The world is too complex – and too dangerous – to be reduced to “good” and “evil”. The habit still shapes how the West justifies power, war and hypocrisy.

Dividing the world into the Goodies and the Baddies defines Geopolitical Manichean thinking. When it comes to inter-state competition, Manichaeism is the state religion of the West. Dark and violent though things are at the moment (Greenland, Venezuela, Iran, Palestine), we have a collective responsibility to challenge and change this for the better.

In 2018 I visited a Sasanian fort in the desert of mid-eastern Iran. Still standing after 18 centuries of heat, dust and competing empires, its streets – at least in my mind’s eye – were still bustling with people. I could almost hear the sounds of camel bells as a caravan entered through the gates, see the colourful robes of devotees of the prophet Mani, disciples of the prophet Christ and even Buddhists whose sandaled feet walked the pressed mud alleyways of Sar Yazd.

Manichaeism, founded in the Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE), merged elements from Zoroastrianism, early Christianity and Buddhism which were all discussed and mingled along the length and breadth of the Silk Road and other trading routes. The prophet Mani believed in a hard dualism – that there was an eternal struggle between Good and Evil – literally a world of light and a world of darkness.

This hard dualism is exactly the way President Reagan described the Soviet Union (‘the Evil Empire’). In a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals on March 8, 1983, he declared that the Soviet Union was not just a rival but “the focus of evil in the modern world”. He told his audience they needed to avoid the temptation to “label both sides equally at fault, to remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong, and good and evil”. It was a spiritual battle, no less. I note he was speaking to evangelicals and, yes, ‘angel’ and ‘evangelical’ share the exact same root: Greek ἄγγελος (angelos).

At this point it is worth pointing out that under Reagan’s angelic presidency the US ran death........

© Pearls and Irritations