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A Glance at Tomorrows History
Dr. Ali Shariati
Of course, friends should not expect that they
will hear a profound and well-prepared lecture because I have had no more
than one or two hours of time to think about it, but I have previously
spoken about this subject at the university and I hope that I am able to recall
here the points I mentioned there and present them to you.
Tibor Mende, a famous Hungarian-French scholar,
one of the most outstanding thinkers of today on understanding the
countries of the Third World, like those of Africa, Asia and South America,
has written a book entitled, A Glance at Tomorrow's History. I am not going
to discuss what he said or this book. Rather I wish to introduce this
expression which I heard for the first time from this man and what a
marvelous expression it is!
Some words have the right to life for a person
(as Andre Gide said) and if they do not have the right to life for a
person, they have the right to develop a thought because it often happens
that there is a word within us which we are not aware of. When we hear an
expression like it, this expression and word in itself becomes a source for
the appearance of an idea and birth of an inner thought.
The expression, "Tomorrow's History"
is a new, revolutionary expression. History, in its content and spirit, has
always reflected the past. History means the past. As this expression,
"A Glance at Tomorrow's History, is a revolutionary one, it becomes
clear that today the world has become aware of the fact that one must write
tomorrow's history, as well, or at least think about the history of
tomorrow. We must have previously accepted this thought and see history as
a real science.
History will have value only if we write
tomorrow's history. If history does not help us to know tomorrow or at
least the human being of today or the human being who is going to appear,
it will be useless, because all sciences must at least be beneficial in
helping to understand human beings, the life of human beings of the future
and the ideal of human beings of today and tomorrow. Understanding the
human being in the past must be a beginning for us to understand ourselves
and our future.
I want to take a glance at tomorrow's history,
not as Tibor Mende did, but rather as I myself believe. (I beg your pardon
if my tone is the tone of a teacher, not that of a lecturer because my
profession is to be a teacher. Fortunately, the faces here are basically
those of university students who are familiar with my tone and words.)
In order for you to understand what I have to
say, I want you to imagine a cone. Keep this cone in mind until the end of
the lecture because this is the framework from which I will speak.
This cone is the framework of our thoughts,
judgments and perceptions. In every civilization, every society and every
age, history relates to the past human being not as an intermittent chain,
but it takes the form of links which follow one another. This is what
history means. Humanity, from the beginning to the. present, has had 3, 4,
5, 10 or, according to Tibor Mende, 27 periods.
Each period, like a living, existing thing, has
a spirit, thoughts and special inclinations. We know today that every new
period has special states, particularities, thoughts, inclinations and
goals which the previous period did not have.
Thus for the understanding of each period, this
cone is necessary and every period can accurately be divided according to
this image. With a careful study of it, we can even predict the future.
As an example, we go back three centuries and we
will apply this cone to the Middle Ages in Europe. The base of this cone,
which has the widest surface, is occupied by the majority of the people of
society, the masses of the people. This cone has a lower and upper part and
as you see, its lower part is greater than its upper part. The masses of the
people in every society, from the point of level and volume, are placed in
the lower part.
Intellectuals, scholars and thinkers of every
age are located in the upper part of the cone. This group is called that of
the intellectuals. This means the group whose work basically revolves
around thought rather than an organ or limb of the body or a tool of
industry. Thus writers, 'Ulama, scholars, poets, thinkers and philosophers
are among the group in the upper part of the cone.
In every society, the common people are located
in the base of the cone and the intellectuals in the upper level of the
cone. This is true even in primitive societies. When we apply this cone to
primitive societies, the masses, tribes and common people form the base of
the cone and they have a group of intellectuals who are the witch doctors,
white beards, nobles and persons who, at any rate, lead the people.
Various ages have come. This cone applies to all
of them. I have realized that whatever era grows closer to today, the base
of the cone, which is that of the common people, decreases to the advantage
of the level of the intellectuals. That is, the volume of the masses
decreases and is added to the volume of the intellectual class. This means
that the number of intellectuals of each era are greater than the
intellectuals of the previous eras because culture is more general,
thoughts are more open and science and thought become more prevalent,
causing the common people to rise to the level of the intellectual.
