Dan Hurwitz
The Wheel of Religion


PREFACE

Since the word religion is included in the title of this
work, it might be well to start off with the manner in which this
subjective term is treated herein. I use the word to mean that set
of ingrained emotions that are difficult to put into words but
which are nonetheless evident to us all. Few can walk through a
cathedral, hear a popular hymn, or gaze upon a Michelangelo
fresco without feeling some rush of passion beyond mere aes-
thetic pleasure. Some chord within our brain vibrates, some in-
bred instinct is triggered, something inside us responds.

Whereas most people, I believe, would agree to the
above as far as it goes, they would find my definition too limited.
Why have I not included God and his teachings? My answer is
that any attempt to linguistically link its instinctive roots with the
practices associated with it deprives the word religion of all
useful meaning whatsoever. An Anglican service at Canterbury
Cathedral, an Aztec ritual sacrifice in pre-Columbian Mexico, a
Passover seder in the Bronx, a Neanderthal burial rite, and the
Muslim haj to Mecca have so little in common with one another
that they simply cannot be lumped together into a single co-
herent group.

The fact is that, like many another instinct found in na-
ture, religion is made to be imprinted upon. A chick is imprinted
by whatever feeds it, mother bird or no. And, by the same token,
a youngster is imprinted by whatever religious belief he has been
fed, mother church or no. Any casual reading of history would
show that men have variously employed their religious instincts
to worship idols, beasts of the forest, serpents, trees, totems,
mountains, as well as every abstract conception of the holy spirit
the human mind has been able to concoct.

The distinction between religion as I have defined it and
Religion with a capital R might sound academic, but I suggest
that it is not. To begin with, the former definition permits us to
ask: Since religion has, time and time again, demonstrated its
ability to influence our affairs for both good and evil, and since it
seems as content with one system of beliefs as another, should
we not objectively reevaluate the various options available to us?
We could start off, for example, by agreeing that retaliatory
headhunting is less desirable on the whole than those systems
that promote honesty, brotherhood, and family relationships.
But religion with a small r frees us to expand our options be-
yond the traditional. Indeed, now that mankind has managed to
burden itself with any number of self-destructive capabilities, it
might well behoove us to consider a new system of beliefs more
in keeping with todays realities. The Wheel of Religion sug-
gests one such possibility.

Finally, I suppose, I should give some explanation for
idiosyncratic form in which this book appears. Its history will
provide the reader with an adequate answer though perhaps not
an adequate justification. When I started out writing a Utopian
novel many years ago, I had the problem of producing not only
the manifestations of a superior (in my mind) culture but its
philosophical basis. My solution was to include a pageant
wherein the imagined populace celebrated the origins of the
ideas that eventually led to their good fortune. Unfortunately,
the pageant grew so weighty that the novel suffered a structural
collapse. Picking up the pieces as best I could, I started anew,
this time focusing solely on the pageant itself. And when this too
became unwieldy, I decided to concentrate on only one aspect of
my Utopian vision at a time. Hence, in this roundabout way, I
came around to an essay in the form of a play. The end result is
that I am the only author I know whose opus has diminished
with time. Whereas this would seem to many as a disadvantage,
it should, at least, engender the hope on the part of my critics
that I enjoy a long life with my faculties intact.