Rediscovering Our Moral Compass: with Amin Maalouf

[Preamble… ]

Host, Richard Holloway: Hello, and welcome to the Edinburgh International Book Festival. My name is Richard Holloway, and it's my privilege and my pleasure today to chair a session with Amin Maalouf and Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. 

If anyone has earned the description polymath, it surely has to be Amin Maalouf.

Born in Beirut in 1949, he's been a reporter, a newspaper editor, a historian, a best-selling novelist, winner of the Prix Goncourt as well as the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature for his entire oeuvre. In short, he is one of the world's wise men, more needed than ever in our fragmenting world. And his wisdom is distilled beautifully into the book we'll think about today, “Adrift, How Our World Lost Its Way.”

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks is one of Britain's most important public intellectuals and spiritual leaders. Born in London in 1948, he served as Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth for 22 years until 2013. As well as being a spiritual leader, he is a philosopher and author of a distinction of more than 30 books and winner of the prestigious Templeton Prize in 2016 for his work in affirming life's spiritual dimension.

The book we'll discuss today, “Morality, Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times,” is best described as a prophetic summons to reappraise the human condition in these times of moral and political disintegration. 

So it's a pleasure to welcome them both to the festival. And if you want to follow this session in British Sign Language, I'm told there's a wee button you can press and you'll see Joe, who will take you through it in sign language.

I want to begin the session by inviting each of our authors to introduce their book by reading a short extract. And I'll invite Rabbi Sacks first, followed by Amin Maalouf. Rabbi.

Rabbi Sacks: Thank you, Richard. And this actually is how the book begins:

“A free society is a moral achievement.

Over the past 50 years in the West, this truth has been forgotten, ignored, or denied. That is why today, liberal democracy is at risk.

Societal freedom cannot be sustained by market economics and liberal democratic politics alone. It needs a third element, morality, a concern for the welfare of others, an active commitment to justice and compassion, a willingness to ask not just what is good for me, but what is good-for-all-of-us together. It's about ‘Us,’ not ‘Me;’ about ‘We,’ not ‘I.’ 

If we focus on the ‘I’ and lose the ‘We,’ if we act on self-interest without a commitment to the common good, if we focus on self-esteem and lose our care for others, we will lose much else. Nations will cease to have societies and instead have identity groups. We will lose our feeling of collective responsibility and find in its place a culture of competitive victimhood. In an age of unprecedented possibilities, people will feel vulnerable and alone.

The market will be merciless. Politics will be deceiving, divisive, confrontational, and extreme. People will feel anxious, uncertain, fearful, aggressive, unstable, unrooted, and unloved. They will focus on promoting themselves instead of the one thing that will give them lasting happiness: making life better for others. People will be, by historic standards, financially rich but emotionally poor. Freedom itself will be at risk from the far right and the far left, the far right dreaming of a golden age that never was, the far left dreaming of a utopia that never will be.

Liberal democracy is at risk in Britain, Europe, and the United States. So is everything that these democracies represent in terms of freedom, dignity, compassion, and rights. The most technologically advanced societies the world has ever known have forgotten just this: we are not machines, we are people, and people survive by caring for one another, not only by competing with one another. Market economics and liberal politics will fail if they are not undergirded by a moral sense that puts our shared humanity first. Economic inequalities will grow. Politics will continue to disappoint our expectations. There'll be a rising tide of anger and resentment, and that, historically, is a danger signal for the future of freedom.

I believe that we are undergoing the cultural equivalent of climate change, and only when we realise this will we understand that the strange things that have been happening in the 21st century in the realm of politics and economics, the deterioration of public standards, of truth and civil debate, and the threat to freedom of speech at British and American universities. It also underlies more personal phenomena like loneliness, depression, and drug abuse. All these things are related. If we see this, we will already have taken the first step to a solution.”

Richard: A powerful indictment. Thank you, Rabbi. And now we turn to Amin Maalouf.

Will you give us your talk, please? Amin Maalouf, thank you. 

Amin Maalouf: Yes. Like Rabbi Sacks, I will read the very first paragraphs of my book. 

“I was born hale and healthy into the arms of a dying civilization.

And I have spent my whole life feeling that I am surviving with no credit or blame when around me so many things were falling into ruin. Like those characters in films, who walk down streets where all the walls are crumbling and yet emerge unscathed, shaking the dust from their clothes while behind them the entire city is no more than a pile of rubble. From my first breath, this has been my sad privilege.

