Sunday 19 June 2005

Pic of the day: Religion is one of the things that set us apart from cats and dogs. Well, usually... But what are they actually saying? Do they have anything in common, something that is essential to our time?

Clues to a future

Warning – this entry contains unusual interpretations of religions, including some of the world's best loved faiths. Be aware that I am here just exploring a scientific theory that could end up only being science fiction in the end. Please don't lose your religion over this. You should consider not reading at all if you feel that your belief is weak or that scientific speculation could corrupt your soul.

Yesterday I made some pretty outrageous claims. I said that humankind is going to change through an upgrade of our very soul, change so much that "classic" humanity will be like Neanderthals to the children of the future. I claimed that this will happen all over the world, and those who do not change will, like the Neanderthals, fall by the wayside and be completely erased from the human race.

Now you may say, like Carl Sagan, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. So where's the meat? Can I really prove something as big as this?

Not really, not as in smoking gun and gesticulating eyewitnesses. Nothing to convince a court, or even get published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. What I will attempt instead is to convince you that you already believe it yourself. Or, failing that, that most other people believe it. This should be much easier.

***

Did you notice how, near the end of yesterday's entry, I wove in a couple poorly disguised verses from the Bible? Millions of people, including (disturbingly enough) the President of the USA, believe in prophecies made by Jews and other Hebrews a couple thousand years ago. These prophecies vary in detail, but they agree on the essence: The world as we know it will come to a sticky end, but don't despair completely: A new and better world will be made by the same entity who made the previous one, and some people from the old world will be allowed into the new, although not nearly all.

In the Old Testament, most clearly the Book of Daniel, there is a lot of such foretelling. But it looks there as if it is the nation that will be "saved", although there is a short notice at the very end about resurrection of the dead. The prophet is however told to not worry too much about this, because people will not be able to understand it until shortly before it happens! In the New Testament, it is pretty clear that it is a personal thing, not a national thing (although there are still 12000 of each of Israel's tribes in the Apocalypse). Jesus says that the Kingdom of Heaven is near, indeed already among them (or possibly within them, depending on your translator) and people reasonably conclude that the Main Event is going to happen almost immediately. But what if this is an event that can happen either on an individual level or as a mass outbreak? First in scattered individuals and then, once it reaches critical mass, transforming the entire society? In that case, both would be true. It would already be available, but it would also be a history-ending event at a later time!

And it is not as if the Hebrews were the only tribe to come up with this type of idea. Near the collapse of the old Norse pagan culture, another foretelling was given. It details the end of the world in a giant cataclysm, and the rebirth of the world, humankind and a new generation of gods. Intriguingly, one of the signs of the impending doom is the dissolution of the family. Christians may remember (although they may prefer not to) that Jesus claimed to have come to set family members against each other, as well as throwing fire on the world. Ironically, it could look like Jesus is the harbinger of death for the world. And in a manner of speaking, this may be true. A harbinger of death and resurrection.

The fission of the nuclear family is already a fact, which you can see every day among your friends and, probably, relatives. The end of the world has already begun. And people feel fine. Or at least they would not want to go back.

Now you may argue that the Norse religion may have been influenced by Christianity. It is pretty obvious that the "end times" is preserved with some variations in all the religions descended from Judaism: Christianity, Islam, Baha'i, Mormonism and nearly all the countless sects and congregations that count Abraham among their inspirations some way or another. (Collectively we often call these Abramic religions.) The idea of a final resolution of history is essential to Abramic thought. But it is not limited to these religions. It may be unsurprising that Persian religion also had a final transformation; after all, it is a neighboring country, or nearly so. But even in South American traditions, we find prophecies about the end of the world. (Some link this to the Mayan Calendar which expires in 2012, and concludes that the Mayans expected the current age to end at that time. I don't believe this was explicitly stated though.)

In short, around the world there has been a widespread anticipation (to give it a positive spin) that the current history would come to an end. The end was generally thought to be unpleasant but brief, leading to the dawn of a new age, which was generally assumed to be better than the current life.

(On a related note: While looking for info on the Mayan Calendar, I noticed an advertisement by Google to compete for "Left Behind" products. Evidently I am not the first to notice a link here...)

***

Lately we have got a new breed of foretellers who believe that a violent cataclysm is neither necessary nor desirable. This so-called "New Age" movement believe that we can avoid a breakdown by raising our level of spirituality. They think that either the current population (especially themselves) or our immediate descendants will manifest miraculous powers and lead the Earth into a Golden Age of spiritual and material abundance ... indeed, possibly even unify the spiritual and material realm so that any wish can be made real by an act of consciousness. Immortality is expected to become the normal human condition, and illness or suffering avoidable or at worst utterly temporary, a glitch at most in a basically perfect life.

I mention this not because I am equally optimistic; I am not. But it supports the premise that there is a widespread expectation of change, a total replacement of the current humankind, an end to history as we know it and the beginning of a new age which we cannot really imagine.

Also it highlights the possibility that the disaster scenario is not unavoidable. Perhaps we don't need to have the planet actually consumed by fire. (Perhaps we can get away with just global warming?) From a distance of thousands of years, it would seem that history and the current mankind could not be utterly wiped from the slate by anything less than a violent upheaval. It was evident to the early mystics that this was not just a political takeover or a shift in the cultural climate. It was the end of human history, an event more monumental than ordinary words could describe. If they did not clothe it in images of the greatest disasters they could think of, it would seem too small and be forgotten. And to the average human, the transition is nothing less than the end of the world. Although the planet is still there, humans as we know them will not be.

***

Nor are religions the only parts of our culture that imagines a profound shift. Look at superhero comics, which in many ways are the mythology of our time. Like the ancients would make elaborate stories about their gods to illustrate a point, modern superheroes embody the strange new duality in human life: The powerlessness of the individual and the immense power of humankind as a group. So we get secret identities, or even heroes who transform between a human and a superhuman form. And we get new teachings like "With great power comes great responsibility". (Jesus said much the same, but who listens to Jesus? He doesn't climb skyscrapers.)

Anyway, in the beginning of superhero fiction, the heroes and villains were uncommon. Superman worked largely alone or sometimes with a few friends. But when superhero writers look to the future, suddenly something changes. Superpowered beings crawl out of the woodwork everywhere. They have different names in the different superhero "universes": Mutants, metahumans, gen-actives, harbingers. But there are more and more of them until they dominate the planet entirely. A conflict is apparent between the new and the old race, and the odds don't favor the normals. Solving this is a major theme in future-themed superhero series.

Also on the other side of the Earth, in Japan, they make anime (cartoons) based on the same assumption. The "psychic academy" type of anime is typically set in the future and assumes that by then, many children will be born with wondrous powers and will need to go to special schools for gifted youngsters. There isn't really all that much parallel to a certain other school for gifted youngsters, though. These anime are more like the "magic school" genre, except they are set in the future and so they are psychic rather than magic. I just mention it because they share the assumption that the future somehow is bound to produce a new breed of humans with mysterious powers. In another genre of anime, so-called "mecha", children or teenagers are usually the ones to operate the earth-shattering fighting machines, children chosen for their unique abilities to interface with advanced electronic systems.

And this is perhaps not so strange. Already today children are born with amazing abilities... for instance, they can operate a video recorder without reading the user handbook...