Our Brave New World will be designed by techies and celebs

Or, as this Brietbart.com piece puts it, by the "technology industry and Hollywood elite." Come to think of it, we're already there. But it seems that some want us to be there even more than we are:

A website launched Friday with the backing of technology industry and Hollywood elite urges people worldwide to help craft a framework for harmony between all religions.

The Charter for Compassion project on the Internet at www.charterforcompassion.org springs from a "wish" granted this year to religious scholar Karen Armstrong at a premier Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) conference in California.

"Tedizens" include Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin along with other Internet icons as well as celebrities such as Forest Whittaker and Cameron Diaz.

Wishes granted at TED envision ways to better the world and come with a promise that Tedizens will lend their clout and capabilities to making them come true.

Armstrong's wish is to combine universal principles of respect and compassion into a charter based on a "golden rule" she believes is at the core of every major religion.

Armstrong's claim to fame is that she is an ex-Catholic nun who is now an "expert" in comparative religion, apparently because she has a degree in...modern literature? How very...post-modern. Anyhow, her "take it home and try it on for size" quote is: "I say that religion isn’t about believing things. It’s ethical alchemy. It’s about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness.” Strangely enough, such pseudo-intellectual utterances are meaningless unless people believe they are true and then act accordingly. Or at least I think that is the case. Unfortunately, not being an internet icon nor a movie star leaves me ill equipped to think, make wishes, lend my clout, or buy really fast sports cars.

In related news:

Speaking at the opening of the 23rd plenary assembly for the Pontifical Council for the Laity, the president of the Council, Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko, warned, "The idea of creating a 'new man' completely detached from the Judeo-Christian tradition, a new 'world order,' a new 'global ethic,' is gaining ground."

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go watch a movie on my iPod...

Comments

[Jackson]

Mustapha Mond has just been elected president. We might as well go all the way.

[MarkAA]

I always have thought "Brave New World" was the sci-fi dystopian novel that had the greatest chance of being the real future. "1984" would require a centralized government so big that it would implode. "Fahrenheit 451" would create a world so completely ignorant that it couldn't keep the lights on more than a generation. But BNW, with its emphasis on sex, drugs and playtime for grownups, always seemed to me the one most likely to succeed. Not seeing a whole lot to make me think otherwise, these days.

[Charles E Flynn]

MarkAA,

Leon Kass agrees with you:

http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=2576

Having burned my bridges to the public school system, I had to apply to go to Saint Raphael Academy for high school. The Christian Brothers required us to read several books that, for various reasons, were banned in the public school system. "Brave New World" was one of them.

[Sawyer]

The "new world order", the "global ethic", the "new man" united by means of a religious syncretism or secular ethic is simply the modern world's attempt to build the Tower of Babel. Look! It's our accomplishment! We will reach the heavens with our ingenuity and cooperation! It's bound to fail, just like it did in Genesis 11. The only way to unite humanity in the proper universal order is to submit to God's plan, decreed from the beginning of time, to unite all things in heaven and on earth in Christ (Ephesians 1).

[Jackson]

All entertainment, all the time; all sex, all the time; sexualized children; plugged-in 24/7; silence almost intolerable; indifference to the highest things; mass shamelessness; modesty dismissed as prudery; humans as technological objects, described as 'wired' etc.; everybody drugged; a bovine self-branded populace (tattoos) of counterfeit individuals; sanitized thought & speech; roses with no scent; unhappiness pathologized as 'depression'; 'rights' without duties; religion castrated as mere 'spirituality'; broken families called 'dysfunctional,' not sinful; countless solitaries everywhere; deviancy normalized & normality seen as strange; chronological snobbery at every turn; the myth of progress almost universally embraced; man as perfectible & sufficient unto himself; the ultimate in consumerism: human life itself consumerized at the sacrificial altar of 'choice' and convenience; Mustapha Mond elected President....

Yep, it's all there in Brave New World.

[Jackson]

No doubt, Sawyer. In fact today I made a new page related to this:

http://tinyurl.com/6q8yms

[LJ]

If I am not mistaken, Pope Benedict XVI laid out the necessary groundwork for dialogue between religions; reason. Without it there can only be conflict.

The big elephant in the room that these well-meaning Hollywood elites are worried about, but refuse to recognize, is radical Islam. They cannot imagine, if they are just nice to them, how the radical Islamists would not suddenly realize there is room in the world after all for Jews and Christians, and Hindus and Buddhists, and New Agers, etc. etc.

[Ed Peters]

Religion is "ethical alchemy"? Well, we all know where "chemical alchemy" ended up. Ha ha ha ha ha ha!