This is the final piece for UNIVERSALISM v PARTICULARISM WEEK. Subscribe as PAID to support this intellectual endeavour:
ARTICLE 1: Exploring Catholic Universalism
ARTICLE 2: Exploring the relationship between Debate and Peace:
ARTICLE 3: Exploring the balance between “Perpetual (Universalist) Peace” and Particularist Tradition:
ARTICLE 4: Exploring how Particularism and Integration marry in British society:
ARTICLE 5: Today we explore how Particularism gives us meaning….
This is a newsletter directed to a wide audience. Jews and Christians; Hindus and Muslims; Brits, Israelis and even some Palestinians. So if the newsletter is universally directed, why am I so relentlessly focused on the particular? Why would a Brazilian be interested in Pirkei Avot or an Indian in Biblical exegesis? These are important questions. For isn’t the need to fight against barbaric terrorism a global challenge and the desire to protect our freedoms equally so? Am I not alienating the average reader and reducing myself to a clique publication?
Such logic rests on the premise that universal truths must be disseminated from universal sources. Or that universal sources even exist. In the matter of the school hijab ban in France, President Jacques Chirac appealed to universal Republican values and the “neutral” public square. But just how neutral is French secularism? And where is the line to be drawn between protecting children from religious indoctrination and abusing them through lack of religious meaning? For though I, like all readers, belong to the universal human family, I am issued from a particular story and my sense of meaning derives from that fact. [Particular stories in fact. The Jewish story. The British story. Even - arguably - the Spanish story.] To deny that background is not merely a rejection of personal identity, but a refutation of psychological need to find purpose in narrative.
We live in a world that is yearning for narrative. Stories with meaning. Student protesters who simultaneously support gay rights and homophobic Islamists are surviving such cognitive dissonance because of an adopted narrative. The narrative that we are in a momentous battle between the white oppressors and the oppressed “of colour”. It’s all nonsense of course. But the reason that October 7th couldn’t kick them out of their sense of righteousness - indeed it emboldened it - was for the simple fact that humans cannot live without meaning. Neither can they live without the sense of purpose that derives from feeling part of a story that binds the past, present and future.
Those who reject narratives - and refuge themselves in material comforts, abstract intellectual knowledge and general nihilism - have been caught up in the tsunami of mental illness and depression. It is a modern phenomenon that reflects a post-Darwinian world. Although the disadvantages of fundamentalist religion are plain, so are its benefits: The certainty of belonging, the absence of doubt, the infusion of meaning and the web of brotherhood. Those who reject the need for religion, be that organised religion, a political religion or a post-modernist religion, are those who are blind to the necessity - dare one say scientific necessity - to have mythos in our lives. Schizophrenia is the extreme exemplification of this. In Madness and Modernism, Louis Sass quotes a schizophrenic who says:
I feel as if I’ve lost the continuity linking the events in my past. Instead of a series of events linked by continuity, my past just seems like disconnected fragments.
Truth be told, even though a great many years have elapsed since the days of Nietzsche, we are yet to comprehend the true meaning of his words. For although some of things he says are difficult for the average stomach to accept, his central message is of great value; that we need to come to terms with the death of Christianity as a source of uncontested certainty.
Sure enough, many may make the leap of faith to accept a religious message, but in a world of doubt it is for the individual to decide; and in Nietzche’s case he criticised Christianity for its repressive effect on the individual, heroic need to create meaning. He feared nihilism, namely that in a world where Christianity (for so long the font of absolute truth) was questioned through natural science, people would reject the idea of truth entirely. Humanity would stagnate, no longer having the sacred pull to progress. And when standing on a tightrope between “last man” materialistic nihilism at one end and “superman” heroic development at the other, the majority would tend towards the former —or worse fall off into the abyss below. And how those words were prophetic. Because in today’s secular world, whose irreligious intensity dwarves by some measure that which existed in the immediate post-Darwinian age, anxiety is exploding.
The psychologist Carl Jung understood this message implicitly. Although organised religion was subject to inevitable corruption and human politics, the need for a “religion” in the wider sense was an observed need. There are no lack of quotes to this end, but for today’s purposes I shall reproduce an extract from the Swiss’ work Practice of Psychotherapy which reads thus:
“Not only Christianity with its symbols of salvation, but all religions, including the primitive with their magical rituals are forms of psychotherapy which treat and heal the suffering of the soul, and the suffering of the body caused by the soul”.
The myths of religion provide ongoing, priceless guidance because the travails of the human condition haven’t changed. Our needs and our search for meaning are continuing. In the stories of devout lives well lived we find our own way forward. In the tales of the biblical past, we find the seeds of self-realisation.
And so we return to the question posed at this essay’s beginning. Why speak of Judaism - or at least Jewish sources - when speaking to the world? For sure, the Jewish faith has wisdom and treasures that have been long hidden from non-Jews due to libel and defamation. And there is no doubt that we can all benefit from her storehouse of eternal knowledge. But for me, even Jung didn’t get to the absolute heart of meaning. For even though in Jewish heroic figures I find inspiration, it is in the Jewish story - or narrative - that I find salvation.
