While this utopian belief might strike some as unrealistic, as recently as the early nineties it was easy to be buoyant about the world's future. The dreaded Soviet Union crumbled without a shot being fired, the Arabs were moving to recognize Israel, the world's stock markets had no ceiling, and I, as a member of Chabad-Lubavitch, had a colossus of a spiritual leader, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, to look up to. I believed the world to be on the dawn of a Messianic awakening. The Christian dualistic vision of the world, which subdivided existence into two antithetical parts-heaven and earth, body and soul, ambition and conscience, and ultimately good and evil-had had its day. Monism, the Jewish mystical belief that everything has an underlying G-dly nature and that there is a latent unity behind all creation, was in ascendance.
I found secular substantiation for my messianic optimism in Francis Fukuyama's epoch-defining book The End of History and the Last Man (1993). Like a prophet stepping out of the ancient Hebrew bible, Fukuyama made a convincing case that utopia was upon us. The spread of liberal democracy had ushered in an era of prosperity and peace. Evil had been vanquished. Tyrannical and dictatorial regimes were collapsing as a result of their inner hollowness.
Pessimists of the world be damned! We were living in an age when you could have it all. Even G-d and mammon seemed suddenly compatible, as the materialistic citizens of the United States embarked upon a spiritual journey with New Age gurus like Deepak Chopra and self-help stylists like John Gray leading the way. Along with our fancy cars and expensive vacations, we wanted G-d in our lives-as well as deeper, more intimate relationships. And it was all happening. Much of what Isaiah and Jeremiah prophesied about a world of material plenty and spiritual renewal was coming to fruition before our very eyes.
But it wasn't long before the whole edifice came tumbling down, and darkness once again reigned over the earth. First, my Rebbe died, and there didn't seem to be any Jewish spiritual leader to take his place. A never-ending wave of suicide bombings in Israel reminded us that the Arabs were prepared to recognize Israel only as a giant Jewish graveyard. Then the suicide attacks of September 11 demonstrated that fairy tales about "peace in our time" had about as much credibility as they had when Neville Chamberlain, tried to "pacify" Hitler. Fukuyama's professor at Harvard, Samuel Huntington, had argued in his far more prescient classic, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1998), that violent conflicts between cultures that base their traditions on religious faith and dogma were increasingly likely. This time it was the teacher's vision of apocalypse that eclipsed his student's dream of utopia.
My fading optimism for the world's bright future was dealt another crushing blow as I watched great democracies like France and Germany use everything in their means to keep the world's foremost murderer, Saddam Hussein, in power. And last month I watched Fidel Castro throw 85 democracy advocates into jail for terms of about 25 years each, and then execute three men whose only crime it had been to steal a boat in order to escape Cuba's island prison. . The world, busy scrutinizing Israel, barely uttered a word in protest against the popular Castro whose recent visitors included both the Pope and Jimmy Carter.
My optimism sank further as I beheld the growing hedonistic degradation in my own beloved USA. America has always moved me with its values, its religious freedom, and its compassion. But the age of reality TV has caused me to loathe its culture. One recent movie release is called The Real Cancun, which chronicles the escapades of America's college students in one of their favorite Spring vacation destinations. In it, thousands of women strip completely in front of cameras, simulating the most explicit sexual positions, in order to entertain libidinous men. These are not strippers, mind you. They are women who go to some of American's best universities. America is rapidly becoming a misogynistic culture of lewd reality TV shows and pornographic images on the internet all designed to exploit women for the edification of corporate and entrepreneurial wallets.
More than ever before, I believe that any hope for the world's future is entirely dependent on a return to religious morality with its strict emphasis on good and evil. Yes, I subscribe to the mystical idea that everything is of G-d and that divine sparks inhabit every part of creation. But I will subordinate that view for now to the simple truth that grotesque evil must be combated before goodness and innocence perish. Religion is no longer a way for the narcissistic personality to cleanse itself after a life of material indulgence and workholism. Rather, it is a social necessity without which the diseases plaguing our society will never heal.
America, now run by a Christian president of deep faith, looks at the world through the Biblical prism of right and wrong, and therefore has no qualms about labeling Saddam Hussein "evil" and battling him to the death. Secular Europe, along with more liberal American New Age spiritualists, lacking absolute standards of morality, can only see through the looking glass of "interests." The same is true of the European approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict, for whom it is about two sides killing each other with neither party being just or right.
The United States is divided into four principal groups. The first are the hedonists and materialists, like the youth on reality TV. The second are the huge number of New Age spiritualists who declares that evil does not exist and that even Saddam Hussein had some good in him. Third, there are the liberal religionists, both Christian and Jewish, who ultimately believe in right and wrong, but are careful never to use the terminology because they believe only G-d can judge. Finally, there are a growing number of religious Christians and orthodox Jews, dismissed as reactionary and simplistic, who favor creating their own private America. They have chosen to remove themselves from the mainstream culture and started, their own television networks, their own schools, their own music labels, and their own neighborhoods.
The surprising development is that the fourth group, traditionally the most powerless, has gotten hold of the reigns of power so that for the first time in a long time, America has a moral foreign policy which expresses itself in fighting tyranny, taking on African AIDS, and disdaining the weakness and amorality of the United Nations. I am so impressed with their vision that I find myself joining their ranks, even if it means that, for now, I have to return to the belief that utopia is not at hand. I still believe in the literal coming of the Messiah (though I realize that we Orthodox Jews are in the minority among our co-religionists). But I relate to it now as an article of faith, rather than as a tangible reality whose first light has already broken.
The founding fathers of these great United States also wished to build a utopia. But they believed that any perfect society was first predicated on a belief in right and wrong, as articulated in the Ten Commandments. It was for this reason that they enshrined their values not in dogma, but in a system of law that we call the Constitution.
I have always wished that goodness could triumph through the strength of its own virtue and would not necessitate a war or struggle in order to be victorious. But if this is the only way for innocence and righteousness to prevail, then I will happily cast aside my earlier suspicions of my Christian brothers and sisters and work with them to build a more lasting G-dly kingdom on this earth.
