I recently took a cab to the airport with my family. Our driver was a Muslim named Khalil, a friendly man in his forties with a full greying beard, which he stroked thoughtfully under his Covid mask as he sped us down the highway.
It isn’t often that someone like me, a follower of the traditional Christian faith, has a chance to speak at length with someone like Khalil, a follower of the traditional Islamic faith. A thousand years ago we might never have met, or if we did, it might have been on either side of the walls of Jerusalem, with sword in hand. Today we faced each other on either side of an SUV seat, chatting over the burble of his dispatch radio.
We talked about the delays people have been experiencing at airports lately, and he mentioned losing his luggage for seven days after flying through Amsterdam on his way back from Saudi Arabia where he had completed the Hajj—the mandatory pilgrimage to Mecca required of all adult Muslims.
“Have you heard of The Line?” I asked, referring to a Saudi plan to build a dystopian mega-city in the desert 170 km long, 200 meters wide, and 500 meters tall, with a mirror glass façade, like a sprawling dry aquarium for nine million people.
“Yes, I’ve heard of it,” Khalil said. “It’s a wonder of technology. And a work of the Antichrist.”
The Antichrist. There’s a conversation-stopper. Or a starter, depending on your viewpoint. Did he suspect I was a religious person?
“The Antichrist?” I said, deciding to draw things out a little. “Do you think it’s the end times?”
“Oh yes,” he said without hesitation.
He recited several Islamic prophecies, like this one, made over 1400 years ago: a sign of the end was that we’d see the barefoot, naked, destitute shepherds competing in constructing tall buildings. This prophecy referred to the Bedouin, Khalil explained. The Bedouin are an ancient nomadic people who still migrate through the deserts of the Middle East; but over the past generation their descendants have built some of the tallest buildings in the world, including the current record-holder, the Burj Khalifa in the United Arab Emirates, which reaches almost a kilometer into the sky, as if to prick the very toes of God.
Khalil’s worries about the future also centered on more familiar themes: from the rise in artificial intelligence to the World Economic Forum to transgenderism. He had enrolled his four children in a private Muslim school to ensure they were protected from liberal ideology and was pleased to learn that my wife and I were homeschooling our own children.
“What does your faith teach you about how we might escape the coming upheaval?” I asked.
It’s the golden question, after all. The one everybody seems to be asking. “It tells me we should flee to the mountains,” Khalil replied. By mountains he meant any remote place away from the city.
Upheaval and Apocalypse and fleeing into nature to escape the Machine. I’d heard these things before, though never from a Muslim. Maybe I need to speak to more Muslims? Maybe I need to speak with more people outside my own church?
People with religious and spiritual beliefs often share concerns about the direction of society, including the demise of spirituality as a foundation for life, and the distortion of what it means to be human. Will diverse religious people form strategic alliances in the near future to support shared objectives, like protections for the practice of faith or home education, or exemptions from future technologies (for instance) that are implanted into the body?
And yet, before we can ask that question, there’s a more basic one that confronts us: Are diverse religious people even capable of alliances with each other?
Those uncomfortable differences
Several years ago, my wife ran a sizeable home-school program out of a church basement. Although it was an openly “classical Christian” program, it brought together families of varying theologies and worldviews, including Evangelicals, Catholics, and Orthodox, as well as a New Age family, an atheist family, and a Muslim family. There were some lively conversations, yes, but no obvious conflict. People got on well, and she had a waiting list of others eager to join. How did my wife make it work?
Partly because she kept the religious aspects of the program very limited or in the background. She required all teachers to acknowledge the Nicene Creed before taking them on, but did not require any other proof of faith. She spoke a brief prayer at the start of each term, with all the families present, but there were no other religious activities, and no ideological purity tests for admission to the program. The focus was on high-level academics and encouraging friendships.
The co-op program was a modest example of a successful strategic alliance across religious/worldview lines. Would this example translate to other situations? It might not, if it involved a larger group or a different activity; and it’s not clear how much of the harmony of the program was due to most of the adults being mothers.
What about Khalil and me? Would we—grown men and fathers—be able to get along outside the limited confines of an airport taxi ride? He was an intelligent and genial person, but I didn’t find all his opinions welcome. Although he held Jesus in great respect, he denied the Resurrection, citing the common Islamic belief that Jesus was carried away into heaven before he died on the Cross.
I’m a tolerant person, not easily offended, not even when someone dismisses the basis of my faith. But how would other Christians feel? Would they tolerate it? I can think of a few people I know who might get defensive.
And how would Khalil have felt if I gently kicked the pillars from under his own faith? Would he tolerate it?
Sometimes those with the strongest convictions carry a fanatical uncertainty within them, one they rarely admit to themselves, but which can make them lash out when that uncertainty gets prodded.