It is not the only source of salvation. That goes without saying. If you are Sikh, you will find salvation in the Sikh story and if you are French you will find salvation in the same. If you have multiple identities (as do I), you will be blessed with participation in multiple narratives. But let us be clear, my teleological drive to improve the human situation comes from those narratives - not a general “human story” - and that is the universal truth that I put before you.
To take the Jewish story first. It is a 3000+ year old page turner, full of ups, downs and visits to hell, but it contains multiple chapters and each new generation has the duty to write the next installment of the saga. Should we choose evil over good, we destroy the good name of our ancestors and spit in the face of their sacrifice and suffering. Should we choose to ignore the nexus of our past and collective future, we neglect our responsibilities.
What gives me meaning in life is to continue on the past of those that suffered before me. Those that fought to have the right to live as a minority among the herd. Those that fought for freedom in a world of slavery. Those that sanctified life in the face of ever-present death.
But I am blessed. Because I am also British and there too lies a beautiful story which graces an oft dispiriting world. The story of the common law, liberty and democracy. The story of tolerance in a world of theocratic absolutes. The story of a nation that destroyed slavery, made safe the seas for trade and bequeathed the rule of law sanctified on high.
To be the heir of two tales, Jewish and British, Jerusalem in Zion and Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land, is a blessing but also a duty. To be gifted two narratives, both inspiring and in no way exhaustively told in these briefest of rhetorical flourishes, is an inheritance from history that I have no right to refuse.
When I look forward in time, I see neither abyss nor any materialistic nothingness. I see a light; a shining, untranslatable goldenness; a responsibility to write the next chapter or else be dismissed a soulless fool. The man who stood under the mountain and refused to accept the covenant.
In that path I find meaning and reject the agony of mental hell. My narrative is not your narrative. And my particular does not obligate your path. But we all are called upon to continue our own national /religious story, from our own small corner of the Earth; and thereby to create a better world. That is a universal message. And through our pride in our own narratives we will learn from each other.
To those Americans or Brits or Frenchmen who are set on tearing up the West, I say this. I understand your need for meaning. I understand your drive for narrative. I understand your need to change the world. But you are the heir of a pre-existing story and it is your generation’s turn to evolve that which was painstakingly created before you.
You don’t need to tear up truth to maintain your mental equilibrium. You don’t need to destroy democracy to heroically push history forward. You need only march on courageously on the path your ancestors ploughed before you —changing that which is necessary, but doing so according to the virtue of prudence.
Truth is not to be found out there; nor is it to be destroyed back here. Instead it is where you stand. For in your respect for your own creed, but aware of the necessity to reject superstition and exorcise hate, you will find the ultimate purpose.
That is why I am a proud Jew and a proud Brit in a universal publication. And that is the universal message from which we can all learn.
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This is a most poignant article, Daniel! Something that is universal to all of us is we are part of a grand overarching narrative in some way or another. In that sense, we transcend the particular and join in in the great universal collective. We are part of a narrative whether it be cultural, racial, religious, gender, sexuality, level of ability, ethnicity, or national origin based. If you’re an American, you follow in the footsteps of our founding fathers and mothers who risked their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to birth our republic. If you’re English, you follow in the footsteps of Alfred the Great’s soldiers who repelled the Danish invasion of England. If you’re French you follow in the footsteps of the Republican revolutionaries who toppled the Bourbon Monarchy and sought to bring democracy to the masses in France. If you’re German, you follow in the footsteps of Frederick the Great and the newly reorganized Prussian Army, a model fighting force who defeated the mighty Hapsburg Empire to win control of Silesia, allowing Prussia to rise to great power status.
Those on the social justice left who seek to tear down tradition and dispatch with narrative, are motivated by something that is totally understandable, finding greater meaning and purpose for their lives. But something they need to understand is, they need not tear down the grand narrative of their country and blow up tradition to achieve positive social change. The two are not mutually exclusive. Both belong together like the yin and the yang. They balance each other out. You embrace your country or religion’s grand narrative and fight for social and racial justice! You can be a proud American, Brit or Frenchman while also fighting to improve your country. Or be a pious Christian, Jew or Muslim while also fighting to improve your faith. For example, I am a proud Lutheran who is pro-choice, pro-birth control, pro-gay marriage, pro-women become pastors, pro-environmentalism, and pro-racial equality. I greatly admire Martin Luther warts and all, and my churches’ history of rebelling and breaking away from the Catholic Church. But I also advocate for Lutherans to take a more nuanced position on abortion, accept birth control, welcome LGBTQ+ people into the church, accept and bless same-sex couples and perform same-sexual weddings, have good relations with our Catholic and Orthodox brothers, and fight racism, sexism, antisemitism, and Islamophobia.
כל הכבוד!