ideology: what ideas will carry future political influence

The challenge facing the world’s population today is about ideology. It’s about what ideas will carry future political influence with the people.

Histories show that the ‘pagan’ Gods of earlier known cultures were, in many cases, replaced in the last few thousand years with the monotheist [single entity] God who ‘informed’ man through a divine personage; and that the ideas from these monotheist movements were spread by the printed word and their success correlates directly with human advances in papers and ink.

The propagation of monotheist religion could not have happened without parallel advances in printed language simply because the whole text carved in either wood or stone would be cumbersome and difficult to duplicate en mass. Using printed language on paper allows the exact words to be passed forward to the next generation without changes that oral histories evoke [although translations from older languages into newer ones probably has the same effect].

In addition to the coincidental improvements in paper and ink, the monotheist message has been popularly received in many parts of the world and this popularity has pushed earlier beliefs into obscurity either by the dust of time or their lack of relevance.

It’s important to note that earlier beliefs had no ‘textbook’ from which to draw specifics about the religion. This means there was no way to pass forward the practices once the language fell into disuse, and since languages are continually changing, the only workable method for preserving religious doctrine over a span of time is to record the message in printed text, and then protect the language that was chosen to carry the message.

History also shows that following the conversion to monotheism has come yet a newer edition of reality which can arguably be called the age of science. Science is natural push by people to find answers that better help them survive. Monotheist writings performed the same function by recording all that was known about the world at the time they were written. However advances in scientific knowledge have progressed over the years and they now call into question many of the bedrock explanations offered by the monotheist writings; differing primarily how each explains ‘man’ in relation to the ongoing physics of the universe.

Presently, a segment of the world favors explanations offered by the age of physics and anthropology and geology and astrophysics, and this has forged new beliefs that say humans have power over their destiny and that human problems can be solved by science and technology. There is considerable truth carried in this because advances in fertilizer and genetics feed the world’s burgeoning population and advances in medicine can now cure diseases that plagued man throughout time.

The sciences contradict the monotheist beliefs that say rituals have to be repeated in an exact manner so that the deity can create favorable phenomenon on Earth. Science has proven that people can circumvent many previously unresolved fears by acting globally and intermingling their diverse cultures. Today’s people now avoid local droughts and pestilence by diversifying food-crops across multiple nations and too they are able to manufacture products on a large-scale so that everyone owns tools to manipulate their environment. This strategy has changed human life and we are not as helpless against nature as our forefathers were, and the ‘global’ outlook has enlightened many persons away from specific ritual performance that was once thought necessary for an abundant harvest.

However, it is natural that a percentage of the population think ‘better days from the past’ should return, and think God ‘informed’ man only once through a prophet and that all ideas of importance were expressed in writings preserved from that single point in history. Many of these folks want the ‘great religion(s)’ to again govern supreme over world populations, however history illustrates the opposite is true, and shows that once a realm breaks or is refuted, it never returns exactly as before, and eventually is replaced with something new. For example the Roman Empire never returned despite the classical Middle Age thinking that it would again rise and bring order to the people.

There are exceptions in history where governing ideas have returned from the past; for instance the formation of Israel which was deemed ‘a divine destiny’ on the basis of ancient scriptures that, not surprisingly, were written by their earlier relatives (which, by the way gives some credence to the notion that religious explanations are based on repeating something over enough times until the affected population unquestionably feels it must be true).

The example of Israel shows how religious-revival movements cause problems since opposing positions are also compelled to strengthen, and it becomes the source of squabble and strife, and today has spiraled into a cacophony of street bombings and arguing over which ancient history carries the greatest import. This example epitomizes today’s ideological challenge and is also an excellent example how to step into the future backwards.

Eventually the issue will be resolved by change, and the question that follows is not what idea from the past will resume its mantle of power in the future; the question becomes: what will be forged next? Science and physics cannot be refuted, and Einstein cannot be debunked because the atomic bomb exists. And the reality sits hard too when powerful telescopes reveal our planet is a tiny speck in a vast ocean of atoms, and not nearly the pinnacle of the universe as predicted by earlier divinations from faith.

The weakening of old beliefs and the clinging by some to those precepts has caused a power vacuum as many of today’s institutions stagger with the weight of increased populations and economic challenge. People are progressively more aware that global science is not the complete answer in their lives, especially as the promise of advancement has led to resistant bacteria, aging populations and the price for health care and political stability is beyond reach for most of the world’s population.

However at the same time many groups are equally aware the ‘old ways’ cannot answer today’s issues either. Neither approach contains the full answer since science has been linked with capitalism and provides benefit only for the wealthiest, while religion provokes endless public brawling. Basically both systems create an atmosphere of exclusivity that causes a rigid barrier against change.

People by nature need a governing system that ascends to a greater inspiration than ‘monetary worth’ or the claim of ‘divine truth’ based on writings from the past. Things change quickly in the world and it is ordinary and essential for ritualistic humans to demand a firm set of doctrine from their leaders and this becomes more urgent when conditions force humans into warfare or hopeless clamor against their own powerlessness. And the perception of powerlessness today has caused the demand for new answers.

