Books that Founded Civilizations:
The Bible is a book that most Americans are fairly familiar with, because it was the foundation of modern Western civilization. There are three other books like it in the world, in which a single great leader taught his followers in a single book everything they needed to know to build a successful civilization. Those were the Koran, the Tao te Ching, and the Great Law of Peace of the Iroquois Nation. Of course, there are two books of the Bible, the Old Testament and the New Testament. I make a lot of general references to the Bible in this book because, as I’ve said, most of the people who make up the most powerful civilization in the world today have a general familiarity with it.
Unfortunately, the followers of three of the five great books of the world are in the middle of a giant war with each other right now. With the end of the Cold War, Communism ceased to be the greatest obstacle to Western imperialism. The next greatest obstacle was Western imperialism’s old nemesis, Islam. Islam has been the greatest obstacle to Western imperialism since the First Crusade roughly 900 years ago, and with the end of the Cold War, what else should replace Communism as Western imperialism’s greatest obstacle? Iran is currently undergoing a process of rejecting Western materialism and imperialism and returning to its Islamic foundations to try to recapture the strength of its people and its culture. For many of the Islamic world, that makes Iran a model of righteousness. And what did President George W. Bush, a fundamentalist Christian, have to say about that, but to label Iran one of the countries that constitutes the “axis of evil”? And what did Osama bin Ladin, a militant Islamic fundamentalist do, but order his followers to destroy the World Trade Center once and for all?
I swear, it’s like driving a car with two little kids having a fight in the back seat. WILL YOU TWO GROW UP?!?!?!?!?! DON’T MAKE ME PULL THIS PLANET OVER!!!!!!
Seriously though, those three great books of the world are getting examined up and down by scholars who are far more intimately familiar with them than I’ll ever be, in the hopes of resolving the differences between those two (or three) groups of people. So in making specific references to the five great books of the world, I focus on the two whose followers aren’t still trying to defeat each other in a 900 year old war.
For all you Jews, Christians, and Muslims out there, your three books on how to build healthy, sustainable, peaceful civilizations are good ideas in principle, but I hope you can understand if I don’t seem to pay much attention to you, because collectively you people aren’t being a whole lot of help right now. In writing my own book about how to build a healthy, sustainable, peaceful civilization for the modern world, I hope you can understand why I focus primarily on the books of cultures that are actually succeeding somewhat at being healthy, sustainable, peaceful civilizations.
Don’t worry, everything you need to resolve the differences between Judeo/Christianity and Islam is contained in this book, but you’re all so wrapped up in trying to prove that you’re right and everyone else is wrong that I’m not going to waste my time trying to prove to you that I know what I’m talking about. The world’s full of people who want to listen to what I have to say, and if you aren’t any of those people, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. But you’ll catch on sooner or later. If you really want peace among your people, it’s all right here. You got yourselves into this mess, now you get yourselves out of it.









