades – the making of bronze and iron for instance – become hereditary as well. The chief of the hunter-gatherer tribes was already receiving the surplus. In settled tribes this surplus increases significantly and is no longer perishable. The accumulation of this wealth makes the family of the King ever more powerful, even if the son lacks the charisma and authority of his father.

The above explanation may seem insufficient to account for the change from efficient leadership to hereditary royalty. I have no other explanations to offer. One thing is certain: hereditary kingship appeared after settlement.

This evolution towards kingship exists everywhere in the world, in China and pre-Columbian America, in Africa and Europe. We find a description of it in the Bible. The first leader of the tribe, Moses, is a charismatic leader. He is not succeeded by his son: other charismatic leaders take over leadership. Some of them are highly effective, Joshua for instance, but others like Samson are ineffectual. Only after settlement do we see kingship appearing. Alas, the Bible is not very clear about what pushed the tribe towards kingship. In a strongly anti-royal text, it mentions that Yahweh told Samuel that he accepted monarchy at the insistence of the people: “Now therefore hearken unto their voices: howbeit thou shalt protest solemnly unto them and shalt shew them the manner of the King that shall reign over them.” And indeed, Samuel predicts that the Kings will steal their animals, their sons and daughters, and will exploit them shamelessly for the benefit of himself and his nobles. But the Jews wouldn’t listen; they wanted a King: “…Now make us a King to judge us like all the nations … and that our King may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.” The full text is to be found in 1 Samuel chapter 8, verses 5 to 22.

In most cultures the King increases his power even further by becoming religious leader as well. This combination of the two powers may already have existed among nomadic tribes. In the Bible the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are both heads of the clan and God’s spokesmen. Later Moses has the same authority: Yahweh speaks directly to him and gives him orders on how to rule the tribe.

Until the humanist revolution at the end of the 18th century, monarchy was the main, if not the only, form of government. Since then a new form of abuse of power has appeared: dictatorship. Apart from the name, there is not much difference between absolute monarchies and dictatorships. Indeed, dictators often even seem to try and establish dynasties. In the framework of this essay, there is no real difference between the two.

In our democracies, we continue to amalgamate monarchy, religion and army. Even today, the King is often the head of the army. At most official ceremonies he wears a uniform; and the princes have “blitz” promotions; for the King is head of the army by right, as his successor after him. Elected presidents and prime ministers don’t wear uniforms: only Kings and dictators do. The link with religion is also maintained. During the Gulf war, Saddam Hussein could be seen praying as a good Muslim although I am convinced his personal belief was close to zero.

Instinctively, we are reluctant to question the authority of the chief. Outside the democratic world, once in place the leader remains the leader for a very long time. Yasser Arafat was the Palestinian leader until his death. Throughout the world individual leaders personify tribes from Castro in Cuba to Gaddafi in Libya. A leader will occasionally have to fend off a young challenger, but the longevity of dictators is amazing. The only real challenge still seems to come from the democratic example, as the successive revolutions against dictators in the Arab world – the Arab Spring – have shown in recent years.

Non-elected leaders tend to stay in power not only for a long time, but they remain surprisingly popular, regardless of the errors they make. On the other hand, in democracies, politicians are often held in low esteem. Someone who says he knows honest, courageous and responsible politicians will be considered a fool, naïve or insincere, but will not be believed. Yet the results obtained by tyrants and by democracies couldn’t be more different. Saddam Hussein, Hitler and Karadzic ruined their countries but had the support of their people to the end. Democracies are amongst the richest countries in the world, but people keep saying “what we really need is a good dictator.” How can we explain this surprising difference? The position of the elected leader is regularly put to the test during elections. Elections are not part of our chromosomes. Is that why we tend to distrust these leaders? In addition, we have elected them: we are to blame if things go wrong. Self-criticism is not one of our qualities and we prefer to blame the leader rather than to blame ourselves.

In history, the power of the King and his dynasty has seldom been questioned. Kingship is private property that is inherited like any piece of land. In 1286 the King of Scotland, Alexander III, died accidentally. Al his children had pre-deceased him. Although the country had until then been fairly stable and relatively prosperous, the problem of his succession resulted in unending wars between the Scottish and English claimants to the throne. This crisis only ended several centuries later with the Union of the Crowns between Scotland and England in 1603. The quarrel between two royal families claiming the same inheritance resulted in more than three centuries of destruction, death and looting. None of these royal claimants had any scruples about the sufferings they were inflicting upon their people. The Hundred Years War between England and France was the consequence of the same fight for inheritance between two families.

