When Worldviews Collide
June 15th, 2003 by sfuqua
What's about to unfold in Iraq may be the most dramatic
act yet in the tragic split we've created in our minds between the natural and supernatural; the physical and metaphysical. It may hasten their reconciliation, or potentially begin the endgame. By Tom Mahon
By Tom Mahon
May 2003
What's about to unfold in Iraq may be the most dramatic
act yet in the tragic split we've created in our minds between the natural
and supernatural; the physical and metaphysical. It may hasten their reconciliation,
or potentially begin the endgame.
Most of the world's people still live in an enchanted universe. They
see mindful intention causing every act in nature. Behind every motion is a
god or goddess or demon or angel or jinni or spirit who wills it as part of
an over-reaching plan.
But we in the developed world now live in a dis-enchanted universe, and have
for 400 years. We see every action as the result of mechanical, measurable processes:
thunder and lightning are not caused by an angry Zeus or Jove, but result from
an electrostatic discharge in the atmosphere. The unfolding of the cosmos is
simply a succession of statistical probabilities occurring over time.
And now the best engineering firms are bidding for contracts to rebuild Iraq.
They employ the best engineers who were taught at the best engineering schools
that, except for meeting or exceeding technical specifications, there is no intrinsic
value, meaning or grace in nature.
The people in the land they rebuild, however, still believe deeply that an
all-compassionate, all-merciful intention is behind the bending of every blade
of grass and the beating of every bird's wing.
This is not simply a cultural difference. Two universes are about to collide
as never before. From the land between the rivers, where Western Civilization
itself was born, will either come a new harmonizing of the
enchanted and disenchanted. Or it will be a replay of the tragic story of Babel,
when all civil discord and missed-communication was born as mortals tried to
engineer a path to God with selfish intentions. This time, however, the play
will be enacted on a global stage with weapons and passions of unprecedented
ferocity.
The pursuit of truth is humanity's noblest undertaking. Claiming to possess
the one truth is humanity's greatest failure. Let us pray for noble actions
and noble outcomes on all sides, and so rekindle a sense of awe and reverence
for a measurable, but no less grace-filled, world.
Tom Mahon has been writing about technology for 30 years
as publicist, journalist, novelist and dramatist. For the past ten years, he
has been speaking and writing widely on the need to reconnect our technical
capability with moral responsibility.
