In terms of history, the events in Middle East, of ISIS and all of that, is just a speed bump on history’s highway. The Middle East is not very important. Silicon Valley is much more important. It’s the world of the 21st century … I’m not speaking only about technology.
In terms of ideas, in terms of religions, the most interesting place today in the world is Silicon Valley, not the Middle East. This is where people like Ray Kurzweil, are creating new religions. These are the religions that will take over the world, not the ones coming out of Syria and Iraq and Nigeria.
The film Prometheus, for example, intrigued me by showing a single woman, an archaeologist character named Elizabeth Shaw (played by the Swedish actress Noomi Rapace), who wears a cross and professes her christian faith at a time when christianity has gone into decline, so that christian believers have become relatively uncommon. Yet she sleeps with a man on the space ship, showing that she practices a liberal morality by traditional christian standards. Does this show where “christianity” could go during its long twilight in the “Jesus who?” age?
BTW, I like tweaking unsophisticated christians who believe in this “end times” nonsense by saying, hey, I believe in the rapture, too: I can see that christians have already started to disappear.
Yet she sleeps with a man on the space ship, showing that she practices a liberal morality by traditional christian standards.
About that...
The usage of making a trysting-place of the church by young men and young women was so universal that only moralists were scandalized by it. The virtuous Christine de Pisan makes a lover say in all simplicity: “Se souvent vais ou moustier, / C’est tout pour veoir la belle / Fresche comme rose nouvelle.”
The Church suffered more serious profanation than the little love services of a young man who offered his fair one the “pax,” or knelt by her side. According to the preacher Menot, prostitutes had the effrontery to come there in search of customers. Gerson tells that even in the churches and on festival days obscene pictures were sold tanquam idola Belphegor, which corrupted the young, while sermons were ineffective to remedy this evil.
As to pilgrimages, moralists and satirists are of one mind; people often go “pour folle plaisance.” The Chevalier de la Tour Landry naïvely classes them with profane pleasures, and he entitles one o fhis chapters, “of those who are fond of going to jousts and on pilgrimages.”
On festal days, exclaims Nicolas de Clemanges, people go to visit distant churches, not so much to redeem a pledge of pilgrimage as to give themselves up to pleasure. Pilgrimages are the occasions of all kinds of debauchery; procuresses are always found there, people come for amorous purposes. It is a common incident in the Quinze Joyes de Mariage; the young wife, who wants a change, makes her husband believe that the baby is ill, because she has not yet accomplished her vow of pilgrimage, made during her confinement. The marriage of Charles VI with Isabella of Bavaria was preceded by a pilgrimage. It is far from surprising that the serious followers of the devotio moderna called the utility of pilgrimages in question. Those who often go on pilgrimages, says Thomas à Kempis, rarely become saints. One of his friends, Frederick of Heilo, wrote a special treatise, Contra peregrinantes.
If there are any significant brain changes, all the bets are off. The easiest brain change would be accepting psychedelics as part of religious practice. That wouldn’t even take new technology.
However, it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s going to be intelligence increase technology and more sophisticated methods of emotional modification. I assume the desire for religion has something to do with brain chemistry/structure, and brain tech probably isn’t going to be tested for how it affects religiosity.
Karen Armstrong has a theory that new religions arise (sometimes?) when a culture’s methods of doing things are clearly not working. We could be heading into a period of institutional breakdown. If that leads to one or more major new religions, the details are assuredly not predictable.
I am reading Karen Armstrong’s The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions now; it is really quite interesting. Armstrong is one of the best writers on religion that I have encountered.
Predicting the future is tricky business. No one’s going to disprove the existence of God anytime soon, and besides religion has close ties to culture. Uncertain times have often led people to seek refuge in the old traditions. On the other hand, many of the social pressures to attend the local church have faded now that people can readily find like-minded individuals online and form their own communities.
We see religion becoming more popular in some places and less popular in others. Christianity is on the rise in China, for example. Many faithful are incorporating changing social mores into their belief, while many of the secular dabble in Eastern mysticism.
Then again, global nuclear war could render the question moot.
Then again, global nuclear war could render the question moot.
I doubt that global nuclear war would wipe out the human race. So far as religion is concerned, I expect that there will mostly be religions derived from religions that exist now.
On the other hand, unless there is some really amazing improvement in education (one that would make people not only better remember the teachers’ passwords, but also understand physics and rationality on the gut level), I could imagine the religion in 300 years to be pretty much the same as it is today.
If people can imagine Santa Claus and microwave oven existing in the same universe, they can also imagine Santa Claus and quantum teleporter existing in the same universe.
The religious mainline cultural institutions are simply too wealthy to disappear in 300 years, especially if they don’t pay taxes. I would assume that they will simply adapt with the times as they always have. I could see world where people consider Islam or Catholicism like we see the Amish today, as outsiders.