But it is also a doubtless characteristic of our era when compared to those that came before. Time was, men had the impression of their being transient in a world that was immutable. People lived on the land where their parents lived, worked as they did, cared for each other as they did, were educated as they had been, prayed in the same fashion, and traveled by the same means.

My four grandparents and their forebears for 12 generations were all born under the Ottoman dynasty. How could they not believe it would be eternal? Within the memory of a rose, no gardener had ever died, beside the French philosophers of the Enlightenment thinking about the social order and the monarchy of their own country. These days, the thinking roses that we are live longer and gardeners die.

In the span of a life, it is possible to see countries, empires, peoples, languages, and civilizations disappear. Humanity is metamorphosing before our eyes. Never has its adventure seemed more promising or more perilous.

For a historian, the spectacle that is the world is fascinating, yet he must still come to terms with his loved one's anguish and his own fears. I was born in a universe called the Levant, but it is so forgotten that most of my contemporaries do not know to what I am referring. True, no nation has ever borne this name.

When books speak of the Levant, its history is vague, its geography shifting, little more than an archipelago of trading cities, often though not always coastal, running from Alexandria to Beirut, Tripoli, Aleppo, or Smyrna, from Baghdad to Mosul, Constantinople, Thessaloniki, from Odessa to Sarajevo. In the outmoded sense in which I use it, it describes the territory wherein the ancient civilizations of the Middle East rubbed shoulders with the younger cultures of the West. From this intimacy was almost born a different future for all people.

I shall later discuss this wasted opportunity at a greater length, but I need to say a word about it now in order to clarify my thoughts. If the citizens of different nations and the followers of monotheistic religion had continued to live together in this part of the world and had managed to pool their faiths, humanity as a whole would have had an eloquent beacon of peaceful coexistence and prosperity to inspire and to light the way. Regrettably, what happened was the reverse.

Hatred prevailed, and an inability to live together became the rule. The enlightenment of the Levant guttered out, then shadows spread across the globe, and to my mind, this is not simply a coincidence.” 

Richard: Thank you, Amin.

Though they're very different in style and tone, each of your books is a magnificent lament over the condition of humanity in our time, but you each offer a different origin story to explain it. 

Amin, you locate it in the Middle East. You write, “The fragmentation of pluralist societies in the Middle East has caused irreparable moral damage, a damage that affects all human societies and has unleashed unspeakable barbarity in our world. In recent years, the turmoil within the Arab Muslim world has become a source of major concern for all humanity. We have all suffered a powerful mental earthquake,” you say, and Rabbi Sacks, you locate the origin of the decay in what you describe as “The long-term consequences of the experiment embarked on throughout the West in the 1960s, the move from We to I.” 

I'm wondering if these are entirely different, maybe even opposing perspectives, rather than common elements in your points of view. I'll come to you first, Amin, to respond to Rabbi Sacks' diagnosis, as it were, and see if there are any common elements. They're located geographically very differently. 

Amin? 

Amin: I think what's happening today in the world cannot be ascribed to only one reason or only one factor. I think there are so many factors that play a role.

Because I was born in that part of the world, I tend to find a number of explanations from that part, which means the Levant. I think this part of the world, because it was the birthplace of the three monotheistic religions, is a place where half of humankind can get inspiration, either inspiration for living together peacefully, harmoniously, and if we had in that part of the world and a model, a working model, I am sure that the whole world would have benefited and would have been inspired by it. What happened is the opposite.

We have every day on all the screens of the world, in front of all the people who look towards the Middle East for many reasons, the example of something that's not working, and the conclusion that people can draw from it is that we cannot live together. People who have different creeds cannot live together. Of course, it's even more true for my country of origin, Lebanon, but it's true of the whole area.

I think its effect on the rest of the world is devastating. 

Richard: Rabbi Sacks, could you respond to that? Because in a sense you're both lamenting the chaos, the driftingness of the world, but locating it in different causes, are they related? 

Rabbi Sacks: Yes. The world as seen from Lebanon is a very different one from the world as seen, for instance, from Britain in the past 50 years, and there is no common story.

