Yuval Noah Harari is an author in fashion
– he incites the passions,
love and fury;
I’m reading his
‘21 Lessons for the 21st Century’:
in it, he refers to two beliefs
about the source of our desires and emotions,
one which is biological,
some will view it as heretical,
the other, based on religion,
some will treat it with derision and ridicule,
as if the believer is a fool.
One understanding,
not particularly demanding,
is that desires and emotions
are just a biomedical algorithm,
no mythicism, no mysticism
– I don’t buy it;
others see them as sourced in ‘an immaterial human spirit’,
call it the soul,
created by the divine:
that belief is mine.
To force a belief is to brainwash,
those beliefs should be squashed,
offenders, I accuse of mental abuse.
Those who think they have a monopoly on religious truth,
whose mission it is to evangelise and dominate,
I berate them vociferously.
I don’t know what G-d is:
I believe in the divine soul
that makes us whole;
I believe in the G-d spark,
despite my being cynical about stories
like Noah and the Ark.
The terms in which I think of G-d are pantheistic,
which, to some, makes me a heretic,
but it’s in line with the belief that G-d is omnipresent, everywhere,
with theists, it’s a view I share.
I sense G-d in the sea, the oceans, the waves,
I sense G-d in the deserts, the mountains, in caves,
I see G-d as indivisible from nature, beauty and art,
that’s my starting point in matters pertaining to G-d.
My relationship with G-d is personal,
it has come to me naturally,
independently,
and that makes it beautiful:
I don’t feel dutiful to anyone in this matter,
leave me alone, pontificators, scatter!
I don’t have a 100% reliance on science,
for me, desires and emotions can’t be explained
by the appliance of science, of biology, of neurology,
our soul is G-d’s domain,
and I don’t think that that renders me mad,
I think I’m perfectly sane.”
Koby
Leave a Reply