Lessons on improving global working conditions can be learned from the Emancipation of the Russian serfs on this day in 1861. Tsar Alexander II’s Imperial Proclamation abolished the right of landlords to restrict the movement of their tenants, or serfs, putting an end to a system which had dominated Russian society since 1649. More than 23 million former serfs could now own property, sue in courts and vote in local elections. In reality, however, prospects for the newly emancipated remained grim.

Using money lent by the landlords themselves, they were forced to buy tiny plots of land from landowners at inflated prices, with debts often being passed down from generation to generation. Such amendments benefi tted the ruling classes whom the tsar had tasked with organising the reform.

Ultimately, emancipation, along with other attempts at modernising Russia, would prove insufficient for solving the problems of Russian society, instead contributing to the disquiet which would lead to the revolutions of the twentieth century. It might be a wise move to draw parallels between those 23 million serfs and the 27-30 million people feared by the United Nations to be slaves today.

14 million slaves are thought to live in India alone – more than one per cent of its population. As we work to emancipate modern slaves, therefore, and put an end to the de facto slavery of sweat shop workers, we must be careful to ensure that our solutions do not further compromise the world’s most vulnerable. Unlike Tsar Alexander, we must not leave reform to their enslavers.

When a political persona is formed and a new kind of politician is introduced to a country’s democratic spectrum, one ought to be ill at ease with the possibility of it becoming or being indicative of a trend, especially if the character (caricature?) in question is someone like Berlusconi. When, on Bloomsday 2015, Donald J. Trump announced his candidacy from the New York building which bears his name, the obnoxiousness of his balderdash speech was enough to alert the world press of his striking resemblance with the Italian media magnate.

 From Rula Jebreal’s, former MSNBC commentator, to that of Italy’s own Beppe Severgnini, author of multiple biographies on Italy’s longest-serving PM, numerous articles of political analysis have been composed, drawing parallels between the two personalities. Now, ten months away from the re-assignment of the world’s most important political post, Trump’s refusal to participate in the Republican debate, mirroring Berlusconi’s long (and successful) record of avoiding public confrontation, draws the two tycoons closer still.  

The resemblance of the two is overwhelming: their similarity is so clear-cut that we need not resort to the contrived comparisons that are often seen in such cases. But if their similarly clementine-tinged public complexion and antics – extreme and unjustified political incorrectness, vague promises of prosperity and security, personal attacks on political opponents – have a large degree of convergence, it is nothing compared to what happens in their private life. The similarities are so evident and numerous that listing them would be as boring as it would be dispiriting. It is enough to mention, lest we become too moralising, their shady business history, their evanescent marriage contracts and their rather addictive habit of frolicking around with their hair, among other things.

With Trump’s rise in US politics, it is easy to believe that history is repeating itself, but as a tragedy rather than a farce, or even that Berlusconi and Trump are setting a precedent for the rise of a new kind of politics and political leader. In fact, it is exactly this common theme that unites the previously mentioned stream articles spawned by Trump’s presidential race: what can recent Italian history teach the US, or the world more broadly? Very little, fortunately. Trump’s unexpected ascent has its roots in the anti-establishment sentiment of Republicans and, after years of Fox News’ fear mongering, traditional run-of-the-mill xenophobia. Conversely, Berlusconi’s electorate was not rooted in the Italian far right, nor was his success brought about by Italian disillusionment with its political class. Following a corruption scandal that virtually wiped out all Italian political parties except in the far left, Berlusconi occupied and exploited the political vacuum created, attracting votes in the millions, for there genuinely ‘was no alternative’, to adapt Thatcher’s famous slogan. The difference between the two cases is as subtle as it is important, for an alienating party system serves democracy better than a non-existing one in preventing the rise of demagogues. Italians really lacked an alternative, while Americans fortunately don’t.

Herein lies the main difference between the two businessmen, which will surely reflect on the results come election day. Trump’s victories in the primaries set him in good stead, but on the other side there is a solid Democrat opposition, recently strengthened by the change in voter demographics and Trump’s very own polarising effect. In short, Trump cannot win, and this isn’t merely wishful thinking. American citizens will be glad to not experience twenty years of buffoonish government, with its inevitable economic decline and national humiliation.

Western democracies are not experiencing the rise of a new kind of politics, and the private and political resemblance of the Berlusconi-Trump duo does not indicate the future rise of anti-political businessmen or, as the humble Italian once defined himself, men of ‘Providence’ to power, but is rather a freak coincidence, which shares no common origin or future.

The WHO has recently declared a global public health emergency as Zika continues to spread worldwide, the outbreak which started in Brazil now affecting more than twenty other countries and possibly 1.5 million people. Although Zika is not usually fatal or even harmful in most cases, with only one-in-five experiencing any symptoms at all, ranging from headaches or mild fevers to rashes or joint pain, the virus is thought to be linked to both microcephaly and Gullain-Barr syndrome. Brazil itself faces a pandemic due to the outbreak of the virus which is thought to have caused the 4,700 cases of microcephaly reported there since October, a staggering number compared to the mere 150 cases reported in the previous year.