A King may be mad, incompetent, cruel, egoistic, all this is unimportant. The King is the King. Crowds have always acclaimed Kings. Great artists used to kneel to offer him their masterpieces. Great authors, including Shakespeare, used to write the most ridiculous flatteries which the King and their nobles loved so much. Royal authority was unquestioned.

Monarchy still exists in many democratic countries. Is this not a contradiction? In democracy, all citizens are equal, the King is an exception. This is yet another example of the contradiction between our instincts and our free will. The humanist revolution has removed the old absolute power of Kings and the nobility to establish equality between all, at least in theory. This satisfies our free will, but does not satisfy our instincts. Is this the origin of the ridiculous infatuation of so many people with monarchy and nobility, with the love stories of princes and princesses? Writings about the lives of the “great” sell like hotcakes. What interest is there for people in this mass of useless information? Yet radio and television programmes are produced and volumes are written about the happiness or unhappiness of Princess Diana. The authors of these works imagine they are producing something of high value and consider themselves to be important historians. The Australians, who live on the other side of the world from the UK, decided by referendum that they wanted to keep the Queen as their Head of State. In Spain the transition from Franco’s dictatorship to democracy passed smoothly thanks to the reinstatement of a King. It has even been suggested to restore the old Kings in Afghanistan…

In hunter-gatherer tribes, the position of chief had several advantages. After settlement, the King and his nobles continued the tradition. I quote again Jacques Maquet: “The precious surplus is kept in the granaries. … Some granaries are visibly bigger and fuller than others; they belong to the chief. … He keeps for himself a large part, perhaps all, of the surplus produced by the other villagers. … This surplus gives him the means to have at his disposal … a following of advisers and security agents who guarantee his control over the village and who, when necessary, will enforce it.” With society becoming ever richer, the wealth of the King and the nobility reached incredible levels. Even today we are still impressed by the magnificence of noble houses. The difference between the poverty of the common man and the nobility must have been amazing when the poor people were still living in rickety cottages with dirt floors.

Today the existing royal families are amongst the wealthiest people in the world.

All this perhaps explains the scourge of political corruption in Third World countries and sometimes in other countries as well. The leaders continue to do what all leaders have done in world history: they take the “surplus”, in other words they fill their own pockets. Dictators in Africa do exactly what kings and nobles did everywhere they were in power, including in Europe. There is no essential difference between what Mugabe does in Zimbabwe, and what Henry VIII used to do in England or Louis XIV in France.

Nobility had complete power over their subjects. They could imprison, torture and execute without restriction. Jacques Maquet confirms that hundred years ago African kinglets had the right of life and death over their subjects. The famous Marquis of Sade (1740-1814), whose name is still remembered in the word “sadism”, abused his servants and even tortured them out of sheer pleasure. In the climate of uncertainty before the French Revolution, his peers decided to put a halt to his activities. No question however of condemning him for acts which were part of his rights as lord, even if they were unacceptable. He was arrested and condemned for … blasphemy!

The happiness of their people is generally the last concern of the King and his warriors. The industrial revolution in Great Britain started with the textile industry. The Scottish nobility, the heads of the clans, soon realised that sheep and their wool would be more profitable to them than the income they got from the small crofters, who were their clansmen. In an operation called “the clearances” they evicted the members of their clans from their houses and lands, often with the support of the clergy, without compensation and with unjustifiable brutality. The bands of scoundrels they used to do the dirty work were sometimes even accompanied by the local minister who gave them some air of legitimacy. They generally waited until the men were absent and in their enthusiasm to expel the inhabitants they beat up women and children, sometimes maiming them for life. To prevent any possible return they burned down the crofts, occasionally forgetting a crippled grandfather inside. All this was of course done with complete impunity. Yet the members of the clans had lived there for centuries and had faithfully served their chiefs. These clearances were the main cause of the massive emigration from Scotland and explain why, today, the Highlands are empty: only sheep and game roam between the ruins of the crofts. For more information about these clearances I can recommend The Highland Clearances by John Prebble.