There is no boundary between the class of the
masses and fiat of the intellectual. As we go up the cone, the common
people reach closer to the intellectuals and at the higher level of the
cone, there is the level of the intellectual. As we go down, the
intellectuals grow closer to the masses of the people and as we go up the
cone, the intellectuals grow distant from the common people until it
reaches the point where the educated and intellectuals take the form of
idols for the intellectuals of each era who form the source of intellectual
thought in every period.
For instance, in the present age, types like
Jean-Paul Sartre, Bertrand Russel and Schwartz are in the upper part of the
cone, at the intellectual class of the cone, and a high school educated
person is in the lower part of this group, near the masses. This is the
introduction to what I have to say. I will continue from here.
We will apply this cone to the Middle Ages. Who
were the common people in the Middle Ages? People who in France Italy and
England went to church. They implemented the orders of the priests and the
orders which the official scholars gave in the name of the Bible, the
Pentateuch, of Jesus and God. They accepted and practiced this. They ate
the common people of the Middle Ages.
This same type of common people live in the new
era with the same feelings and particularities. At Christmas time, when the
Pope appears from the window of St. Peter's, hundreds of thousands of
Christians can be seen there who cry so hard when they see his clean
clothes and ornamentation that they are drowned in religious feelings and
strong religious emotions which then recalls the Middle Ages. The exact
feelings and thoughts are the thoughts of the people who lived three or
four centuries ago in the Middle Ages in Italy and France.
Thus when we say that now is the new age, we
mean a change has taken place in the class of the intellectuals of Europe,
not in the common people. Thus, all of our thoughts must be to find the
particularities of each period at the level of the intellectual.
But there is something else and that is that in
every era, in addition to the common people in the base of the cone and the
intellectuals in the upper part of the cone, a very few and rare
individuals exist whose thoughts or beliefs differ and oppose those of the
intellectuals and the ideas of the educated. They cannot be counted among
the common people. They are great writers and geniuses of humanity. They
cannot be put in the class of the intellectual either. Why? Because the
substance of what they have to say is not that which the intellectuals
believe in and essentially, they have brought about new thoughts which
intellectuals still do not believe in. Rather, they have expressed new
words which have exploded like a bomb.
What group are they? They cannot be given a
class because their number can be counted on the fingers. It can be said
they are geniuses. It can be said they are people who speak new words
opposed to the prevailing spirit of society. Opposed to the traditions of
intellectualism and opposed to the method of science and the intellect of
that age.
This is extremely important. The subject appears
at the end of the Middle Ages. The common people are the same as those who
now live in Europe. They obey the Church. They obey the former Middle Ages'
religious scholars.
The educated who live in Europe appeared from
three centuries ago, that is, from the 17th century, a century where the
intellectual class was established in its present form. Those who we now
recognize as being an intellectual and educated, those who are educated
with a new culture, are copies of intellectuals who appeared from the 17th
century in Europe. To this very day, spirits are nourished from them, they
think like them and they imitate their scientific ideas, beliefs and
thoughts. Thus they are an extra appendix of followers of the educated who
were formed in the 17th century in Europe and who continue to run the
universities, science and modern life until the present time.
Who were these educated and intellectuals of the
Middle Ages? They were Christian priests, people who studied in schools
affiliated with the Church and their goal was to discover religious truths.
Their goal was to enlighten people, lead people or, at any rate, to capture
people in the bonds, chains, moulds and goals of religion.
Thus when this cone is applied to the Middle
Ages, the intellectual consists of priests and religious scholars.
You also know who the religious scholars in the
Middle Ages were but in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, people and
geniuses were born who arose against the educated of the Middle Ages, who
had been Christian priests, and they brought something new, but still no
class was formed.
The religion and school of thought of all of
these people was that instead of the Christian religion or worship of God,
they replaced this with another thought which consisted of the principle of
the methods of these people who, in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries,
appeared at the peak of the cone. They replaced the worship of God, which
had been the religion of the intellectuals in the Middle Ages, with the
worship of science. Whereas religion said one must accept that which is in
the approved religious texts and anything not mentioned in them must be
rejected, they said that they only believe in that which they think and
attain by science and experience and that they do not accept that which
does not exist even if religious and sacred books mention them, unless they
attain them through experience and research.
