Friday, April 16, 2010

What religion could look like

To expand upon what I said in class, I have a vision in my head of what the distant future might be like. Admittedly this vision depends upon a host of technological and social variables that I cannot begin to predict, but I'm going to go with it anyway. In my imaginary future humanity has begun a large scale colonization project, planting new communities on dozens of different planets. I imagine that human culture in general, as far as we have shared culture from planet to planet through shared ideas or media, will be largely secular, perhaps with a vague notion of spirituality. This of course assumes no alien religious influence. However I think that there could be places, or even whole planets, where people from a particular religious group decide to live in community together. Perhaps some would completely renounce the larger, secular culture, but I think that others would simply see it as a way to live in community with each other and put their ideals into practice. In all likely hood I have this vision because I am Mennonite and finding our own little planet to live together in community seems like something that Mennonites would be all over. Now the question becomes, would I want to live there? In many ways I think it would be nice, however living with nothing but Mennos might make me want to pull my hair out eventually. I think that if technology allowed for widespread media, communication, and relatively easy travel from planet to planet I would definitely want to live there. However, if technology was such that we were very isolated I think I would think twice about it.

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