To allow the kings to exploit the rest of society freely, justice had to be a royal prerogative. And indeed, royal justice guaranteed the established order. In other words, it allowed exploitation of the common people by the great. Construction of palaces on the backs of the peasants was normal, but the poor were hanged or deported for the theft of a spoon.

As far as we know from historical sources, the criteria to judge a king have never changed. A great king is a king who conquers his neighbours. Sufferings by losers and victors alike are unimportant. Napoleon wrecked the whole of Europe and ruined France, Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan destroyed empires, Godfrey de Bouillon killed all the Jews and Turks living in Jerusalem when he took the city at the end of the first crusade. That is what guarantees their “greatness”. As mentioned above, the Jews wanted a King who would “…go out before us, and fight our battles.”

Republics still seem to be nostalgic for dynasties. Kim il Sung was succeeded by his son and his grandson in North Korea. In the United States, only his assassination prevented Robert Kennedy succeeding his brother John as President and another brother Edward was a Senator until his death. Father and son George Bush were both Presidents of the United States, whilst another son Jeb was Governor of Florida.

Even in democracies where citizens generally distrust politicians, instincts sometimes follow strange paths. Two recent examples: at the end of her first mandate as Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher was rapidly loosing popularity. Thanks to the Falklands war, she was re-elected in 1983 by a margin rarely obtained in elections in the UK. After his first election, President George W Bush became very unpopular. In the weeks following the terrorist attack on the twin towers on 9th September 2001, opinion polls suddenly showed that 90% of Americans were convinced that he was the right man to fight terrorism. George Bush hadn’t changed: in times of crisis our hunter-gatherer instincts tell us to close ranks behind the leader.

Yet, in democracies many still long for an uncontested leader. Every populist leader with charismatic appeal attracts followers regardless of the content of message. Hitler and Mussolini were elected in democracies and, with less dramatic results, so were Le Pen in France, Haider in Austria, Pim Fortuyn in The Netherlands and the leaders of successive extremist parties in Belgium. They appeal to our basic instincts.

The absolute power of kings has been challenged by the principles of the humanist revolution. Since then, we should have been sufficiently intelligent not to follow any leader unconditionally, hereditary or not. The humanist revolution created a society which is better than anything that existed previously or exists anywhere else in the world. However our basic instincts are still there, deep inside us. We are nostalgic for royalty and nobility and maintain useless and expensive royal families. This is a lesser evil and satisfies the romantics and those with tastes for pomp and ceremony. But, sadly, whenever a populist leader appears, he continues to be followed by those who do not think for themselves but follow their instincts.

11. THE STATUS OF WOMEN

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“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”

Simone de Beauvoir (The Second Sex)

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For millions of years human life has been precarious. Dangers were everywhere; and to defend themselves men had only simple and inefficient weapons. The death rate was high, even higher among children than among adults. Childbirth was dangerous and women often died giving birth. The tribe could only survive if the number of births was higher than a critical figure, which was probably very high. Women spent their lives being pregnant and giving birth. Taboos and religious prescripts favoured pregnancy. For many tribes, having no children was seen as God’s punishment. For the Jews, women were “unclean” around the time of their periods which increased the chances of pregnancy. In the Catholic religion the use of any contraceptive still is a sin. Female members of hunter-gatherer tribes always had a child in the womb, one on their back and several around their feet. A woman who died young not only represented a loss of life, but also the loss of all the babies she would never bear. She could not therefore participate in the most dangerous activities. In times of danger the men would protect women and children: the loss of a man was less important than the loss of women and children. Even today, when there is danger, we say: “Women and children first”. On publicity posters, it is always the good-looking boy whose arms are protecting the pretty girl. Those who need protection are often considered inferior, whatever their intellectual capacities. Tribes who protected their women and children well would have had better chances of survival than those where women would have participated in dangerous activities. With the passing of time, natural selection implanted these attitudes in our genes. Is it not a surprising that women are considered to be inferior to men because they are more important for survival?

