PREFACE

William James, in his classic book, The Varieties of Religious Experience wrote: "That which produces effects within another reality must be termed a reality itself, so I feel as if we had no philosophic excuse for calling the unseen or mystical world unreal." In my view, if a belief leads a community of people to real action with consequences, then we can talk about that belief as being real, even though a different community might hold a different belief. Social scientists have said that if a community holds a belief that leads to real consequences, then we can talk that belief as being real. Recently, cognitive scientists provided evidence that I translate into "hardwiring" in the human brain (in the unconscious and conscious memory) of a desire and need for a relationship with a caring other. As the individual matures this need may lead, in the minds of some people, to a relationship with the ultimate care-giver, which some call - God. A psychologist might view this as a relationship to an internalized image of this care-giver. Very young children internalize an image of their mother. Some mature Christians internalize an image of Jesus.

I believe that social scientists, cognitive scientists, and human scientists in related fields will overcome the separation between religious faith and science and by so doing will unite the bases of faith in all religions. I define faith as trusting in the idea that God is present and active in and through the behavior of loving and caring humans. As will be seen later, in a way, God is hardwired within those who bonded with their loving and caring Mother. I end with a discussion of Karen Armstrong’s Spiral Staircase and Spiral Dynamics by Don Edward Beck and Christopher Cowan.

AN OUTLINE OF THIS BOOK

I discuss how advances in brain science will enable a coming together of world religions, based, in part, upon new ideas about "hardwiring" in our brains, clarifying how we envision the One God, and broadening levels of perspective taking. This is followed by discussions of spirituality and how political, economic, and religious institutions are interconnected. At that point I examine a new paradigm called spiral dynamics described by Don Edward Beck and Christopher Cowan, and described from a different perspective by Karen Armstrong in her auto-biographical book: The Spiral Staircase. I take a look at possibilities for a more hopeful future, societal transformations, altruism, and the acceptance of responsibilities by religious communities.

NOTE: A more detailed version which includes and supplements this short E-book is entitled: Countering Polarization. My book is available now from Xlibris' bookstore by clicking on: Countering Polarization, the Colorado State University Bookstore, and the Boulder Book Store. The book is now also available from Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

A Table of Contents, a short Author biography, a Bibliography, and an Appendix for my book are accessible from the following links. A Table of Contents, About the Author, a Bibliography.

INTRODUCTION

This E-book shows how reality and faith exist as two interrelated ways of believing that have always existed side-by-side. Reality deals with conscious and unconscious memories of events one has experienced in the real world and stories that one has heard. Such stories, range from stories of real events experienced by the individual by him or her self, to those told by a trusted friend or read in a book. Development of science and technology is included in what one believes as real and provides a growing part of our beliefs about reality. Scientific testing and research show us what is real and predictable. Science clarifies some of our memories about what was thought to be real. I believe that recent discoveries in brain science help us in the more spiritual side of human development and eventually, as I discuss subsequently, will bring all religions closer together.

The other approach to belief is based upon historical stories and myths of a kind that describe how people faced problems in their lives and over came them with help from gods or the One God. If they did not overcome them they were forced to adapt or, in some stories, they were killed. Religious leaders built upon these stories, seeking to construct and inculcate faith or trust in God, either as a supreme caring other and/or a judge. To get primitive people to believe these stories, God was, and still is today, portrayed in anthropomorphic terms. Thus Faith is the second half of the approach to belief. In addition to a belief in a supreme caring other, religious leaders sought to provide hope by means of mystical cures, magic, and the like.

A major part of faith is spirituality that includes ceremonies, rituals, meditation, and other forms of focusing ones deeper consciousness upon relationships with all of creation. Stages of faith and moral development, especially the work of James W. Fowler, when combined with the writings of Marcus Borg and others on "the God within each of us", and Karen Armstrong's work in her books: The History of God and The Battle for God, point out how people's beliefs are based upon trust and relationships with caring others and accepted members of one's communities. Each person develops his or her faith based upon a set of beliefs that are unique to the culture and the universal values learned within the communities to which the individual is committed. The latter include much that is common with the worldviews and universal values of others in our rapidly growing global community of faith.

Religious stories teach us universal values such as compassion for all, stewardship of our natural environment, and the Golden Rule which are common to most of the world faiths. Other stories describe cultural values concerning such important acts as marriage, transitions to adulthood, responding to death, how justice is administered, and the like. Cultural values that one reads in the sacred books are associated with patriarchal clan and tribal commitments. In our modern world people have tried to apply these old values to commitments to larger communities such as cities, nation states and global corporations and the United Nations. Sometimes they do not fit well, especially in our increasingly pluralistic world.

In the Preface to Kenneth J. Gergen's, 1991 book, The Saturated Self - Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life, he discussed how communication and transportation technology have exposed us to a "barrage of social stimulation. Small and enduring communities, with a limited cast of significant others, are being replaced by a vast and ever-expanding array of significant others." This change is moving many persons "toward a state of saturation" demolishing "the coherent circles of accord". "Beliefs in the true and the good depend on a reliable and homogeneous group of supporters...". "..beliefs (are) thrown into question by one's exposure to multiple points of view". This is part of what some call Postmodernism. We have become faced with an "unbridled relativism".

It is important to remember that there are important differences among cultural traditions and values that are included within different religious faiths. Attempts to separate religion from politics and governance run up against problems of commitment to tribal and parochial traditions and saturation of responses to other cultural differences.

Daniel Goleman, in his new book, Social Intelligence - The New Science of Human Relationships outlines in his Prologue how many people seem to tune out interactions with people around them, Gergen might say that they are saturated by the complexity of life in a pluralistic society. Yet, on page 3, he provides an example of how a commanding officer overcame opposition from a group of Iraqis who feared that his soldiers were coming to arrest their cleric or destroy their mosque. Hundreds of people surrounded the soldiers and were threatening them. He ordered his men to kneel on one knee, point their rifles toward the ground, and to smile. "That quick-witted move was the culmination of a dizzying array of split-second calculations" by the commanding officer. The story is a good example of how most people are hardwired to read facial expressions and other actions to distinguish between threats and caring behavior. That is what Goleman calls "social intelligence".

In my view, the main purpose behind the development of religious institutions was, and still is today, to simulate the kind of interpersonal interactions between a baby and her caring mother, or between a shepherd and his sheep, so that people will grow up with some of the benefits, including early development of aspects of social intelligence, that a good, loving mother can give to her child. Various aspects of this trusting relationship become hardwired in the brain of the child and influence how the child will respond to others throughout their life. Several chapters in Goleman's book give many examples of how this process works.

A book that is relevant here is: The Good Society by Robert Bellah, Richard Madsen, William Sullivan, et al. It focuses on defining institutions and the need to change institutions. It includes a good description of applied social science merged with individual and community action, conversation, expanding pluralist perspectives, and the like.

In other words, the major purpose of religious faith is to simulate rewards and punishments that caring mothers might rely upon in child-rearing so that everyone in the community has an opportunity to hardwired to seek a relationship to a transcendent caregiver. Religious traditions either talk about one going to heaven if one's good acts out weigh selfish ones, or burning in hell, if they do not.

A book that I recommend highly is one that I have just read. It is entitled Heaven on Earth, The Rise and Fall of Socialism. Joshua Muravchik, the author has provided a very readable summary of the rise and fall of socialism. Socialism tried to create Heaven here on earth. As I see it, they ran into problems because they ignored the human search for a relationship with a caring other and the spirituality that relationship involves. Muravchik starts with the work of Robert Owen whose settlement - New Harmony, I toured in June 2006. His last pages 333-334 are especially good, ending with a discussion of zealotry and coercion among communists and some socialists. I recommend his book highly.

Consider tribal cultures that emphasize honor, and retribution for dishonoring one's family, clan, or tribe. Might it be that the idea of hell, developed in these cultures, in part, to release the family, clan, and tribe from retribution and to leave it up to God??? See: [http://www.bible-researcher.com/hell1.html], especially the paragraph past the middle of the posting, starting with the sentence: "The Old Testament itself offered the point of issue for the process of development."

In Jesus' time the valley of Hinnon's son, South of Jerusalem was a garbage dump where fires burned to consume the refuse and its smell. The bodies of criminals were dumped there. A photo of the valley is accessible at: [http://www.answers.com/topic/jpf-hinnom-valley-jpg]. Is this a photo of Hell?

In the early church, the doctrines related to heaven and hell were taught by some authoritarian fundamentalist parents, teachers, and pastors. Some still teach and preach that today. Such teaching generates strong emotions of guilt, shame, and fear to guide children along what they believe is "the one and only true path to heaven". This approach seems like an easy way to have children grow up to become caring and compassionate adults. Marlene Winell discussed, in detail, how such exclusivist perspectives and related doctrines restrict children and adults from the learning and experiences needed to broaden perspectives and to live peaceably in a culturally diverse, globalizing, and pluralist world. This approach sets the over-protected child up for culture shock when the child leaves home for college or a job and encounters Christians and others who do not hold this interpretation.

Christianity seems to go one step further than other faiths by presenting stories about having one's bad deeds be wiped off the slate if one surrenders or accepts Jesus as Savior. Thus it might be more appealing to the mature adult who has led a sinful life and therefore has no hope of ever counterbalancing his bad deeds with good deeds. Before extrapolating the foregoing few sentences, which are gross oversimplifications, I urge the reader to read Goleman's book. I summarize the foregoing ideas to plant some seeds in the reader's mind, with the hope that readers will build transcendent overviews to help them expand their interpretation of religious faith.

A COMING AXIAL TRANSFORMATION

Karen Armstrong and others have described an axial age from 900-200 B.C. when significant changes or transitions occurred in culture-bound ways of believing about many gods focused on areas of life such as fertility, war, and love. These transitions were based upon the cultural evolution within particular tribal communities. The transitions were to new ways of relating to transcendent powers; ways that emphasized relationships with one compassionate God. This helped reduce the varieties of faith based upon many specialized gods, and emphasized compassion toward those within ones own communities and others outside their communities.

Armstrong's latest book: The Great Transformation describes in depth, a number of transformations that occurred from 900-200 B.C. pushing "forward the frontiers of human consciousness and discovering a transcendent dimension" in the core of their faith. Toward the end of her book, Armstrong wrote: "Suffering shatters neat rationalistic theology." I discuss these transformations again in a subsequent section on societal transition crises.

Advances in science and the idea of programming or hardwiring in the brain, in my view, point to the coming of another axial transformation that will unify the various faiths one finds around our world. Cultural variations will not disappear, but will become distinct from a universal faith. This transformation will involve struggles between nations and world religions as people expand their worldviews away from commitments to parochial tribal worldviews toward global and universal values and worldviews. Such changes involve violent struggles at the individual level as people try to manage reforming their personal identities and community systems of honor and justice . These changes often lead to struggles among communities as systems of justice, defense, and economies compete for loyalties. World peace depends upon communities changing from a primary focus on local parochial scale communities to include commitments to national, regional and global scales.

These struggles of transition can be ameliorated only as education helps people broaden their perspectives to include trustworthy larger-scale religious, political and economic institutions and organizations. As perspectives expand, some of the old traditional cultural values will be replaced by universal values and ideologies. We have seen such struggles on a global-scale between the ideologies of communism and capitalism, between different religious communities - Islamic and Christian, and between third-world economies and exploitive international corporations.

More is said about these transformations toward the end of this E-book.

