Distilling All of Western Civilization Down to One Core Idea?

I like to ask people a simple question: If you could flick a switch and exterminate every mosquito in the world, would you? How about curing cancer? If you could eradicate cancer from the world with a single push of a button, would you?

The answer I receive most often is: “No.” Some worry about unintended consequences, which I think is a reasonable concern. But most rely instead on an instinctive cultural response that there must be something wrong with seeking to radically change the natural world.

Where does this come from? To my mind, part of it comes from a popular cultural belief that nature is best when it is unsullied, especially by man. Nothing could be worse, after all, than paving paradise and putting up a parking lot. Primitive pagans, including classic druids and witches, all agree: mankind is evil whenever we act as anything more than mere animals.

Most other faiths, including many Christians, share similar conclusions, albeit with different justifications. The logic for monotheists is straightforward: G-d is perfect. Therefore, His works must be perfect, too. Which means that nature cannot be “improved,” and that it hinges on blasphemy to suggest that mankind has a role to play in doing so. What a conceit it is to suggest that G-d did not create a perfect world!

It follows from this that anything that is “natural,” “organic” or “less processed” is always better than things that are artificially or highly processed. And modern civilization lives with this ongoing tension: we live in our homes, comforted with modern HVAC systems and living off highly complex supply chains for everything under the sun — while we virtue-signal by trying to cut whole-wheat bread with useless wooden cutlery. Such behavior is only different in degree from all the billionaires who board their Gulfstreams to fly to climate conferences to bewail how humanity is raping the earth.

The Torah stands athwart all of the above, with a simple, single commandment: Such shall be the covenant between Me and you and your offspring to follow which you shall keep: every male among you shall be circumcised. (G. 17:1)

Why do I make a big deal out of this commandment, out of the hundreds in the Torah? Because this is the very first of them all, the commandment upon which the entire relationship between Jews and G-d is built. And at the heart of this commandment is a very simple, profoundly jaw-dropping idea: We are commanded by G-d to improve nature.

In a single verse, we learn that G-d does not think Nature is perfect. Nor does He think that man’s obligation is merely to passively trust in G-d. On the contrary! This commandment requires us to be partners with the Creator. To recognize that the world is not finished, and that its improvement requires the active engagement in, and meddling by, mankind.

Arguably all of Judaism is built on this idea: That we should not emulate nature, especially when we try to develop ethics and morality. That “it is natural!” should not be taken as a positive argument. And ultimately, that our lives and choices matter. We may choose not to be either our nature or our nurture; that choice is the inherent quality of free will and the underpinning of a covenant, a holy relationship, with G-d himself.

We can even expand this; because G-d commands us to circumcise, we are to learn that all holy relationships require us to invest, to commit, and seek to change ourselves. At the root of every commandment is this one: Listen to Me, change yourselves (physically and spiritually). And in so doing, we merit to connect with G-d. I would add that the same principles underpin any holy relationship we have with other people as well.

Why do I suggest that this idea might be the seed for all of Western Civilization? Because virtually every invention in the world either originated or was substantially developed in the West, and only because there is a broad cultural consensus that new building materials, medicines, and industrial processes are inherently good. This Torah idea has not been historically welcome in non-Western countries and cultures. But it has been pivotal to all human development.