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The Challenge of the Twenty-first Century
Meredith Sprunger, Fort Wayne, In., USA
We are living in one of the major turning points of history. Our times have been labelled variously as the post-industrial, post-modern, and post-Christian era. The traditional paradigms of cosmology, value, and reality have lost their unquestioned relevance and authority among contemporary people. The social institutions which were structured by these traditional concepts and values are deteriorating in vitality and influence. The economic and political infrastructures of society are breaking down and losing their credibility and effectiveness. The mores that have been the foundation of human behavior and ethical standards in society are crumbling and immorality, crime, and violence are endemic. Religious institutions that were once the central pillars of society are now relegated to a peripheral position.
As we face the twenty-first century there are numerous scientific-technical innovations which will revolutionize the way we live. Computers and computer technology are changing the way we are handling information and communication. Microbiology is opening a vast potential for altering living organisms. Recombinant DNA technology makes it possible to restructure both plants and animal and produce a variety of drugs, industrial lubricants enzymes, etc. Human applications will range fron predicting inherited genetic diseases to applying gene therapy for correcting genetic disorders. The new physics is radically changing our conception of the nature of material reality. We are, literally, being ushered into a new world of potential development.
Among the many problems that we face, the material-environmental, economic, and political difficulties are much easier to cope with than the personal-spiritual and social-cultural problems. Our industrial-technological civilization has broken up the small communities which were indigenous to the agricultural society and has isolated the individual within the boundaries of specialization and urbanization. The advent of the computer has accelerated this separation and seclusion. The sense of both community and the extended family are greatly diminished. Even the segregated industrial-business groups and the nuclear family exist in relative cultural isolation. This detachment and isolation contributes to the deterioration of family and community influence. The inherent human hunger for community and belonging causes young people to join gangs with territorial-defensive agendas and motivates adults to affiliate with ideological and religious groups with exclusive-restrictive boundaries.
The root of the breakdown in individual behavior, the deterioration and malaise of our social institutions, and the failure of our religious institutions to satisfy our spiritual hunger and inspire our creativity, is that our civilization is trying to draw resources and energy from a horse and buggy paradigm of reality which has lost its relevance and serviceability. There are diverse and confused views of reality in today's world. Many scientifically oriented people have a materialistic- positivistic understanding of life. Most religionists have a simplistic view of spiritual cosmology that does not harmonize with our astronomical view of the cosmos, and a great portion of society is confused about what to believe. The basic dilemma of our times is that we have no unifying conception of reality.
The singular ingredient which will bring meaning and unity into planetary existence is an inspiring paradigm of reality which will harmonize science, philosophy, and religion, and inspire humankind to strive for common goals and objectives. Only a new and enlarged revelatory vision of reality has the potential of doing this. Hopefully, the seekers and searchers of our world will discover the Fifth Epochal Revelation in the twenty-first century. The Urantia Book is the only source of reality that is large enough and spiritually empowering enough to unify and energize the planet. Enculturating the world with the inspiring and ennobling teachings of the Fifth Epochal Revelation is the challenge of the twenty-first century!
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