Keeping the Faith

Perhaps presaging our first career as a
cultural anthropologist, the adolescent Dowbrigade had a consuming interest
in, among
other aspects of what is collectively know as "culture", the wild
variety of religions found around the world. In fact, had we not gotten
on the bad side of the International Jewish Conspiracy for our subversive
teen-aged activities in the Holy Land (from which we were eventually
rounded up by the Mossad
and deported from) we may very well have ended up working
with or for the God Squad in some capacity.

Be that as it may, we remember a youthful fascination with
many religions, and one in particular. A lengthy article in today’s
Boston Globe brought that phase of our philosophic formation tumbling
back into our mind.
The
religion in question: Zoroastrianism.

For a period of about a year (we must have been 13 or 14),
when asked for our religious affiliation, we would invariably identify
ourself as a Zoroastrian.We had actually found out enough about
the religion to know that it accepted no converts, even kids from mixed
marriages
with one Zoroastrian. parent (the Dowbrigade’s parents though Zoroastrians
were fans of the masked avenger Zoro), but this did not daunt us.

What attracted the adolescent Dowbrigade to such an out-of-the-mainstream
religion in the first place.  Well, first of all we loved the
name, which was much cooler, more exotic and mystical than "Christ"
(an exclamation appropriate to banging ones thumb with a hammer) or
"Jaweh"
(a name
so secret they can’t agree how to spell it) or Allah (thinking in Allah
Mode brings to mind ice cream on pie). We wondered how Zoroaster felt
in the hypothetical Pantheon of the Gods to always be the last God in
alphabetic
order. And being at that time completely ignorant of Spanish, we, like
our parents, assumed Zoro himself was a believer.

The little we knew about Zoroastrian beliefs only reinforced
our initial fascination with the group. Dating back to about a thousand
years before Christ, Zoroastrianism (and here we apologize to Ryan
Overbey, friend and real expert in Comparative Religion, for oversimplification
if not blasphemy) had a profound influence on all of the major modern
religions: Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Zoroastrianism. was one of the first monotheistic religions
to postulate what has become the dominant religious paradigm of the modern
world – life as a constant battle between the forces of darkness and
light. As we understand it, there are three basic tenets of Zoroastrianism.  First,
as Joseph Campbell writes in "The Masks of God", "The Zoroastrian version
of the world course presents a creation by a god of pure light into which
an evil principle entered, by nature independent of and contrary to first,
so that there is a cosmic battle in progress; which however, is not to
go on forever, but will terminate in a total victory of the light: whereupon
the process will end in a perfect realization of the Kingdom of the
Righteousness in Earth."

Second, there is the concept that each individual is imbued
with free will, and the ability (and responsibility) to choose to further
the cause of light, or darkness.

Finally, the third principle, essential to the Zoroastrian.
world view, is the idea that personal enlightenment is achieved through
engagement with the world, rather than disengagement, which
was the norm in most other Asian religions.

This meshes nicely with, and no doubt influenced, our own
present personal philosophy of the meaning of life, which holds that
not only is the universe enmeshed in a titanic struggle between good
and
evil,
but that on the cosmic scales, in relation to the human race, the aggregate
coffers of good and evil to date are exactly balanced.

This underlying axiom conveys a terrible responsibility
on any individual who adopts this worldview, because the results of
his or her daily choices and moral decisions could tip the balance,
for light or darkness.

If, we hypothesized, there were in fact a supreme being
testing the worthiness of his creations from beyond, or an alien race
or council of evolved conscious nesses, sitting in cosmic judgment of
our
ability
as
a species
to join the ranks of the evolved or the need to wipe us from the universe
like
a cosmic plague before we can infect our quadrant of the galaxy, it could
very well be our decision to give a few coins to a beggar or whether
or not to ghost-write an economics paper for a wealthy Middle-eastern
illiterate which makes the difference between salvation and oblivion.
A weighty responsibility, having the fate of humankind riding on your
shoulders every day!

In addition, we really liked the constant references to
Zoroastrians "famous
eccentricities, quirky manner, and indelicate vocabulary". They
were our kind of people!

As we got older and came to see all organized religion
as a cheap sham to harness human labor and loyalty to the service of
aging theocrats and the political thugs who co opt them, our Zoroastrianism
sort of fell by the wayside. But it all came back as we read the paper
this morning.

The Globe
article points out that modern Zoroastrians, living
mostly in Iran, are dwindling in number due to their traditional refusal
to accept inter-religious marriages or converts. Another endangered thread
in the human tapestry, which, after after playing an important role in
getting us to where we are today, is struggling to find a place in the
modern world of global integration.

article from the Boston Globe