HARDWIRING IN OUR BRAINS OF A QUEST FOR A CARING OTHER

A new idea that I believe is the foundation of spirituality and a belief in God is the idea of programming or hardwiring in our brains of a need for good relationships with a caring other.

NOTE: This does not mean that God is hardwired in our brains. It means that the desire for relationships with caring others is effectively hardwired in our brains. To understand this idea it will be helpful to keep in mind that human beings are relational creatures and even while in the womb, they start a relationship with their mother, from hearing sounds from her voice, and sense her emotions. In the following paragraphs, I discuss the idea of how a person's need for an ongoing relationship with a caring other, becomes "programmed" into the baby's brain soon after birth. The term "hardwired" has recently become popular with scientists familiar with computers and electronics. It came from the wiring of a permanent connection in some electronic analog computer programs that I used, in the late 1950's, to simulate the flight of airplanes in the pre-digital age.

As I see it, hardwiring creates a desire or predisposition to seek and hold on to trustworthy relationships with caring others for the rest of our lives. Many persons feel that they are not whole if this desire for a relationship with a caring other is not satisfied. (For those unfortunate children who lack a caring other, an alternative is to find support and protection in a gang - a small community that cares for those who pass the test to prove that they can be trusted to conform to the laws of the gang.)

As a person passes through the stages of faith development, the mother as a caring other, is replaced or becomes supplemented, by a favorite teacher, a mentor, a friend, or a supervisor at work. We expand our perspectives by interacting with and relating to these caring others and to people from different occupational and ethnic backgrounds.

The basic principle of the idea of expanding levels of perspective-taking is that a person at higher levels has mapped the terrain and therefore can guide people at lower levels to find their way and broaden their perspectives. This is what underlies the career of teacher, social-worker, lawyer, pastor or minister, travel agents, and the like. These are the helping professions. One of the main rewards of these professions is the joy of sharing discovery with the person they are helping. This joy becomes the cement of authentic communities as Scott Peck has defined them.

For those few persons who achieve a partial glimpse of an ultimate perspective, the caring relationship has evolved towards an internalized image of a transcendent, immanent, and loving divinity of some kind. How this divinity is imagined, affects personality styles and perspectives that influence responses to change and uncertainty.

Reading Sharon Janis' book Spirituality for Dummies helped me to realize that the terms: perspective, worldview, worldly knowledge, consciousness, and awareness are all closely related in meaning and involve memories stored in our brains. As one expands their perspectives by gaining knowledge, but also by getting to know people from different careers, cultures, and approaches to transcend ideas, they reach higher levels of perspective-taking and consciousness. They can understand the past and see into future possibilities better. They can plan for their future better. They understand better, the yearnings and joys of their lives. Everything seems to fit into a larger whole. Their desires are influenced more and more by the broader perspectives and/or higher (or deeper) levels of consciousness. Thus, as they think about their bliss, and work at following their bliss, the objects of their bliss change to fit into the broader perspectives and deeper consciousness. Thus, their desires become more attainable. However, it is important to keep in mind that we must be cautious not to believe that if we are relating to a broader perspective and/or a deeper consciousness, we are relating to the ultimate perspective. On page 123, Janis provides a very relevant quote from Albert Einstein: The significant problems we face can never be solved at the level of thinking that created them.

Janis' book has a very good prelude - introduction to broadening worldviews on pages 24-28, and to spirituality on pages that follow. Chapter 5 on programs of practices that strengthen spirituality has a good introduction with examples. I have not seen such good examples presented for the newcomer to spirituality development in other books. Her writing fits well with, and does not conflict with, practices in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and other faiths. Chapter 14 discusses the benefits of associating with groups and gurus that expand our perspectives and deepen our consciousness.

For a related discussion on spirituality, see the end paragraphs of my next-to-the-last section herein: KAREN ARMSTRONG'S "SPIRAL STAIRCASE".

Professor Ervin Staub's book entitled: The Psychology of Good and Evil became available in August 2003. Pages 58 and 61-64 in Chapter 5 of his book discusses basic human needs and, in my view, relates to the idea of hardwiring that I discuss herein. The importance of attachment is discussed in his Chapter 10. I wish that Professor Staub had incorporated in his research some of the ideas related to levels of perspective-taking that I got from James Fowler's work, Faithful Change, and describe in Chapter 1 of my book Countering Polarization - A Key to Peacemaking. My book is available now from Xlibris' bookstore at: Countering Polarization. The book will also be available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Borders later this Spring 2008.

There is scientific support for my idea of a hardwired quest, and support is also found in the sacred writings and practices by followers of Christianity and Islam. See: (Luke 17:21, Romans 5:5 ("for God's love has been poured into our hearts..."), and I Cor. 3:16 (" Do you not know ... that God's Spirit dwells in you?"). In Ephesians, 3:16-17 - ... that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. See also Galatians 2:20 and Romans 8:10.

In Islam, see verse 30:30 in Asad's translation of the Qu'ran, entitled: The Message of the Qu'ran. See his note #27 referring to that verse, and also his note #139 for verse 7:172. Note #27 includes the famous saying of the Prophet Muhammad: "Every child is born in (with) this natural disposition". Note #139 says: "According to the Qur'an, The ability to perceive the existence of the Supreme Power is inborn in human nature (fitrah) ..."

See also Seyyed Hossein Nasr's reference to this idea in his book entitled: The Heart of Islam on pages 6 and 7 relative to the term "al fitrah". The Muslim word "al fitrah" points to a primordial knowledge deeply imbedded into our being. In my view, that implies that every child is born with an innate (hardwired) desire for a relationship with a caring other which, as the individual grows, can, for some persons, reach a relationship with the ultimate other - God.

I agree with what Erik Erikson wrote in 1958, that "basic trust" in relating to another was "the first psychosocial trait and the fundament of all others". There is an aspect of mutuality in "basic trust". Without it "children die mentally". "They do not respond or learn". I believe that he was close to the idea of "hardwiring". See page 118 in the paperback edition of Erikson's book, Young Man Luther.

Nelson Thayer, a professor of Psychology and religion at the Theological School of Drew University, published Spirituality and Pastoral Care in 1985. It is most unfortunate that we lost this scholar, at age 53 to cancer, in 1990. The first 60 pages in his book discuss the development of thinking about spirituality and spirit, starting from the view of Biblically-based tradition and then following Christian perspectives as they were impacted by the age of science, modernity, and postmodernity. He described the views of Freud, Reinhold Niebuhr, Albert Outler, Eric Erikson, Abraham Maslow, Ludwig Bibswanger, Peter Berger, Robert Bellah, Mircea Eliade, Howard Thurman, and others.

I found statements that in my view allude to the idea of God and man's relation to God. Thayer quotes Howard Thurman on page 30 - " ... the movement of the heart of a man toward God; a movement that in a sense is within God - God in the heart sharing its life with God the Creator of all Life." ..."It is not surprising that in man's spirit should be found the crucial nexus that connects him with the Creator of Life, the Spirit of the Living God. [Bold type has been inserted by Notess, in the previous and forthcoming to highlight ideas that are akin to hardwiring.]

On page 34, Thayer wrote: Freud "...understood belief in a personal God to be a projection of a wish for an all-powerful benevolent, protective father. ...characterized by the residue of vicissitudes of the relationship with one's earthly parents." The foregoing two quotes, as I see it lead to the idea of hardwiring. On page 49 Thayer started a seven-page summary of his ideas. On page 50, he wrote that theologians ..."recognize the human yearning for the divine." .."the words of Augustine: "O God, Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee." On p. 51, "And yet the experience of relationship in some way has always been a part of this dimension [or aspect of the human personality]." (Bracketed term inserted by Notess.)

Thayer's writing, starting with the last paragraph on page 59 and continuing to the end of page 60 provides a good summary of how recent work in the area of states of consciousness point to the idea that "reality gives itself to be known through many modalities of lived experience" other than "reason and the five senses".

A key to spirituality is to supplement scientific knowledge with human-to-human relationships that eventually transcend mere human friendships and interactions. Such relationships with transcendent thinkers whose broad and deep life experiences have been written down in classical and sacred books strengthen spirituality and support reaching higher stages of consciousness.

There is more from Thayer’s writing in my subsequent section, herein, on Aspects of Spirituality.

Elaine Pagels in her 2003 book, Beyond Belief - The Secret Gospel of Thomas discussed the differences in opinion between Saints John and Thomas. On page 46 she wrote that "… everyone … receives an innate capacity to know God." This, in my view, supports the idea of a hardwired quest for a Caring Other.

Recent research by Dr. Kathleen Kovner Kline of the Dartmouth Medical School supports my use of the term "hardwired" in relation to the ever-present quest for a relationship with a transcendent caring other. Kline was the principal investigator of the research. For information on this research, see Hardwired to Connect. Further support comes from the book: The Power of Empathy by Ciaramicoli and Ketcham, wherein Chapter 3, entitled: "Wired for Empathy" describes several inter-creature relationships that show empathy across species. On page 30 they mention empathy in the brain and the role of the amygdala and neocortex which raps over the primitive amygdala.

See also, Tolson’s article listed in my bibliography.

Other research on the limbic system of the human brain summarized by Daniel Goleman, et al in Chapters 2 & 3 of their 2002 book Primal Leadership - Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence supports my idea that caring and nurturing mothers play an important role in hardwiring. See Section W in Chapter 2 of my book CVountering Polarization published by Xlibris and available now from Xlibris.com. It has a description of emotional intelligence. Mothers might be using Emotional Intelligence without knowing it as such.

To understand this hardwired seeking, it helps to remind one how they felt upon meeting a new friend who feels like a soul mate. I believe that such a deep and rapid feeling of relationship as that upon meeting a soul mate occurs partly at the unconscious level. This is the level where ones soul exists. The soul, in my view, is closely related to the early relationship to a caring mother that remains in the unconscious and provides the motivation to climb the "spiral staircase" throughout one's life until one has found the ultimate caring other, the ultimate soul mate.

Gerald M. Edelman, in his book, Wider Than The Sky - The Phenomenal Gift of Consciousness, has presented a readable framework about how the human brain works and has evolved from primary consciousness in animals to enable higher-order consciousness in humans. He starts his idea on page 29 with the statement: “Neurons that fire together wire together.” On page 22 he wrote: "Increased synaptic strength or efficacy within a pathway leads to a higher likelihood of conduction across that pathway, whereas decreases in synaptic strength diminish that likelihood." These two ideas, coupled with the idea that there develop in our brains alternative neural (feedback) paths by which a signal can travel, imply that the path selected can be influenced by changing interpretations, changing emotions, and more. His writing implies that the term hardwiring might be misleading unless the selectivity is included. For more discussion of Edelman's ideas see the fourth section in my posting: Relating to the Divine.

Goleman's newest book reenforces the idea of Hardwiring. It is entitled Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships. These ideas got me thinking that Christianity and Islam both develop their religious stories, rituals, and practices in ways that bond followers to, as though they were "wired to connect" to the supreme caring other. The benefits that Goleman describes accrue to the true believer.

As the child learns about the world around him or her: what is safe, what is good, and what is not safe, the child starts to build a worldview or perspective that guides his actions for his own good and for the good of those others whom he trusts. It is important to realize that relationships with trusted others help one expand what one can learn beyond what he can see and hear with his own eyes and ears. "Four eyes work better than two." The trusted others become a community which supports each member as they learn more about the world and as they spread their knowledge and information to others among their circle of friends.