Amin is exactly correct that Lebanon was once the most extraordinary example of cosmopolitanism, of pluralism, of Beirut, the Paris of the Middle East, and that was Lebanon's greatness, and that collapsed for a whole series of complex historical reasons, and Western liberalism collapsed for a completely different set of reasons. These are two different narratives. The question is, do they have something in common? And the answer is, I think they do.

At one or two points in his book, Amin mentions - correct me if I'm wrong here, Amin - that maybe the old system of empire worked better at containing different kinds of community, and what happened, of course, was an area of the world dominated by empire for more than 1,000 years. After the… in 1917 and shortly after, towards the end and after the First World War, the Western powers, primarily Britain and France, created new nations in this part of the world, nations composed of very different ethnic and religious groups, but did very little, I mean, it did more in Lebanon than anywhere else. Lebanon did more in itself than anywhere else, but did very little by way of nations to create one nation out of all these different groups. So, for a moment, the West and the Middle East forgot about nation building and how extremely difficult that is. 

In Britain, the opposite happened. We had a very strong sense of national identity, and it lasted until the 1950s, and in the 1960s, when we said this is much too restrictive. Let's do what we like, not what we ought. Now, had John Locke been around, instead of living in the 18th century, he would have told us, in the 17th century, he would have told us there's a big difference between liberty and license. There's a big difference between making sure my freedom respects yours and just focusing on me. So, one way or another, Britain stopped practising the art of nation-building. 

I had the privilege when I was Chief Rabbi of knowing some fairly senior British politicians, and I said to one of them at a certain point that if you go into the Jewish cemetery where most of the eminent Victorian Jews are buried, you will look on the gravestones, and on the gravestones it will say, a proud Englishman and a proud Jew.

I said, ‘Today, more than a century later, I can tell you what it is to be a proud Jew. But I really can't tell you what it means to be a proud Englishman.’ 

So, I think in different ways, Europe and America lost their approach to nation-building, and the Middle East challenged to create nations that had never really existed before, also found themselves unable to fully rise to the challenge of nation-building, and the reason is because it's a really hard thing to do, to get lots of different people to say, we are all part of one group, and we owe responsibilities to all the members of this group.

Richard: Amin, would you like to come in there? I noticed you gesturing. 

Amin: I think making people live together is something very important and extremely difficult. Diversity can be a huge asset for a society, and it could be a huge liability, depending on the way we manage it.

If we manage diversity in the appropriate way, and we make out of all these different people a nation, give them the feeling that they belong to the same human group, and that their interest is part of the interest of that human group, if we succeed in doing it, it's a huge asset. It is a marvelous thing, like we can see in a number of countries. And when it doesn't work, and more and more often it doesn't work, whether with the local population or with the mixture of local and immigrant population, it is a drama, and I think we need a code of conduct. We need a code of conduct for people who live together to learn how to live together, what they should learn from the others, what they can bring themselves, what they should learn from the local culture, and what they are allowed to bring from their own culture. I think this is something extremely delicate, and we have to address it really in detail. Unfortunately, we never really do it, we consider that that's something that will take place with time, and it doesn't. I think we need to be a little voluntaristic in this matter. We need to build, yeah, we need to build the feeling of belonging to the same nation everywhere. 

Richard: Still sticking with that theme, Rabbi Sacks, you write, “Identity politics is a clear and present danger to liberal democracy. It fragments the body politic and balkanizes society,” and you point to the multicultural phenomenon as having led to segregation, not integration.

Amin, you described the Levant as a place where the ancient civilizations of the Middle East rubbed shoulders with the younger cultures of the West. I like that note. Can you relate that to Jonathan's anxiety about multiculturalism? Because in the Levant, there seemed to be a paradigm, a way in which that worked. But the identity politics of today are very divisive, they don't work. 

Amin: No, my dream is not of a society which would be a patchwork of ghettos. Everybody comes and lives as he wishes without paying any attention to the way the others live and what the others want.

We need to have people who relate to each other. Every person should feel a member of probably its own group. At the same time, be a member of a common nation. And what Rabbi Sacks said about the cemeteries is really very, very interesting. Because people wanted to say, well, we are part of a community. And at the same time, we are part of a nation. And being part of a nation is not contradictory with being part of a community. And people should learn. And sometimes we forget it, especially in the last decades.

People forget that if they have a kind of belonging to a group, that does not mean this belonging has to be exclusive. They can belong to a religious community and also belong to a nation. And in my case, I feel also that I belong to Europe as a continent, as a civilization, and to many other sources of culture.