Another element strengthened this feeling of male superiority: the risk of inter-breeding. Indeed, tribes were small and possible partners few. In order to avoid a decline in the quality of the tribal group following too much intermarriage, new blood had to be introduced into the tribe. This would be achieved by looking for a partner in a neighbouring tribe. But inter-tribal relations were not always friendly. Abduction was another means of introducing new blood. I have already mentioned the Iliad and poor Chriseis and Briseis who were abducted. We know of the “rape” (in fact the abduction) of the Sabine women by the early Romans from our history books. According to legend, the founder of Rome, Romulus, allowed his men to abduct women from the neighbouring Sabine tribes and to take them as wives. Strangely, when the Sabines tried to free them, the women refused to leave their captors and preferred to stay in Rome. Even if these stories are legendary, they certainly describe common practice. We will return to this contradictory attitude of the women later in the chapter. In the Bible we read that after their victory against the Madianites, the Jews slew all the men and burned their cities. Moses was angry that his troops had spared the women and children. He sent them back ordering “Now therefore kill every male amongst the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.” (Numbers chapter 31, verses 17 and 18)

The Bible contains other barbaric examples which show the contempt of men for women. For instance, the book of the Judges tells how an old man gave hospitality to a man from Judah and his concubine. Certain “sons of Belial” wanted the man from Judah“so that we may know (i.e. abuse) him”. Horrified by the idea of such a crime the old man proposed that they should rather abuse women saying “Behold here is my daughter, a maiden, and his concubine; them I will bring out now and humble ye them, and do with them what seemeth good unto you”. A breach of hospitality towards a man was unthinkable, but towards a woman was acceptable. Even giving up his virgin, and probably very young, daughter was acceptable as long as no harm was done to a man. The man from Judah courageously “…laid hold on his concubine and brought her forth onto them…” After having been raped the whole night, the concubine fell to the ground and died, her hands “upon the threshold”, probably in total panic and distress. The man of Judah’s only words were “Up, and let us be going.” Seeing that she was dead, he cut up her body and sent the parts to the tribes of Israel. (Judges Chapter 20, verses 16 to 28) The man from Judah had not been touched: that was the main thing. I am not pointing a finger only at the Bible, but by this example I want to highlight a mentality that was common throughout the world and can still be found today in many countries.

Women seem to be considered inferior because they must be protected; and because they are a vulgar booty that can be stolen from a neighbour and be given away by cowards to save their own lives as in the Bible story quoted above. And all the time she is man’s equal if not his superior.

Today, thanks to medical progress, both adult and infant mortality have been reduced to such an extent that we rather risk overpopulation. Women do not need to give birth to numerous children; two or three will be enough to guarantee the survival of the tribe. In addition, we do not hunt mammoth any more, we work in an office. No longer any need to keep women and children safe: safety is the same everywhere. Women can participate in all activities. And indeed, women increasingly leave the family prison to participate successfully in all human activities. But our instincts are still there, unchanged. Women still find hurdles to harmonious integration. There are two types of obstacles: male instincts and female instincts. For, even if this seems curious, instincts identifying male superiority are found in both male and female human beings. This is understandable in the light of evolution. If in the old hunter-gatherer tribes women had refused to accept this unequal status, they would have endangered the tribe’s survival: the higher mortality rate would have reduced the birth rate.

Nowadays in our Western countries, after marriage both partners generally continue work. After children are born, at least one of the parents must look after them; this responsibility is generally incompatible with a full-time career. Despite our progressive ideals, it is very often the wife who gives up her career partly or completely. Yet there is no reason why men would be less capable of looking after the children.

The male instinct is better known as machismo. Outside the Western world we are aware of the facts. It must be horrible to be a woman in the Third World or in Muslim countries: repudiation, excision, beatings, contempt and submission. How girls in these countries can keep falling in love with men who treat them this way would be a mystery to me, if it could not be explained by instinct. Before the humanist revolution the situation was the same in the West. During the wedding ceremony the bride had to promise obedience, whilst the groom promised protection. Women had to keep silent and to submit. For women who were too strong-willed, there were special torture instruments such as the extensible vaginal pears. They were composed of a long screw which opened several arms with sharp points at the end. After violent insertion they would penetrate the womb and rip it apart. Delicate refinement: these pears had an eyecup allowing the victim to be hung from the ceiling. Shrew’s bridles were masks whose projecting points were forced into the mouth of their victims, generally women who had dared to say too much. The system was highly efficient: the mutilations made by these masks often prevented the victim ever uttering another word. During the 1980s an exhibition called “Inquisition” toured Europe. Its catalogue, Inquisition, a bilingual guide to the exhibition of torture instruments from the Middle Ages to the industrial era, stated that through the ages more that 85% of the tortured and executed were women. A vague impression of disobedience was enough to accuse them of witchcraft or any other imagined crime and to torture and execute them with a clear conscience. For the executioners, all male, torturing a woman was far more pleasant than torturing a man.