An interesting question that arises is: Which is more important, broadening one's perspective by reading about the life contexts of diverse others, or expanding relationships with people from diverse backgrounds and getting to know them? I believe that expanding relationships comes first. Broadening perspectives is a result of expanding relationships.

The quest for a relationship with a caring other, in my view, is like a search to fill a hole in one's soul. In many lonely and bored adolescents, the need leads, in some cases, to their joining a neighborhood gang or a group of seemingly compatible teens. Such loneliness is especially found in Western societies that value independence, freedom for the individual, and self-sufficiency. Carried to extremes in highly competitive societies many persons feel alone and are at a loss for how to become involved in "authentic communities". In authentic communities, the community members know each other, respect each other's differences, and can reach workable compromises on issues that divide and polarize pseudo communities.

In other words, to understand this hardwired seeking, it helps to remind one how they felt upon meeting a new friend who feels like a soul mate. I believe that such a deep and rapid feeling of relationship as that upon meeting a soul mate occurs partly at the unconscious level. This is the level where ones soul exists. The soul, in my view, is closely related to the early relationship to a caring mother that remains in the unconscious and provides the motivation to climb the "spiral staircase" throughout one's life until one has found the ultimate caring other, the ultimate soul mate.

Some readers might have problems with the following paragraph. If this is the case, I ask them to wait until they read the next two sections of this book.

Ultimately, the quests: (1) for a caring other, and (2) to expand one's perspectives, are filled by a relationship with an ultimate caring other that is associated with a global or ultimate perspective. Many humans have trouble committing to a global perspective and therefore they internalize some image of God. This image is often a personalized or anthropomorphic image and becomes internalized within the individual's psyche, in much the same way that memories of a mother, dear friend, or mentor become internalized. A child who is raised by loving and nurturing parents is more likely to believe in a loving God. On the other hand, a child who is raised by overly strict, punitive parents who do not listen to the child's concerns are more likely to believe in a strict punitive and often remote image of God. In either case, the internalized image of a parent exists even after the parent has passed on. In the latter case, the child of authoritarian parents might be more easily brainwashed to relate to an authoritarian leader.

The idea of hardwiring has important implications for a pluralistic approach to religion and politics, so sorely needed in today's world. I believe that the idea provides a common basis for viewing relationships with God. Consider that experiences during early childhood, for children in all religions, vary greatly between the two extremes - 1) somewhat isolated, paternalistic-authoritarian upbringing wherein the children are taught to respect and follow traditions and seldom have opportunities to mix with other children from different ethno-religious backgrounds, and 2) the other extreme of parents who give their children freedom to mix with diverse others and take advantage of the many educationable moments in their child's life to nurture, explain, educate, and guide their child to choose from a set of more universal values. In both of the foregoing extremes, parents can teach their children to become compassionate adults with a good set of values, learned by seeing how their parents act toward others. In the latter case however, the children will also learn how to relate to persons from diverse backgrounds.

Parents have such great opportunities to nurture their children. Yet, many parents or parent surrogates lack the experience, time, and knowledge to provide good parenting for their children. Great harm is done to children whose parents are inconsistent in responses to their children's actions and therefore many of these children grow up to have a low tolerance for ambiguity.

Development of one's faith is like climbing a "spiral staircase" to relationships with ever-broader perspectives or ideas wherein at the top of the staircase one develops a relationship with the transcendent, ultimate power in the universe. Some call this power the process of creation, or God, while others call it The Force, or by some other name.

Since the power is so great that mere humans cannot imagine all the aspects of this power, we anthropomorphize God using humankind as a model for conceptualizing God. In other words, we create God in the image of a King, Emperor, or other powerful being. Images of God are discussed further in the Section following the one below.

EIGHT LEVELS OF PERSPECTIVE TAKING

In the foregoing section, I mentioned the dependence of perspectives upon relationships. Perspectives are broadened as we establish relationships with people who have broader perspectives. We learn from how they see the world, and how they see us. We rely upon empathy to test our understanding of the other as we strengthen these relationships. Empathy is an innate trait that almost everyone uses to "understand and respond to the unique experiences of another." This quote comes from page 4 of the book: The Power of Empathy by Ciaramicoli and Ketcham. Their book describes many examples of the use of empathy.

As a person passes through the stages of faith development, the mother as a caring other, is replaced or becomes supplemented, by a favorite teacher, a mentor, a friend, or a supervisor at work. We expand our perspectives through our relationship with these caring others. The basic principle of the idea of expanding levels of perspective-taking is that a person at higher levels has mapped the terrain and therefore can guide people at lower levels to find their way and broaden their perspective. This is what underlies the career of teacher, social-worker, lawyer, pastor or minister, travel agents, and the like. These are the helping professions. One of the main rewards of these professions is the joy of sharing discovery on the part of the person they are helping. This joy becomes the cement of authentic communities as Scott Peck has defined them.

As we broaden our perspectives it is like climbing a spiral staircase oscillating between learning by trying on our own and learning from the experiences of others or an experienced leader or guide. At the top of the staircase is what some call the ULTIMATE guide. We react as this guide would to encountering a threat, or some other danger. The relationship is a key and that idea is exemplified when we want to know who the author of a guidebook is before we trust the guidance in that book.

Consider that at the top of the staircase the ultimate guide is one whom we trust, and one who knows everything about the territory and has the ultimate perspective. To think about the One who has that perspective we have to think of the One as a person. Some call the One - "God". Others humanize the One a bit more and call him Jesus. Once the One is humanized or anthropomorphized down to a size we can imaging, we can internalize the One and build a relationship with the One.

The religious leaders of 1600 years ago created rituals and doctrines that helped people of that time to relate to the One. Now we need new interpretations and rituals that will help us have a turned-on relationship with the ultimate One.

I propose expanding levels of Perspective Taking to eight tiers. The idea of levels of perspective taking is influenced by stages of cognitive development at the lower levels of perspective taking.

1. The first level of perspective taking occurs during "the terrible twos" as one becomes aware of one's self as a unique individual who can react to events in his or her surroundings to satisfy personal needs such as hunger and building a trustworthy relationship with his or her caring other, (a mother, for example).

2. A second level is learning to take the perspective of another person, with whom one has a relationship. The self can influence the other person for three purposes:

a) One’s own gain,
b) Another's gain, and
c) Strengthening a trustworthy relationship between the other and self.

3. A third level is that of a third person who is watching the interaction of two other persons. An example is two siblings imagining how their mom might view their interaction. They might stop a quarrel between themselves to please their mother.

Important to learning to take the perspective of others is the concept of "TRUST". Perspective taking, when coupled with sincere and authentic caring for the other, is an essential requirement for building trust among members of a family, a group outside the family, or a community.

4. A fourth level is that of the family which includes siblings, mom, and dad. An example would be action that serves to maintain the good image of the family within the community or neighborhood. Day-Care centers are representative of new institutions developing around the need to serve a specific family concern such as caring for preschool children or caring for a live-alone grandmother. The concept of Honor that is emphasized in many Muslim societies today falls in this category. The honor of the family is sensitive to the social behavior of children, parents, and other extended family members. Honor, guilt, and shame are discussed in detail in chapter 3 of my book Countering Polarization soon to be published, and in my posting: Understanding Forces Confronted By Muslim Youth. In my book (Chapter 3), I also answer the question: "Why Do They Hate Us?" Answers to this question involve several important differences in perspective. For a detailed view see also Why Do People Hate America?, a book by Sardar and Davies, that was an international best seller.

A close circle of friends also functions at this level of perspective taking. An excellent example is the "Inklings", a group of literary friends at Oxford University in which C. S. Lewis was involved. Colin Duriez has written an article entitled: The Way of Friendship, wherein he wrote that friends provide "other vantage points" or perspectives "from which to view the world." "Each friend opens up reality in different ways." In such a group, "…the process of opening up reality was richly interactive, a constantly moving play of light." " Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth … each bringing out all that is best, wisest, or funniest in all the others." (from page 38 in Issue 88, Fall 2005 of Christian History and Biography)

5. The fifth level of perspective taking is one wherein the working of the community as a whole is of concern. For example: "What can I do to help the image of my high school, my church, my town?” I might help keep a good community team spirit and not bully the other community's ball team. I might help keep the grounds clean and attractive, and so on".

6. A sixth level is that in which people show concern for the well being of the nation or state and their institutions. An example would be a person who joins a voter registration effort and votes in all elections. The writings of Walter Wink are relevant here. Wink considers the spirit of an institution. I discuss his topic, the spiritual aspects of institutions, later in this section.

Actions based upon this level of perspective taking go beyond contributing toward the building of mutual trust within the community. This next phase of trust development, I would call "FAITH" in one's nation. Patriotism falls in this level. Loyalty to one's city and concern about how newcomers and tourists view the city requires taking their perspective and the perspectives of city government officials.

7. The seventh level is that of concern for our planet. Environmentalists often show this concern. The number of international organizations is increasing rapidly in this era of globalization. Institutions, such as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, develop as experience shows what works and what doesn't work at this level of concern.

I recently came across very relevant work in a book entitled: The Sins of Scripture by John Shelby Spong (2005). I found that he described the expansion of consciousness that was influenced by the teachings of Hosea, Amos, and the life of Jesus. On page 293, Spong wrote that God is the "ultimate consciousness in which our own consciousness participates and is a part." A few other short quotes from Spong follow.

From: page 294 (last line). God "was growing with the expanded consciousness of the people." From: page 296. "Tribal divisions come out of limited consciousness. A universal sense of what it means to be human is a gigantic step into something quite new, an expanded consciousness."

At this point, I believe that it is important to insert an important concern. That is that leaders of a global corporation do not necessarily function on the basis of a broad global perspective. Consider the kinds of tribal-scale perspective one finds among leaders of Halliburton in its operations in Iraq and elsewhere, or those of the former Enron Corporation. I consider that their commitments were no different from those of a tribal chief or cleric who has his men kill because the tribe was dishonored by occupation of its land.

In our globalizing world with instant communication, independent systems of justice must expand to consider such sinful examples. This is a concern of President Bush who realizes that the World Court is striving in this direction and might put him on trial as Milosevic was put on trial. The Environmental Impact process for approval of large construction projects is one example of government trying to guarantee justice by reducing impacts on the environment. However there are many other areas where protection from impacts is desirable and necessary.

Unfortunately, the old time religions did not consider global justice and impacts of global scale in clear and simple terms.

8. An eighth level is based upon the word "consciousness" as used by John Spong. It is similar in meaning to how I use the term "perspective". The term "Ultimate Consciousness" then, is in some ways equivalent to an eighth level of perspective taking and implies a relationship to the God within. This 8th level might also be called a "Godly Perspective".

From: page 290. "The experience of Jesus meant to him that human life was not bounded and that God was not external. We human beings enter God and life simultaneously the moment we step beyond our fears and become free." ... "One cannot limit God to that sense of holiness we meet only inside the boundaries of tribal worship." That is idolatry. "Tribal divisions come out of limited consciousness."

Spong seems to be saying that some of those with perspectives expanded beyond tribal perspectives in this modern era are now global humans and no longer are there limits to their identities and perspectives, or as he says - consciousness, and security boundaries. But, I would add here that responsibilities must be expanded to the ultimate scale also, as I implied in my bold-type discussion at the end of level 7.