Thus worship of science consisted of the first
cries, the first signs which great geniuses like Kepler and Galileo, and
even others before them, announced at this peak, cries against the class of
religious intellectuals of the Middle Ages. This class arose against the
new ideas. They condemned them; they called them infidels; imprisoned them;
burned them; tried them (the trial of Galileo is famous).
Why? Because they are individuals who are
speaking of new ideas which oppose the intellectual and the educated of
society.
Thus at the end of the Middle Ages, there were
the common people and the educated (religiously educated, affiliated to the
Church), and above them, several individuals 10 or 20 people geniuses who
arose in spite of the ideas and school of thought of this group (the
educated affiliated to the Church). But they are not enough to create a
class in society. They are rare individuals. We apply this cone to the next
era, that is, the present age ( 17th to 20th centuries, the length of the
new era). We see that the class of the common people has not changed, only
their volume has decreased and a few have been educated and joined the
upper group.
We study this upper group, the educated and
intellectuals of the new era after the Middle Ages. They say exactly the
same things those geniuses, those rare individuals said in the 16th
century, which the intellectuals of that era did not listen to. Thus, there
are always geniuses at the peak of the cone in society who are above the
educated class, who express new ideas which oppose the current ideas of the
intellectual class and then, in a deterministic way, in the next era, the
words of these geniuses, who are rare, strangers and alone in society, take
the form of a school of thought of the educated of the future. That is, the
school of thought of the next period consists of beliefs and a way of
thinking which rare individuals of the previous era expressed.
Thus in every period, we see that at the peak of
this cone, geniuses exist who oppose the current educated class and do not
listen to them. The struggle begins. These geniuses remain rare and
strangers. Little by little their thoughts grow, their ideas, ways of
thinking and they themselves are even transformed into the future educated
class and then this new group turns away the class of the educated of the
former era from society.
When we look at Europe today, we see there are
still priests. They still have power but the spirit of the new era belongs
to the educated who worship science, not God. Thus, if we apply these words
in the new era and if we look at the new era from the point of view of
religion, we see that according to the sociological cone of culture,
religion binds and is the basis of the thoughts of the common people.
We see there is a group who worships science.
The religion of the class of the educated and intellectual of today is to
worship science, not to have religious feelings and beliefs. Thus,
according to this law, in general, the educated must not be religious in
this era! Why? Because religion binds the belief and base of the common
people in the new era, but, as opposed to the Middle Ages where
intellectuals were all religious, they now worship science, that is, they
are followers of the idea of the worship of science. The ideology of all of
the new educated is the worship of sciences as opposed to religious
commands and belief in dogma, resolutions and principles of religious
devotion which must be fulfilled without questioning.
One thing appears and it is this that religion
belongs to the common people as it was in the Middle Ages. The base of the
worship of this new educated class is the worship of science and when we
look, we see that, really from the 1 7th century to the present time, as
the educated class grows closer to the basis and principle of the worship
of science, the further they move away from religion, and to the same
extent, the educated of the new era move away from the masses.
Whereas in the Middle Ages, common people and
educated classes had a commonality of belief, they spoke with one tongue
and for one goal, today the educated are worshippers of science and the
common people are religious.
This is a reality which in no way is able to be
justified, interpreted or commented upon even if it oppose our temperament
and our beliefs. It is because of this that in Europe, America, Africa,
South America and in Iran and Asian countries, the more the new science and
new educated class is extended like in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries,
the more religion is put aside from the top of the cone and only remains in
the base of the cone.
Here religion is weakened to the point where it
is destroyed and science, the worship of science and belief in the
authenticity of science replace it.
If this cone is applied to the new and present
era, just as I said, the common people are still of the Middle Ages.
They are religious all over the world. They have
their former religion. To the extent which the new educated grow closer to
the worship of science, which is the religion of this class, they become alienated
from their traditional and their own national religion and they move away
from it.
The statistics of people who studied the
sociology of religions in any country in Europe and America, in the East
and in the West reflects this.