I think every one of us should be a place where different elements of identity can meet harmoniously. And every one of us is the depository of this harmony and has to spread this harmony where he or she is. 

Richard: A philosophical difference, I detect, between you.

Rabbi Sacks: Yes. Once upon a time, what held societies together was religion. Obviously, at a certain point, really in the 17th century, people realized that that was much too restrictive because it means anyone not a member of the established religion is really and truly not a citizen, doesn't possess rights, and it's completely unnecessary to impose religious uniformity. So the question was, what will hold a society together in the absence of religion? And the answer they came up with in the 19th century, people like Matthew Arnold, said, what holds a country together is culture. 

And that was very nice, that without regard to religious commitments, we were part of the same culture, and this made us British or French or whatever.

When multiculturalism came along in the 1970s, essentially it said, forget it. We don't have a single overarching culture. We've got lots and lots of different cultures with no kind of priority between them.

That absolutely destroyed the basis of the modern nation-state, and the end result was disastrous. The first country that adopted multiculturalism was Holland. The first country to regret multiculturalism was Holland. When people asked Dutch men and women why they were against multiculturalism, they replied, because we are in favour of tolerance.

So they were asked, what's the difference between tolerance and multiculturalism? And they replied, tolerance means ignoring differences between different colours or different ethnicities or different religions. Just ignore them, treat everyone the same. 

Multiculturalism means making an issue of those differences at every stage.

So the Dutch found long before anyone else that multiculturalism led not to integration but to segregation, and created tension within a society that had been until then one of the most tolerant societies in the world. I mean, Holland was probably the first country really to pioneer tolerance. It's where Descartes and Locke had to escape to when it was no longer safe for them to live in France or in Britain.

So I'm afraid multiculturalism was done with the highest of motives, but with the worst possible results. And once that moved just from ethnicity and religion and began to include things like gender and sexual orientation, multiculturalism morphed into identity politics. 

Richard: And is there no virtue in it at all, Rabbi? I mean, you've hinted that it was done for the best of reasons. One of the reasons presumably was because in some ways the common culture excluded individual groups from feeling at home in it. I mean, is that also what you're saying? 

Rabbi Sacks: There is absolutely everything to be said for every group in Britain, or any other country for that matter - feeling recognized, appreciated, dignified. And the way I put it is this, that a society of integrated diversity is one in which each group is respected for the way it brings a unique gift to the common project of the nation.

And that then turns diversity into a win-win, we-all-gain scenario and takes away the lose-lose scenario of identity politics. 

Richard: And that sounds a bit more like your Levantine paradigm. 

Amin: And I can't agree more with Rabbi Sacks.

I think we are at the heart of one of the most difficult problems in today's world. I think diversity is a reality. We must organize it in a way in which, as you just said, every person and every group feels respected, feels its dignity preserved, and is invited to bring something to the nation in which the group lives.

So this integration is essential. The idea of having groups that live separately and only fight for their group's rights and their group identity, I think this is destructive. And so I think we totally agree on this.

I think we need to build a new relationship, a new relationship between the different groups in which every person feels duties towards the whole nation. And when you accept that you have duties, then you have the right to bring new elements that will modify, that will enrich the culture of that nation. Because the culture of that nation is not a blank slate. And it's not just a printed page. It's something that is being written. So we have to take part in writing it and not just consider that we are from somewhere else and we have the right to ignore what has been built in the country where we come from for centuries.

So that's why I think there should be a code of conduct. And we should not expect the code of conduct to be elaborated by individual immigrants. It has to be elaborated and discussed by the whole nation and probably implemented by public authorities who can implement it, who give guidelines and open it to discussion.

I think this is fundamental. I think in every government, there should be one person in charge of exactly elaborating that. 

Richard: Can I stick with you, Amin, because one of the most devastating sections of your book relates this phenomenon of stuff happening that isn't good or wasn't intended. It's the book, it's the section in the way history, historic decisions designed to bring brief tactical advantage, prompt a sequence of events that brought great historical tragedy. An example that you gave is the CIA's aid to the Mujahideen, which began during the 1980s. And that was designed to give the USSR its Vietnam War.

And you described this as “American leaders played God by nurturing the emergence of a complex, enigmatic, disconcerting phenomenon that it would later be unable to control.” That happens a lot in history. You think you're doing one thing, but you're doing something much more massive.