When a person passes the age of about 15 years, his level of perspective taking can vary independent of his stage of cognitive development. Levels of perspective taking may differ among levels three or higher depending upon the situation. In times of a world war, one many might give highest priority to levels 4, 5, or 6. For example, if ones neighborhood got extensive bomb damage, level 5 might get top priority. Otherwise level 6 might get top priority, unless an only son is the sole means of support for his family on the farm; in which case, as in World War II, the son might get a deferment from military service (level 4 might take precedence).

In the foregoing, it is important to realize that some adults are primarily devoted and committed to their spouse and family, and at the same time, they are committed to their close-knit community at work, in their neighborhood, and/or religious community. Many have little experience or time for concerns focused at higher levels. If there is an ultimate consciousness it is likely to be simplified to a fatherly, anthropomorphic view of God.

During discussions about people who seem to have strong limits to the scope of their perspectives, a metaphor that arose was - "these people act as though they were in a box". Generally people who use this metaphor imply that those on the far right seem to be in such boxes. However, I have met so-called liberals who have broader perspectives and believe that they are not in a box. In other words, each group cannot stomach discussion with the other. It is important to realize that under certain conditions people in each of these boxes can have a good life and work for peace at the level of their own perspective.

Recent research published in the American Sociological Review and accessible at: (http://www.asanet.org/page.ww?section=Press&name=circle+of+friends). It describes how the circle of friends is shrinking for Americans. This idea provides one explanation why broadening perspectives has become so difficult for Americans. A solution to this problem is provided by the idea of social capital described by Robert Putnam in his book Bowling Alone.

I describe social capital in Section L of chapter 4 in my book entitled: Countering Polarization. I mentioned this book at the beginning of this web site (In the 4th paragraph).

I believe that the increasing isolation is why many people are attracted to the mega-churches that thrive on supporting many small groups each of which connects people around topics of common interest. Isolated people need opportunities to build relationships with others in settings that broaden perspectives. This is what social capital provides. I am not sure that the small groups in mega-churches broaden perspectives. It appears to me that many of them reduce the isolation, but strengthen the "Berlin Walls" that limit exposure to diverse perspectives instead of breaking down these walls.

IMAGES OF GOD - TRANSCENDENT, INTERNALIZED WITHIN EACH OF US, OR A COMBINATION OF BOTH

This section deals with a key component of religion - relating to the idea of a Creator, a God, The Force, or other "ultimate" transcendent foundations of faith. Variations in how God is perceived contribute significantly to polarization within and among societies.

When humans try to form a mental image of something they cannot see, hear, or feel, it is natural to base their image on something with which they are familiar. Many persons imagine God to be like a King, and/or a Judge. This is called personalizing God, or having an anthropomorphic (human-like model) image of God. Our language forces us to speak and write about God in this way. We refer to God as a “Him” or “Her”. Using the pronoun “It” seems to demean God. Thus, many of us create God in the image of a father, a King, or in an image of some super-human being. However, these images of God impose limitations upon God.

In Biblical times, God was imagined to be in heaven, above a flat earth. Such a view of God was consistent with the beliefs about the cosmos in those times. However, in the postmodern transition that we are in now, the knowledge gained from scientific research makes it difficult for many adults to hold on to the old image of a remote God in heaven. Marcus Borg, in his book, The God We Never Knew, distinguishes between a Monarchical image of God and an Immanent image of God. The Monarchial image is referred to as: God the Father, a supreme being, a King, Judge, usually remote, up in Heaven. The Immanent image has God being all around us and within each of us. (Borg, born into a N. Dakota Lutheran background, was in his thirties when he began to relate to the Immanent image of God.)

Borg, on page 36, wrote that KNOWING God, is more than knowing ABOUT God. As I see it, KNOWING, in this sense, implies a close relationship between two persons. You KNOW a person when there have been many happy and good experiences shared together. I remember when my 7-year old son's girl friend wished that he were there to share in seeing a beautiful view of a creek winding through a canyon. This is because they had spent many enjoyable times hiking together in a canyon that had many swimming holes. They were like a pair of loving and knowing children and had a caring brother and sister relationship.

God is imagined in many different ways because the idea of God is too complex for any human to be able to describe God in words. The concept, GOD, is ineffable, which means that it is difficult to describe in words that communicate a clear meaning that most persons would interpret in the same way. (The story of 'The Blind Men and the Elephant' is relevant here.) Our language itself is not up to the task of describing an infinite creator God or a process of creation. Biblical stories and sacred stories in other faiths guide the thinking of people about their God. I discuss this in more detail in the next section on spirituality.

Is God real? In Fowler's book Faithful Change he quotes William James as follows: "That which produces effects within another reality must be termed a reality itself, so I feel as if we had no philosophic excuse for calling the unseen or mystical world unreal." In my view, this statement works best when a community of people hold and apply a belief. Then we can talk about that belief as being real. For example, if a story about an American bomb destroying the house of an innocent family whether true or not, can lead to consequences, say such as a suicide bomber driving into the American Embassy, then the story, as it was imprinted in the mind of the suicide bomber, was real for him. This line of reasoning leads me to the statement: "God is real." To be more precise, since each person has a unique image of the infinite God, yet in a major faith, there are common aspects or "central tendencies" to the images of God, we can say: "That community's image of God is real". Marcus Borg, in his latest book, The Heart of Christianity (2003) provides a clear discussion of terms such as truth, real, and worldview on pages 61-62.

Those who believe that God exists, within one's mind and/or is internalized by the person, can relate to that image of God as one relates to the memory of a dear friend or parent now deceased. Many persons internalize some image of God, Muhammad, or Jesus. This image is developed from what they learn about God from their sacred books and stories. Such an image, for many persons, is an effective guide along the road of life. How one relates to an internalized image of God, Allah, or Jesus is a major component of the spiritual side of faith. We must remember that each person's image of an internalized God is unique to them. When speaking to another person about God it is desirable to discover how their image differs from yours. So doing can avoid a lot of confusion.

Fowler, in Chapter 12 of his book: Faithful Change, summarized images or aspects of God held by individuals who are influenced by modern and postmodern views.(pp. 192-3) After a quote from Peter Hodgson, he wrote: "He (Hodgson) is suggesting that behind the events that represent breakthroughs in the history of people and nations, a discerning observer can detect long lines of convergent providence." The civil rights movements in the U. S. and in South Africa illustrated how [belief in] God energizes and "is present" ... "in specific shapes and patterns of praxis" that can transform societal trends.(p. 194) (I added the terms in square brackets and I discuss one way to understand the idea - God's involvement - in the next paragraphs.) By "praxis", Fowler means "the characteristic patterns of God's involvement in and providential guidance of the processes of our evolving universe, including God's interaction with humankind".(p. 191) "Patterns of divine praxis that Fowler described are: God's creating, governing, liberating and redeeming."

When one speaks about God acting in some way, I prefer to separate these actions into two groups. Consider the statement that God caused a storm or earth quake to destroy houses. I interpret such statements to refer to the creator part of God that includes the big bang and evolution. These are processes with a variety of physical probabilities and randomness included within those processes. God did not cause the storm for the purpose of punishing a human being. The best we humans can do is to use scientific methods to simulate part of the storm's processes and predict where the storm might hit and how strong it might be.

On the other hand when someone states that "God acted" to punish a group of people who violated a moral law; rather than say: "God acted in this way", I prefer to say that "a person's or group's belief about God caused them to act" in response to the immoral act. In other words, if one develops a close relationship with an internalized Jesus and/or with God, and opens his heart to such a relationship, then the "amazing grace" of God seems to flow in a spiritual way that builds hope, a positive attitude, and strengthens faith in the relationship. Such a relationship enables a person to navigate safely through many of the vicissitudes of life.

From a different perspective, we need to view God's graciousness as also rooted in a creative process that includes the process of evolution, and as leading humankind to take on a responsible partnership with God as His helper. We are to be stewards of His creation that gives us the responsibility of managing natural ecosystems to continue in a progressive balance so that the processes of evolution (part of God's creation) will continue to be fruitful.

We must realize that the theological concept of "GOD as Creator" includes the whole universe and it's natural eco-systems of which we are a part. Humans have the consciousness to partner with God and we have the obligation to help Mother Nature keep these many systems in balance.

Some people believe that God's creation is sacred and we should not tamper with it. However, we pollute Mother Nature and exploit its resources for personal gain. Some believe that we might even go so far as to use genetic engineering to help manage natural ecosystem balances. Many of the Asian and Native American religions emphasize respecting Mother Nature and not exploiting it for our own selfish needs and thus throwing the many balancing forces in nature off balance. How shall we be guided in balancing the sacred and secular in the postmodern era?

In August 2006, I found the a well written web posting: Buddhism and Peace by Jan Willis, a Walter A. Crowell Professor of the Social Sciences at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Her paper was presented at the G6B People's Summit - Calgary, Alberta, Canada (6-24-2002). It is accessible at:

(http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma6/peace.html).

Can we have evolution without competition? Can we have competition without conflict? Our Western emphasis on free enterprise and the free market process are part of an ideology or faith that is destroying Mother Nature.

Neale Donald Walsch in his book The New Revelations - A Conversation With God (2002) used the format of a conversation with God that describes a new reality - a new belief system, based upon interpretations of sacred witings in the Bible and Qur'an that frees believers from the old interpretations of religious beliefs. Walsch points out clearly how narrow perspectives of religious leaders imposed limits upon and distorted the systems of beliefs that served as the bases for the Abrahamic faiths. His book aims to broaden perspectives so that individuals and communities can relate better to the one God. This is essential to establish a lasting peace. I recommend his book highly.

INTRODUCTION TO ASPECTS OF SPIRITUALITY

The concepts of spirit and spirituality are closely related to how one interacts with and relates to his/her image of the divine and/or the process of cosmic evolution. The relationship starts in childhood, when hearing stories about God and becoming familiar with the emotions that others have when they communicate such stories; emotions such as awe, joy, and respect. Such experiences create symbols that dwell in our conscious and unconscious and trigger particular subjective feelings. Disciplined, yet relaxed focusing on these symbols, together with contemplating about them, helps organize these symbols and experiences toward a coherent holistic image of the process of an evolving cosmos that some persons achieve in the later stages of faith development. Such focusing includes relating to others, centering on the sacred, meditating, prayer, relaxing, yoga and clearing ones mind of worldly cares and concerns. These and other approaches help one to occasionally reach an alternative state of consciousness, a state wherein one feels in communion or close relationship with the divine and/or the cosmos, with the Christ, with the Holy Spirit, with a remote monarchical God, with an internalized God within each of us, or a combination of the foregoing.

The Introduction and Chapter 1 in Thayer's book Spirituality and Pastoral Care provide good discussions of the uniqueness of spirituality and its embodiment in symbols and symbolic structures learned in religious classes or in other spheres of one's life. Each person has unique experiences in their past that consciously and unconsciously influence their vocabulary of symbols and the meaning they impart to these symbols. In his last paragraph on page 27, Thayer described how adult discussion groups believed that "... meanings were being communicated and shared. But upon further inquiry, none really knew what the content of the others' experience actually was." The kind of person one is, and her or his unique experiences, influence one's spirituality. Thus unless a discussion group has become an authentic community wherein each person knows where the others are coming from, discussion produces little long-lasting change.

