New world’s new faith

If it is indeed an African great-great-great-grandmother that all the people on this planet have as a common ancestor beginning some 50,000 years ago, it must mean — as Nayan Chanda argues in his brilliant new must-read, Bound Together — the Oneness of this planet that spiritualists and Darwinians claim to realise is probably truer than even they imagined. Blonde was black, tall was short, straight was frizzy and all were Africans who, in the Ice Age, went out in search of food.

The research Chanda brings to our attention takes history, genetics, anthropology and religion and integrates them to show “how traders, preachers, adventurers and warriors shaped globalisation”. What is an inter-disciplinary study of an event that so far has largely been examined within a narrow framework of the economy, business and finance, matches the instinctive surge of the Spirit in man that is ultimately the culmination of all knowledge. As rational thinkers push the boundaries of knowledge and put together pieces of the amazingly integrated jigsaw that is life, science will meet more spirituality, the first popular result of which was Fritjof Capra’s mind-opener, The Tao of Physics.

If, as science proves, religions evolved to support the changing needs of human beings moving either in search of food, a place to drop roots, for faith or sheer adventure — and who in turn were simultaneously evolving as a species — we know that religion finally is as man-made a construct as politics, empire-building or trade. Looking at it in another way, religion could be an expression of homo sapiens making physical life better organised and less violent while exploring a deeper self within as they moved across varying terrains, climates, geographies. Crossing continents, they left mindprints of belief systems and faiths behind. Those who settled down in snow or near water, in deserts, plains and mountains, settled with their beliefs, that over time, have become fossilised. What is emerging are new missionaries with new faith systems of environment protection, human rights and, yes, democracy.