Around the world there is widespread restlessness, and the answer for many is to revive the ‘old ways of fundamentalism’ and return to a known religious centering. Today, like in the European Middle Age, some want the ‘Roman Empire to rise again and provide order to the people.’ These religious movements may or may not want to erase thoughts of evolution by smashing the anthropological evidence of earliest man, and frankly its unknown the extent of their objectives to make the world a more pious place. Unfortunately, or fortunately, the more they battle to return things to the way of the past, the more they hasten a critical tipping that will fashion something completely new, and the worry is that science will lead the charge as each side threatens the other with atomic weapons.

The world needs leadership today that strikes a balance between the old and the new while inspiring goals that push ‘inventiveness’ into the future.

It’s important to recognize that any movement to reorganize social power must ultimately speak an essential truth. And if people across the world know that atomic power exists and they use scientific inventions like electricity and genetic engineering to maintain their lives, then it is very well impossible for leaders to turn back the clock and require that people stop planting enhanced crops or giggling on their cell phones.

The new beliefs that supplant what exists today will have to accommodate what ‘everyone knows’ because accommodation is the function of any explanation, and to do otherwise becomes a short-lived whimsy to glorify the hats and hairstyles of the past, or weaker yet, allow the leaders to anoint themselves as the voice of God.

Leaders anointing themselves as the ‘voice that makes all public decision’ is a cultural throw-back that works primarily in small geographic areas with enclosed, non-mobile populations, and primarily in those cultures that hold self-sufficiency a virtue over global exchange. In small closed groups like described above, the rule of order is focused on ‘family rights and duties’ while identifying outsiders as a threat.

This perfectly matches the old-style religious governance that narrowly defined human activity this way, out of necessity, since the tiny populations of those years were stuck living and intermarrying with the same group of people their entire lives. However if living by narrow definitions of ‘family responsibility’ were the ideal answer for today, why did people move across the globe when given a choice to stay at the ‘family farm’ and eat the same food that their grandfather ate?

People by nature are mobile and changeable. The world is different today than it was thousands of years ago because there are more people and more ideas, and religion must keep in step and change how it defines human relations. It’s impossible to believe that monotheism carries a shred of validity when it requires street murder that mimics gang warfare. This is not modern leadership; this is nothing more than local roosters dressed in ‘colors’ and fighting over slights to their honor.

When populations are mobile, and viewpoints are exchanged across worldwide cultures, then the older explanations of culture break down and lose their ability to describe ‘the proper behaviors one must perform’ in order to preserve the ‘behaviors they perform.’ In other words the older rituals lose currency as people move about the globe and use cross-cultural criteria for family decisions like mate selection; which explains why most models of monotheist religion support a strict eugenic policy where people mate only within their similar culture and therefore require a cloistering of their populations (either by geography or some apparel that visibly distinguishes them). These closed systems of belief also demand persecution of all those who interfere … and this is the source of problems because people are being called out of their local communities by globalization, and forced to interact with new people and new ideas. 

Let’s not forget that people have moved about the globe and mated with others outside their community since the beginning of time. Globalization is nothing new, and the natural mixing of human genetics assures that most people are not closely related to the ‘direct descendents’ of any ‘purist’ religion, and therefore the reactions they harbor for ‘defending one ancient history over another’ is a factor of ‘wanting to belong to something.’ In other words the history they ‘die for’ is not their own, and widespread genetic testing would probably astound people about their actual roots.

The world today is at a crossroads between the older models of religion and the more contemporary international exchange of culture. The battle is old versus new and the question is whether the world can accept diversity, and the fight can only end in a change, never a victory, just a change.

The unrest around the world guarantees that religious doctrine (those ideas generally rooted or established within the last few thousand years) will eventually meld with contemporary scientific initiatives and adapt to the world’s changing social structure. The people of tomorrow’s tomorrow will follow a different menu of thinking, probably unlike anything we imagine today. Nothing returns to the ‘old way’ and intuitively we know that once the wheel revolutionizes culture, nobody goes back to dragging their goods across the ground, except by stubbornness or heat-delirium, and no amount of ‘fundamentalist vigor’ can stop this change.

So what new cultural dogma will replace what we know today? What is in the world’s future?

At the very heart of the question is: are we alone in the universe? Is Earth the only place where life takes place? And maybe this appears an unlikely fulcrum for hurling the world’s political dynamo, but this question is paramount and stands in the crosshairs between science and the older systems of religious government. This question must be answered because it exists inside every human mind and has been there since man first looked at the stars.
 
If we are alone in the universe, then we are insignificant and temporary since science shows that our planet eventually excludes us by evolution or mass extinction or some physics we’ve yet to experience. And if we are just temporary, then that affects the way we behave, and may catapult excessive force against the scientific advances that feed the world today.

If, on the other hand, we are not alone in the universe, then that too affects what we believe and how we behave, and will motivate our species to explore the land and resources beyond our planet, and future people will reach outward for answers and not inward for supernatural meaning.

So which is it? Are we alone, or are we part of a whole universe that is quite similar to ourselves … and perhaps the relationship between us and our similar universe is obscured from present understanding only because our lives are so brief?

This is the question for tomorrow’s inhabitants, and they will decide what the answer is, but it’s optimistically interesting to note that yesterday’s ‘fundamentalism,’ in combination with today’s global science, is the source for tomorrow’s change, and this is true as the future always builds on the past and never makes the same thing again.

Gene Haynes