The Great New Emerging Civilization

   Author: James Hilgendorf

reviewed by Theresa Welsh

James Hilgendorf has written a book that is part memoir and part manifesto for a new world. He tells us we need to stop making war, turn back from violence and anger, rethink whether the nation-state has real meaning, and start helping one another on a global scale. He is highly critical of what's happening in the US, with the paranoia about terrorism, as more Americans retreat into a cocoon of phony patriotism. Isn't our obsession with security just selfishness, people who have too much protecting their right to use up the planet's resources while others live in poverty? The US is a society that runs on rampant materialism and an economic system that values only money, that measures success by how much goods and services each of us buy.

Politics and Religion
Clearly, James Hilgendorf does not hold the Bush administration in high esteem. But the book is only covertly political; it purports to be more about religion. Yes, the two things we most like to argue about. The most difficult task I can imagine is to get people to agree on politics and religion, and I'm afraid Hilgendorf will not succeed. I agree with most of his polemic, and admire the passion with which he tells us what he thinks we need. But his message is not new, either in its condemnation of America's action nor its prediction that we are on the verge of a spiritual awakening.

Lots of people don't like George Bush and there are millions of dissatisfied Americans who feel the US is on the wrong track. I know I am one of them.

Ugly Americans
Hilgendorf tells us he was in Ireland after the war in Iraq began and he felt the disapproval of Europeans at our actions. We attacked a country that posed no immediate threat to us and this has resulted in much suffering and thousands of deaths of innocent people, both Iraqi and American. I cannot argue with any of that. When the war began I too was in Europe, spending my last night in Prague in a cheap hotel near the airport. I turned on the TV in the early morning to see Saddam's ugly face complaining that his country had been attacked. I'd had an opportunity to talk to a number of Czech and German people on the trip, which was a visit with my daughter who was an exchange student in a small town in the Czech Republic. I'd spent an evening sitting in her host family's living room in a big concrete apartment building, enjoying a glass of wine and a discussion of what America was up to. The father in this family could not understand how America could feel threatened or why we needed to have nuclear weapons while we criticized other nations for wanting them too. My daughter also felt the anger directed at Americans as she traveled in Europe. Americans are seen as arrogant and selfish, and Hilgendorf tells us that's exactly what we are.

Is Religion Obsolete?
So what is the answer? Hilgendorf talks a lot about religion and lets us know that he is a practicing Buddhist. The most compelling parts of this book are the stories he tells about himself and his own path to peace. He found meaning in a Buddhist chant that, I confess, I do not understand, except to say that, in my view, each person must seek and find his own way. I do not doubt that chanting transformed the author's life and the lives of others, but I also do not accept this as a universal answer.

The answers, as Hilgendorf suggests, are rooted in ourselves. We DO need a new religion and I think we may be gradually creating one. I remember Joe McMoneagles's prediction (in his wonderful book, The Ultimate Time Machine) that a new religion would appear between 2002 and 2005. He said it would be based on "universal rules or laws of the spirit." Joe's timing may have been wrong, or he may have picked up the vibrations of so many people wanting a new religion, one that is not dogmatic, that has no hierarchy or clergy. It will just be people awakening to the reality of the world of spirit.

I admit that Buddhism is the least dogmatic and least hierarchical of older religions, and that it has much to offer. But I think the very idea of religion is becoming obsolete and people are starting to think in terms of "spiritual" growth rather than "religious" devotion. They have abandoned Bishop Spong's "theistic" God. Buddhism is different kind of religion since it does not ask adherents to worship God, but rather to seek enlightenment, or perhaps, to seek the God within. The whole concept of "worship" makes little sense, but it is the main activity of the church buildings that fill our cities. What does it accomplish?

Traditional religions claim everyone but them is in error. Some try to convert everyone and others regard non-believers as enemies. Indeed, religion is the actual cause of most of the current and former wars. A new spiritual awakening will have to pick up a lot of strength to combat the Christian fundamentalists who eagerly await Armageddon and the Jihadists who admire Osama Bin Laden. When I begin to believe this new awakening is here I remember that we re-elected George W. Bush and that the "Left Behind" books have sold millions of copies. Fundamentalism is a strong force in the world today and underestimating it would be a mistake.