For me, present humanitarian crises have a lot to do with theism running up against its limits--while it strengthens the impulse to altruism, it also strengthens com|munity in the sense of pooling arms against real and imagined aggressors. I tend to side with Joseph Campbell's assertion that we're in a period of mythogenesis--we need to find and/or be the new reformers bearing spiritual tools more applicable to the situation at hand.
I would agree that something new needs to emerge in these desperate times. In fact, I might add that the current Presidential election season has made me even more ready to contemplate the very real possibility that not just humanity but all the other species on Earth could all go extinct within roughly a lifetime from now. All it would need is just a combination of disastrously irresponsible ecological destruction and multiple use of free-lance WMDs to bring this about. So the basic ingredients are already in place. Consequently, I view such an eventuality as more likely than not, right now.
If something new does emerge in time, my guess would be that the new synthesis would be made up of certain concepts that are already out there, rather than something wholly unfamiliar. That's the only aspect here that gives me a little hope. The tools are already to hand. Now, this is strictly a guess, but the prime sources for a new synthesis of some sort might be a careful mining of those elements that, say, the earliest texts on Buddha, Socrates and Christ have in common. This is why I behaved so badly here when I encountered an unfortunate misunderstanding re this possible synthesis in a previous thread. I truly feel the survival of all of Earth's species is at stake within this very century. The stakes could not be higher.
The sad misunderstanding in the previous thread lay in my having expressed myself very badly as to the framework for a new set of "spiritual tools", as you put it. Some thought I was suggesting a mere watering-down, a simplifying, of various traditions. But candidly, I could not be less interested in "traditions". Instead, I'm interested in specific texts -- the earliest texts on specific religious/philosophical pioneers being frequently ignored in the subsequent "traditions". So I'm suggesting a very painstaking survey of the very earliest texts on, say, just these three pioneers in particular, with a view to isolating any and all possible specific
parallel notions/concepts that all three of these figures seem to have in common. This would be a daunting and time-gobbling task, requiring a whole team of linguists and scholars from a whole range of perspectives working 'round the clock.
But since the alternative is imminent extinction .............. <shrug>
Operacast
The Holy Qur'an isn't based on the christian bible....
