A Trojan Affair

by Michael Smorenburg

  “Wonderful.” Al smiled. “To study?”

  “Yes, applied mathematics,” Sonja volunteered.

  “UCT?”

  “Uhmm, yes, UCT accepted and I… I’m enrolling,” she blushed. “Stellenbosch accepted too.”

  JJ’s face cracked into a smile—she’d been hedging but was smoked out.

  “Tough course,” Al observed. “UCT’s got the name for it; Stellenbosch is right up there too, though.”

  “UCT’s easier,” JJ’s suggested, speaking as an alumnus. “It’s just up the road from my main home and office, a stone’s throw from Dara’s new school.”

  Marsha and Al looked at one another.

  “Dara’s school… it’s sort of a bit on ice now,” Marsha volunteered. “The incident. It’s soured us, I must confess. We’re going to leave it up to Dara whether he heads back to the UK with Al to do his last year there or not.”

  “Completely understandable,” JJ agreed. “I’m sorry to say, but it really pisses me off that you had this experience. I’m sorry, I don’t know what else to say. I apologize again on behalf of my community.”

  “It sounds like you think it’s more than just a random incident?” Marsha prompted.

  “Well,” JJ grimaced, “it’s awkward, to say the least,” he shrugged, and his shrug was confirmation enough.

  “Indeed,” Marsha allowed, “but we can’t condemn everything for the decisions of a few.”

  There was the long silence of strangers trying to navigate through thorny issues, where potential unknown agendas might lurk. Each weighing whether to invest of themselves in the pursuit of commonality.

  “So, what are your plans with a degree in applied mathematics?” Al asked Sonja, aiming to break the awkward impasse.

  “Google’s recruiters are looking at her,” JJ volunteered, and she frowned to hush him. “But it’s true, sis,” he explained. “Google identifies the brightest....”

  “You’re good enough to flip a flag in Mountain View?” Marsha asked, astounded.

  “She came first in the Olympiad,” JJ confirmed.

  Sonja hung her head in embarrassment.

  “Be proud of it,” Marsha gently admonished her. “Celebrate talent. The SKA is also funding scholarships.”

  “I’d love to, but my dad would never allow it,” Sonja responded.

  “I see...” Marsha was calculating the drift.

  “It looks like a real hot potato,” Al grimaced. “Why’s the project so unpopular round here when I’ve seen nothing like that in the news?”

  “I can’t figure it out either. I think it’s just a small group, gone renegade. I don’t think they even know why, they’re just feeling challenged. My people are like that sometimes.” JJ shrugged again.

  “I’m glad you’re saying that, because it’s all made no sense to me.” Marsha was frowning. “I mean, the SKA is a telescope, for God’s sake. The Meerkat precursor ran for years without a bleat of opposition. Now there’s suddenly friction? It makes no sense.”

  “My friends in the town say their parents are complaining. House prices are rocketing because of the foreigners,” Sonja added.

  “Really? That’s not very well thought through,” Al frowned. “Rising house prices shouldn’t breed discontent? I mean, the opposite can’t be true; people wouldn’t be overjoyed if their house values fell ‘because of foreigners’, would they?”

  “A few of the farmers are upset by the limits on radio transmissions,” Marsha offered, “and the forced sale of their land to host it.”

  “Ja, well, you can understand them being upset about the sale of land. Sometimes they build a road and if your property’s in the way, they can’t go around it. It impacts relatively few within the bigger scheme,” JJ argued. “But the intensity of it… something else is stirring it up.”

  “Probably just media hype then?” Marsha suggested. “If the media hadn’t sung about us seeking the origins of the universe or extra-terrestrial signals, nobody here would have given a hoot.”

  “Could be, but that’s still not enough for such passion,” JJ countered. “My dad’s not a news guy, and the Dominee isn’t either; none of them would even bother to read a report about this.”

  “And the main church? The NG parent?” Al asked. “Are they behind it?”

