The Eleventh Commandment

A Desperate Attempt to Enlighten the Modern Barbarian

Vladimir Vassin

Preface

This book is intended for a broad public both in North America and in other parts of the world. It deals with fundamental human ideas, problems, and solutions at a time when we, as a society, are faced with an urgent choice regarding our future: either to remain barbarians and eventually destroy our planet or to become fully human ( Homo sapiens ) and, guiding ourselves by our reason and conscience, preserve our habitat and continue to evolve into a better society. Not only do our problems persist, but they are getting increasingly worse, making more and more people look for answers. This book presents, in a down-to-earth style, a comprehensive and unorthodox system of ideas, a world outlook that is not limited by existing dogmas and ideologies, emphasising the oneness of our world and the interrelatedness of all its aspects, phenomena, and events. And more important, it suggests a system of solutions to humanity's problems based on logical thinking and a sense of morality.

In my book I attempt to synthesize the most realistic and practicable aspects of humanist philosophy that I have assimilated in the course of over 50 years of my life. I relate particularly strongly to the philosophies of Erich Fromm and Aldous Huxley, whose works have played an important role in shaping my own perception of the world. I quote them extensively throughout the book because they have expressed much of what I feel and think with more precision and vividness than I could possibly have done myself. These quotations are, in themselves, an anthology of wisdom. As writers, Fromm and Huxley may seem very different at the first glance, but they have a lot in common in terms of how they viewed society.

Although Huxley did not seem to aim at developing a system of views, perhaps because he regarded himself as a fiction writer first, the power of observation he was endowed with drove him to explore the multifarious aspects of human nature and society, making a great thinker as well as writer out of him. Much as I admire him as a fiction writer, I admire him even more as an essayist and philosopher.

Fromm, as far as I know, was the only thinker to produce an all-inclusive scholastic analysis of human society and man's nature, identify the root causes of societal problems, and suggest some basic solutions to them. However, being an author of many scholarly books as well as a professional psychoanalyst, he may not have had the time to focus on specifics and practical measures. But he was, in my opinion, one of the greatest humanists who walked the Earth, and his legacy has not yet been fully appreciated by the humanity for which he cared so much.

Having lived long enough both in the East and in the West, I have had the opportunity to observe and compare the two societies at first hand. I am not taking sides or espousing any of the existing ideologies. Rather, my understanding of the world at this point in time stems from my own experience and my observation of social systems at work and man's behaviour in general as well as from my reading of various literary and philosophical works.

Many readers may find this book too straightforward, blunt, or even insulting. But it was not my intention to call people names or insult them (with few exceptions perhaps). Rather, exercising a fundamental human right of free speech recognized by all Western democracies, I tell the truth as I see it. This truth may be hard to swallow and digest. It may also hurt before it is understood and accepted. I would only ask the reader to pass his or her judgement based not on emotions and preconceived opinions, but on rational, logical, and objective thinking.

Part I. Man桝 Portrait of Ourselves

1. Introduction

In considering our origins and development, we seem to have only vague notions of who we really are. Still we conveniently pretend to have reached the top of the evolution ladder, understandably because we want to ennoble ourselves. We like to think we have fully developed into almost complete human beings. But have we?

I side with those who think otherwise. We are still incomplete human beings because we still retain many traces of our original animalism, like irrational behaviour and disregard for life, to name only a couple of examples. But that is not to say we cannot overcome our shortcomings. We can, as I will argue later in this chapter, for we have the potential ability to suppress our fears, excessive passions, and natural instincts, which have largely guided us in the earlier stages of our evolution. This leads us to consider our role in nature. What are we, as humans, in relation to it?

