Despite the best efforts of Mussolini and his fascist party, most Italians remained rather lukewarm about putting Italy before their famiglia. In Germany the Nazi propaganda machine did a much more thorough job, but not even Hitler managed to make people forget all the alternative stories. Even in the darkest days of the Nazi era, people always kept some back-up stories in addition to the official one. This became patently clear in 1945. You would have thought that after twelve years of Nazi brainwashing many Germans would be utterly incapable of making sense of their post-war lives. Having put all their faith in one great story, what to do when that story exploded? Yet most Germans recovered with amazing speed. Somewhere in their minds they maintained some other stories about the world, and no sooner had Hitler fired a bullet through his brain, than people in Berlin, Hamburg and Munich adopted new identities and found new meanings to their lives.
True, about 20 per cent of the Nazi gauleiters – the regional party leaders – committed suicide, as did about 10 per cent of generals.17 But that means that 80 per cent of gauleiters and 90 per cent of generals were quite happy to live on. The vast majority of card-holding Nazis and even of the SS rank and file neither went insane nor killed themselves. They went on to be productive farmers, teachers, doctors and insurance agents.
Indeed, even suicide doesn’t prove an absolute commitment to a single story. On 13 November 2015, the Islamic State orchestrated several suicide attacks in Paris that killed 130 people. The extremist group explained that it did so in revenge for the bombing of Islamic State activists in Syria and Iraq by the French air force, and in the hope that France would be deterred from carrying out such bombardments in the future.18 In the same breath, the Islamic State also declared that all the Muslims killed by the French air force were martyrs, who now enjoy eternal bliss in heaven.
Something here doesn’t make sense. If indeed the martyrs killed by the French air force are now in heaven, why should anyone seek revenge for it? Revenge for what, exactly? For sending people to heaven? If you just heard that your beloved brother won a million dollars in the lottery, would you start blowing up lottery stalls in revenge? So why go rampaging in Paris just because the French air force gave a few of your brothers a one-way ticket to paradise? It would be even worse if you indeed managed to deter the French from carrying out further bombings in Syria. For in that case, fewer Muslims would get to heaven.
We might be tempted to conclude that Islamic State activists don’t really believe that martyrs go to heaven. That’s why they are angry when they are bombed and killed. But if so, why do some of them strap on explosive belts and willingly blow themselves to smithereens? In all likelihood, the answer is that they hold on to two contradictory stories, without thinking too much about the inconsistencies. As noted earlier, some neurons are just not on speaking terms with one another.
Eight centuries before the French air force bombed Islamic State strongholds in Syria and Iraq, another French army invaded the Middle East, in what is known to posterity as ‘the Seventh Crusade’. Led by the saintly King Louis IX, the crusaders hoped to conquer the Nile Valley and turn Egypt into a Christian bulwark. However, they were defeated at the Battle of Mansoura and most of the crusaders were taken captive. A crusader knight, Jean de Joinville, later wrote in his memoirs that when the battle was lost and they decided to surrender, one of his men said that ‘I cannot agree with this decision. What I advise is that we should all let ourselves be slain, for thus we shall go to paradise.’ Joinville comments dryly that ‘none of us heeded his advice’.19
Joinville does not explain why they refused. After all, these were men who left their comfortable chateaux in France for a long and perilous adventure in the Middle East largely because they believed the promise of eternal salvation. Why, then, when they were but a moment away from the everlasting bliss of paradise, did they prefer Muslim captivity instead? Apparently, though the crusaders fervently believed in salvation and paradise, at the moment of truth they opted to hedge their bets.
The supermarket at Elsinore
Throughout history almost all humans believed in several stories at the same time, and were never absolutely convinced of the truth of any one of them. This uncertainty rattled most religions, which therefore considered faith to be a cardinal virtue and doubt to be among the worst sins possible. As if there was something intrinsically good about believing things without evidence. With the rise of modern culture, however, the tables were turned. Faith looked increasingly like mental slavery, while doubt came to be seen as a precondition for freedom.
Sometime between 1599 and 1602, William Shakespeare wrote his version of The Lion King, better known as Hamlet. Yet unlike Simba, Hamlet doesn’t complete the Circle of Life. He remains sceptical and ambivalent to the very end, never discovering what life is all about, and never making up his mind whether it is better to be or not to be. In this, Hamlet is the paradigmatic modern hero. Modernity didn’t reject the plethora of stories it inherited from the past. Instead, it opened a supermarket for them. The modern human is free to sample them all, choosing and combining whatever fits his or her taste.
Some people cannot stand so much freedom and uncertainty. Modern totalitarian movements such as fascism reacted violently to the supermarket of doubtful ideas, and outdid even traditional religions in demanding absolute faith in a single story. Most modern people, however, took a liking to the supermarket. What do you do when you don’t know what life is all about and which story to believe? You sanctify the very ability to choose. You forever stand there in the supermarket aisle, with the power and freedom to choose whatever you like, examining the products laid out before you, and … freeze that frame, cut, The End. Run credits.