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INTERFAITHINGS WINTER 2010

Continued on page 2

In This Issue...

EVOLUTIONARY RESPONSIBILITY Page 3

VOICES AND QUESTIONS

Page 6

SATURDAY IN THE CITY

Page 9

WIRED COMMUNICATION

Page 10

SAN SEBASTIAN DEL OESTE Page 14

GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS

AND THE SPIRITUALITY OF THE

SOLITARY SELF

Page 15

THIS MICROWAVE LIFE

Page 19

To Interfaith: To enter into respectful dialogue

regarding beliefs, values, and practices with

adherents of world views other than one’s own.

LATE WINTER 2010

Vol. 4, Issue 1

points in the unfolding of our collective

journey from cave to space travel stand

out. One such dwelling point is October

4, 1957. That’s the date when the Soviet

Union launched Sputnik, an unmanned

satellite that successfully fell into orbit

around the Earth. Three months later,

America countered with its own

Explorer satellite.

The gap between our inventiveness and

our wisdom had now taken on a whole

new meaning. Here were the Soviets

and their western counterparts parading

a technocratic savvy that was making

possible a whole new chapter in the

exploration and colonization of outer

space. Yet these same super powers, armed

with stockpiles of weaponry vastly more

lethal than any previously known, were

enmeshed in an ever worsening cold

war – a cold war that was a frightening

testament to humankind’s inability to

resolve its differences by peaceful means.

And with the advent of the Cuban missile

crisis a few years later, the prospect of a

nuclear holocaust became particularly

real–more real than most of us were

allowed to know. [The plausibility of some

such doomsday scenario was tellingly

brought home to us by the film, Dr.

Strangeglove: Or How I Learned To Stop

Worrying and Love the Bomb.]

Praise be, we did avoid nuclear winter.

And after the demise of the Soviet

empire, the fear of our technologies’

lethal potential receded. Meanwhile,

with “the giant leap for mankind” Neil

Armstrong spoke of as he set foot on the

Moon, another perspective was gaining

currency. Some historians and futurists,

led by a maverick classics professor named

Marshall McLuhan, were articulating

a much more optimistic view of where

our new inventions were taking us. New

forms of communication, so argued Mr.

McLuhan, were fostering our ability

Dr. Frankenstein, Twitter, and

the Shape of Things to Come

A shudder in the loins engenders there

The broken wall, the burning roof and tower

And Agamemnon dead.

Being so caught up,

So mastered by the brute blood of the air,

Did she put on his knowledge with his power

Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

William Butler Yeats

“Leda and the Swan”

The current fascination with the movie,

Avatar, testifies to the hold on our

imaginations of a very old theme –

technology as life blighting, as coldly

efficient while suppressive of the very

things that make life worthwhile.

This fear of “the satanic mills” that can oh,

so easily enslave us has a long and time

honoured pedigree. But certain turning

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