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