Henslin: Caught Between the Ages

In this chapter, William Van Dusen Wishard highlights three trends that we experience when evolving into a new age. The first trend being globalization where "nations are incorporating planetary dimensions of life into the fabric of our economics, politics, culture, and international relations. Although this new culture is spreading worldwide, there is a fear of invasion. There is a noticeable contrast between the beliefs of the west and the east. The west believes in individuality and that humans can dominate the nature of this world. Whereas the east believes in relationships and that human is a part of nature. 

The second trend is the movement between two ages, technology development. Experts have a belief that the intelligence of an artificial robot would surpass those of humans in 16 years from now. The co-founder of MIT's artificial intelligence lab thinks that it is okay to devalue human if we can create something better, and more intelligent. What's even scarier is that they don't think it is wrong or aren't scared of the existence of humans, they believe it is the next stage of evolution. 

The third trend is a long-term spiritual and psychological reorientation. It is the content and quality of our culture that indicates what's going on in the inner life. "For example, we used to talk about 'heaven', which denoted the transcendent realm, eternity, the dwelling place of gods", Willam continues which has no spiritual connotation" (546). The words and topics we talked about had a link to our unconscious self, our inner self. Now we just speak of matters, vocabulary of technology, which is a sign of us devaluing our inner self.