The signs are beginning to show. In my perch in the middle of Manhattan, I watch the world go by. There is plenty of middle America about. And most of the younger people I see moved here recently.
Big change
Here’s one thing I have seen. Halloween is replacing Christmas. It’s not a competition. It is a subtle trend.
Jacques Ellul years ago spoke of the future as a time when our impulse toward ritual and spontaneous celebration would burst the bonds of dying religion and surface in new forms.
Inclusion
It will be no surprise to see more and more evidence that inclusive symbols like those around Halloween supplant the more religion-specific holidays of the past.
The move will be gradual.
In a triadic world, things that were binary opposites in the past -– “saved” or damned, young or old -- will lose their power. We are escaping the “character prisons” of yesterday. There is a growth in inclusion and secularity and a corresponding rise in tolerance and democracy.
It may well be reflected in forthcoming elections.
Secularity
The 'Star Wars' films have long stressed the importance of tradition and ritual when it comes to learning the ways of the Force. Chaim Saiman explains how 'The Last Jedi' broke with that history https://t.co/9cMfCxuMzZ
— Stephen C. Rose (@stephencrose) January 8, 2018
The news of a new and perhaps definitive wave of secularity will take time to catch up to the underlying sea of change.
But the evidence will show up in many ways.
Nietzsche wrote his first book about the conflict between Apollo and Dionysis – austere reason versus ecstatic liberation. Such a division diminishes in a triadic universe where all of us are a spectrum. We each exhibit all manner of characteristics. We are not this or that.
We differ mainly in whether we are mindful or not, whether we value ethics or not, and whether truth and beauty are important to us.
Transcendence within us
The secularizing of Spirituality means that the transcendence that exists within everyone will be given freer rein. It also means that phenomena we have associated with religious life will transit into secular forms. Spirituality will become seen as more and more normal in everyone. Its expression will be seen as a private matter.
But its implications will be profound for the future of the planet.
A major result will be that we will see consciousness as a link to the possibility of life beyond death. We are familiar with reincarnation and near-death experiences. But there is a much wider realm of transcendence that applies.
Beyond superstition
I am not talking about reverting to past superstitions. I am suggesting that more and more we will sense that we can be in significant communication with an existence that is not within us only, but out there. I am suggesting a move toward a natural inclination to relate in conventional ways to phenomena that become more and more pervasive as time progresses.