Some people basically accept the modern world at least as far as technology goes, keep their religious beliefs, but modify the, how to put, aesthethics of it to fit the modern world (but values, politics often not, creating strange mixes) and basically you get the kind of American Protestant churches that have TV screens with preaching recordings going in it or Chick comics for some to me strange reason nobody says “But wait, we are conservatives, we are not supposed to like all these modern things like screens and comics, we should try to keep things old!” This is a strange mix, because it is aesthethically and technologically modern yet the content of beliefs and values/politics can be unmodern and it can come accross as a shock. I cannot predict what will happen with them because this is a mindset very different to me, I always keep my aesthethics and conent in synch. If I want to preach liberalism, I won’t wear a medieval robe. Conversely, I cannot imagine preaching 19th century sexual mores without wearing 19th century clothing and so on. I simply cannot predict how minds like this function.
Some other people are more like, conservative is conservative. This is more amongst aging European Catholic populations: they try to reject the modern world in a more coherent way, they watch little TV, they go to really old looking churches, they read old poetry, watch operas, go to stage plays not cinemas, wear bow ties, really try to keep things old and shut out modernity. They are not Amish, so they will use technology at work, but kinda need to be dragged into it. These people are at least understandable to me, their worldview is coherent. I used to think this will become extinct, as modernity offers so many advantages. However it seems people don’t use those well. People have a smartphone in their pocket they could use to learn things from Wikipedia yet they use it to like jokes on Facebook while they ride the subway. The old-fashioned religious conservative who decides to rather read a book of old poetry on the subway is not actually worse off. As long as they use tech at work or OK with being healed modern ways, they are not much worse of practically and this could survive, as a subculture, pose, atittude, the Retro People. And it is a fitting match with religiosity.
This is a strange mix, because it is aesthethically and technologically modern yet the content of beliefs and values/politics can be unmodern and it can come accross as a shock.
You seem to be assuming that beliefs, values, and politics progress in the same way that technology does, that saying e.g. “Renaissance values” implies a step forward from e.g. “medieval values” in the absence of some catastrophe. Conservatives of this type don’t believe that. That’s why they’re conservative.
Not everybody believes in technological progress also being a step forward, towards something better either. Luddite atittudes exist and not every elderly grandma is approving of young people being on their smartphones all the time. (Interestingly, the great historian Johan Huizinga wrote in The Twilight of The Middle Ages precisely about this: that, apparently, back then there was not much enthusiasm but more of a mood of a things breaking down.)
At any rate, my point is something a bit different. It is closer to fashion than progress. Current technology is fashionable. As an attire. Just like fashionable clothes. It is holding up a sing “I love that it is 2015!”. While the idea of religious conservatism should be more like “I want it to be 1900!” and this is why I don’t understand how can it wear technology as an attire or accept any other current fashions, like, what I have recently heard about, the “beat mass”, doing Catholic Mass as beat music, early rock, like The Beatles. How does this work in people’s minds to combine two things from two very different dates. Why don’t they hate everything modern.
A fashion model is IMO more reasonable, and closer to what I believe, but I don’t see any particular reason for ethical fashions to track closely with aesthetic ones, or for retro taste in one to necessarily align with retro taste in the other.
I’m rather fond of Migration Period knotwork designs, for example, but I’m not about to raid my neighbors for cattle.
But that knotwork is just decoration, icing on the cake.
Aesthethics, for me, is a much more deeper concept—everything you viscerally like, as a terminal value, everything that presses your ’Aww yiss!” buttons.
What will “religion” look like in the next 100-300 years?
This comes up in the new Edge discussion between Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman;
http://edge.org/conversation/yuval_noah_harari-daniel_kahneman-death-is-optional
The film Prometheus, for example, intrigued me by showing a single woman, an archaeologist character named Elizabeth Shaw (played by the Swedish actress Noomi Rapace), who wears a cross and professes her christian faith at a time when christianity has gone into decline, so that christian believers have become relatively uncommon. Yet she sleeps with a man on the space ship, showing that she practices a liberal morality by traditional christian standards. Does this show where “christianity” could go during its long twilight in the “Jesus who?” age?
BTW, I like tweaking unsophisticated christians who believe in this “end times” nonsense by saying, hey, I believe in the rapture, too: I can see that christians have already started to disappear.
About that...
-- J. Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages
If there are any significant brain changes, all the bets are off. The easiest brain change would be accepting psychedelics as part of religious practice. That wouldn’t even take new technology.
However, it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s going to be intelligence increase technology and more sophisticated methods of emotional modification. I assume the desire for religion has something to do with brain chemistry/structure, and brain tech probably isn’t going to be tested for how it affects religiosity.
Karen Armstrong has a theory that new religions arise (sometimes?) when a culture’s methods of doing things are clearly not working. We could be heading into a period of institutional breakdown. If that leads to one or more major new religions, the details are assuredly not predictable.
I am reading Karen Armstrong’s The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions now; it is really quite interesting. Armstrong is one of the best writers on religion that I have encountered.