Microcephaly causes babies to be born with below-average head size and brains which don’t grow at the normal rate, a condition which already affects 25,000 children in the US. The condition can be fatal and causes delayed development and intellectual disabilities. It is known to be caused by infections such as Rubella, substance abuse during pregnancy or genetic abnormalities (the Guardian) – but the massive increase in Brazil and other South American countries has been attributed to Zika. Much discussion has been generated over the questions still concerning this huge surge in the number of cases of microcephaly and the difficulties of stopping the spread of Zika, the threat the virus poses to the 2016 Olympic Games and even the fact that President Obama plans to visit both Cuba and Peru this year, two countries in which Zika will be endemic in a few months according to scientists. Colombia, which has not yet seen an increase in cases of microcephaly but has experienced the outbreak of Zika is also a focus of concern, for the disparity between the impact of Zika there and in Brazil as well as for the many pregnant women who are being encouraged to have abortions in case their babies are born with microcephaly. All these issues are hugely important and must be understood, in order to comprehend the enormous impact Zika can have on a country and possible solutions to these problems.

But there is another issue we should be looking at – how to support parents and their children who are affected by the Zika virus worldwide. These parents need information about microcephaly and how it could affect their children as well as the options open to them. Ana Carolina Careces, a journalist who has microcephaly herself, has written about the importance of putting prejudice aside, ignoring the scaremongering tactics of people such as the Brazilian minister of health who has warned of a ‘damaged generation’ and realizing that ‘microcephaly is an ugly name but it is not an evil monster’. Microcephaly of course does not mean an easy life, and Careces herself calls herself one of the ‘lucky ones’. But it is a disability like any other and the children who are affected with it should not have to grow up in a world that sees them as irretrievably damaged, even as the world continues to try and fight the Zika virus to stop more cases of microcephaly.  Scientists have developed a testing kit to quickly identify carriers of the Zika virus, while money – Obama planning to pledge $1.8 billion to fight Zika – is being fuelled into finding a vaccine. Another potential solution is the genetically modified mosquito developed by scientists that could reduce the mosquito population by 99%.

Zika originated in 1947 in Uganda, “the world capital of viruses” and is spread by the mosquito Aedes Africanus and the Aedes Aegypti, the latter responsible for the transmission of Zika in Brazil. Scientists warn that the encroachment of humans into forests may disrupt the normal behaviour of mosquitoes, resulting in increased transmission of disease. Uganda itself has not seen any cases of microcephaly so far, but it has been questioned whether we would see the same worldwide response to an outbreak there, in a country which itself “mostly shrugged” at the outbreak (Mukwaya); malaria is currently epidemic in the north of the country and 1.5 million Ugandans have HIV, thousands suffering from Hepatitis B, Ebola or Marburg.

It is now just as important to work towards helping those affected by Zika as by Ebola as it will become just as widespread, according to WHO, a statement that reveals the enormity of the problem and the extent of the danger posed to families worldwide. 

It has lately been suggested, by an author who I both know as a friend and deeply respect for his lucid and powerful insight, that the decline of religion is an opportunity for the flourishing of a scientific worldview, which was so presented as to be our noblest alternative to despair. I would hardly do my friend the gross disservice of thinking that he actually believed in the contents of his article, but nevertheless I feel it is in need of some critical emendation. To Nietzsche’s madman exclaiming the death of God, he proposes, simply, that it is no matter, for science can do all that religion does, and all the better, too. There are, I think, some more elementary and fundamental errors latent in the piece, such as an implicit adherence to the conflict theses between religion and science, and an optimistic, almost dialectical view of progressive secularisation. It is not my purpose here to catalogue points of disagreement between myself and my friend, but to provide a critical alternative to his suggestion.

As a person with no religious affiliation or belief myself, I am writing this not to provide an artillery of apologetics; as a Theology student I’ve simply found it impossible to have as naively dismissive a view of religion as my friend. Though it is not my intention to harangue Materials Science students for their ignorance in other disciplines, it would be to the great benefit of my friend and anyone interested in the subject-matter to appeal first to experts in the field, so as to refine any spontaneous opinions which have not yet been sharpened by the “tooth of disputation”. It is an unfortunate and incongruous situation in which people feel free to opine, quite strongly, in matters pertaining to religion without any education in the field—where, quite sensibly, should I write a loud and passionate piece on chemistry (about which I know nothing) I would be rightly chastised for even undertaking such an enterprise in the first place on account of my untutored mind. This is not, of course, to say that I am at all qualified to arbitrate on the subject, for if my education has taught me anything so far it lies in the discovery of a vacuum of personal ignorance which only ever widens.

