We, The New Manichees

The first time I came across the term 'Manichaeanism' was around six years ago when doing a paper called 'Religion In The World Of Late Antiquity'. I was told that Manichaeanism was a religion that taught that the world was a battle-ground of the two co-eternal principles of Good and Evil which were constantly trying to vanquish each other. I was also informed that this religion disappeared from central Europe more or less around 1200 AD, and so did I believe until a few years ago when I began to realise that Manichaeanism has returned to haunt us, albeit in a form quite different from its classical ones. In fact, it seems that we find it hard to resist the attraction of a Manichaean mode of separating the world into two distinct blocks or chunks, one to which we ourselves belong, the domain of Light, and the other into which everyone else is steeped, the realm of Darkness.

Americans, of course, have a notorious reputation of revelling in such dualistic divisions, and they have proliferated axes of evil running through places as distant and disconnected from each other as Hanoi, Hamburg, and Havana. This is done on the basis of what might be called the faith of Americana, the faith that American values (whatever you may take these to be, liberalism, democracy, the free market, and the like) must be spread throughout the world to make it a better and more habitable place. The strange thing, however, is that quite often non-Americans turn out to be every bit as Manichaean as some of the Americans themselves, and on the basis of their faith of anti-Americana they claim to be able to discern a clear axis of evil running through Washington D.C. Moreover, all the political, social, ecological, and economic ills in the world can be causally traced back, so it is alleged, to some decision, past or present, taken in the White House.

One should, however, be equally suspicious of both Americana and anti-Americana for they are simply mirror-images of each other. It is one thing to empathise with, and even struggle with, people who affirm anti-Americana, but it is quite another matter to believe that they have the adequate tools, conceptual and material, to reverse the socio-economic inequalities in the world and establish a more transparent community than the current one. American society may indeed be a tottering edifice plagued with the sins of consumerism, individualism, pragmatism, and utilitarianism, but unless anti-Americana is to degenerate into a mere League of Retribution, a Ring of Hate-Mailers, or a Band of Slogan-Chanters it must be founded on a certain emancipatory vision of how it is going to establish a superior juster system of social organisation on a world-wide scale, a system that will be compatible with individual liberty.

Unless we, the new Manichees, learn to renounce both Americana and anti-Americana at the same time, the world will remain a collection of ships that pass one another by in the dark night, missing the little flickering light that still continues to glow.