Cultural norms and religious entropy

Kathryn Aegis (aegis@igc.apc.org)
Mon, 17 Feb 1997 19:59:53 +0000


When I first heard of an impending radio interview with Constance
Buchanan, Assoc. Dean at Harvard Divinity School and founder of the
women's studies' department there, I thought, 'this will be good for
a few laughs'. Instead, it was a fascinating hour in which Buchanan
made a call for continuing to dismantle the underlying cultural norms
that have been based in religious belief (I half-expected for her to
use the word entropy) and developing new leadership and authority
models based on full public agency for everyone.

In her book _Choosing to Lead: Women and the Crisis in American
Values_, she reveals the continuing influence of the Christian
religion on secular society and in particular our cultural norms
regarding who has a cultural authority to speak in public regarding
the way our social interactions will be structured and carried out.
It also contains some interesting critiques on the increasingly
narrow scope of feminism.

In my notes I stated an application to transhumans/extropians:
It is clear that merely rejecting religion is not sufficient to free
ourselves from its effects. What remaining vestiges of this
Judeo-Christian cultural map do we continue to play into in our everyday
lives, and are we willing to accept changes based on eradicting those
vestiges?

Sin,

Kathryn Aegis