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A Glance at Tomorrow's History
by:
Dr. Ali Shariati
Of course, my friends, you should not expect that you will now hear
a profound and well-prepared lecture because I have had no more than one
or two hours time to think about it, but I have previously spoken about
this subject at the university and I hope that I will be able to recall
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
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 marvellous expression it is! Some words
have the same right to life as a person (as Andre Gide said) and if they
do not have the right to life, they do have the right to develop a thought,
because it often happens that there is a concept within us of which we
are unaware. When we hear an expression similar to it, this expression
of the concept in itself becomes a source for the appearance of an idea
and the 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 the world has become aware of the fact that today 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 to know the human being of
today or the human being who is going to appear, then 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 ideals of
human beings of today and tomorrow. Understanding the human being in the
past must be a starting point 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 according to what 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 that of a teacher. Fortunately, the faces I see here are mainly 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, judgements and perceptions. In every civilization, every
society and every age, history relates to past human beings not as an intermittent
chain, but in 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, peculiarities,
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 model. With a
careful study of it, we can even predict the future.
As an example, we can go back three centuries and apply this cone model
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 mass
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 mass of the people in every
society, from the point of view 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 the group 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
model of a 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, elders, nobles and persons who, at any rate, lead the
people.
Various epochs have come. This cone applies to all of them. I have realized
that the more modern the era, the more 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 that volume is added to
the volume of the intellectual class. This means that the number of intellectuals
in each era is greater than the number of intellectuals in the previous
eras, because culture becomes more widespread, thoughts become 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 that 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 apex where the educated and intellectuals take the form
of idols for the intellectuals of each era and act as 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 model 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 were the common people
of the Middle Ages. This same type of common people live in the new era,
and have the same feelings and peculiarities. At Christmastime, when the
Pope appears at the window of St. Peter's, hundreds of thousands of Christians
can be seen there, who cry so loudly when they see his clean clothes and
decorations that they are drowned in religious feelings and strong religious
emotions which then recall the Middle Ages. Their feelings and thoughts
are the selfsame thoughts of the people who lived three or four centuries
ago in the Middle Ages in Italy and France. Thus when we say that today
is the new age, we mean that a change has taken place in the class of the
intellectuals of Europe, not in the common people. Thus, all our thoughts
must be directed to find the peculiarities 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 at 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 from 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 that they are geniuses. It
can be said they are people who speak new words opposed to the prevailing
spirit of society. They are 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 first appeared three centuries ago, that is, from the 17th century,
a century when the intellectual class was established in its present form.
Those who we now recognize as being intellectuals and educated, those who
are educated with a new culture, are copies of intellectuals who first
appeared in 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 to the followers
of the educated who were formed in the 17th century in Europe, and they
continue to run the universities, science, and modern life until the present
time.
Who were these educated people and intellectuals of the Middle Ages?
They were Christian priests, people who studied in schools affiliated to
the Church, and their goal was to discover religious truths. Their goal
was to enlighten people, lead people, or at any rate, to imprison people
in the bonds, chains, moulds and goals of religion. Thus when this model
of a cone is applied to the Middle Ages, the intellectual class consists
of priests and religious scholars. You already 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 separate class of people was formed.
The religion and school of thought of all of these people was that rejecting
the Christian religion or worship of God, they replaced it with another
school of thought which consisted of the principles of the methods of those
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 that one must accept what is in the approved religious texts
and that anything not mentioned in them must be rejected, they said that
they only believed in what they think and can prove through science and
experience, and that they do not accept what does not exist even if religious
and sacred books mention it, unless they have proved it through experience
and research. Thus the worship of science comprised the first outcry, the
first watchword which great geniuses at the peak of the cone, like Kepler
and Galileo, and even others before them, announced; an outcry against
the class of religious intellectuals of the Middle Ages. This class of
religious intellectuals reacted against the people with new ideas. They
condemned them; they called them infidels; they imprisoned them; they burned
them; they put them on trial (the trial of Galileo is famous). Why? Because
they were individuals who were speaking of new ideas which opposed the
intellectual and the educated people of that society. Thus at the end of
the Middle Ages, there were the common people and the educated people (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 people affiliated to the Church).
But they were not numerous enough to create a class in society. They were
rare individuals.
If we apply this model of a cone to the next era, that is, to the present
age ( the I7th 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. If we study this
upper group, the educated people and intellectuals of the new era following
the Middle Ages, they say exactly the same things which those geniuses,
those rare individuals, said in the 16th century; the things to which the
intellectuals of that era did not listen. 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 for the educated people of the future. That is, the School of
thought of the next period consists of beliefs and a way of thinking which
were expressed by rare individuals of the previous era. 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 opinions spread; their
ideas, ways of thinking and they themselves are even transformed into the
forthcoming educated class, and then this new group ejects the class of
the educated people 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 principles 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 model of a cone of culture, religion both
restricts and forms the basis of the opinions of the common people. We
see that there is also a group who worships science. The religion of the
class of the educated and intellectual people of today is to worship science,
not to have religious feelings and beliefs. Thus, according to this rule,
in general the educated people in this era must not be religious! Why?
Because religion both restricts and forms the basis of the beliefs of the
common people in the new era, but, as opposed to the situation in the Middle
Ages when intellectuals were all religious, intellectuals now worship science,
that is, they are followers of the concept of the worship of science. The
ideology of all the modern educated people is the worship of sciences as
opposed to religious commands and belief in dogma, edicts and principles
of religious devotion which must be followed without question.
One thing appears certain, and it is this; that religion belongs to
the common people just as it did in the Middle Ages. The foundation for
the worship of this new educated class is the worship of science and when
we look, we see that, really from the 17th 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.
Revised by: Dr. Bartlett M.D.
