Now that mobile phones and the internet have altered the epistemic selective landscape in a revolutionary way, every religious organisation must scramble to evolve defences or become extinct.
There's eco-pragmatism, where you recognize, 'Yeah, we live on a planet that's permanently altered by humanity, and rather than seek to return to or preserve pure wilderness, we recognize that's an illusion, and we proceed under the new knowledge that we live, in fact, in a human-dominated planet.'
We have altered the physical, chemical and biological properties of the planet on a geological scale. We have left no part of the globe untouched.
That we have altered the dog genetically is well understood; it is hardly known how they changed us.
There are but a handful of times in the history of our country when there occurs a transformation so remarkable that a molt seems to take place, and an altered country begins to emerge.
Since the middle of the twentieth century, our understanding of the American past has been revolutionized, in no small part because of our altered conceptions of the place of race in the nation's history.
To pass from estrangement from God to be a son of God is the basic fact of conversion. That altered relationship with God gives you an altered relationship with yourself, with your brother man, with nature, with the universe.
It's something I've always been passionate about - which is the power of rock and roll itself. I'm a walking example of its power, 'cause I was totally altered in the seminal years of Live by bands like U2 and R.E.M., U2 in particular.
In 'Nineteen Eighty-Four,' protagonist Winston Smith works at a propaganda department for the state called the 'Ministry of Truth,' where inconvenient news can be discarded down a 'memory hole.' Orwell was fixated on the idea that under certain governments, the past can be altered or documents rewritten.
Altered social conditions may remove certain ailments and deformities in existing society. But the new and more beautiful society will not be formed exclusively - or even mainly - by improved conditions, but above all by more perfect human beings.