That was a devastating thing. And in a sense, that started the explosion in our culture, didn't it? Of course. At the same time, we cannot blame somebody for decisions that were taken in a certain situation.

It's obvious that at the end of the 70s, for the United States, the main danger was the Soviet Union. We cannot, 40 years later, tell them what, well, it was not so dangerous because the Soviet Union disappeared. This is how we see things today with hindsight.

But 40 years ago, they could not consider the Soviet peril as a secondary one, and they could not consider that these very small, unorganized, unarmed, or not very, very sophisticated groups would one day become a real threat. So the decision that was made 40 years ago to arm these groups was a reality. I wouldn't judge it.

But of course, seen from today, all the decisions that were taken at that time led to a disaster. 

Rabbi Sacks: I think, Amin, that is an understatement. Arming the Mujahideen was just the beginning of a series of catastrophes, including two catastrophic wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq, that were, again, decisions taken because the people taking those decisions did not take the trouble to understand the people who were not like them.

They thought all you've got to do is remove Saddam Hussein and institute some kind of election procedure, and you can create a liberal democracy out of what is a complex tribal society. And I've seen this time and time and time again with bad foreign policy decisions. It's not just - and you're absolutely right - that people are thinking short-term, not long-term. But they're also not thinking, do I understand? You remember what Robert McNamara said in the fog of war after all his own troubles? He said, rule #1 of foreign policy. First, understand your enemy. And I really think that's what happened with the Mujahideen.

Americans had no idea that this small group were utterly driven and could actually see the expulsion, the forced withdrawal of the Russian troops in, when was it?, February 89, I think it was. It was actually the beginning of something, not the end of something. So I think we really have to ask, we are asking, can we relate to people not like us? And that has foreign policy implications, not just domestic policy implications.

Richard: Amin, do you want to? 

Amin: Yes, I think I agree with part of what you said, and disagree slightly with another part. The part I agree on is that when you decide to go to war, like the United States did in Iraq, as Colin Powell said, ‘You break it, you own it.’ Which means when you take a decision that changed completely the situation in the country, you cannot just leave.

And it's true also of Afghanistan. You cannot be engaged at one point, and then you leave the people and say, we don't care anymore, we have already what we want, because the consequences are completely destructive. 

Where I don't completely agree, I think it is possible when you go in a country, even if the system is different, to work to change it really. My example is Japan. When the Americans went to Japan, there was a very complex, very difficult situation to change. And they decided they had to change it. And seen 70 years later, it was a success. I think even the Japanese, except for a very small nationalistic group, must admit that Japan, after the war, found its way with the economy and the new democratic system. Also with Germany, I think, of course, the situation was not completely the same, because Germany, there was a parenthesis of extreme nationalism, and the Germany of before was completely different. So it was not so difficult to rebuild something. But I'm sure that in Iraq, for example, people longed for a kind of democracy. And were it done in a subtle way and in a consistent way, and in the long term, something would have been built there.

But they were very short term, those who intervened there. They had no time to look into details and see what can be done. So they, for example, they instituted a confessional system, communitarian system like in Lebanon. It's already a disaster in Lebanon, and it made a disaster in Iraq. So something different should have been made, I think, could have been made in Iraq. 

Richard: Can I shift to another thing you both have in common in your books, the way you point to pivotal years in recent history. You each point to 1980, 1979-80. Rabbi Sacks, you talk about markets without morals, and you say “The underlying factor was the change in corporate culture prompted by financial deregulation in the 1980s by Thatcher and Reagan.” You say it was right for the time, but you notice that “Since 1980, the average pre-tax income of the top 10% of Americans has doubled, and it's not much better in Britain.”

You go on to say that, “The fault is not with the market itself, but with the idea that the market alone is all we need.” Please unpack that for us. And, Amin, you also write about the pivotal importance of that year. I'd like you to reflect on Rabbi Sacks' meditation on it, because it was one of those great swing years, wasn't it? Rabbi. 

Rabbi Sacks: The story I tell in the book was a remarkable individual. Lord... What was his name? … Britain... The head of GEC. I've forgotten his name for the moment. He was Britain's leading industrialist for 40 years. And just, you know, in the last six months of his life, he phoned me up... ..and said to me, Rabbi Sacks, I'd like to come round and talk to you, please. And he came round and he told me that... Lord Weinstock, yeah, Arnold Weinstock. He told me that he built up GEC. He was... really, it was the greatest industrial success story in Britain for those 40 years. And he told me how much he paid himself. It was a... It was a good sum, but not a big sum.