But there is one other issue and that is that in
addition to these two classes, we must seek out one more group. As we have
seen, there are geniuses in each era and there are rare people in every
age, people who we are obliged to place in the highest peak of this cone. From
the point of view of education and type of thinking, words prevail in
opposition to the current method of thought of the educated class. The
number of this small group increases at the end of each era. Clearly
recognized, they gain power and strength and they formulate the kind of
thought of the intellectuals of the future like Kepler, Isaac Newton,
Francis Bacon and Roger Bacon who formed the thoughts of the people of
their era.
These individuals who are now at the peak will
form the educated of the future according to that law of determinism which
I mentioned.
Thus, according to this method, we can glance at
tomorrow's history. How? If we recognize who these present geniuses who are
at the peak of the cone, and how they think and if I can introduce those
who exist at the peak of the cone in the present era to you, and show how
the thoughts of these geniuses oppose the methods of thought of the worship
of science of the last three centuries of the educated, then we can solve
the problem which I mentioned. We can clearly foresee and predict how the
educated class of the future will think in the era after the present and
what inclinations, beliefs and feelings they will have.
We are obliged to place geniuses of humanity
today above the educated because, on the one hand, the educated consider
them to be supra-educated and, on the other hand, we are obliged not to
place them among the educated of today because they think and speak
differently from this group. One is Guenon. His book, Crises of the Modern World
and his journal of religious studies have been published in Europe. He is a
great, educated, French genius who suddenly revolted against science and
the worship of science, went to the East and retreated to Egypt, not a
retreatment in today's sense of the word but rather he withdrew from
society and the way of thinking of today so that he could answer the great
need and thirst of the people of Europe.
Another was Alexis Carrel. One of his most
famous work is L'homme c'est inconnu, which has been translated into
Persian along with some of his other works. He has written another book
called My Meditation upon the Pilgrimage to Lourdes. Another is Le Count de
Louis. He wrote The Fate of Mankind. It has been printed in Persian twice.
The translation is bad but the text is worthy of study. Then there is
Einstein, William James or Basalard, who is the greatest French
scientific-philosopher-thinker and he is much greater than what the people
of the world recognize in Jean-Paul Sartre and Bertrand Russel. There is
also Max Plank, Georges Gurvitch, Patrick Donitz and Paster-nak, who wrote
Dr. Zhivago. These people can never be put in the class of the new educated
but only at the peak because generally they oppose the worship of science.
They speak against it and the religion of the educated class of the last
three centuries.
Of course it cannot be said that Guenon speaks
exactly like Max Plank and Max Plank repeats the words of Alexis Carrel.
Each has a new opinion. But something exists in common. That is, if we find
a common principle, we can recognize, with the method I mentioned, that
this common principle is a new tendency to be found in the world, the
commonality to oppose the general tendency of the worship of science, which
is the religion of the intellectual of today.
This tendency in the future era will be
transformed into the religion of the intellectual of the type of the future
and will replace the worship of science which is the religion of the
educated of the world today. In all of these people, one idea prevails and
that is the religious feelings and belief in spirituality which they hold
in common without exception (unfortunately there is no time to quote from
each of them).
We can say Einstein had great religious
feelings. But we said that religion is the basis of belief of the common
people! Can we say Einstein is among the common people and is among those
who have a high school diploma or a college degree or is an engineer or Ph.
D like myself and is in the new educated class!! Never. Yet he is religious.
Thus it becomes clear that other than the worship of science, there is a
new thought appearing in the world which is the greatest wave of thought in
the world today. We can never say that the religion of Einstein or Carrel
is of the same substance as that of the common people. It is a religion
which is above the beliefs of intellectuals, above science.
Thus two religions exist. One is that of those
who lack education and science and it is their religion which exists at the
bottom of the cone. As we move up the level of religion, we reach a
scientific atheism in our own era and if we move up higher, we attain a
meta-religion. This can clearly be seen in today's world.
Look at the educated. One is educated and
religious but his religion is taken from below and he pulls it along with
him like a spare part. He has become an engineer, a doctor and he has
retained his religion. He took it from the masses and pulled it up with
him. This is abnormal and must be thrown away. If he lacks religion, in my
opinion, he is closer to a religion of meta-science which is above and
beyond science.
