What are the most important texts ever written?
The best reading list algorithm ever involves some very simple math.
World population: roughly 7-8 bn with 7 traditions with at least a billion each:
- Christians: 2 bn
- Muslims: 1.0 bn
- Chinese: 1.3 bn
- Hindus: 1.0 bn
- Communists: 1 bn
- Secular Non-Communists: 1 bn
If for members of each tradition there is one book that is overwhelmingly more important than any other, well there are the 7 most important texts ever written.
One measure of the tragedy of the American educational system is that few university faculty members at leading institutions have read all seven.
Many if not most can not even name all seven.
What are the seven texts?
- The Bible
- The Koran
- The Analects
- The Bhagavad Gita
- The Communist Manifesto
- The US Constitution and Declaration of Independence (the basis for hundreds of constitutions from around the world)
Students are forced to read hundreds of books by the time they graduate from college. But rarely if ever are all of these 7 texts numbered among them.
This is an anomaly that needs fixing.
Discussions of these books should focus on the handful of passages in each that matter the most to members of each tradition.
Which passages are these? The ones that are learned by heart and recited on a regular basis.
Examples: from the Bible – the “Our Father,” from the Koran, “Al Fatihah.” from the Communist Manifesto “Bourgeois and Proletarians,” and “Proletarians and Communists,” from the Constitution: The “Preamble” and the “Bill of Rights.