Paraphrasing Thayer, spirituality in general, emphasizes an interrelated set of practices, rituals, and doctrines designed to deepen one's sense of relationship with the ultimate transcendent power, or the divine. Included in this definition is, by implication, integrating and expanding one's perspectives of the real or reality so that their perpectives reach transcendent levels. In other words, I believe that spirituality develops as a person through meditation, practice, and ritual learns how to delve into his or her unconscious and relate to some combination of an internalized, anthropomorphic image of God, and God as also the evolutionary process of creation that has developed in the unconscious.

Another description of spirituality can be found in the beginning of a book: Spiritual Literacy by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat. Their definition is much broader than the foregoing. On pages 28-29 they emphasize: a "holy longing, a yearning to know the meaning of our lives, to have a connection with the transpersonal", "our deepest values and desires, the very core of our being", personal depth, conscience, deep will". Is this yearning related to our hardwired quest for relationship with a caring other that I discussed earlier?

An example of spirituality occurs when one has felt at one with a particular group of people, or felt herself to be in tune with the cosmos. This feeling can happen, at one level, after contemplating a subject and understanding for the first time a new idea or relationship of ideas. One has to be so involved with the subject at hand that every-day worries and concerns are shut out from confusing the thought processes. One feels a joy and has a glimpse of some new power to comprehend the meaning of faith or the meaning of a relationship with God or Jesus. This feeling might last for only a short time, until one gets involved in doing something else. I had such a feeling when singing in a choir that performed Handel’s Messiah. All the parts, in harmony, created a sound and mood that was greater than the sound produced by any one voice. I felt at one with the choir. A choir transcends the individual.

The feeling of joy is similar to the JOY that Scott Peck described in The Different Drum, the joy that members of an authentic community feel when they first realize that their group has risen to the level of being an authentic community. The community members know each other, respect each other's differences, and can reach workable compromises on issues that divide and polarize pseudo communities.

Another example is that a transcendent experience is something like a mountaintop experience of seeing the layout of land features below, in a new spatial relationship and connectedness.

Armstrong wrote on page 338 in A History of God that when our minds are relaxed and receptive, ideas come from deep within our minds and sometimes from our unconscious. Many are familiar with the "Ah! Ha!" experience Archimedes had while in the bath. Sometimes these new ideas escape from being imprisoned by ideas "that have already been established."

Spirituality develops from lived experience wherein one has emotion-evoking experiences that generate meaningful symbolic attachments. Examples are: attachment to ones mother and/or father because of the tender loving care they gave to their new baby; attachment to the house and hometown where one spent childhood years; attachment to a tree or a scenic overlook, where one might have spent pleasant moments with a close friend; attachment to a group of war buddies or college classmates with whom one had exciting experiences; and religious activities that involved close relationships while learning from the Bible, relating to Jesus, etc. Summer church-camp experiences especially provide opportunities for spiritual reflection and Ah! Ha! experiences.

Such symbolic experiences dwell in our memories, in part, as unconscious memories, and influence how we feel about events later in life as new situations trigger the unconscious and/or conscious memories. We often are unaware how these symbols can work from our unconscious to generate strong emotional responses, when turned on by certain key words - such as red flags and memes. Memes were described by Richard Dawkins, in his book, The Selfish Gene first published in 1976. I present from his Chapter 11, a descriptive paragraph below.

"Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ..." "Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. If a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he passed it on to his colleagues and students. He mentions it in his articles and his lectures. If the idea catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain." I recommend Dawkins' book.

During the Presidential election campaigns of 2004, memes such as "pro-life", "freedom", and "democracy", were often used to corral and manipulate the thinking of voters, especially those used to listening to talk radio hosts and 15-second sound bytes. George Lakoff described how this was done and I refer to Lakoff again in the next section.

(Susan Blackmore's presents a good understanding of memes in her book, The Meme Machine.)

Development of strong symbols and a coherent set of metaphors and symbols is an important part of building one's faith. It helps if a group of people share experiences in authentic communities and build a common set of symbols and metaphors. For a spiritual transformation to develop, many persons must be committed over a period of at least several months. It is not something that one can achieve over a weekend, unless an experienced consultant leads a group of people who already know each other and are familiar with the key words, symbols, experiences, and perspectives uniting all of the foregoing. Mariana Caplan, in her book Halfway Up The Mountain, published in 1999, wrote about the length of time it takes to attain a lasting spiritual transformation. She emphasized that most Americans are too much in a hurry and too much used to a fast paced life, illustrated by the use of fast-food restaurants and automatic tellers. New Age gurus and other “sages” who promise them ecstatic experiences at a weekend retreat, easily exploit many who are searching for an authentic and long-lasting spiritual transformation. Others rely on drugs to give them a feeling of ecstasy. However, in most cases they become addicted to the search process and never achieve authentic and long-lived transformations.

I have found that some Christian congregations, in trying to satisfy a wide range of age and generational cohorts, have a mix of metaphors and symbols that is not effective. It is difficult to provide a focused set of symbols while trying to satisfy the needs and experiences of persons with a wide variety of backgrounds. Some prefer literal interpretations of the Bible. Others prefer to de-emphasize the Old Testament. Some find little meaning in communion bread and grape juice and do not believe in hell, or heaven. Others believe that Jesus' death on the cross, saved them from hell for eternity, if they accept Him as their savior.

Armstrong's History of God shows clearly how so many different approaches to faith developed and many of them are still relevant to small groups within any particular congregation.

The tree of faith has become overgrown with twigs and branches that weaken the tree. There is much careful trimming to be done. If the stories, metaphors and symbols are not properly trimmed, the congregations will lose members.

Thomas Merton, in the revision to New Seeds of Contemplation published in 1972, distinguished contemplation from trance or ecstasy, the hearing of sudden unutterable words, and the imagination of lights. He wrote, on page 1: "Contemplation...is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, and infinitely abundant Source. Contemplation is, above all, awareness of the reality of that Source. ...It 'knows' the Source, obscurely, inexplicably, but with a certitude that goes beyond reason and beyond simple faith." Might it be that part of this Source is hardwired into the child as a result of a caring and trusting relationship with his mother?

Excerpts from his pages 9-11 follow. "Contemplation... is the experiential grasp of reality as 'subjective', not so much "mine" (which would signify "belonging to the external self") but "myself" in existential mystery... Contemplation ... arrives at reality - by an intuitive awakening in which our free and personal reality becomes fully alive to its own existential depths, which open out to the mystery of God. For the contemplative, there is only "I AM". ...in the humble realization of our mysterious being as persons in whom God dwells, with infinite sweetness and inalienable power."

I believe that the search for the feeling of ecstasy and for emotions that are spread by group contagion is what attracts many Boomers to Pentecostal and other types of growing congregations. However, I feel that this kind of group activity and participation in worship is inauthentic in some cases and might not provide strong symbols that have meaning and will be long-lasting, unless the activities take place within authentic communities.

Spirituality includes the idea of relationship with what is a sacred object or idea. An example of a community that developed a sacred attachment is Estes Park, Colorado. The object that became sacred to many residents of that town was a large bull elk that came into town with his harem each winter to graze at the lower altitude. The residents named him "Sampson". When a big-city man shot the bull to take his antlers for a trophy, the whole town joined together to catch the culprit and punish him.

Primitive hunters in prehistoric times, Native American Indian tribes, and modern-day nature lovers observed animal, plant and bird behavior over periods of years. Such activities lead to a great respect for animals and nature in general, a respect that is closely tied to the idea of a felt relationship to the animals, plants, etc. This type of relationship is similar in some ways to the spiritual relationships described above. Selected elements of the natural world were viewed as spirits by primitive peoples. This, in part, reflects our human tendency to anthropomorphize sacred objects.

An important adjunct to such actions and relationships is that the participants become aware of the many interrelationships and forms of connectedness in nature, including their own community. This leads to broader perspectives without the scientific research we rely so much on today. Unfortunately, the social, physical, and biological sciences break up reality into classifications and categories so that measurement and research are facilitated. But, by so doing the interconnectedness and interactions are overlooked. The Asian way of life, more so than our own, seems to be concerned about the wholeness and interconnectedness of humans together with and as part of Mother Nature. See Robert C. Monk, et al, and Alan Watts, in my Bibliography for more on the Asian way. While reading Chapter 2 in Watts' book, This Is It, and Other Essays on Zen and Spiritual Experience I considered whether the conscious is fully in control of the self. I concluded that, the conscious self might believe that it is entirely in control. But, this separates humans from nature and the unconscious memories and related concerns, some of which have become hardwired within us. This idea of segmenting reality constitutes what some Asian followers of Buddhism believe complicates the perspectives of Westerners who become violent in seeking to overcome the ambiguities created by many diverse segmented views of reality.

Humankind has been placed on this planet to do God's work. It is through our good actions that God's work is accomplished. If we live in a tight, authentic community that incorporates mutual help among the community members, then if one member is in trouble and needs help, the community will join together to provide help. This is another form of what Christians call God's grace at work. It is also an example of how a supportive community can equate to a transcendent force that is larger than the individual.

David G. Myers, in his book Psychology and the Christian Faith (pp. 223-5) described how research shows the "powerful effect of overt action on internal disposition. If one wants to change character in significant ways, he has to depend on more than introspection and intellectual insight. Sometimes one needs to get involved in the action. The Biblical emphasis on strengthening one's faith by getting involved in helping others is strongly supported by evidence from the field of social psychology. Those congregations that strengthen the faith of their members get their members involved in helping others. Myers presented a good example of how involvement in helping and doing, changed perceptions in positive ways. (p. 214) To do God's work, we have to strike some kind of balance between the Asian and Western approaches to the complexities of our modern world. The next two Sections explore this problem.

I found a web site by C.L.Redding, entitled: THE EXPLICATING UNIVERSE early in September-2006. It is well written and covers topics similar to those I have tried to explore herein. It is accessible via Internet Explorer, at: (http://clreye.googlepages.com/theexplicatinguniverse). I recommend it highly.

INTERACTIONS AMONG POLITICAL, EDUCATIONAL, AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS

Both Walter Wink in The Powers That Be and Emmanuel Todd et al. in After the Empire - The Breakdown of the American Order contributed to different ways of thinking about institutions and the political, economic and religious powers that are supported by the norms and values that comprise institutions. At this point, I introduce the idea of institutional change wherein the institutions of economy, polity, education and religion are involved together. Sociologists define institutions as the norms (expected behaviors), values, traditions, practices, doctrines, stories, rituals, tools, and roles that guide human actions in the religious, political, economic, and social realms. For more on the concept of institutions see Chapter 2 of my book Countering Polarization.

Relevant here are the ideas in Joshua Muravchik's book, that I mentioned in the Introduction.

We are living in times of rapid change as cultures clash on our shrinking globe. The writings of Emmanuel Todd and of Walter Wink on pages 25-31 have led me to think about societal institutions. The roles and positions filled by those who work in the organizations that represent the institutions define the influence that workers wield within the organization and beyond. The powers that are associated with the leaders of these institutions have spiritual roots that extend deep down into our unconscious. For example many Roman Catholics revere their Pope. Shiite Muslims revere their Ayatollah. In the institution of a nuclear family deserving fathers and/or mothers are loved, revered, and internalized by their children. A student might internalize a favorite schoolteacher. Many Christians have internalized an image of Jesus. In the words of the hymn, In the Garden, "He walks with me and He talks with me."