Man is part of nature. He has, in all probability, developed from the ape. At least, this is the view of one school of thought. Man has lived in packs as animal, in tribes as savage, in societies as barbarian, and, occasionally, has risen to higher levels of awareness and wisdom. According to Erich Fromm, a reputable psychoanalyst, sociologist, and philosopher, to understand our problems as humans we must first understand our human nature. In a number of his books, Fromm provides a thorough, "from the womb to the tomb" analysis of man. Man's main predicament is his dualism in relation to nature. Writes Fromm in The Art of Loving (p. 6): "... man... emerged from the animal kingdom, from instinctive adaptation,... he has transcended nature梐lthough he never leaves it; he is a part of it梐nd yet once torn away from nature, he cannot return to it..." Fromm goes on to say in Man for Himself (p. 44): "There is only one solution to his problem: to face the truth, to acknowledge his fundamental aloneness and solitude in a universe indifferent to his fate, to recognize that there is no power transcending him which can solve his problem for him."

An interesting perspective on man is offered by Arthur Koestler in his essay "Man桹ne of Evolution's Mistakes?" First, he isolates a number of "pathological symptoms reflected in the perverse history of our species," such as human sacrifice; the killing of man by man; "the permanent, quasi- schizophrenic split between reason and emotion, between man's critical faculties and his irrational, affect-charged beliefs;" and "the symptomatic disparity... between the power of the intellect when applied to mastering the environment, and its impotence when applied to the conduct of human affairs." Koestler then speculates on the possible causative factors of the human predicament. He names five:

1. Neurophysiology. He quotes Dr. Paul D. MacLean who writes in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease :

"Man finds himself in the predicament that Nature has endowed him essentially with three brains which, despite great differences in structure, must function together and communicate with one another. The oldest of these brains is basically reptilian. The second has been inherited from lower mammals, and the third is a late mammalian development, which has made man peculiarly man. Speaking allegorically of these three brains within a brain, we might imagine that when the psychiatrist bids the patient to lie on the couch, he is asking him to stretch out alongside a horse and a crocodile." © p.12

2. Anthropology .

Thus it can be stated that man is not yet fully human. In whatever way he came into being (by creation or evolution), it is a scientific fact that man did go through a primitive stage in his development; therefore, it cannot be asserted that his evolution has been completed. Logically, therefore, humans have not reached their full potential, i.e., we still can change physically, mentally, and spiritually. At this stage, we are partly animal, partly savage or barbaric, and partly human, with the ratio of these qualities varying over a wide range from individual to individual. This is a biological fact, and we must admit it. So if we are just passing through a stage in our evolution, then there must be room for improvement in us, a potential that could be developed. And though we can never get rid of certain biological functions, at least in this world, we must try to shift the ratio towards the human level by suppressing and controlling our animal and barbaric instincts as far as possible and developing our human qualities at the earliest possible age. Huxley said ("Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow," Collected Essays , p. 386) that "the essence of humanity, it is evident, is not something we are born with; it is something we make or grow into."

In contemporary society, however, this is not how we see ourselves. We think of ourselves as complete human beings while tolerating and accepting as natural such barbarous traits and qualities as greed, competitiveness, aggressiveness, cruelty, and hate. These qualities are rationalized, perpetuated, and utilized by modern barbarians in their own interests for the purpose of manipulating and exploiting others and gaining access to wealth and power. That is why the late rich and famous American Malcolm Forbes, even at an age when man is expected to have acquired certain moral values and some wisdom, insisted, in a TV interview with William Buckley on Firing Line , that man is, and will always be, greedy and acquisitive, because that is part of his nature. George Bush justified U.S. plans to retain nuclear weapons after the fall of Soviet communism by saying that the world was driven by greed. When people who cannot think for themselves hear such statements from the mouths of "great achievers," they are likely to accept them as truth. If we continue to stick to that perception of man, then there is no goal for us to strive for. So, by saying that man is not yet fully human, I mean that he is not yet Homo sapiens , that he is not what he can be and should be, and that he has not reached his enormous potential in terms of reason, wisdom, spirituality, and creativity.

As Huxley says through one of his characters in After Many a Summer Dies the Swan (p. 197), "... the world we live in is a consequence of what men have been and a projection of what they are now. If men continue to be like what they are now and have been in the past, it's obvious that the world they live in can't become better... But, on the other hand... they have it in their power to climb out and up, on to the level of eternity."