Posted byVineeth Koshy

Together Towards Tomorrow
Re-thinking Future of Humanity
Interfaith Youth Summit 2011
Organized by
Interfaith Coalition for Peace
Commission on Youth–National Council of Churches in India
20 – 25 June 2011      St. Xavier’s Villa, Khandala

The future of humanity is often viewed as a topic for idle speculation. Yet our beliefs and assumptions on this subject matter shape decisions in both our personal lives and public policy decisions that have very real and sometimes unfortunate consequences. It is therefore practically important to try to develop a realistic mode of futuristic thought about big picture questions for humanity. All the major religions have teachings about the ultimate destiny of humanity or the end of the world. Eschatological themes have also been explored by big-name philosophers such as Hegel, Kant, and Marx. In more recent times the literary genre of science fiction has continued the tradition.

The future, very often has served as a projection screen for our hopes and fears; or as a stage setting for dramatic entertainment, morality tales, or satire of tendencies in contemporary society; or as a banner for ideological mobilization. It is relatively rare for humanity’s future to be taken seriously as a subject matter on which it is important to try to have factually correct beliefs. There is nothing wrong with exploiting the symbolic and literary affordances of an unknown future, just as there is nothing wrong with fantasizing about imaginary countries populated by dragons and wizards. Yet it is important to attempt to distinguish futuristic scenarios put forward for their symbolic significance or entertainment value from speculations to the real future picture of humanity. 

The scale of human social organizations has also grown, creating new opportunities for coordination and action, and there are many institutions and individuals who either do consider, or claim to consider, or ought to consider, possible long-term global impacts of their actions and evaluate the future of humanity. Climate change, national and international security, economic development, nuclear waste disposal, biodiversity, natural resource conservation, population policy, and scientific and technological research funding are examples of policy areas that involve long time-horizons. Arguments in these areas often rely on implicit assumptions about the future of humanity. By making these assumptions explicit, and subjecting them to critical analysis, it might be possible to address some of the big challenges for humanity in a more well-considered and thoughtful manner.

Humanity since centuries is facing the problems of poverty and hunger and this is also the cause of concern for the future survival of humanity too. Today more than 1.2 billion people are under extreme poverty conditions. That is to say, one in every five persons on earth survives on less than one dollar a day.  More than 2.4 billion people have no sanitation facilities; no access to safe drinking water. Women suffer most because two- thirds of world’s 876 million illiterates are women. Staggering 852 million people suffer every day the pain of hunger. In seven South African countries the number of people needing emergency food aid has doubled in a short period to 8.3 million from 3.5 million. India has serious poverty conditions. In 1990, 33.1% of the population earned less than $1 a day, and in 2005 it was 24.3%. According to World Bank estimates, in December 2008, based on 2005 data, 256 million survive below the updated international poverty line of $1.25 (Purchasing Power Parity - PPP) per day. Again, according to the World Bank, 33%, i.e. one third of world’s poor live in India. India has highest malnutrition among children under 3 than any country in the world and 75% of the poor live in rural areas. Evidently, this poverty situation and widening gap between the rich and the poor has serious consequences in the future.

Another critical issue humanity globally faces is the rise of religious fundamentalism. Religious fundamentalism is a global religious impulse particularly evident in the 20th century that seeks to recover and publicly institutionalize aspects of the past that modern life has obscured. Religious fundamentalists take their cues from a sacred text; they maximize the distinction between humanity and religion. We are also facing the global challenges like terrorism and militancy. The immediate human victims of terrorism and violence are generally chosen randomly they are ‘targets of opportunity’ or selectively ‘representative or symbolic targets’ from a target population, and serve as message generators. The two challenges - poverty and religious fundamentalism are intrinsically intertwined with terrorism. Poverty and deprivation is the recruiting ground for terrorists. Religious fundamentalism indoctrinates their minds and accelerates this process.

It is said that disasters are natural, but our recent experiences reveal that most of the disasters are human-made. Irresponsible mining of minerals and stones, destroying the existing trees, water sources, and streams are examples of human atrocities on environment. Landslides have become common causing damage to life, livelihood and properties of human beings. Deforestation causes drought, flood, and soil erosion. Floods create breaches on river embankments forcing & flow into the agricultural land, damaging agricultural activities for some years. Destruction of mangrove forest on the coast fails to protect people from disasters like cyclone or tsunami. The cement industry, atomic reactors, thermal power plants, sponge iron and other industries, their waste materials and urban sewerage including garbage pollutes the ground water and the air, causing a number of health hazards.

Therefore we need a relational convergence of religious experiences and religious resources. An important aspect of relational convergence of religious experiences is mutual conversion. Being born in a religion does not mean that we should die in that religion in the same way as we were born. We can get converted into the true spirit of one’s own religion and in that very conversion get converted into another religious experience as well. The faith experience of an Indian Christian need not be pre-formulated, but could be transformed in a process of formulation through the guidance of Muslim or Hindu or Sikh or any other religious experiences. Religious conflicts and future of humanity is secured and divisions transcends in such understandings of conversion.

The inter-religious relations and religious resources of the world must be conceived as the common property of the whole humanity. All religious experiences and traditions are simultaneously ours. We do not have any one particular religious tradition alone as our own and others as belonging to others. It is a religious perspective in which while remaining in one’s own religious faith-experience; one can consider other faiths as one’s own, as the common property of humanity, for an increasingly blessed and enriched life. It should be noted that if one is intimately familiar with one’s own religious system alone, that is a very religiously poverty stricken condition. Here the affirmation is of an inter-connected identity and uniqueness of each of the religious experiences as our own.

Objectives
• To develop an interfaith youth intellectual capacity to critically analyze the challenges the community faces and to work out appropriate strategies
• To enhance youth capacity to take a stand on weighing the complex factors of considering the common good of the community
• To initiate the grassroots interfaith perspective to bring about the common good of the community
• To formulate a moral authority and enjoying the confidence of the apex leadership as well as that of the grassroots on interfaith concerns

Expected Participants 
• We expect 40 inter-religious young activists, students, theologians, leaders from the following religious backgrounds. 
• The expected youth should be preferably in the age category of 18-35 years, with females & males in equal ratio.
1. Buddhist
2. Bahai
3. Christian
4. Hindu
5. Muslim
6. Sikh
7. Jain 
 
Proposed Venue:St. Xavier’s Villa, Khandala, Mumbai-Pune Road

Date: 20 – 25 June 2011

Follow-up & Outcome 
• Formulating and developing interfaith youth peace movements, campaigns, discussions and public forums in their respective religious places of worship/educational institutions/work places to secure the future of humanity to be just and peaceful.
• Creation of interfaith youth led e-groups/forums movements from the respective regions to promote peace and justice for a meaningful engagement of just inter-faith communities.

Prepared by

Vineeth Koshy      
Executive Secretary - Commission on Youth
National Council of Churches in India

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