Bookraft

As an atheist I should have no interest in religion. As an advocate of Teilhard des Chardin I should have a broad vision and be willing to accommodate the world's religions and their shortfalls - secure in the belief that inevitably a universal improvement will occur. As a secularist I should be confident that the separation between Church and State, hard won in various countries around the globe, will continue to expand and be adopted worldwide.

But then I see the religious center-to-right in Israel slowly but surely take bigger chunks out of the West Bank and do a Diaspora unto the Palestinians like that which was done unto them by the Romans, the Spanish Catholics, and others repeatedly in the past 2000 years. Or I see the polarizing influence of the Religious Right being inflamed and courted by the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln by gay bashing, thinly disguised anti-science, and appeals to a Christian righteousness whose persecution complex says that the ACLU and other despicable Liberals are trying to eradicate all displays of religion in schools and other public places among other diabolical deeds.

But the master baiters of this religious persecution complex is surely a well oiled Muslim communications Cabal. They can have hundreds of Pakistanis in Islamabad, Iraqis in Baghdad, Muslims in India, Persians in Tehran and thousands of other rioters from Cairo through to Eastern tip of Indonesia all appearing "spontaneously" with effigies and flags to burn. All this over say offensive Danish cartoons or the Pope's pronouncements on violence and jihad being influential to this day in Muslim actions, or even a whiff or the slightest suggestion that Islam and/or the Prophet ever condoned violence for fateful ends. So, Western Media, don't you dare report the Muslim Sunni on Shia internecine violence and sometimes near open war not just in Iraq but with flash spots throughout the Mideast. Nor dare you say a thing about the Wahabi sect in Saudi Arabia using bombs and massacres to try impose their fundamentalist will. And Mum is the Muslim word on Islamic influenced religious and ethnic conflicts or near-genocides in Sudan and the Darfur region or Kashmir's and Sri Lanka's festering conflicts or Muslim civil-warlord lead turmoil racking Afghanistan, Somalia, Lebanon and the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia.

So I have to say - What the Hell is going on with Religion in the World ?

Well as my father used to say, a persecution complex needs fertile ground to fester and take hold. What could be the fertile grounds for the various veins of religious radicalism that are manifesting themselves so persistently in the world today? Let me posit five major causes.

1)Instant communications with mobile phones (many with picture taking features), "professional media-savvy" TV plus radio, internet and email connections permeating the world. If a $100 laptop is possible what about about basic verbal and visual communications being even more influential?

2)The pace of change accelerating with products, industries, and jobs being obsoleted in ever shorter cycles of 50 years shrinking to 5-10 years. Follow the vinyl record, 8 track tape, tape recorder, CD, DVD to iPod cycles in music and recordings. There is even a name for it, Disruptive Marketing.

3)Slack in the system disappearing as both costs must be reduced and time-to-market advantages allow for minimal buffers, inventory and build-up of support systems. "Just good enough but first to market" products and services sometimes do not have the testing or the support systems to stand the test of product deficiencies or unintended consequences.Time and resources to do things right and handle the unexpected are being minimized.

4)Labor cost minimizing has gone global. This is a classic raiding of the Commons problem. Business persons the world over are saying "Workers need money and fair-value wages to buy my products ... just not my workers". So for example, in the 1980's and 1990's US jobs got exported to Canada and Mexico creating Rust Belt spots throughout the manufacturing economy gutting both century old and new companies. Recently, those same jobs are now being exported from Canada and Mexico to even lower labor cost producers in China, India and Southeast Asia which all have huge labor pools totaling over 2 billion people willing to work for $20-300/week. And so now there is a second tide sweeping out not only manufacturing jobs but also management and knowledge worker jobs. But this time it is worldwide - not just developed but also emerging economies that are suffering. So now throughout the developed countries mothers and fathers and even children must work to stay above poverty levels. While under-developed and just rising economies like Eastern Europe, Central America, North Africa and the MidEast are losing out in the jobs markets. In short, poverty is being redistributed worldwide.

5)Finally there is the juxtaposition of instant worldwide knowledge of what is going on as seen on TV or over the Internet with the sense of loss control:
a)loss of control over jobs and wages many times despite serious education and training.
b)loss of control over how political and economic decisions are made. For example, in the US election votes are becoming ever closer so such politcal manipulation as gerrymandering, dirty smear campaigns, and election day vote fraud are on the uptick because now close voting totals are more prevalent, the risk are high, but the rewards for rigging more attainable than ever before. In some developing countries, vote riggings are the starting point to election fraud, coups or religious fundamentalist states. On the economic side, foreign institutions like the World Bank or large corporations are seen to be imposing not just their standards, wages, and financial conditions on local economies but also social mores as well.
c)loss of control over the pace of change. Economic, social, educational, health, and living standards are being imposed on communities large and small sometimes with little regard for local buy in. Even more telling is that there is often no time and resources available to allow for unintended consequences as slack has been cut out of the system.

So as poverty gets redistributed and the control of the pace of change seems to slip out of personal or local social moderation people do what they have done in the past. First, they look for factors and causes to blame for "things happening to them". And second they look to regain control. And for millenia - regaining control over their lives has seen a return to religion as a place of solace but also as a countervailing power and institution.

Now in the blame game, people will get support for their intuitive notions that somethings are going wrong and sometimes disturbingly so. George Fukuyama's book, The Great Disruption, documents how since the end of the Second World War, the developed countries from Britain, France and Europe, to the Asian powerhouses such as Japan and Korea to North America and Australia, all have seen social problems like broad crime rates, unwed mothers, abortions, divorce rates, declining school graduations, incarcerations, and increases in poverty levels grow almost across the board in their countries. OECD, WHO, and Unesco studies confirm these trends. Thus, income distribution has become more skewed as the rich take more income from a growing lower class. Or health problems like infant mortality, AIDS, or lung infections are on the rise. Or labour injuries,disabilities and deaths are on the uptick as well.

As for religion being a countervailing power, that is taking some very diverse trends. There are the traditional approaches of missionay and aid societies. But the effectiveness of those can be undercut at times - for example, the administrative overlap of so many aid agencies has been a big bungle in the Katrina flood and African Aids crises. Also dissarray from pedophilia in Catholic and other churhes in North America has diverted and depleted funds and trust that lowers what can be done overseas.

But also as religious services start to wield organizational and economic power, there also comes breakdowns in the secular division of church and state. And in the Muslim faith, that division between Church and State is by doctrine a Western artifact - and not necessarily welcome in countries as diverse as Iran, Taliban Afghanistan, and parts of Nigeria. Thus religious tolerance and conflicts has become an epidemic and source of terror and military conflicts across the globe. And that religious intolerance is not just Muslim in origin as can be seen by religious conflicts in Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka. But as we have seen Muslim-based conflicts and terror are starting to dominate the world scene. And despite massive Western secular aids given to earthquake victims in Pakistan and Indonesia, Muslims have unrequited grievances against the West plus internal strife to spare.

So as the Disruptive Pace of Change (shades of Alvin Toffler's Future Shock) become more prevalent, two key social players, Religion and "Progress as our most important Product", once thought to be part of the solution to World problems are now perceived to be moving towards "Part of the Problem" side of the fence.