He held by the principle that a CEO should be paid not more than 20 times the amount paid by the lowest-paid worker. And that's what he kept to. He then told me that his successor paid himself 10 times as much and was destroying the company. And he did indeed destroy the company. 

And I suddenly realised that what made Arnold Weinstock a great businessman, one of the heroes of the 20th century, was that he had a very, very strong moral sense. You're in business not just to make profits, you're in business to provide employment, to generate wealth, to make sure that the people who work for you live well and are well looked after, as did, for instance, the people who founded Marks & Spencers.

They were absolute pioneers in how workers were treated and the kind of facilities they had and the medical facilities they had. And therefore, they combined markets and morals in the most powerful sense. And everyone who worked for them knew this. They knew that the people running those companies were running them for the sake of the workforce. The customers, the suppliers, and so on. And it seems to me that when all sorts of things were deregulated in the 1980s, all of that simply disappeared.

And so instead of 20:1, the ratio is about 320:1 as of the present. CEO pay has risen out of all proportion. And people have pursued very short-term, high profits, high acquisitions, without any regard for the long-term good of the company. A little bit of how Amin describes some kinds of foreign policy. And they're in it for themselves. They're not in it for the people that they employ.

So markets depend on morals. That's what Adam Smith understood when he wrote “Theory of Moral Sentiments” along with “The Wealth of Nations.” It's what many great economists have argued. And I think we've lost that connection between markets and morals. And without morals, we will create very inequitable systems of pay, wealth, and all the rest of it. 

Richard: Amin, do you want to reply quickly? I say quickly because I've noticed this has been so much fun, we've almost run out of time. We've got to go to the Q&A. You write very powerfully about that moment as well. Would you like to respond both to Rabbi Sacks and develop it a bit?

Amin:  In fact, I noticed while going through the years in which I was following what's happening in the world that there was a year, which I fixed as 1979, but it could be slightly before, slightly after, where a new atmosphere enveloped the world. One of the main elements was that the idea of revolution, which had been the appendage of progressives for a long time, was taken over by conservatives in many parts of the world.

In Britain, of course, you had Mrs. Thatcher's conservative revolution. In Iran, the same year, we had the Islamic revolution. Pope John Paul was, in a way, a conservative revolutionary. Deng Xiaoping, in a different way, but yet in the way he was opposed to the idea of revolution by Mao Zedong and the cultural revolution, he was also, in a way, a conservative revolutionary, but also a conservative. I think a new atmosphere was created. And to comment more precisely on what Rabbi Sacks said, I think that moment developed a kind of vision of the world, which in some way was very positive.

It helped develop parts of the world, including China. This idea of economic liberalism was very powerful. At the same time, I think it was misguided in some way because it didn't feel there was still an opposition. Many people felt that now capitalism can go the whole way. No preoccupation of equality or values can stop the development of a world dominated by efficiency and profitability. And I think we need now - maybe with the help of this pandemic - we need to have a more balanced vision.

Of course, we need economic efficiency. At the same time, we need to go back to values, of course, because we can build societies on nothing else than solid values, and we need them more than ever today. 

Richard: I'm trying to turn to questions, but I can't get this to work. Here we go. There's another laptop coming. Are they coming? Ah, here we are.

I'm sorry, this was so enthralling that we've run out of time. We've got about 10 minutes for these. David has asked, “What are our building blocks for a global society in which we live together with tolerance and mutual respect?” You've really both been on about that.

Rabbi Sacks, a few minutes on that, and then Amin. 

Rabbi Sacks: Number one, I think we've had this extraordinary experience for six months now, in which the whole world has been going through the same experiences. Governments across the world have been implementing more or less the same policies.

We have been exposed to the same risk, the same virus, the same pandemic, and when a lot of people go through a haunting and transformative experience like this, there is a sense of we've been through something together. We are somehow, hopefully, a little closer together, and I do hope political leaders and religious leaders can build on that feeling because it can dissipate if they don't. I also think that we've seen, strangely enough, the Edinburgh Festival come to Amin in France and me in Golders Green.

