What could I say to that? No?
The test
Albrecht said, “The people of our culture imagine that we invented technology, agriculture, law, and of course civilization, but we also take credit for less praiseworthy accomplishments. Can you think of some of those?”
“Well,” I said, “I suppose we take credit for things like poverty, crime, and discrimination along racial and social lines. What Shirin called ‘the suffering classes’ are certainly our invention. Political oppression. Mental illness.”
“You’re missing the biggest one of all, Father.”
“I’ve given up being father. Just call me Jared.”
“All right.”
“The biggest one of all would be … war.”
“Of course. War is far and away the greatest ill we’ve brought to the world, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Albrecht shook his head, disgusted. “You really are pathetic, Jared. You don’t even pause to doubt, to question what Mother Culture whispers in your ear. You remain a total captive of the Great Forgetting.”
“Listen, let’s just skip the name-calling for a while, okay? I don’t pretend to know everything Charles and Shirin knew—or even everything you know. You’re telling me what? That war was not our invention”
“That’s what I’m telling you. War is not a defect found only in our quirky, deranged culture. It’s found wherever human culture is found—in the past and in the present. The myth of the peaceable noble savage is exactly that, a myth.”
“Okay. So?”
Albrecht stood up. “You’re truly sad, Jared. Don’t let me hear that you’re calling yourself B in this city. If I do, I’ll come round and embarrass you, I promise you that.”
“Sit down. Please.” He sat. “Please understand that I don’t pretend to be historically or anthropologically knowledgeable. I will be, I hope, but right now I honestly don’t see the point you’re making.”
“Then why don’t you ask?”
“I ask.”
“The foundation thinkers of our culture imagined that human life began when our culture began, just a few thousand years ago. Therefore nothing could possibly be learned about human life beyond that point. Beyond that point was nothing but a vacancy. Thus they looked into the past and saw that Man had been born an agriculturalist and a civilization-builder. They thought this was Man’s nature and Man’s destiny—and this is what we teach our children. The human race was born to become precisely us. Isn’t that what we teach them?”
“Yes.”
“B has tried to show you the absurdity of this teaching by removing the obscuring lenses of the Great Forgetting. By showing you that what came before the birth of our culture was not a vacancy. By showing you that our culture was not born in an empty world, in a world devoid of religion and law. Religion and law extend back hundreds of thousands of years, perhaps even millions of years, to the very origins of human life.”
“I understand.”
“You do? You understand that religion and law extend back hundreds of thousands of years?”
“Yes.”
“Well, so does war, Jared. Explain.”
“Explain,” I repeated hopelessly.
“Is this just another sign of pur vicious nature, Jared? Is that the explanation? Do we just innately love to kill?”
“No.”
“Does that ‘no’ represent a profession of faith or a statement of fact?”
“At the moment it represents a profession of faith, but I hope to turn it into a statement of fact.”