Religion, Spirituality, and Ethics in the Perfect Society
Societal
perfection will be attained only many centuries after the Twenty-First.
As in
other aspects of life, humankind will remember and continue to study certain
institutional features from those centuries long before perfection was
attained, and in many ways life will be informed by those institutions:
National borders will no longer be rigidly definitive but rather suggest areas
within which culturally united people dwell; the best features of past
social democratic government will produce the democratic, cooperative,
egalitarian spirit that now makes highly formal governing institutions
unnecessary; families will still be organized residentially and
emotionally into nuclear units, but concern for one’s fellows will extend
loving concern for everyone in the larger national and international family.
Similarly,
people in the perfect society will remember and respect religious institutions
to which humankind was long devoted. Memory and reverence for those
institutions will preserve sacred literature, places of worship, and key
concepts from the historical religions of the world:
Animistic
heritage will inform an abiding, deeply held reverence for the destructive
potential, constructive power, and transcendent beauty of Nature.
Respect
for the Zoroastrian tradition will instill abiding gratitude that former
tensions between Good and Evil have been resolved decisively in favor of the
former.
Judaism
will be revered for instilling in humanity a centuries-long desire to fulfill
the expectations of the Divine.
Hinduism
will be appreciated for producing in humanity an appreciation for a World Soul
that unites all Life and induces respect for Ultimate Reality beyond the
terrestrial.
Buddhism
will be revered for producing in humankind calmness of soul, an enhanced
appreciation for the inevitability of change, and a propensity to appreciate
with profound, focused attention each moment of joyful, healthful, radiant life
while comprehending and responding circumspectly to suffering, illness, and
death.
Christianity
will inspire in humanity a deep love of one’s fellows as the most important of
all values, a refined sense of empathy, and a sense that for each human being
in which such a spirit abides, immortality is assured.
Islam will
be revered for penetration to the moral core, elimination of distractions, and
relentless focus on singularity of the Divine.
Sikhism
will be appreciated for inducing in humanity honest, loving, egalitarian
behavior across race, gender, and creed with a passion for unity with the
Divine.
In the
perfect society, places of worship will be preserved as architectural treasures
and as spaces that offer an abiding sense of peace, conducive to meditation and
prayerful reflection. All will be welcome to all such places of spiritual
repose. Such spiritual spaces will honor the past while abiding in a
society in which borders and distinctions are suggestive rather than
definitive.
As with
the case of government, the religious institutions of history will inform the
organic emergence of spiritual leaders inspired by the ideal qualities
attributed to popes, patriarchs, and Dalai Lamas who exist now only in
historical memory.
People
will live abundantly, contribute greatly, and die fearlessly, assured of
immortality due to the nature of their lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment