"The World Before Her"  reminded me that the insanity of nationalism as a religion is still with us. There were many unsettling similarities between pre-war Germany and current-day India. The thought pattern is so familiar: You need an enemy, totally evil, requiring extermination (Jews/Muslims). You must preach that this enemy is a dire and current threat to all you hold sacred. You need unquestioning faith in the imagined past and superiority of your own culture and nation (Germany, India) You need to demonstrate your faith by head bashing and murder You need to form the faithful into quasi military units and impose military discipline All this brainwashing works best on the uneducated, economically depressed masses. Such folks are always in plentiful supply. I'm sure this toxic combination of Nationalism, fake history, militarism and paranoia   will keep flaring up in human history. Our task is simply to see it for what it is. We are still feeling the after-effects this

I have been assured that the novel Ishmael  is a must-read for anyone who wants to seriously discuss the "big picture". It's easy to see why people would feel this way about it, since it touches on a long list of issues that the armchair philosopher might have otherwise missed. These include: The central importance of myth, including the fact that we are so immersed in the myths of our own culture that we are scarcely aware of it and the fact that such awareness can only come when we explore alternative mythology. The nature of evolution and natural history which is not a march toward perfection in the form of man and does not somehow culminate with the arrival of man. The tension between the Biblical view of man and that presented in other world-views, especially the role of man versus the environment. All this will appear as heady stuff for anyone who is otherwise uninformed about these issues. However, I'm reminded about what is often said about Freud: What is tru