NASA is predicting that 'life' on other planets might/will be discovered in the next 25 years. What then for our belief systems. Will we find parochial, as we come to accept our cosmological minuteness, we of the Parish called Earth, must adjust our age old beliefs. Dom de Lillo writes of being in 'hurry up time' and intensified present, 'My 'God', there are living beings on other planets
with wholly different belief systems than us - and they don't believe in an Islamic state, and they laugh uproariously at the idea of Paradise.
If this discovery takes place - and it will, will we move in a brighter light, will we stop groping and stumbling around old beliefs, will we be in an intensified present. ''When the Old God leaves the world,'' DeLillo writes, ''what happens to all the unexpended faith?'' It's not that people will start believing in anything: they will start believing in everything. ''When the Old God goes, they pray to flies and bottletops.'', is only the most extreme symptom of an (apparently) general condition. The post-modern world magnifies the self to the point of insupportability; those who can't take it will need to surrender to an idea or--easier still--a personality, an inscrutable chairman
No doubt we will still need icons.
The icon of this overlordship is of course the inscrutable Chairman, who tried to replace the thoughts of a billion people with the thoughts of Mao. At the same time Mao heroised the masses, the dark crowds to whom, DeLillo hints, the future ''belongs''.
with wholly different belief systems than us - and they don't believe in an Islamic state, and they laugh uproariously at the idea of Paradise.
If this discovery takes place - and it will, will we move in a brighter light, will we stop groping and stumbling around old beliefs, will we be in an intensified present. ''When the Old God leaves the world,'' DeLillo writes, ''what happens to all the unexpended faith?'' It's not that people will start believing in anything: they will start believing in everything. ''When the Old God goes, they pray to flies and bottletops.'', is only the most extreme symptom of an (apparently) general condition. The post-modern world magnifies the self to the point of insupportability; those who can't take it will need to surrender to an idea or--easier still--a personality, an inscrutable chairman
No doubt we will still need icons.
The icon of this overlordship is of course the inscrutable Chairman, who tried to replace the thoughts of a billion people with the thoughts of Mao. At the same time Mao heroised the masses, the dark crowds to whom, DeLillo hints, the future ''belongs''.
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