  “I’m not really plugged into that world anymore, but I don’t get a sense that they are. It seems very localized, which is odd because the church organization is very top-down. They follow prescription from the leaders,” JJ explained. “Then again, Oom Gert—the local pastor—he’s a bit of a Maverick.”

  “And this is what I’d hoped we could chat about.” Al kept talking as he got up and brought the coffee pot over to do refills. “I’m really interested in the psychology of it, the local peculiarities. I’ve just come back from the US—a book promotional tour—and it’s quite insane how issues that I don’t even think are issues, are blown out of proportion there. It seems you have the same here?”

  “My wife, Morgan, she’s from the Deep South, from Tennessee. After going to California and marrying me to make it worse; she’s about as popular with her folks there as I am here. Our Calvinists are pretty much the same blood-stock and certainly similarly strung up,” JJ pointed out. “I mean, the Pilgrims that founded the US and my ancestors here; they were all of the same Old Testament, fire-and-brimstone flavour. You know, back then, our ancestors got on a boat and either went west to the Americas or south to here. So there’s not much at a deep fundamental level to distinguish between the resulting cultures in America’s Bible Belt today, or this place.”

  “Sure,” Marsha chipped in. “Strange how they were fleeing religious persecution and immediately set up persecution under their own umbrellas when they arrived.”

  “I think that’s a misnomer,” Al suggested. “I get your ‘abused becomes the abuser’ psychological play, but I don’t think they were so much fleeing persecution as they were unhappy with the shift of the religion in Europe away from conservative values. They left because European religious drift was too liberal for their tastes—they wanted to maintain staunch ideals.”

  “That makes a hell of a lot more sense,” JJ agreed. “Our guys here, and the Evangelic lot over there, clearly haven’t mellowed at the same rate as Europe. Europe’s been secular for ages, while the colonies, by contrast, are still so uptight.”

  “Indeed. And the irony is,” Marsha chimed in, “that the Americans protected freedom ‘of’ and by implication, freedom ‘from’ religion into their constitution. Al’s been coaching me…”

  They all laughed at the light moment and JJ pressed on.

  “I was surprised… I lived in the States for a while, and I saw that they drew a theoretical line between government and religion, yet today Americans are more plagued by religious attempts to force their will into legislation than anywhere else on the planet.”

  “I call it ‘free enterprise’ religion,” Al proposed. “In Europe, the Old-World religions are state sponsored. They don’t need to campaign to survive. In the States, religion is sold like any commodity, the way toothpaste or breakfast cereal are hard-sold. Billboards, TV ads, print—it’s a profitable business; round the clock televangelists.”

  They all agreed, Sonja listening intently.

  Soft moans came from up the corridor and Marsha was up and out of the room in a flash.

  “Just a sec, I’d better go see,” Al followed her.

  “UCT hey?” JJ beamed when they were alone.

  “Too presumptuous?” Sonja gnashed her teeth and the tendons in her neck stood out for a second as the edges of her mouth drew her face into a fleeting grimace.

  “No… Perfect. I wanted it to be your decision.”

  “Dad’s going to freak…”

  “He’ll get over it,” JJ assured.

  “Wow… These people are so different from Ma and Pa, so relaxed. And with Dara; almost like they don’t care.”

  “People handle situations different
ly, cultures too. You know the Brits, stiff upper lip. Dara’s on the mend so they’re dealing with us and the situation pragmatically. He looks Indian, but a classic Brit.”

  Al came back in.

  “Everything all right?”

  “He’s a bit sore when he wakes. The medication’s worn off; takes him a moment to orientate, I guess,” Al confirmed. “You want to see him?”

  “We’d love to but don’t want to impose.”

  “Perhaps just give them a few minutes. The nurse is attending.” Al sat down again.

  “Sonja suggested that this maybe isn’t the time to engage you in philosophical conversations?”

  Al shrugged. “What else are we going to talk about? It’s a waiting game with Dara; we can only speculate about his recovery so many times before my head explodes. Chatting with you is a welcome distraction.”

  “Sure.”

  “So… what were we on about?”

  “Free enterprise religion,” Sonja recalled.