Adapting to and confronting aspects of cultural (institutional) change is stressful because norms, values, and traditions change. The responses to such stresses are evident, especially in young people trying to develop secure personal identities and to make choices about commitments to ideas, groups, political parties and careers. I refer the reader to the good work of The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in Section - J of Chapter 1 in my book. Both public school and religious education teachers can help considerably by using some of the SPLC's innovative ideas.

Consider the ideas of George Lakoff, (Moral Politics) a linguist who has analyzed how people react to certain key words and symbols that arouse emotions rooted in their unconscious. These reactions cause some people to close their minds and they become unable to listen and think critically. Often, they do this subconsciously, without realizing how they are being manipulated. Combine that idea with the fact that excessive television watching from babyhood on affects brain development to lower attention spans, and in some, it leads to attention deficit disorders that make learning more problematical. We have already witnessed the application and exploitation of this television syndrome in the proliferation of 15-second sound bytes in advertising and in election campaigns. These reactions are a danger to democratic societies because a true democracy depends upon people listening to diverse others discussing differences, understanding differences and striving toward consensus. Fifteen-second sound bytes are not conducive to critical thinking. Thinking about the problems that people with tribal commitments have in transitioning to broader bases for their commitments, I wonder about the problems that people used to 15-second sound bytes will have. Might this be a factor in the increased dropout rate of high school students?

Recent publications about the idea of memes are related to the foregoing. Glenn Grant has a web site that helps readers understand memes by relating them to the idea of a virus. He wrote that a meme is a pattern of information that happens to evolve a form that induces people to repeat the pattern. Advertisers and politicians running for election use these ideas for their own selfish purposes. See also the work of Don Edward Beck and Christopher C. Cowan, Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change in a following section on Spiral Dynamics herein.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has written a book entitled: What's Right with Islam (2004). He leads a congregation in a mosque twelve blocks from the World Trade Center site in Manhattan and has done a superb job of describing the Islamic faith. In his Chapter 4, he wove together ideas from the work of Wilfred Cantrell Smith, Barber, and Dawkins. Rauf distinguished between religion as an institution or system, which is a concept that is about one or two centuries old and, on the other hand, the much older concept - religion as defining how a person relates to his or her God. Islam means self-surrender to God and only recently has the Western description of Islam as a religious system become common in writings. He wrote, on page 115, "Religion changed from something you did into something that you were. The relatively new term - Islamism - merges the faith of Islam with political militancy and that leads Westerners to think that Islam is the main source of militancy. This, Rauf wrote, is a "pernicious use of language". I recommend Rauf's book highly and place it on a par with Nasr's The Heart of Islam.

The ambiguities one encounters in times of socio-cultural change, especially in underdeveloped societies, make it difficult for young men to manage development of a strong and secure identity and worldview. Such change often requires individuals to change the priorities of their values and commitments. For example, young persons learn that career opportunities in the cities provide more choices that they can find in their village. But, to seek these new opportunities, one must decrease commitments to family and learn about making commitments to ones school, craft, or trade in the city. Rural traditions do not provide clear guidance for such changes. The ambiguities produced by these changes increase stress within families and with the youth facing decisions about moving to the new and more complex world of city life.

I have seen the variety of responses to change when rural people moved to the towns to work in textile mills. In some rural areas in the America of the 1950's and 60's schools tried to help prepare students for these changes, whereas in other areas the young people had to adapt without help. Sometimes church leaders helped in the readjustments. Radio and popular magazines helped by dramatizing these changes in their programming and stories. Remember that in the middle of the twentieth century, the influence of television was much different than it is now and there was no Internet. I believe that the levels of stress are much greater in the developing countries of the Middle East. Now, the rate of change is faster and television and the Internet focus on the negative aspects of city life to a much greater degree.

Consider that in their early years, many Saudi boys are influenced in ways that determine how they will react to strict leaders and to women. Coming under the strict domination of their father at age seven, I believe, will influence their image of God as an adult. For example, in Islam, and also in Christianity, those boys who have a strict, punitive father often have an authoritarian image of God. They can become easy prey to those extremist religious clerics and teachers who emphasize an authoritarian image of God. On the other hand, if their father is kind and compassionate, they are less likely to view God as authoritarian.

The problems of stress are compounded further by the emphasis on honor and blaming (mentioned earlier herein)in that part of our world. Changes have come so quickly that Muslim clerics and other educators have not had experience or training to help in these transitions. The result is that many leaders have chosen to regress to more fundamental guidelines associated with the Qur'an and the traditions of patriarchal cultures. Experience with living under colonial domination further compounds the problems of change.

I believe that these inner struggles can lead to the violence similar to that which Emmanuel Todd finds when a culture is changing from a patriarchal pre-industrial form to a modern form.(pp. 32-42) When leaders have the resources they can help the young persons prepare for and adapt to the new situations through counseling and training for employment in this computer age. When leaders lack experience with such changes, they sometimes blame change and colonialism for the stress and the discord or violence that can result.

Walter Wink, in his first Chapter describes the powers that the Bible speaks about using such terms as the Dragon (Revelations 12) to represent the dominating Roman Empire. These powers include educational, political, military, and religious institutions, but there is also a spiritual aspect that extends deep down into the unconscious of persons affected by these institutions and the leaders of these institutions. I discussed this idea earlier herein.

Barbara Rossing presents a hopeful interpretation of empire and revelation in an interview entitled: End Game - Living Joyfully in an Apocalyptic Time in the November 14, 2006, Christian Century. She "challenged notions about the rapture and the end-times that are popular in evangelical Christian circles" in her 2004 book, The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation. She translates the oikoumene that comes to an end as being Imperial Rome rather than the whole world. Rome was the world at that time. At the end of verse 11:18 in Revelation God says: "I'm going to destroy the destroyers of the earth. Those destroyers can be seen as the last great empire in the West - America, and those who contribute to unbalancing Mother Nature by wasting fossil fuel and polluting the air. Rossing speaks about the judgment of the empire and states: "God says to the empire, "Because you shed the blood of prophets, saints, and all the people of the earth, you're going to be judged." (p. 23 in Christian Century of 11-14-06).

SPIRAL DYNAMICS

A new concept - Spiral Dynamics - provides a paradigm for how civilizations progress toward peace. After reading Beck and Cowan's book: Spiral Dynamics. I believe that their ideas point to a new step forward, one that builds upon the cyclical theorists such as Pitirim Sorokin and historical studies that organize thinking about change, such as the 1997 work by William Strauss and Neil Howe, entitled The Fourth Turning.

As I see it, Beck and Cowan described how dynamic social forces move societies up a spiral toward higher levels of perspective taking and faith development. Changes in commitment generate an oscillation between emphasizing primarily a concern for one's own self and one's status, a ME-orientation; and a primary emphasis based upon commitments to relationships with others within a community, a WE orientation. Generally individuals oscillate between the ME and WE orientations on their own, but at certain times a majority of the population in a nation might be caught up in either a ME or WE in synch with most other people in the population. In other words, people and societies over time seem to oscillate between poles of Self-expression by an internally focused ME, (Survival, Power, Achievement, Flexibility, and Strengthening of Identities) to the pole of Commitment and Self - Sacrifice to an externally focused WE, (Kinship, Supportive, Purposeful, Consensual, Global). In Beck and Cowan's view, this oscillation between ME and WE is not only a cyclical pattern, but progresses toward commitments to ever more transcendent perspectives. This oscillation, in my view, is the basis for their theory of Spiral Dynamics.

I believe that the oscillations in emphasis from Me to We provide the motivational energy that helps us progress up the spiral toward broader and more tolerant perspectives and a good relationship with one's transcendent, yet internalized, image of God. Relevant here is a quote from Albert Einstein from page 123, of Sharon Janis' book: Spirituality for Dummies: The significant problems we face can never be solved at the level of thinking that created them.

Beck & Cowan wrote that life conditions might awaken memes that emerge, surge, regress, or fade in response to dynamic interactions between our internal states and external worlds. (p. 52 in Beck and Cowan) Memes zig-zag between Express-self and Sacrifice-self themes (p. 56 in Beck and Cowan). As I see it, Zig-zag is merely another term for oscillation.

The concept of how memes combine together in our brains will spread quickly via the Internet and improve ways of thinking about interpersonal relationships, ideologies, religious faiths and more. Some societal and corporate leaders will use these ideas to corral our perspectives for their own advantage. Only a broad-based education system and a democratic system of justice and governance will save us from such leaders.

The ideas inherent in Spiral Dynamics can provide tribal societies, in today's world, with the memes that will enable them to progress up the spiral to more progressive levels without getting trapped by self-oriented and/or paranoid power seekers. To corral the macho-male leaders will be a formidable task. It might be up to the United Nations.

Is there a better metaphor than Me vs. We, one that calls a reader's attention to the foregoing?? We need to consider improved metaphors for personal perspective and faith development on the one hand, and the family, community, national, and global scales on the other hand.

To spread peace, we must all work together to have people focus on being compassionate. We can do this if we expand our own worldviews or perspectives to include wider knowledge of diverse others. Only then can one be compassionate to the others in their own context. Relationships with such others are essential to broaden one's own perspectives. Thus, I believe that relationships with people at higher levels of perspective taking precedes broadening one's perspectives. In other words, we climb the spiral staircase of commitment toward improved relationships with other people who have broader perspectives than we had.

There is a web posting by beliefnet wherein the Dalai Lama speaks about compassion, broadening perspectives and other key points related to the impact of relating to a caring other. His ideas fit in well with those I have included herein. It is accessible at: Dalai Lama. It is reprinted by permission of Pocket Books, from "How To Practice" by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Translated and Edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, Ph.D. copyright 2001. I recommend it highly.

At the top of the spiral staircase is the Ultimate Perspective and to achieve this perspective we must first become committed to a relationship with the spirit of God which is associated with the Ultimate Perspective. In other words, I believe that humans can only broaden their perspective to the highest (ultimate) level by including as much of the Godly perspective in their own, even if this means anthropomorphizing the spirit of God in some way. We must internalize as much of the Godly Spirit as we can.

APPROACHES TO DIVERSITY AND CRITICAL THINKING AMONG CHRISTIANS AND MUSLIMS

In this twenty-first century, we suffer from systems of governance that are a thousand times more complex than those of Hammurabi, the ancient Hebrews, and the early Christians. We are becoming aware that we need new paradigms to lead our moral codes to higher levels of abstraction so that a large majority of people can comprehend governance. Specialists in legal and moral affairs interpret application from the general to the specific. Ideally, by democratic means, each person should have input through their elected representatives to selecting judges, interpreters, and leaders who will guide our planet to peace and harmony among all peoples, and also toward a way of life that is in harmony with Mother Nature. But, in my view, the great variation caused by conscious segmenting of reality into sub-components and losing information about the interrelations among these components makes it very difficult to campaign for election to office and to gather and disseminate enough information for a people's democracy to work effectively.

If one lives in tribal communities, there is little need to analyze critically news that one hears within the village wherein one is familiar with most of the other members of the community and knows which storytellers are trustworthy. The power structure of the village, in many cases, determines what is true. In today’s modern urbanized settings, many community members, whether Muslims in the Near East, or Americans in the West, believe what they are told by those at the top of the power structure, in news broadcasts, on radio and television, or by writers of essays in the newspapers. This is so because they lack critical thinking skills. This is an important reason why critical thinking skills need to be taught in high school and universities, even though political leaders might feel threatened by critical thinkers. Some textbooks now have special sections at the end of each chapter focusing on critical thinking about the content of the chapter. This is a start. A helpful start is Chapter 14, in Marlene Winell's book, Leaving The Fold. I recommend her book most highly.

