July 18 , 2005

Dear Colleague,

     The latest installment of the Harry Potter saga is out. Saturday morning, while Lee, Sally, and I were having coffee at Starbucks, a couple of girls entered, each with a copy of the Book, which they then proceeded to read in total concentration. They apparently waited all night for it. Sally said that the Potter books have had a positive impact on children if only because they make them want to read more. Sales of children's books have gone up noticeably in recent years, riding on the coattail of the Potter boom. I was, however, not amused. Any kind of mass craze turns me off. It doesn't matter to me who or what--Harry Potter, Cabbage Patch Doll, the Da Vinci Code, the little Red Book, Stalin or John Paul II--causes the craze, the mass movement. They all signify for me one thing--the enslavement of the mind, the reduction of the unique and immortal soul to a cipher--cannon fodder for war, yawning appetites for the juggernaut of consumerism, zombie followers of egoistical gurus.

     Religion is increasingly under the sway of numbers. How many people attended Billy Graham's crusade--many more, I dare say, than Christ's five thousand--and how many were at John Paul II's funeral? Being one of a huge crowd encourages belief in the righteousness of one's cause, raises the level of fanaticism. Alone one cannot smash windows and kill; in the midst of shouting, stomping, and yes, even praying with others, it comes naturally and easily. That's why terrorism is such a strange phenomenon. It is committed by fanatics, but their fanaticism does not seem to require feeding by submersion in chanting, flag-waving marches and processions. To the contrary, the fanaticism--the decision to kill even innocents for one's cause--can be nurtured in the quiet of religious schools. And, of course, the act of terror itself is not a mass phenomenon, done with the immediate and constant support of one's fellows, but rather perpetrated in small groups or alone--indeed, more often than not, alone. Have you thought how utterly alone the suicide bomber must feel as he climbed up a double-decker London bus? Where, he must have fleetingly asked, are my comrades? Why aren't they here to give me support? But climb up he did and he did blow himself up, with twelve others, all under the powerful drug of religion.

     Religion to me is the private conversation between a human conscience and its God. The quality of that conversation can never be known, except to God. The test of that quality is, however, readily seen: it is in everything we say and do--in guarded and unguarded moments--in each and every day we live.

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu