Member-only story
The Eden Myth And How Demagogues, Hucksters And Con Artists Use It To Deceive Us
The story of the Garden of Eden is one of the oldest in recorded history, belonging not only to the world’s three major Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but also having roots in Greek and Sumerian mythology. It’s the ultimate origin archetype: We were once pure, innocent and good, but then were corrupted in some way and cast out.
As Timothy Snyder points out in his excellent course on The Making of Modern Ukraine, this template of innocence, corruption and expulsion often leads us to a bad place, because it implies that anything we do to remove that corrupting influence would be good and just. When you’re fighting a holy war, the ends justify the means.
The Eden myth is a favorite of demagogues, hucksters and con artists because it is so powerful. We’re constantly inundated with scapegoats — the government, big business, tech giants, the “billionaire” class, immigrants, “woke” society — to blame for our fall from grace. We need to learn to recognize the telltale signs that someone is trying to manipulate us.
The Assertion Of Victimhood
In 1987, a rather drab and dull Yugoslavian apparatchik named Slobodan Milošević was visiting Kosovo field, the site of the Serbs humiliating defeat at the hands of the Ottoman empire in 1389. While meeting with local leaders, he heard a commotion outside and found police beating back a huge crowd of Serbs and Montenegrins.
“No one should dare to beat you again!” Milošević is reported to have said and, in that moment, that drab apparatchik was transformed into a political juggernaut who left death and destruction in his path. For the first time since World War II, a genocide was perpetrated in Europe and the term ethnic cleansing entered the lexicon.
In Snyder’s book, Bloodlands, which chronicled the twin horrors of Hitler and Stalin, he points out that if we are to understand how humans can do such atrocious things to other humans, we first need to understand that they saw themselves as the true victims. When people believe that their survival is at stake, there is very little they won’t assent to.