I don’t know if Khalil fell into that category. I made no effort to prod him. But clearly his beliefs were strong and unabashed. With calm and reasoned words, he spoke of Islam as the one true faith. At the same time, he appeared genuinely curious about my and my wife’s perspectives, and affirmed aspects of Christianity that he thought to be correct or laudable.
He upheld Russian Orthodoxy, for instance, as the most admirable Christian denomination, as the women wear head covers, much as Muslim women wear the hijab. Still, there were moments I had to bite my tongue. Khalil could not accept the doctrine of the Trinity, and with blunt humor remarked, “God is not a triangle”. I might have replied, with equal humor, “Nor is God a dot”, but thought better of it.
And then there was Salman Rushdie. The near-fatal knife attack on Rushdie occurred only a few days after the cab conversation. Would that conversation have unfolded differently if I had questioned the 1989 fatwa that had called for Rushdie’s death after the publication of The Satanic Verses?
Tolerance: Virtue of the Future
Tolerance may become increasingly vital in the coming years, for two reasons. The first, as I’ve suggested, involves the need for strategic alliances as people of different religions and worldviews discover they’re fighting common battles against Machine liberalism, that emerging new ideology in which human beings are viewed increasingly in purely material and hyper-individualistic terms.
However, before I get to the second reason, it would help to unpack the meaning of “tolerance”.
I call tolerance a “virtue” in the same sense that FFatalism recently did, in contrast to acceptance. Acceptance, he writes with lacerating clarity,
isn’t morally sophisticated. It’s an infantile mistaking of mushy warm-heartedness for goodness. It replaces a notion of truth grounded in the world with one grounded in the desires of the self. If you’re going to do that, then you might as well grind morality - along with philosophy, art, and science – into a fine paste, flush it down the toilet, buy a lifetime’s supply of heroin, and so quickly replace all your desires with a single new one that you are extremely well placed to satisfy.
Among other things, FF is suggesting that acceptance is easy, indeed cowardly, because it denies objective truth. Acceptance says, We don’t really know what’s true or not, but the important thing is that we get along with each other and therefore recognize each other’s views as valid. Acceptance is a shrug, and a warm hug.
Tolerance, on the other hand, implies the reality of an objective truth, and at the same time recognizes that somebody must be wrong in what they believe. That somebody might be me or you, or an airport taxi driver.
For this reason, tolerance is more difficult than acceptance, requiring, as FF points out, humility as well as “discipline and a willingness to sacrifice part of your own power over the world”. More concretely, I think it also requires the ability to psychologically endure periods of self-doubt, anxiety, irritation, or whatever difficult emotions come with it.
If Acceptance has any virtuous role, it’s as a servant to Tolerance. It happens when Tolerance says, “I’m finding this very uncomfortable,” and Acceptance says, “Accept the discomfort. Accept that people are different from you. It won’t kill you to accept this.”
Or, even more radically, Acceptance the Servant may say, “Welcome those who are different, not because you intend to become like them or take on their viewpoint, but because hospitality, kindness, and patience are themselves virtues worth cultivating.”
Tolerance 2.0
So, to reiterate, the first reason we need to develop tolerance is to be able to cooperate, across religious, denominational, or worldview differences, against a Machine ideology. But this first reason may be supplanted by a second reason in the near future, due to changing demographics.
The September Salon at the Abbey of Misrule featured a video interview with geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan, who noted that throughout most of the world, age demographics have dramatically shifted, with shrinking numbers of younger people and increasing numbers of older people. The result will be a population crash and all sorts of ripple effects, economically and otherwise.
To put a finer point on it, recent global age projections indicate that in 2018, the number of people older than 64 surpassed the number of children under age 5 for the first time in history. For greater context, the graphic below from Ritchie and Roser (2019) shows what’s been happening to the population since 1950, and what’s projected to happen until 2100:
The blue pyramidal shape in 1950 is due to an increasing number of births in that decade (i.e., the broad base of the pyramid) along with a continuously high risk of death throughout life (i.e., the pyramid narrows towards the top).
The boxy shape by 2100 indicates a very low risk of death for younger populations as well as people living longer lives. In essence, the world population heading toward 2100 is becoming healthier.
One of the biggest exceptions to the global shrinkage is sub-Saharan Africa, whose population will double by 2050, and possibly double again by 2100. How this will affect Africa and the rest of the world is still unclear, though the impact will doubtless be felt in geopolitics, global trade, and many other areas.
For the West, the negative implications of population shrinkage, at least for the immediate future, will include labor shortages—or I should say worsened labor shortages. Zeihan explores these economic impacts in in his video, as do Ritchie and Rose in their article, but we will focus on something else: the implications for religion.