Many Muslim college students who studied abroad found it easier to study technical and scientific subjects rather than social science, "social justice, pluralism, and gender justice" because the former do not involve topics that are included in their religious traditions. It seems easier for Muslim students to get jobs in the technical rather than social/behavioral fields. They do not seem to be learning critical thinking sufficiently to help their societies move forward in our changing world. When I studied engineering at the undergraduate and graduate levels in the mid twentieth century, I did not learn about critical thinking, deconstruction of texts and the like either.

In pre-modern times Muslim thinkers such as al Ghazali were skilled at critical thinking and that skill was taught in the Muslim Universities (madrasahs). Omid Safi, in the Introduction to his book Progressive Muslims (pp. 19-21), states that an impact of colonialism was the decline of the madrasahs. (Note: Karen Armstrong, in The Battle For God (p. 34) attributes a similar effect to the Mongul invasion of the thirteenth century.) Eqbal Ahmad, interviewed by Barsamian in the book entitled: Eqbal Ahmad, presents a number of reasons for the decline in Higher Education in Pakistan and India, on pages 19-20. The World Bank, for one, discouraged higher education by emphasizing literacy and a pool of workers who would follow instructions. In Pakistan, bureaucrats started running universities. Colonial education aimed to provide servants for the empire rather than governors, citizens or educators. The foregoing are only some of the factors that help to explain the decline of education in Muslim nations. Referring to the writing of Khaled Abou El Fadl, colonialism contributed considerably to the decline of education in critical thinking, because educated locals were a threat to the local puppets supported by the colonial powers.

The following is a full quote, because I cannot condense it without losing the impact of El Fadl's very clear writing.

"The burden on Muslim intellectuals today is heavy indeed ...just because Muslims achieved greatness once does not necessarily mean that they will do so again. From a Muslim perspective it is arrogant to assume that regardless of the efforts and behavior of Muslims, God is, somehow, obligated to save Muslims from the consequences of their own deeds. Classical jurists used to repeat that political power is necessary to safeguard the interests of religion, but they also used to warn that political power is fundamentally corrupting of the human conscience and the mandates of justice. This is particularly true of the current Muslim reality."

There is another important consideration that helps to explain the decline in greatness of these Muslim civilizations. That is how, among those tradition-followers with tribal scale commitments and who are not broadly educated, there is a fatalistic value orientation that emphasizes reliance upon Allah to solve problems from natural events and human actions. Rather than the Western orientation that if there is a problem find out how to fix it and get it fixed, Arabs wait and rely on Allah to fix it. In part this might be the result of centuries of living in the desert, where there was little one could do if a well went dry.

Raphael Patai, a cultural anthropologist who taught at Columbia, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania, described this orientation in a book entitled: The Arab Mind, published by his estate 6 years after his death in 1996. See especially pp. 156-7 on the Arab mind seeing "the universe running on a predestined course, determined by the will of Allah who also "predestines the fate" of each individual. Chapter 15 describes stages of stagnation and responses to it. His historical summary goes beyond the effects of colonialism. There are many considerations that contribute to stagnation, but the impacts of television and the Internet, I believe, will eventually succeed in overcoming the stagnation. I recommend Patai's book.

In my view, we see a recent example of corruption in Benjamin Barber's book: Jihad Versus McWorld - How Globalism and Tribalism are Reshaping the World. The example is politicizing and thus corrupting the appointment process for selecting justices to serve the Supreme Court of the USA. A very recent book by Leon Howell, entitled United Methodists @ Risk describes very clearly the strategies and tactics used by far-right extremists in their attempt to gain control of governing bodies of mainline religions and also the national government.

Charles Kimball provided an example of how some conservative Americans spread a fear that limits the broadening of perspectives. Page 97 of his book: When Religion Becomes Evil presents a story from his past that is most revealing about exclusivist believers. He had been very involved in Campus Crusade for Christ and in Young Life, (two conservative Christian groups) having read most of the books the group leaders had recommended. When, at age 19, he told his friends that he decided to take a religion course in the college of arts and sciences at a state university. He described the reaction of most of his friends and the religious leaders whom he knew, as "...swift and decisive. "Don't do it," they warned. "Those professors will try to undermine your faith by confusing you with questions. They don't believe the Bible is true.""

This story is a prime example of how one's peers and one's teachers sometimes try to lead a person to close their mind in order to defend a naive approach to their faith. This is exclusivism. The teacher and friends might believe that they are saving the person from being confused, from fear, and from the stresses of ambiguity and uncertainty. However, cognitive dissonance is often a key to learning.

IS THERE HOPE OF INCREASING TOLERANCE IN UNCERTAIN TIMES?

While reading a book on the ideas of Eqbal Ahmad, I was surprised to find how quickly a person can change the scale of his perspective and outlook on life. In an interview with David Barsamian, on page 25 of the book Eqbal Ahmad, Ahmad mentioned how Malcolm X changed his perspective "... from a narrow, nationalist position to one that embraced a global perspective" after returning from his haj - his pilgrimage to Mecca. Eqbal Ahmad had seen Malcolm X before and after Malcolm's haj. There are other seeds of hope for changing and broadening perspectives.

A key sentence that summarizes the goal of Fowler's work and related postings of mine, is one that I believe comes from his book entitled: Faithful Change - The Personal and Public Challenges of Public Life. The quote is: "The human calling - which we take to be universal - is to undergo and participate in the widening circle of those who count as neighbor, from the narrowness of our familial beginnings toward real solidarity with a commonwealth of being." The book is one that could be designated, some day as a "Postmodern Testament". It was written in a somewhat academic style, but could not cover the broad range of considerations relevant to his topic in another style. Every time that I open its covers during the past four years, it speaks to my slowly evolving conceptual framework.

Fowler discussed the difference between orthodox temper that honors sources of authority that are external to the self when considering belief and morality. On the other hand, there is progressive temper, which locates the authority within the self. (103) The idea of temper comes from James Davison Hunter who wrote the book, Culture Wars. Fowler's Chapter 10 is entitled Beyond Culture Wars. Fowler ends that chapter with the statement: "churches are called to move from perceiving themselves as gatekeepers of heaven to being leaders in establishing God's commonwealth of justice and love on earth."

Another seed of hope comes from a PBS Newshour discussion of ethnic newspapers in California. (10-14-02). In the last decade there has been a tremendous growth of foreign-language newspapers and broadcasts (both TV and radio). These help the immigrant to learn about, and blend in with, American culture and also to keep in touch with events back in his or her homeland.

If America takes advantage of its great religious and cultural diversity and finds leaders who are motivated to use this diversity to expand shared experiences with others, for children in school and for adults of all ages, then we can truly become a "light unto the world". Books by Charles Kimball, Marc Gopin and Karen Armstrong contain many ideas related to peacemaking. See: my book Peace Is Possible due to be available late in October 2007 from Xlibris.com's bookstore.

Another basis for hope is the idea of spiral dynamics that I discussed in an earlier section herein. This paradigm can help us progress up a spiral toward ever increasing levels of mutual understanding and tolerance of ethnic differences. This, I believe, will be one of the key parts of what some might call a new axial transformation wherein many people progress up the axis of the spiral toward a unified ecumenical perspective based upon commonly held universal values.

SOCIETAL TRANSITION CRISES AND AXIAL TRANSFORMATIONS

Karen Armstrong wrote about the Axial Age on page 27 in her book, The History of God. On page 44 of that book, she wrote: "The prophets had discovered for themselves the overriding duty of compassion, which would become the hallmark of all the major religions formed in the (1st) Axial Age." In her book, The Battle for God, on pages xiv, 51, 59, and 169, she related the Axial Age to improvements in agriculture and its implications for society and spirituality. See also her more recent book entitled: The Great Transformation.

Harvey Cox wrote that Erikson " ... once remarked that the anguish a civilization suffers as it moves from one era to the next is not unlike that of a person negotiating a new stage of the life cycle, say from adolescence to young adulthood, or from middle to late adulthood." (p. 194 in Religion and the Secular City.)

James Fowler in Faithful Change and Emmanuel Todd in After the Empire both applied the models of personal identity crises to the transitions of whole cultures and societies from pre-modern to industrial and then to postmodern stages of development. Such transitions often involve violence and large segments of a society's population often regress to more simplistic forms of political ideology and religious faith to weather the storms of doubt and powerlessness created by such transitions.

An example that extends from the personal level of transition crises to the societal level is the following. When I taught on a college campus during the riots of the 1960's, a student complained to me that his grandparents had come to America as immigrants from Europe and worked hard to put all their children through college. With a college degree his dad became an engineer and achieved a higher status than that of the student's immigrant grandfather. Now his parents wanted him, similarly, to reach a higher status position than theirs by getting a Masters Degree and a good professional job. However, by the late 1960's some students facing this situation found that there was much less room at the top and they rebelled against the more difficult expectation of doing better than their parents. I believe that this crisis in personal identity management, felt by many frustrated college-age youth contributed to some of the violent acts during the societal transition of the 1960's. The Vietnam War, of course, was also a factor.

Major transitions, such as the axial age often involve a lot of stressful confrontations. In discussing transitions in response to modernity, Armstrong wrote, on page 169 in The Battle for God, about confrontations between conservatives and liberals. She wrote: "Liberals and conservatives in the early years of the (1900's) were both involved in the social programs of this so-called Progressive Age (1900-1920), which tried to deal with the problems arising from the rapid and unregulated development of industry and city life." In her next 10 pages, Armstrong summarized that struggle. The struggle appears to be unresolved and is going on now at the start of the 21st century.

We have seen similar unrest and violence during the past few decades as America passed into the postmodern transition and became the world's most powerful empire. As our world becomes more complex, many persons have difficulties in adapting to the many rapid changes in cultural traditions. Politicians also seem to have trouble adapting. Some try to tap the frustrations of voters by selecting single issues such as abortion or gay rights and magnifying their importance to simplify politics and gain supporters among voters who also are stressed by change. In 2006, with a mid-term election coming, I do not see much innovation and exploring of new perspectives and policy platforms. Those who regress to simpler strategies seem to rely upon regressive approaches to religious faith and to politics. Eventually, some of these people will find that a simplistic, dogmatic, and selective interpretation of the world affairs and/or religion will prove inadequate in these complex times.

Now we seem to be reaping the harvest of narrow-minded single-issue representatives getting elected and polarizing the democratic process of listen, learn, discuss, and vote in congress. Instead of the interests of all citizens, the main interest in the closed minds of these representatives seems to be getting reelected. The result is government that is unable to function in a complex postmodern world. The majority of citizens are fed up with the narrow-minded and simplistic thinking of minority swing groups and hopefully they will throw them out in the coming elections. We need broad-minded candidates who can think through complex issues and we need a media that educate the voters and the candidates about how to find compassionate solutions to complex issues.

One step in this transition is recent use of the term "post-biblical". I first encountered this term on pages 469-470 of Tom Friedman's book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree. He provides a Jewish interpretation. Note: Friedman defines his book title on page 31 of his book. I define them near the end of Section Y in my book, Peace is Possible due to be available late in October 2007 from Xlibris.com's bookstore.

After a search for the word "postbiblical" in Google, I found two helpful web postings, one by Michael Dowd and the other by Marcus Borg. Their URL's are, respectively:

Michael Dowd - (http://www.evolutionarychristianity.org/7revelations.html).

