distinction

Human cognition is characterized by the ability to distinguish one thing from another. It is built in to the deepest recesses of our evolutionary past. Predator or prey? Will this plant nourish me or kill me? Is he my friend or my enemy?

As our consciousness gradually evolved to grasp ever more abstract and useful notions - self, good, future - our ability to distinguish these things from their opposites - other, evil, present - evolved in tandem. Eventually, the meta-cognitive processes emerged, which led to the development of symbolic religion, culture, metaphysics, cosmology, and performance of ritual. At some point, we realized that what we were doing was unique among our animal peers. Many languages still retain, for example, distinct grammatical forms to describe human and non-human affairs, or to differentiate between in-group and out-group.

Some time around twenty-five hundred years ago, independently across various civilizations, the very notion of making distinctions was identified as the cause for so much violence and strife. New teachings emerged preaching various forms of universalist doctrine. Anyone who did not accept the new teachings, who carried on with the old ways, became ostracized. "If everyone would just agree with us," the thinking went, "we could bring about world peace!"

The hypocrisy was not lost on the dissenters.

Distinction is at the center of the Jewish tradition: between sacred and profane, between the week and the Sabbath, between the people of Israel and the nations. From its inception and throughout its development, Judaism rejected universalist utopianism as a child's fantasy. Our sages understood that to eliminate distinction was to bring about the end of history, and the end of humanity along with it.

If the twentieth century taught us anything, it ought to be that the sages were right.