Saad Anis March 28, 2006

Tags: god , religion , christianity

href="/tag/European">European history, two major systems have been introduced in order to justify the agony of humanity in the world, with the avowed aim of progress towards an improved life. Founded in the dark ages, the first system had its roots in the metaphysical realm and led to the institution of the Kingdom of God. An agrarian civilisation, highly susceptible to superstition and economically polarised, witnessed the mushrooming of divine vicegerents from among the societal elite. Thus commenced the invocation of the Divine Right of Kings – the doctrine that the sovereign rules by providential imprimatur, and sedition against the monarch tantamounts to an opposition to the will of god. This resulted in a master-slave power structure where the monarchy held sway over subjects generally living in destitution, and was considered answerable only to Providence.

The masses in this scheme were kept content in spite of their insufferable misery, partly through the assimilation of austere concepts such as Original Sin into Christianity. Largely though, the populace was placated on the promise of a blissful eternal life in the Hereafter. The system demanded faith, and the credulous agrarian populace gladly obliged. Thus the dream of an elusive otherworldly paradise justified flagrant slaughters and gross injustice, in return providing hope to the common peasant wistfully anticipating Grace. This was well complimented by multifaceted philosophies of self-abnegation conveniently indoctrinated into religion. Expounding the evil inherent in human nature, these innovations condemned man as worthy of castigation. Ergo, the conception of denial of all pleasures in life for the attainment of true virtue. Such asceticism appealed to the downtrodden majority, which discovered moral sublimity in religion simply by reason of its deprivation. Man’s self-debasement thus legitimised pain.

With the advent of industrialisation, mankind grew more self-assured through development of means of production, and became less prone to fallacy. The Age of Enlightenment brought advancement in introspective art and literature. The pensive man, upon reflection, found nothing innately evil in his disposition. The subsequent deduction was inevitable. Since humanity, despite not being malicious by nature, was in the throes of perpetual sufferance, the fault must consequently lie in the system ruling man. If man was not to blame, the Kingdom of God was. It suddenly became vivid that a formulation which allowed massacre in the name of a faraway Afterlife, was defective.

So mankind rebelled, heralding the dawn of a second system of values. Freedom and the recognition of the sanctity of life were the founding principles of this novel uprising. It was a negation of the exploitative master-slave relationship established by the Ancien Régime, and affirmed the economic and political liberation of the proletariat. The Kingdom of God was reviled as the source of eternal human bondage, and Grace was cast aside to make way for the Kingdom of Man. “God is dead,” cried Nietzsche, and all fervently agreed.

Of course, the successful evolution of the rebellion against Patrician oppression required sacrifice. The proverbial City of Freedom, for realisation, demanded the blood of the rebel and his erstwhile masters. Here lay the contradiction. Man had rebelled against murder sanctioned under the pretext of a suspiciously Utopian prosperity promised in an abstract future. And now, the rebellion for its sustenance required of him the perpetration of that very heinous crime against which his conscience had compelled him to rise. By choosing to act, he risked the negation of his crusade and his personal fall from moral transcendence to vile tyranny. On the other hand, inaction would have spelt his withdrawal from the rebellion and a cowardly descent to a fatalistic reconciliation with his undeserved agony. He had to either sacrifice his principle on the altar of a rebellion no longer pristine, or choose the preservation of his ideal at the cost of the demise of his insurrection and the dream of the City of Man.

Historically, the rebel has invariably chosen to act. Hundreds of thousands were condemned to the guillotine in the virgin winds of the revolution that blew across Europe, beginning with France and continuing well beyond the next century. Once in command, the rebels affectedly began their struggle for the Promised Land. A few from their ranks rose to assume leadership, and proceeded to grant their consent to every measure avowedly taken for the quest of utter freedom and absolute equality, glaringly paradoxical objectives achievable only at the cost of each other. Oddly enough, the Kingdom of Man bore a striking resemblance to the Kingdom of God of yore. Still were pogroms vindicated by despots as offerings in the name of the City of Man. Still did the blood of the hapless masses flow through the streets. Still did pain exist, despite man’s repudiation of god. Ironically, those questioning these means were accused of a lack of faith, and severely dealt with.

History is an impassive witness to the progression of the Kingdom of Man. In the name of ultimate human prosperity, twelve million perished in the concentration camps of Germany, Austria and Poland. Twenty million were sacrificed in the quest for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat in Soviet Russia, while the promise of the land of liberty in socialist China claimed seventy million lives on the path to fulfillment.

And yet, for all the blood, the City of Man remains elusive.