During a fifteen-minute taxi-ride the other day, I was given an interesting lecture by the driver, whom I took to be Levantine, judging by his accent and formalised manners. But his ethnic origins were blurred by his subsequent monologue. He declared that “the war” was going well, because Ukrainian Jews were migrating to Israel, as had been predicted in some vaguely specified writings emanating from the Middle East around 5,000 years ago. This is a long time before Ukraine was a nation and even before Judaism was established, but I didn’t object, as I was by now more interested in where this was going than I was in the route to the station.
He was emphatic about his “studies” of ancient writings and the conclusions he had drawn from them. Everything seemed to hinge on a dream that some Mesopotamian king had had and which, with the help of a paid flunkey, he then presented as a revelation, a vision of the future, whereby East and West would face each other in unreconciled opposition at the end of the world. “So, the war is according to the prediction, you see?”, said the driver. I had already sensed that argument would be futile, as it usually is with people who believe what they want to believe. Besides, he had given me no opportunity to comment. But as I was paying the fare, he finally asked me what I thought of his studies. I said that basing geo-political theories on some ancient despot’s ‘vision’ was as about as flawed a line of enquiry as I could imagine. He started to scratch around for corroborating evidence for his theory, but I had a train to catch.
By way of setting some perspective, I was later at the British Museum’s exhibition The World of Stonehenge, where I learned that 5,000 years ago in what is now England, the culture that culminated in the building of Stonehenge was flourishing. Writing was not one of its accomplishments, however, so we rely on archaeological interpretations for the story. But, if the rest of ancient writings – and their subsequent interpretations – are anything to go by, this is arguably a more reliably factual starting point for historians. The evidence is dug up, not dreamed up.
Experts generally agree that all early civilisations, on whatever continent, sought some explanation for the forces of nature and, in the absence of scientific evaluation, were easily persuaded by a good story. The all-powerful sun was a popular choice since its effects are tangible and indisputable. In Egypt the sun became a god called Ra and subsequent rulers appointed themselves as Ra’s intermediaries, thereby acquiring the despotic powers by which they commissioned pyramids and other fantastical monuments to themselves. The question of who ordered the erection of Stonehenge, our home-grown tribute to the sun, is unanswered, however. There is no evidence of a supreme ruler with a subjugated or enslaved workforce at their disposal. Was it simply a communal enterprise, a voluntary collaboration? If so, this would fit quite neatly into the story that the British are naturally averse to tyranny. After all, didn’t we suss long ago that the word ‘monarch’ is a euphemism for tyrant/despot/dictator/autocrat? Didn’t we strip our own monarchy of its ‘God-given’ rights?
Maybe so, but beware complacency. Where others have Putin, Bolsonaro, Modi, Orban, Kim Il-Sung, Xi-Jinping (it’s a depressingly long roll-call), we have Johnson, a cuddlier but just as deadly threat to democracy. His proposed legacy projects, which include bridges, airports and tunnels, may have failed for lack of autocratic wherewithal, but he continues to chip away at democratic freedoms with sly, Trump-lite moves to curtail the independence of the judiciary, pack public bodies with stooges, mislead parliament, sell publicly owned TV stations to friendly media barons and gerrymander the electoral base. Better watch out for any ‘visions’ he may conjure up to convince the gullible.
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