TOM WOLFE'S "THE HUMAN BEAST"

Author Tom Wolfe (The Bonfire of the Vanities, A Man in Full, and I Am Charlotte Simmons) delivered a lecture last Wednesday at the National Endowment for the Humanities' annual Jefferson Lecture in Washington, D.C., that may shake the world as violently as Darwin's 1859 The Origin of Species.

Wolfe spoke with Scott Simon on NPR's Weekend Edition this morning, and I was transfixed. For years I have been wrestling with what I call the possible "Big Universal Lie." I never thought I would write this because I really don't like Wolfe's writings, but thanks to this lecture, I have begun to gather one of the loose threads of my evolving beliefs.

Wolfe said in the lecture, "The Human Beast" that, ". . . by the time [Emile Zola, The Human Beast, 1888] and Darwin got hold of it, evolution had been irrelevant for 11,000 years. Why couldn't you two see it? Evolution came to an end when the human beast developed speech! As soon as he became not Homo sapiens, 'man reasoning,' but Homo loquax, 'man talking'! Speech gave the human beast far more than an ingenious tool. Speech was a veritable nuclear weapon! It gave the human beast the powers of reason, complex memory, and long-term planning, eventually in the form of print and engineering plans. . . . One of Homo loquax's first creations after he learned to talk was religion."

Also, according to Wolfe, "Culture is the product of speech." He refers to culture as an "irritating matter".

He continues later in the lecture, " Book One, first verse, of the Book of John in the New Testament says cryptically: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' This has baffled Biblical scholars, but I interpret it as follows: Until there was speech, the human beast could have no religion, and consequently no God. In the beginning was the Word. Speech gave the beast its first ability to ask questions, and undoubtedly one of the first expressed his sudden but insatiable anxiety as to how he got here and what this agonizing struggle called life is all about. To this day, the beast needs, can't live without, some explanation as the basis of whatever status he may think he possesses. For that reason, extraordinary individuals have been able to change history with their words alone, without the assistance of followers, money, or politicians. Their names are Jesus, John Calvin, Mohammed, Marx, Freud--and Darwin. And this, rather than any theory, is what makes Darwin the monumental figure that he is. The human beast does not require that the explanation offer hope. He will believe whatever is convincing. Jesus offered great hope: The last shall be first and the meek shall inherit the earth. Calvin offered less. Mohammed, more and less. Marx, even more than Jesus: The meek will take over the earth now! Freud offered more sex."

So, culture is the product of speech, and there can be no religion without words? Can it be, then, that religion is, after all, the product of culture and little more? I shall refer to this again later, as I continue to contemplate about the Universal Eternal Mind, and the possible Big Universal Lie that is, if Wolfe is on to something here, culturally induced.