Marcus Borg - (http://www.explorefaith.org/LentenHomily03.24.00.html). Borg's site is a Lenten sermon that also appears on pages 9-13 of a book: "God at 2000" edited by Marcus Borg and Ross Mackenzie. However, the term postbiblical does not appear in the book version. Karen Armstrong, in a chapter starting on page 99 of that book expands upon this general idea.

The idea of hardwiring of the human brain will be helpful here. The idea of hardwiring will play an important part in a new axial-age transition just now starting in world religions. It is a transition toward an ecumenical unity in our postmodern era that will be able to bridge the gaps between conservatives and progressives. Hopefully the idea of hardwiring will help all faiths work together to bring more people closer to the one compassionate God.

ALTRUISM AND PEACEMAKING

The emotions of fear and hate attract more attention from the television viewer, book reader, or radio listener than do the emotions related to altruism. I believe that is one reason why TV dramas and the news programs, as well as the newspapers, focus more on fear and hate.

The emotions of feeling happy, and sharing the joy of those who overcame challenges, can bring tears to their eyes. Their joy is like that Scott Peck describes as people become accepted into a progressive authentic community, a community that helps expand perspectives and generate hope for the future. However, the emotions associated with that kind of joy are very different from those associated with the emotions of fear and hate.

I believe that altruistic behavior is closely tied to identifying with another person or a member of a group to which one is closely associated. For example, a person seeing a little girl wandering out in the road in front of an oncoming car might associate her with his own daughter, and risk his life to pull the girl out of the way without thinking about the risk to himself. The vet who pulled a comrade to safety on the battlefield identified very closely with his buddy. Thus some altruistic acts appear to be as automatic a reaction as conditioned responses to fear. Fear for survival of the person with whom one identifies is what contributes to the speed of action. Other altruistic acts do not appear to be automatic reactions. An altruistic act such as helping an old woman cross the street seldom involves the physiological reactions such as quickened heartbeat and breathing rate, perspiration, blood pressure increase, constricting blood vessels in the stomach to force blood elsewhere, and so on.

Consider the former type of altruistic behavior, the type with strong emotions, and how it relates to any dramatic aspect of performances on stage or on television. What makes them so attractive is that one becomes closely familiar with, and in a way identifies with, the characters whom the actors are portraying. Identifying in this way includes experience at taking the perspectives of others and empathizing with the characters before one can sense the dramatic emotions that the actors might portray. When it comes to attracting viewers, the murder mysteries and coverage of awful world news events seem to be much more exciting and are likely to attract more viewers. But, I believe that they do not expand the perspectives of their viewers as much as altruistic and peacemaking stories do.

The traditions of religious institutions have, for centuries, engendered altruistic behavior by use of stories that exemplified altruistic behavior and the benefits that accrued to the individual and the community. However, some religious leaders have also responded to the challenge of guiding followers to be altruistic, by putting the stronger and deeper emotions of fear of hell into their followers. This approach persists because the idea of one's final judgment occurring in heaven cannot be verified or disproved by our senses.

Marc Gopin included four references to altruism in a religious sense in the index of his book, Between Eden and Armageddon. He discussed the good moral values inherent in most of the faiths that have passed the test of time and how these values led to the raising of children who as adults followed these good values. By their example they showed others what kindness and caring can accomplish, even at the risk of one's own life. Gopin described, two examples; of Mennonites in France during World War II, and of Christians saving Jews from the Nazis. He listed a number of questions that, if researched properly could help peacemakers build upon particular religious traditions that foster altruism.

A Quaker journalist, Kate Maloy, analyzed the Columbine High School Disaster in Littleton, Colorado in a section entitled Hollow Children. She wrote: "The jocks in cars who throw beer cans at nerds on bicycles...can't know the effects of their divisive cruelty in advance." They trod others down to raise their own ego. "...When teenagers can lose friends and their standing in their community just for wearing the wrong clothes or talking to the wrong person in the lunch room, [it indicates that] outward symbols and trappings have become everything to them. It means our children have learned emptiness - they have been hollowed out."

In the terms that I use, these children have not received adequate guidance in experiences that involve learning to relate to and empathize with others who are different in some way. They have not learned to see past the superficial exteriors to the human soul deep inside the other person. In other words their self-concepts are hollow and superficial rather than filled with authentic experiences of relating to others who are different. To live in a pluralistic society, sharing experiences with others is a necessity. Maloy described how she handled her son's playing computer games that target others. It does not take much effort for a compassionate person or parent to monitor the attitudes that their child conveys while playing and redirect management of fear and aggression toward socially constructive ways. But, the parent needs to be with the child to monitor and guide effectively.

In sum, the challenge of giving television viewers equal opportunities to watch altruistic and hope-engendering behavior rather than killing and violent behavior, seems to be an impossible challenge to surmount, except occasionally on PBS. The way the human body responds to each of these two types of experiences is so different, that it is difficult to have altruistic experiences counterbalance the hateful violent ones. A dynamics engineer would say: "This is not a linear process."

RESPONSIBILITIES OF RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES

Religion provides the universal values that aim to guide us all to work toward building "good societies", good-constructive and compassionate relations with other people, and to work toward world peace.

What religious communities need to do for peace is to focus on topics that are appropriate for church study groups and public education. The topics are: 1) in the areas of education; improving skills for critical thinking, and providing experiences and stories that will help people broaden their perspectives, and be more tolerant of people from diverse ethnic, and religious backgrounds. 2) Reinterpretation and reform of religious writing, doctrines and bible stories for the purpose of providing hope to overcome adversities and decrease chances for retreat, regression, and violent reactions to changing times. C. S. Lewis provided good examples in his stories for children, such as the Narnia series. 3. Respected leaders need to speak out when they see abuse of people's rights at home and abroad. In Yugoslavia for example, leaders spoke out when the other ethnic group committed violence, but did not speak out with the same vehemence when members of their own group committed violence against the others. In some cases they might have feared for their lives.

In early, 2007 the American Psychological Association released findings of a study that points out how American girls have been sexualized. An executive summary is accessible at their web site: [http://www.apa.org/pi/wpo/sexualizationsum.html]. Many girl pathologies - eating disorders, low self esteem, and depression - can be linked to obsession about body image and objectification of themselves. Their report ends with good and useful recommendations on: Positive Alternatives to the Sexualization of Girls, and others on: public awareness and policy, education and training. There is much that religious communities can do in this important area of public policy.

Religious communities must also contribute to explaining problems with systems of justice, politics, and governance. They need leaders who will point out when governments and justice systems have strayed from the high goals of providing a proper balance between freedom and responsibility that serves the whole population. They have roles to play in bringing out the truth and reinterpreting the ancient wisdom in forms that relate more clearly to today's world.

Hugh Sanborn, a retired director of campus ministry and professor of psychology of religion, edited a book entitled: The Prophetic Call published in the Fall of 2004 by Chalice Press. He contributed a chapter that describes the church's responsibility to help us out of these dilemmas.

Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" and Tom Brokaw's program a few weeks later provided good examples of a modern-day prophetic role. Gore tells the viewer in very clear terms about the threat of global warming and how the industrial complex has distorted the urgency of changing our life styles to save Mother Earth. He shows us what we must do. This is the prophetic role - warning people when they are going astray and showing them how to regain a compassionate path.

Alan Wolfe of Boston College surveyed three books; one by David L. Holmes, one by Peter R. Henriques, and one by Jon Meacham all of which included some discussion of the approach to religion by our founding fathers. The review in the May 7, 2006, New York Times Book Review (page 26) is entitled: Keeping the Faith at Arm's Length. A one-line summary printed under the title is: A Weighing of the evidence suggests that the Christianity practiced by most of the founders was lukewarm at best. Near the end of the review Wolfe wrote: "[O]ur greatest leaders and thinkers knew where the work of God stopped and the need for human creativity began." I like that sentence and wish that we could find such leaders today.

Professor Sallie McFague, in her recent book Life Abundant - Rethinking Theology and Economy for a Planet in Peril presents a clear analysis of how Christian theology and our economic ideology might be integrated for the benefit of our global ecology and the good life. Her book complements that of Sanborn. Can we get churchgoers to celebrate Christmas each year by sharing our abundance with all people, rather than consuming "stuff"? A recent book by DeGraff, Wann, and Naylor, entitled: Affluenza (The Second Edition) provides many hope-generating examples that can help liberate us from this consumption-dependent disease.

CONCLUSIONS

Expanding sciences of psychology, physiology, sociology, and others help us understand how individuals manage their personal and group identities, how our brains work to remember basic human needs and unconscious memories, how we humans form attachments to symbolic meanings, how addictions and habits and cultural norms are formed and changed, how humans react to attempts to broaden their perspectives to include the perspectives of other people, and organizations in a diverse globalizing world, and much more. We will understand better how to help people adapt to societal changes. It will take a very broadly-based and committed group of people to work together and coordinate economic, political and religious changes. Yet, even one person can make a difference as was illustrated by the work of Jody Williams who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work to ban land mines. (See Section U in my book, Peace Is Possible due to be published by Xlibris late in October 2007, and available from their bookstore.)

I highly recommend a book by Louise Diamond, entitled: The Peace Book - 108 Simple Ways to Create a More Peaceful World, (Third Revised Edition), 2003. Check out their web site at: (www.thepeacecompany.com).

The Middle East has been caught up in a war where people on both sides have lost homes, businesses, and lives. To work for a lasting peace, the leaders and common people must all attentively listen to each other responsibly. Progress in peacemaking depends upon honestly seeking to learn about and appreciate the perspectives and basic human needs of the other. This has not happened. Much of our media have not helped us learn and broaden our perspectives. They have not helped us think critically, which is essential for a working democracy.

Leaders who are insensitive to the other are essentially saying; "Don't mess with my perspective. I am right and you are wrong." Such attitudes are closed minded and that implies having narrow and selfish commitments. Competing for support for one’s own perspective leads to anger and separation of reality into narrowly focused worldviews. We see this even among people whose identities are wrapped up in commitments to professional sport teams, and also among candidates running for election.

Political problem-solving fails when anger takes over. Anger seldom broadens perspectives and thus is inimical to peacemaking, especially in a fast globalizing world.

Another key to peace is to have trustworthy systems of justice that transcend the parochial and/or tribal systems which are based upon honor and revenge by family or tribal groups. In our globalizing world, this means, respected national and world court systems. In the latter part of the twentieth century, we have made the first few steps in this direction, but we still have a long way to go.

There is hope for the future and we know what has to be done. Faith in an internalized compassionate God will guide our development toward one faith as it guided development toward belief in acting in relationship with one God. Yes, we can begin to see how faith and science can work together. We need courageous leaders who have the broad perspectives and the compassion to liberate us from rigidities of the printed word, in interpretations of sacred writings constitutions and the like.

A final recommendation is Michael Lerner's book The Left Hand of God - Taking Back Our Country From The Religious Right He has done a lot of research on many of the issues that I have written about. He blends together the basis of spirituality - true compassion and community, in contrast to ego-dominated competitive striving to accumulate symbols of status, achievement, material goods, and the like.

My book Countering Polarization will be available in May 2008, published by Xlibris.com. It should be available from Amazon.com in late Spring or early Summer 2008.

© Copyright: by Charles Notess, 2006-8. "Fair use" encouraged.