I feel a lot more connected than I ever did before. There's been a lot of global communication going on, and I think we can do that without wrecking the environment because our carbon footprint has certainly declined as we've been flying less, and so on. So I think, you know, I hope we will come through this pandemic feeling we are one humanity.

We are one, very vulnerable humanity, and we have to work closer together - especially in the case of crises like this - to recognize that a crisis for one is a crisis for all. 

Richard: I mean, let me jump immediately to the second question, which is fascinating, also from David. “In the political world, we need leaders to engender a more moral world. Instead, we seem to have male leaders who are driven by greed and the need to divide society in order to rule. Is there anyone who you see with the potential to help lead the change, and how can that change happen when the world is shackled to capitalism?” There's a punchy question for you, Amin. 

Amin: I think we've answered part of it in the last question. I was going to go back to the previous question, but maybe it's also partly relevant for this question. What strikes me from the beginning of this pandemic is that it had been a great equalizer. Usually, when you have a calamity - an earthquake, for example, you see some countries where the earthquake kills 10,000 people, and another country where the same type of earthquake, same magnitude, will kill 10 people.

And we are used to the idea that societies that are richer and more sophisticated can cope much better with catastrophes. What happened with this pandemic is the opposite. All societies are coping practically in the same way. They have the same proportion of death. We could even say that the most sophisticated societies - the United States or France, Italy, Spain… -  suffered more than countries which had less sophisticated structure, health structure. So I think this is a moment which helps us to reflect, as Rabbi Sacks said, about the unity of the global nation.

Because at the end, we have one huge country, which is our planet. We have no other planet. We have to live together, and the question is not whether we will be able to live together, but how we organize our common life.

And I think this moment of crisis, of global crisis, from which we all suffer, should be the beginning of a reflection, including a reflection on how the world should be governed? Who will govern it? What is the meaning of democracy? What would be the future of freedom? All this, maybe today, is a moment to begin this reflection. 

Richard: Rabbi, this is one for you.

It comes from Bronwyn. “To what extent do you think that the failure of the United Nations to include duties as well as rights in the Declaration of Human Rights may be implicated in the division of society into communities defined by identity and the extreme emphasis on the individual over community we are experiencing now?”

That's a stonker of a question. 

Rabbi Sacks: It's a stunningly good question, and I agree with it absolutely.

When you have a Universal Declaration of Human Rights and you do not have a corresponding ‘Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities,’ then you have created a dangerous but also meaningless system. Rights are cheques. They are drawing on somebody's bank account.

But if nobody is putting in the altruism, then you have nothing to draw on. So despite the extraordinary importance after the Second World War of that Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it means that we live in a world today where for millions and hundreds of millions of people, human rights are an idea and an ideal, but not a reality in any shape whatsoever. We need a Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities.

Various people have been working on that for a long time. But the time has come. We owe a responsibility to the planet to avoid planet change. We owe a responsibility to one another as human beings connected in this bond of collective fate and responsibility. 

Richard: I mean, here's one from PYKB. “That old English saying, the meanness of poverty, captures the unpalatable truth that those who are unfortunate financially, educationally, are often left competing in a social arena where personal survival physically, psychologically, leaves little space for kindheartedness. Is morality a luxury for those insulated from life's strife?” That's a big one. So morality is a luxury for the well-off, essentially. 

Amin: I think moral values are supposed to be a protection, especially for the weak persons in our society. So I think, and I go back slightly to the question before, I think it's very important for every society, and also on the global level, to have not two declarations, but one declaration, which includes duties and rights, which both of them define what is responsibility in our times. 

Richard: I'm afraid, everyone out there, that we've come to the end of this enthralling hour. And I apologize for any ineptitude on my part.

It's kind of awkward doing it this way, having a fascinating conversation with a couple of wise men who are hundreds of miles away, and there's a lot of equipment in between. But I hope it's meant as much to you as it has to me. And I hope that you will... You can get their books in our online bookshop, I'm told. I don't know how it works, but you can get them. “Morality, Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times” by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, a powerful prophetic challenge. “Adrift” by Amin Maalouf, another not only despairing lamentation, but a call actually, to do something about it.

The world's in a mess. We're the only people who can maybe sort it. So buy these books and you'll get some clues.

And thank you to both our speakers, Amin Maalouf and Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, for giving us an enthralling hour. And I apologize for the glitches that are entirely my responsibility. Go well, both of you.

Amin: Thank you

Rabbi Sacks: Thank you.