Bunyan and Newton. Blog Post #3

As technology continues its rapid evolution and begins to near concepts that one hundred years ago would have been deemed science fiction (AI, Mars exploration, self-driving cars, etc.) spirituality has also decreased. Spirituality in this sense is not synonymous with religion. By spirituality I mean the innate sense of camaraderie to nature and the acceptance of the unknown within and beyond us. In no way am I against scientific progress but one must acknowledge that the techno-space created by the advent of wonderful gadgets (smartphones, smart TV’s, ) has insulated an environment in which notions lacking scientific background, though not rejected, are not readily given the attention that our predecessors bestowed to them. Naturally religion would be the most affected. Bunyan Pilgrim’s Progress offers us an analogy to our current situation. We are in Vanity Fair. Materialism follows its promiscuous nature and wants us all. Facebooks, Instagrams, and Snapchats demand we share our social lives and demand them to be luxurious. Though Bunyan advocates salvation through the God of Abrahamic religions, I will modernize it and say that with spirituality one can anchor against the angry flow of progress, not to become a conservative, but to catch one’s breath and assess if the current you is the proper you. If this you is who you want to be, and if yes, to sail on and if no, to take a different course and that is ok as well for however much science knows, Truth is ungraspable. Perhaps one day atom can truly marry Eve. Yet, ironically, though scientifically we are reaching pinnacles, socially we are still very backwards. After the Charlottesville incident of August 12th, racial tensions in America have spiked up once more. Though it would be impossible to convince white supremacists and Neo-Nazis to pick up and read Newton’s Theory of Color, it would not hurt to try. Perhaps in reading it they can realize that the skin color to which they ascribe superiority is a product of certain melanin absorbing said color for its degree of refrangibility. They then would realize that without these different levels of refrangibility, everyone would be purely white, even the minorities they despise. I doubt it would change their beliefs. Men need a raison d’etre. Theirs’s is hate. And what man will ever willingly give up his driving force? 

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