Again we have an educated person who is
religious and we see how he follows a religion which is above science. It
is clear in his writings. This religion can be seen in people, in
universities, in thoughts.
The religion which is less than science is lower
than the educated and the religion which is above science, which the
heights of science have not yet reached, is a religion which today the
great thinkers of the world, ones I mentioned, have and the world
recognizes. They are above the educated. They are the new geniuses.
Many of the words which we have in the Quran or
we have attained by closely following the Quran, we suddenly hear in a
translation or a text from Max Plank or Einstein or Carrel.
Most of those people I mentioned passed through
a time of crises, a time of atheism and then a time of re-finding,
rediscovering a religion above and beyond science. All of them are among
the most outstanding, well-educated people who opposed and revolted against
the worship of science. Their commonlity is the return to spirituality, the
return to religious feelings and sensitivities. In the last three
centuries, they have been abused and condemned by the idea that religion is
the belief of the common people and must be put aside.
Thus that which we must believe is that today,
as in the 16th century, when geniuses came into being who brought the
worship of science, geniuses have come who are not familiar to the present
educated class. Their words have still not become official. They have not
filtered into the university yet they speak above the level of the
university. Surely the words and speeches of these people form the basis of
the belief of the educated of the future who they will form in tomorrow's
historical period.
Thus, without doubt, today's religion is a
return to a religion which is above science or approaching a religion which
is above science, that is, the truth of religion. Thus, with this study, it
can be said that we believe that today the era of the worship of science of
the educated class formed in the 17th century which led to the alienation
from religion, is ending. Why? Because today geniuses have come into being
who are above the science of today and who announce a belief in a great
Spirit and Intellect in the universe and the need for mankind to worship or
to have religious belief.
If he is a physicist like Max Plank, he speaks
like this, "Kepler was a scholar who believed in a total intelligent
system, carefully aware and conscious of all of creation." He also
gives an example of another scholar and says, "He did not have such a
belief in a total system of the universe as well as an all encompassing
intellect which exists and because of this, he remained at the level of a
small, experimental scholar. He remained at this level because he did not
believe in a universal intellect but Kepler believed in this and because of
this he became the creator of a new physics." He speaks like this.
Einstein, in the same field, says,
"Religious feeling and belief in a great secret in Creation, is a key
concept in great scientific research." A psychologist speaks in
another way. He says, "In the fate of mankind, prayer is necessary,
worship is necessary like the need for food and for air; it is a genuine
need. If we blind the need for worship in ourselves, we will be
destroyed."
A person like Carrel, who was never religious
and is a man who received two Nobel Peace Prizes for research on the heart
of sparrows and their transplantation, says, "Worship is like
breathing, like eating and is a part of the most genuine physical,
neurological, psychological and intellectual needs of ours." He says,
"Because of a lack of strong belief in religion, Rome was destroyed."
These are words of Alexis Carrel, not a priest,
not a religious person at the base of the cone. Alexis Carrel is the first
human being who received two Nobel Peace Prizes and according to the
Larouse dictionary, he is a great person whose thought has had a deep effect
upon the 20th century. He says, "If worship, the prayer to the Beloved
Creator, is taken away from society, we have signed the death certificate
of that society."
Did the educated of the 17th, 18th and 19th
centuries speak like this? The educated of the 17th, 18th and 19th
centuries said, "If I cannot see God under the scalpel knife, I will
not believe in Him." The worshippers of science spoke like this. But
today, as Gurvitch says, "In the 19th century, sociology developed 198
laws which it believed in but sociology in the 20th century believes in no
laws."
Schwartz, the greatest French mathematician
says, Physics in the 19th century believed that it could justify all issues
of life, even poetry and today physics believes that even it cannot come to
know what material is."
Why has science in the 20th century become so
humble according to Gurvitch and why has the pride of the 16th, 17th, 18th
and 19th centuries been broken? Because a new era is beginning in the
world. The school of thought of the educated of the future, as opposed to
the educated of today, will be a religious school of thought a religion not
lower than science, rather one higher than it.
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