“It’s the end of the world as we know it”

Israeli historian Yuval Harari may be one of the greatest thinkers of his generation. While cloistered away in month-long, silent Vipassana meditation retreats, Harari has conjured up some of the most innovative and ground-breaking understandings of human history.

One of his seminal insights is the idea that human society progresses when people collectively agree on common “myths” or “stories”. The first great “myth” was the “story” of G-d, the idea that a greater power would punish us in the afterlife if we didn’t behave or adhere to a set of rules today. Through this belief in an omnipotent being, judging our actions and wreaking retribution for our misdeeds, humanity allowed itself to be structured and ordered, with the overlord of religion ensuring compliance.

The second great “myth”, according to Harari, was the myth of money. Humanity collectively agreed that a coin or piece of paper somehow represented value. No longer was the woman who wanted corn forced to carry her cow to barter for cloth to exchange for wheat. By society agreeing to this “myth” of value, we could trade with each other in an almost frictionless manner.

The third great “myth” arose in the wake of World War II. Society had to define a new world order. Europe had been decimated by two Great Wars in less than 40 years, and the blood and ashes of tens of millions of innocents had fertilised the fields of Europe.

Humanity needed to find a way to live in peace without constant fighting and genocide.

In order to forge peace, we created a new set of “myths”, the story of globalisation and human rights.

Countries that traded together were unlikely to fight each other. Nations that shared common values were unlikely to go to war. Democracies were unlikely to attack each other. The United Nations (founded in 1945); the World Bank (1944); the International Monetary Fund (1944); the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) – the predecessor of the World Trade Organization (1947); and the Council of Europe – the predecessor of the European Union (1949), were all central to this idea. NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – 1949) would defend democracy, but the economic interdependence of nations would become the key to peace.

Human rights, democracy, and freedom were central to this idea in the post Holocaust era.

This new respect for human dignity didn’t come easy to the colonial masters of Europe. Britain and France longed to retain their colonies. Israel fought its British colonisers to achieve independence in 1948, India and Pakistan in 1947. Between 1945 and 1960, 36 countries achieved independence from their European rulers.

Given the emphasis on human rights, the Cold War between the West and the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) became a fight between good and evil, between democracy and tyranny, between human rights and oppression.

As the world decolonised, freedom abounded, China started a liberalisation policy that brought millions of people out of poverty, the Berlin Wall fell, and never before in human history had the world seen so little war.

The era of peace had dawned, war, poverty, and disease were all in remission, the world had never looked better.

And then something changed!

The values that had underpinned modern Western liberal society suddenly fell from favour. It was an avalanche.

Britain exited the European Union in an illogical and dramatic rejection of globalisation in favour of nationalism. The Americans elected a narcissist, semi-irrational “American-first” president, who saw little value in human rights. Soon ultra-right-wing white supremacists were chanting, “Jews will not replace us” on the streets of Charlottesville and right-wing antisemitism surged throughout the United States. Brazil jerked far to the right with the election of Jair Bolsonaro, and the gentle people of the Philippines selected another right-wing maniac, gun-toting president in Rodrigo Duterte. Hungary moved to the far right, followed by Sweden and Italy.

The world was shifting, the individual was becoming more important than the collective, the values that had guided us since the Great Wars were gone, and no new philosophy or “myth” had taken its place.

In the midst of this collapse in the Western World’s belief system, Russian President Vladimir Putin took a gamble, betting that the West in its self-obsession wouldn’t care too much about a small expansion of the Russian Empire. The flatlands of Ukraine, the bread-basket of Europe, stood vulnerable, exposed, and indefensible to the might of the Russian army. But Putin miscalculated, and his short war of annexation met the impenetrable force of Ukrainian will. Biden’s offer to Volodymyr Zelenskyy of an evacuation was met by scorn and the immortal words, “I need weapons not a flight.”

Put Putin’s game is far from over. Winter is coming, and the shortage of Russian gas in Europe will test Western mettle. Putin’s new bet is to freeze the West into submission, to use the frigid northern winter to loosen the binds between the United States, Europe, and Ukraine. Without ongoing American weaponry, Ukraine will fall. All Putin needs to do is offer the West an alternative to its energy woes. A worried, aging American president, craving re-election, may well grab the bait.

And in the midst of this realignment, the Israeli electorate went to the polls for the fifth time in four years. An election fatigued nation, battered by increased Palestinian violence, rising inflation, and an unaffordable cost of living also lurched to the right. The new cabinet looks more like the neo-fascist Viktor Orbán in Hungary than the liberal democracy proclaimed by Ben Gurion.

The incoming cabinet hosts outright racists with little respect for human rights or dignity. Already a bill has been introduced to place politicians in charge of the appointment of judges, removing the Israeli Bar Association from judicial appointments. LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) rights are under attack, and plans are in motion to end the corruption trial that has plagued incoming Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. The new Israeli government is in step with the rise of right-wing forces around the world.

But as South Africans, we live in a country with an independent judiciary, with a Bill of Rights that protects us all, where judicial processes have recommended the impeachment of our president. We’re grateful for the values that our struggle for freedom and democracy has bequeathed us, and we cannot hold another set of values when we judge the rest of the world.

As December rolls in and we head for the white powder beaches at the tip of Africa to contemplate the year gone by, we have to wonder, how did they all get it so wrong?

But it certainly is the end of the world as we know it.

• Howard Sackstein is chairperson of the SA Jewish Report.