Despite the humanist revolution, the macho instinct is still present although it does not express itself any more in the same lugubrious and bloody way. Men’s clubs often don’t accept female members. Men and women are still not equal in a work environment. Not only are average male salaries higher than female ones, but there is still a glass ceiling that prevents many women from reaching the top levels at work. Sexual harassment at work can be explained, at least in part, by the fact that instinctively men resent the presence of women on the “hunting grounds”.

It may sound unbelievable, but many women endorse this type of behaviour. In the animal world the demanding partner is the one that tries to look attractive. Many male birds show their most resplendent feathers to conquer the female. In primitive tribes, women need protection and they are the ones who want to look pretty. Men fall in love because the girls are beautiful. In response, girls try to be as attractive as possible. Men are foolish to restrict themselves to this superficial criterion in choosing a partner. But women are just as foolish to conform to this simplistic system. One of my female friends, an efficient and intelligent professional woman, spends quite a lot of time doing her make up. She once said: “You must understand, for us women things are different.” This is the wrong attitude. Many women indeed behave as if they considered themselves as inferior and must carry a part of the responsibility for encouraging this macho attitude in men.

This female instinct to be beautiful at any cost is very strong. At the moment of writing, fashion has developed shoes that are real torture instruments: women do wear them! Aesthetic clinics specialise in increasing and reducing the size of breasts and tightening the skin. In Afghanistan, where, under the Taliban, women were whipped for owning a lipstick, beauty salons were still working secretly although the results were hidden under the burka.

Men too look after their appearance. They shave and even wear a jacket and tie in hot weather. However, their desire to look good is much weaker. Most men don’t mind being bald or having a paunch. Male fashion changes more slowly than female and many men – I for one – are not interested. And indeed, for most women, male looks are seldom a major factor of choice.

A strong instinct pushes women to try and be beautiful. Do they consider their outer shell, their bodies, to be more important than anything else? Fairy tales teach them this lesson. In many fairy tales there are three sisters, a pretty one and two ugly ones. It is always the prettiest who is kindest and who in the end marries the Prince Charming, leaving the ugly and nasty sisters to their fate.

In all wars, rape is an integral part of the sacking of the conquered country. It is one of the rewards for the warrior. But here too, even if it sounds incredible, we find a mirror instinct with women. In 1945, the Red Army shamelessly raped in the countries it liberated in the East and in Germany. This behaviour was a horrible stain on an otherwise brave army. In the parts of Germany liberated by the Western allies, women sold themselves for a packet of cigarettes that the soldiers had in unlimited quantities. Is this not a form of accepted rape? More surprising even, in France, Belgium and Italy, the women offered themselves as rewards to the liberating soldiers. For more details, read for instance "Berlin, the Downfall" by Anthony Beevor. Benoîte Groult, one of the great French feminist authors, describes how she herself participated in this free prostitution after the liberation of her country in a book she wrote with her sister Flora "Journal à Quatre Mains" (Diary at four Hands). Once again, the male is the aggressor: a woman who gives or even sells her body doesn’t harm anybody but herself.

In most countries there exists an ignoble trade in women, even in countries which consider themselves civilised and democratic. The victims of this trade are “only” women, used for the pleasure of men. Police turn a blind eye or pay token attention to the law. In countries where prostitution is illegal, police generally arrest the prostitutes, seldom their clients.

Female fashion has never been as revealing as today: miniskirts, hipsters, low-cut outfits etc. Do women not try unconsciously to compensate for feminism and the fact that they can now participate in “hunting” activities by showing more and more clearly that they are still women? Again this is an example of the contradiction between our free will and our instincts. Women are the equals of men; there is no doubt about that. Our society has evolved and the survival of the tribe no longer requires women to be protected from “outside” activities. But our instincts are still there, in men as much as in women, and prevent the integration of the sexes that would be so beneficial to progress.

Fortunately, feminism continues to progress in our Western World and the situation is steadily improving. I hope that feminism will soon be consigned to history books. It is only then that we can consider our civilisation as democratic, for women as much as for men. But away from Western civilisation women are still occupying a “lesser” role and their liberation has hardly begun.

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