I think that there have always been religious extremists and people who follow them out of some combination of obedience, ignorance and fear. They have always existed, everywhere. But the world is smaller, as the saying goes, and so now we have Muslim fundamentalists in Afghanistan who want to kill a guy for converting, and it's on TV, it's on the internet. Are they devolving? Probably not. I don't know. It's not for me to say. I'd like to think that there are fewer people in Afghanistan who feel this way than there might have been, say twenty years ago. But I have no way of knowing. I do know that I have no respect for a religious interpretation that demands a man be executed for converting to another faith. But it doesn't necessarily mean that Afghan society is being reduced to some lower level of consciousness, thereby lowering the worldwide morality/enlightenment quotient.
Are we in the US devolving? Probably that's the wrong word to use--it implies an organic process that can't be stopped. Are we slipping backwards down a social and political incline because half the population doesn't know or doesn't care or feels paralyzed to do anything about it? I sure think so. I no longer know what it will take to shake people up enough to reverse the process. I would have thought any one of about a dozen things that have happened would do it. But we move on to the next news cycle and we wait...for some pendulum to correct itself, for the next election, for some deus ex machina process from beyond history to set things right. But history is made, not written.
I hear that Americans don't care about history.
Rome is burning. It's not too late. History is made, not written.
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