Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.

Beyond The Mirror – A Bill Allin Column

January  12, 2007

What Is The Truth? (Part 2)

[Caution: What follows may be offensive to some people because it is based on fact, reason and probability, not on an established belief set (religion). If you are offended by anything that does not support your belief set, you should choose to not read this article.]

In Part 1 we looked at the beginnings of modern religions in our distant past, in times when "society" consisted of tribes, not megasocieties as we have now. Today we will continue to draw from those times to find elements that we can use in our own time.

The characteristics we often think of when we think of tribes are violence, cohesiveness and primitive belief systems. We have not carried cohesiveness with us into our megasocieties because it is impossible for every adult to consider himself or herself to be a pseudoparent for each child in the community. Most of us do not believe we have duties to our communities, as members of tribes do.

We believe in national pride and patriotism, though the meanings of these terms and how they should play out in our lives vary a great deal.

In tribal societies, every adult is considered to be a parent to every child in the village. It’s not just a responsibility, but a duty that is enforced by social pressure. Each adult in a tribe must be prepared to teach each child life lessons when the opportunities arise.

Today that would be impossible because we are all too busy minding our own business. That self-interest is part of our problem, both in our families and in our communities.

What we have carried forward from our tribal days are violence and our primitive belief systems. The "tribe" now is a nation (or a culturally distinct part of a nation, such as the Quebecois are in Canada). The other tribes are now other countries. But we still view other countries (other "tribes") with suspicion that they will take advantage of us or will attack us if conditions are right for them.

They are viewed as potential enemies because they are different from us.

We tend to see the militants among those who are not allies as "terrorists," as true representatives of those societies, while we consider militants among our own people as liberators, as pro-democracy fighters, as "heroes." Except our own militants who kill our own people, in which case they are "violent criminals" who should be condemned to death or put into prison from which they will never return.

Our primitive belief systems are our religions. While Christianity and Islam, for examples, still recruit new members actively where possible, their membership in traditional strongholds crumbles from within. In Canada, for example, a very large majority (about three in four Canadians) were raised in nominally Christian households, but only around 24 percent of Canadians attend church regularly.

Iran, legally an Islamic state, has strong and powerful leadership by Muslim clerics who hold positions of political as well as religious power. However, as over 30 percent of Iranians are children or young adults, many of whom do not adhere to Islamic rites to the same extent as their parents and grandparents, Islam’s power within the country weakens as more and more young people believe that Islamic rituals and rites are part of "the old ways that should be in the past now."

In contrast, Islam is the fastest growing religion in North America, where many Muslims do not feel restricted to the same degree as those in countries led by fundamentalist governments.

Modern religions, while gaining strength in some places, are losing ground in their traditional homelands because they have not kept pace with modern times. Nowhere is this more evident than in the United States where a large minority of fundamentalist Christians believe devoutly in the six-day creation story of the Abrahamic bible, while science has proven that the story has no foundation in fact.

This series will continue next week.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a book about real and inexpensive solutions to community problems most people think are inevitable evils of modern society. They aren't. We just have to look in the right place.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Contact author Bill Allin at turningitaround@sympatico.ca