  “Ah… yes… Good point. It’s interesting, you know. I mean, in the UK and Europe, we really don’t see much of this sort of thing, this fundamentalism.”

  “I watch the statistics,” JJ agreed. “There’s a marked difference between the US, the underdeveloped or developing economies, and the European sphere of influence. Religiosity is pretty much imploding in Europe.”

  “Except of course for a big migration in from the Middle East and the hair-trigger sentiments they bring with them,” Al added. “Now, that’s going to make things… veeeeeery interesting.”

  “No doubt. In Scandinavia, they’re so tolerant they’re tolerating intolerance,” JJ quipped.

  “Truly. Often, it’s foreigners who go there for asylum. Actually, it’s rather a pun; asylum seekers turning it into an asylum,” Al joked. “But the encouraging thing is that where there’s good education and fast Internet access—like they’re getting here—we’re seeing a vast swing away from religion.”

  “Why do you think a swing away from religion is a good thing?” Sonja challenged.

  “It’s a fair question,” Al responded. “It does sound rather mean-spirited with us sitting around here griping about people’s private beliefs, doesn’t it?”

  “No, that’s not what I meant. I’m not disagreeing with you; I just want to get your perspective,” she spoke with ease, like an adult.

  Practicing the question technique? JJ smiled at her knowingly and she smiled back in accord.

  “Well,” Al ventured, “One could go off on tangents and draw lists of atrocities that religion has visited on individuals and populations, motivated entirely by hoping to appease the notion of what a particular deity wants done.”

  “Like slavery, apartheid, witch trials and wars?” Sonja proposed, exercising her new questioning technique.

  “Yes,” Al agreed. “Of course, all of that. It’s all quite true, but if you argue that tack with adherents, the whole debate will quickly collapse into mud slinging. The religious will snap back and claim that all of the fascist and communist despots outlawed religion… and, somehow, in their minds these political murders equal blood on the hands of anyone educated enough to have got past superstition. You follow me?”

  Sonja nodded that she did.

  “But that’s a daft point of view, isn’t it? Firstly, anyone who knows history knows that fascism was a conservative Christian movement. And communism merely removed the notion of a God and church in order to set itself up as the supreme deity, its leaders instituting a cult of personality focused solely on them, with no Jesus or other distraction. It’s a tactical move. That’s why all the communist despots always got a grip on peasant societies who were already primed for totalitarianism by their historic servitude to orthodox religions. They never got a toe hold in any educated region.”

  “Sure… very smart.” JJ had never considered this angle. “Easy pickings for a regime to build their own cult—replace one god or demi-gods with the Dear Leader leering off of every wall.”

  “Voltaire said,” Sonja added, “‘Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.’”

  “Precisely… yes. And, as you said, Sonja, slavery and Apartheid were undeniably both inspired by the Bible, or interpretations of the Bible.”

  “You know our history well.”

  “I’m an anthropologist, it’s my job. But if a God authored or oversaw the Bible, I’d expect him…” Al’s eyes twinkled with mischief, “…or her—I don’t want to be accused of gender prejudice—to have had foresight enough to see the room he’d left for these gross misinterpretations. He should either have edited those things out, or intervened when they went off-message in competing bibles and sects. But, honestly; those are not the worst atrocities of religion—and here I mean any religion. Because…”

  “And prayer?” Sonja asked over him, carried away with enthusiasm for her new technique of asking questions to move the conversation. “I wondered—when you heard Dara was so critical, did you pray? Surely you did? It’s natural to pray.”

  “I don’t know that it’s natural to pray,” JJ suggested, sorry Al hadn’t finished what he was about to say, but also glad to see his sister flexing her mind.

  “Oh… I think it is,” Al countered. “Superstition is the result of a very important evolutionary mechanism.”

  “An evolutionary mechanism?” JJ frowned. “Really? You’re the psychologist, I’m not going to argue it; just intrigued.”

  “Sure. I’ll explain that in a moment, because you need to grasp what I mean when I say that prayer is a superstitious appeal, a begging for a particular outcome. And prayer and superstition come from a common root.”

