Bomb + Internet >= better than a Saucer?!
If this is correct, then C S Lewis would have been a threat to the plan. If his Christian cabal had infiltrated across the river and across the pond, our Cambridge Pragmatists, the 'B' schoolers, ARPA, and even the Internet bubble, would have been a very different story. The Bomb kept a lot of things under a lid. The Bomb, sans Lewis, planted a very firm wedge this last century between two increasingly influential groups in this country -- the secular, technocratic intelligentsia vs. the fundamentalists. With a Lewis clone on this shore and no Bomb, the Y2C (i.e. second coming) would have had to have been mediated by a Saucer, rather than by this minimalist, 'prime directive' respecting Internet method. Sure, this is a big stretch, but a little cosmic 'pronoia' can go a long way in this game.
[Later: I think I'm trying to say that another Lewis, over here, back then, sans Bomb, might have led to a much less dramatic, more evolutionary paradigm shift toward theistic idealism. The dramatically punctuated shift possible right now is more in harmony with the eschatological drama of the prophetic tradition and with the original X-event. Otherwise we might have needed a deus ex machina to pump up the drama.]
Wouldn't the Saucer have been more fun? You know, the one that the Guy in the white robes gets out of, on the White House lawn, under the TV lights. Blinding! (Like the Greeks used to do in their dramas.) But, no, not more fun, think about it.
We're adults now, not little kids at a cosmic circus. This is the Best Possible World. We are about to be treated to participatory eschatology. Internet spells 'participation'.
The pendulum does swing between materialism and idealism. It has already swung back from materialism almost now to the middle, but it has considerably further to go. We can just pick up with theistic idealism, where we left off about a century ago. We just have to keep nudging that pendulum. The bursting of the economic bubble, the clash of civilizations, there will be plenty of drama. But the real drama will be right here, even on this site, or on one not terribly different. There will be the default immaterialist eschatology 'blog'. Opportunity is knocking. May the best bloke win. Someone will be able to talk to the Fundies and the Eggheads at the same time. No mean feat. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court?
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7/21/02