He presents a strikingly unoriginal analysis of religion, and I think his (likely unwitting) patching-together of Feuerbach, Freud, and Nietzsche is shamefully spoiled by its admixture with a positivistic scientism to fill all the gaps. Religion is psychologised away as being an emotional crutch, a myopic, self-gratifying worldview, which is the product of an ignorant and pre-scientific reflection on the world and our place in it. Religion is made out to be an infantilised project which accordingly belongs in the infancy of human history; to continue to cling to it is symptomatic of our inability as a culture to ‘grow up’, as it were, into scientific maturity. On this account, religion presents us with a shrunken worldview, a “small aperture” through which we see “a poorer, smaller and less diverse universe than we actually inhabit”. This, of course, is only true if we take the highly reductive and, at points, flagrantly false (to the point of theological illiteracy) understanding of religion which he provides. Christianity, for instance, is described as having a lower-case ‘g’ ‘god’ who is some projected celestial father invoked both as an explanation for things before we had science and as some fictitious comforter for our grief and despair. Religion is, quite the contrary, a defiance against being shrunken down— the act of faith is a rebellion against the suggestion that what we see is all that there is, that we are merely apes with delusions of grandeur, and so on. Christianity, for example, is not the comfortable, pocket-size belief system he presents, but the daring claim that God himself died out of love for each and every one of us; that a bloodied, muddied man on the cross is the supreme instance of perfection. Those who does not shudder at this are insensible, and those who does not treat it seriously, but reduce it and wave it away, do themselves a great disservice.

He seems to treat of religion as no more than a set of propositions, a list of prescribed beliefs, which (at least ideally) ought to affect behaviour in proportion to the strength of their adherence. Since religion is in error, then, it is good that its untruth be replaced, as it were, with the clarity and rigour of scientific truth. However, to even suggest that religion can be adequately replaced by science is to say that there is at least some domain of human knowledge, the human experience, and some human impulse, which religion (attempts to) satisfy, and which science can as well. Questions about purpose, meaning, beauty, goodness, and so on, are, by their very nature, those which fall completely outside a scientific purview. Science is our best method of finding out what is – what the world is, how it works, and so on –but it cannot hope to furnish any evaluative conclusions about what is. If we knew all the scientific facts in the world, every single detail of every minute part of the universe, this would in no way give us an answer to what makes life meaningful, or what beauty or goodness is.

It is an unfortunate accident that scientific hubris has generated the popularisation of the very peculiar view – which has next to no support among ethicists – that science can by itself account for morality. As any first-year PPEist could tell my friend, it is famously difficult to derive an ought, that is, a moral obligation, from an is, or what is the case. The assessment of the development of morality or (question-beggingly ‘moral behaviour’), though a fascinating and fruitful enterprise, in no way provides for any actual conclusions about what is good, right, and so on. If we grant that it can be observed that altruistic behaviour, for instance, is evolutionarily advantageous, this in no way entails that altruistic behaviour is good or right – merely that it is evolutionarily advantageous. To say that it does do this is to equate the ethical notion of goodness to being evolutionarily advantageous, which is no longer a scientific claim, but an ethical, philosophical proposition expressing the relation between evaluative concepts and descriptive ones. Dawkins’ case for morality already presupposes the truth of some non-scientific, brute assertion of ethical fact that “It is good for agents to act in the ways prescribed by memetic evolution” or something of the sort. It is not my intention to lecture on meta-ethics, but the tremendous issues my friend’s suggestion is plagued with should serve to introduce some hesitancy into its adoption.

My friend is wholly correct in saying that religion is no prerequisite for wonder and the experience and recognition of the beautiful, but I must admit the arousal of some bile in my throat when I read that we can “endeavour to see the true beauty and mystery of our lives through the clear lens of science.” How it is, exactly, that science can direct us towards the beautiful or generate the mystical is a question that he thankfully leaves unanswered, for to venture an attempt here would be to swiftly meet a dead end. It goes without saying that the object of scientific inquiry – the natural world – is beautiful, from the composition of basic units of matter to the most expansive galaxies. That this is the case is evident to anyone with eyes to see; but why it is the case, or how we respond to the beautiful, are questions which science completely fails to answer. We cannot pathologise aesthetic sentiment, and we cannot make cut-and-dry formulae for the production and detection of the beautiful. Our sense of the transcendent when beholding the beautiful is something which does, and quite reasonably should, provoke a religious impulse, one which, as it were, wishes to peer behind the curtain of the world to there find its meaning.

As to those questions which concern why we are here, and what our purpose is, science finds itself likewise incapacitated. It can, with ever-increasing detail and accuracy, tell us how it is that our existence came to be, and what the conditions for our existence are, what our biological drives are, and so on. This is, for the larger existential questions, entirely irrelevant, and I would wager even positively unhelpful. To the person plagued with a sense of purposelessness, despairing of existence, reminding them that they evolved a certain way and that they are equipped with a libidinal economy geared towards reproduction and self-preservation does literally nothing by means of actually remedying their cares. They want to know what the good life is, or, what makes life good, and how they can achieve it. Religious systems give robust and suasive answers which has brought so much vitality to humanity that to simply pretend we could do fine with science alone belies a tremendously stunted capacity for introspection.

In the end, I must and will firmly maintain that religion is perennial, and only religion, or something like it, can replace religion. A Weltanschauung which equips us with a table of values and an account of meaningfulness and purpose is indispensable, and whether we choose to fill this need with Islam, Catholicism, dialectical materialism, Camusian absurdism, or something else belongs wholly to us – but choose we must. And, unfortunately, science is not on the menu.