  Sonja was surprised by the answer. “I don’t see how superstition and evolution can be related?” she posed.

  “Fairly easily. We evolved from prey animals, agreed? Our ancestors a few thousand generations back were pitifully weak out on the African plains.”

  “Yes,” both listeners agreed.

  “Those of our ancestors who were not suspicious of every little rustle in the bush or crack of a twig in the dark, well—they aren’t our ancestors, because, chomp-chomp, they entered the food chain and became nutrition for predators.”

  “All right…”

  “So, we inherited suspicious genes—nature selected for animals, for our ancestors, who had a natural suspicion of anything out of place, any small sound. Those genes slipped through the filter and found their way to us, made us naturally suspicious. Agreed?”

  “Okay.”

  “But then, as a species, our brains grew sophisticated. Just imagine it—huddled in a cave with thunder booming outside, or fording a river in a flood—our ancestors naturally assumed a benevolent or malevolent intelligence that had intent in the thunder or raging waters. That’s what a more sophisticated mind does, it projects intent into inanimate objects. I still do it. I get cross with a nail that won’t bang in straight; that nail is deliberately trying to be difficult.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Humans love to personify inanimate objects. Through this mechanism, that very-necessary suspicion we’d inherited morphed into the superstition of projecting intent into everything. And this brings us to prayer, because projecting intent onto causation is beseeching the invisible to not harm us, or to smooth our path. That’s the connection between our evolutionary-driven suspicion, superstition and prayer—we project intent and we beg for clemency.”

  “Ahhh…”

  “But now you have me very excited, you see; it’s my field. Just shut me up or nod off for a moment if you’re hating this,” Al went on.

  “No… it’s fascinating,” Sonja urged.

  “Okay. So, each river or volcano or forest gets its own deity that in the minds of people who must deal with it has this intent. Eventually, in our collective mind and culture, those individual gods took on the characteristics of our own projected characteristics. As a species, we had adopted farming and settled into communities,
so that little clans all fell under a hierarchy of tribal leaders and eventually under kings. In our projected world, paganism had arrived. Not just a new god for each river, but a single god for all rivers, another for all oceans, and yet another god of all mountains.”

  “Why did one god triumph if he isn’t real?” Sonja posed.

  “That’s where it gets very interesting because the monotheistic religious concept, the idea of just one single God, is the next step; it just flows from logic.”

  “From logic?”

  “Let’s say, there’s a volcano in Hawaii—Pele is the god. Even if Pele is the god of aaaall volcanoes; doesn’t matter to you if you don’t live near a volcano, right? You don’t fear Pele. Do you sacrifice to him? Pay him any attention? No, he’s insignificant to you. But one day someone tells you, ‘Listen, mate, there’s a single God—he’s like the emperor ruling all the individual gods, and it doesn’t matter if there’s no volcano here—and he’s not just a volcano god. He runs it all: oceans, rivers, lightning, fire, famine, and plague. He’s the one you have to watch out for! And he’s made me responsible that you grovel to him’.”

  “I do the enforcing for him.” JJ had got it. “And, if I don’t enforce it, I get punished.”

  “Precisely! Wherever you go from now on, now that you’ve been warned. Whether you like it or not, you’re under His spell and my authority as his spokesman.”

  “Very cushy.”

  “Sure is. It’s masterful. It’s not just when you cross this river or any river. Whether you’re sleeping at night in your own bed or walking with your family, He’s watching and I’m there to ensure he doesn’t get pissed off at you. So… fall in line; oh, and beseech him often—pray a lot, and pay a lot. We’ll come together and pray in a church so we all see we’re all toeing the line!”

  “Fascinating! So, it’s not long before people hedge their bets and fall in line with that God—the Almighty one.” A light bulb of realization had gone on in JJ’s head. “Voila! Monotheism. Voila! Representatives of that monotheistic deity: Moses, Jesus, or Mohamed. Voila! Enmity and wars between those that cling to one or another of the all-powerful versions of the story. I mean, thirty thousand versions of Christianity alone.”