Along with Africa, certain religious groups will be another exception to general population decline in the coming decades. Eric Kaufmann, a professor of politics, has argued that “religious fundamentalists” are on course to become a dominant global demographic, as these groups tend to be the most fertile. They include Mormons, Haredi Jews, certain Muslim groups, and various Christian groups, including Old-Order Anabaptists (Amish and Mennonites) “Quiverfull” Evangelicals, and the Laestadian Lutherans of Finland and Sweden, all of whom take literally the command to “be fruitful and multiply”.
Kaufmann makes his argument in a 2012 book titled Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, though Alan Carlson provides a good summary of in the context of declining Swedish and European fertility. If the above claims are accurate—if we are facing both a global population crash, yet with robust fertility among traditional religious people—it means the future will see not only a rise in religion, but also, more broadly, in conservatism.
The social impact will be profound. Here’s more from Carlson, summarizing Kaufmann’s predictions:
Due to differential fertility between "seculars" and "fundamentalists," by 2100 "three-quarters of America may be pro-life. Their activism will leap over the borders of the 'Redeemer Nation' to evangelize the world." In the arena of Islam, secular forces (as found in modern Turkey) sow the seeds of their own demise: "Heads sharia wins, tails you lose." And in Europe, "at a key tipping point, secular liberals will replace [immigrants] as the conservative bogeyman, with Christians and Muslims joining forces to oppose secular Europeans." This will shift the main fault lines in European politics from ethnicity to faith.
So, if you’ve been worried about the ascendency of Machine liberalism, I would suggest that that’s not the real story. The current Machine-liberal ideology—so intent on denying objective truths, even to the point of self-contradiction, and often espoused by people who themselves have among the very lowest birth rates on the planet—such an ideology may prove to be a wisp in the wind.
The sacred Machine
The real challenge, going forward, will be a world filled with increasing numbers of groups who do believe in objective truth, but often from radically different viewpoints. Will they be able to live in peace together? Will they tolerate each other?
The past is replete with religious conflict, and it would be foolish to predict that the future will be vastly different. The rule of human psychology is that past behavior predicts future behavior; on a broad scale, history repeats itself. A probable future of the West is not the victory of religious (or political) conservatism, but tension and conflict within and around conservatism.
The resolution of this conflict could include any of the following scenarios:
- One traditional religion assumes dominant social influence, but tolerates other worldview groups, resulting in relatively lesser conflict.
- One traditional religion assumes dominant social influence, but does not tolerate other worldview groups, resulting in conflict and potential violence.
- No traditional religion dominates, but all operate freely within a tolerant political sphere in which church and state remain separate (a “secular” state).
Of course we’ve already attempted that third option in the West, only to learn, in the end, that removing God from society leaves a gaping hole of meaning and values which zealously yearns to be filled—even if it gets filled by absurd or ill-conceived ideologies. Indeed, to the dismay of many, it appears religious fanaticism does not require religion at all.
Above I suggested that the current Machine-liberal ideology may turn out to be a wisp in the wind, but that doesn’t mean it won’t, or can’t, become something more potent. A fourth possibility is that a new religion will come to dominate society, based on a new sacred order that is connected with, or supported by, technology.
This new sacred order would be a fabrication, an invention; I imagine disgruntled ex-Christians in a marketing division, joining forces with tech-engineers to bring spiritual ideas to life. Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke noted that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, and that would surely be the goal: to convince the masses, on the basis of magical and supernatural “proofs”, that the new religion is true.
If we ever get to that point, we will have arrived in a frightening place. As I noted in a previous Abbey comment back in 2021,
the Machine will come to full fruition only when a new sacred order is explicitly articulated and gains widespread acceptance. If this does happen, [the Machine] will be a more devastating thing altogether. Not just a bigger and more efficient Machine, but one that is righteously empowered, like a god, to destroy anyone opposing it.
With that, it seems we’re back to the Antichrist, or something very much like it.
And back to my taxi driver, Khalil.
I’m not as convinced as he is that we have arrived at the end times. However, I’m certain we’re nearing the end of an age, the turning of the wheel, whose final grinding revolution still has a few years to go.
After unloading my family’s luggage at the airport, Khalil and I stood at the edge of the taxi lane, the warm air thickly scented with muffler fumes and jet fuel. “I think there is 90% overlap between Christians and Muslims,” he said. “The conflicts are due to politics.”
“Yes,” I said. I wasn’t sure his numbers were right, but the basic point was sound. Religion and power do not mix well; add a few drops of politics and it gets explosive.
Khalil and I parted amicably, each with our identity intact, and yet not entirely unchanged: our tolerance muscles had been worked. Worked and perhaps a little bruised, but the stronger for it, I hope.