Predicting the future is tricky business. No one’s going to disprove the existence of God anytime soon, and besides religion has close ties to culture. Uncertain times have often led people to seek refuge in the old traditions. On the other hand, many of the social pressures to attend the local church have faded now that people can readily find like-minded individuals online and form their own communities.
We see religion becoming more popular in some places and less popular in others. Christianity is on the rise in China, for example. Many faithful are incorporating changing social mores into their belief, while many of the secular dabble in Eastern mysticism.
Then again, global nuclear war could render the question moot.
I doubt that global nuclear war would wipe out the human race. So far as religion is concerned, I expect that there will mostly be religions derived from religions that exist now.
I’m fairly sure that this is already fairly common among today’s Christians. Far from universal, but far from unknown.
Needlessly rude, I think.
The options seem to be:
less education,
more complex rationalization, or
more compartmentalization.
On the other hand, unless there is some really amazing improvement in education (one that would make people not only better remember the teachers’ passwords, but also understand physics and rationality on the gut level), I could imagine the religion in 300 years to be pretty much the same as it is today.
If people can imagine Santa Claus and microwave oven existing in the same universe, they can also imagine Santa Claus and quantum teleporter existing in the same universe.
The religious mainline cultural institutions are simply too wealthy to disappear in 300 years, especially if they don’t pay taxes. I would assume that they will simply adapt with the times as they always have. I could see world where people consider Islam or Catholicism like we see the Amish today, as outsiders.
Today I see two general and opposite strategies.
Some people basically accept the modern world at least as far as technology goes, keep their religious beliefs, but modify the, how to put, aesthethics of it to fit the modern world (but values, politics often not, creating strange mixes) and basically you get the kind of American Protestant churches that have TV screens with preaching recordings going in it or Chick comics for some to me strange reason nobody says “But wait, we are conservatives, we are not supposed to like all these modern things like screens and comics, we should try to keep things old!” This is a strange mix, because it is aesthethically and technologically modern yet the content of beliefs and values/politics can be unmodern and it can come accross as a shock. I cannot predict what will happen with them because this is a mindset very different to me, I always keep my aesthethics and conent in synch. If I want to preach liberalism, I won’t wear a medieval robe. Conversely, I cannot imagine preaching 19th century sexual mores without wearing 19th century clothing and so on. I simply cannot predict how minds like this function.
Some other people are more like, conservative is conservative. This is more amongst aging European Catholic populations: they try to reject the modern world in a more coherent way, they watch little TV, they go to really old looking churches, they read old poetry, watch operas, go to stage plays not cinemas, wear bow ties, really try to keep things old and shut out modernity. They are not Amish, so they will use technology at work, but kinda need to be dragged into it. These people are at least understandable to me, their worldview is coherent. I used to think this will become extinct, as modernity offers so many advantages. However it seems people don’t use those well. People have a smartphone in their pocket they could use to learn things from Wikipedia yet they use it to like jokes on Facebook while they ride the subway. The old-fashioned religious conservative who decides to rather read a book of old poetry on the subway is not actually worse off. As long as they use tech at work or OK with being healed modern ways, they are not much worse of practically and this could survive, as a subculture, pose, atittude, the Retro People. And it is a fitting match with religiosity.
You seem to be assuming that beliefs, values, and politics progress in the same way that technology does, that saying e.g. “Renaissance values” implies a step forward from e.g. “medieval values” in the absence of some catastrophe. Conservatives of this type don’t believe that. That’s why they’re conservative.
Not everybody believes in technological progress also being a step forward, towards something better either. Luddite atittudes exist and not every elderly grandma is approving of young people being on their smartphones all the time. (Interestingly, the great historian Johan Huizinga wrote in The Twilight of The Middle Ages precisely about this: that, apparently, back then there was not much enthusiasm but more of a mood of a things breaking down.)
At any rate, my point is something a bit different. It is closer to fashion than progress. Current technology is fashionable. As an attire. Just like fashionable clothes. It is holding up a sing “I love that it is 2015!”. While the idea of religious conservatism should be more like “I want it to be 1900!” and this is why I don’t understand how can it wear technology as an attire or accept any other current fashions, like, what I have recently heard about, the “beat mass”, doing Catholic Mass as beat music, early rock, like The Beatles. How does this work in people’s minds to combine two things from two very different dates. Why don’t they hate everything modern.
A fashion model is IMO more reasonable, and closer to what I believe, but I don’t see any particular reason for ethical fashions to track closely with aesthetic ones, or for retro taste in one to necessarily align with retro taste in the other.
I’m rather fond of Migration Period knotwork designs, for example, but I’m not about to raid my neighbors for cattle.
But that knotwork is just decoration, icing on the cake.
Aesthethics, for me, is a much more deeper concept—everything you viscerally like, as a terminal value, everything that presses your ’Aww yiss!” buttons.
Do you find the aesthethics of a Migration Period warrior also appealing? Helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ift85e38H3M