THIRTY FIVE YEARS AGO i took german in college,and just today i was trying to see if i could remember the american pledge of allegiance, in german. Mine deutschen freunden;laufen sie nicht, bitte....i can almost remember it, can almost get it right...well, here goes:
"Ich gelobe der Fahne der vereigten Stadten, welche sie vertritt, treue. Eine nation, unter Gott, unteillbar, mitt Freiheit una Gerechttikeit fur alle." and that can't be right, because nowhere in there is the term "united states of america". Oh well..i tried...
studying a foreign language is a great experience, and even if eventually the world speak a single language, may we preserve and learn all the old languages, and never lose them.
Likewise, it seems possible that the world will one day use a single currency system, in a truly connected global economy. But for the love of pete, may the world never, ever, ever suffer the curse of suffering the outrageous fortune of a sinlge, world wide religion.
Can you imagine how horrible that would be? In fact, we should encourage exactly the opposite, a different relgion for every person, complete freedom and individualism, instead of unity and universal conformity.
Humanity may need linguistic and monetary uniformity, though there is room for doubt about both ideas. However, i can say with complete, absolute certainty, that the last thing humanity needs is a single, uniform religion.
We need religious diversity, to the extreme. one religion per person. and we all know this, if and when we really choose to think about it. a single, uniform, universal political system, a world government? Maybe. Probably.
But religious conformity is a complete, unqualified disaster. It results in spiritual stagnation, and a complete lack of innovation, and evolution. "When I realized that everyone invents his own religion, I decided to invent mine." - Goethe
how true...how true..we all invent our own religions, whether we want to or not. May we celebrate the process, rather than deny it.
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