I wrote a novel called Millennium 3. The genesis of the novel was a question: I wondered what our world would look like if it followed the principles of the Bahá’í Faith, one of which is the equality of women and men. What if The Golden Rule pervaded every decision at every level of human society, even the international level? What if the compassion of women had come to dominate the motivations of mankind, leaving the survival-of-the-fittest mentality to be discarded on the dust-heap of history?
Today, misogyny is alive and … well … actually, not-so-well; it’s slowly dying off as the older people, born before the internet, are dying off. The religions that preach male supremacy are dying off, too. Spirituality, based on “the independent investigation of truth,’ another Bahá’í principle, is allowing people to abandon the male-dominated religions of the past two millennia. In recent years, more women are graduating from college—even in Muslim countries. When these women, born since 1990, are forty or fifty years old, they will be a powerful force. The “greatest generation” and the “baby boomers” will be either dead or too old to be active in business or politics. Between now and 2040, today’s young women will redefine cultures around the world. It will be impossible to hold them back.
So, if you’d like a glimpse of the future, either buy the book or sign up for my mailing list and I’ll send you the entire essay. The essay describes several aspects of the world culture about 900 years in the future. Most books and movies that describe the future are dystopian. They paint a bleak picture in which mankind is fighting over the meager resources left after a nuclear war or a similar tragedy. I believe the future is unimaginably bright. Knowledge is proliferating today through ever-expanding opportunities for education and communication. One of the wonderful things about knowledge is that, once you have it, it is really hard to revert to ignorance. Once you learn that black people are no different than white people—other than pigmentation—you can’t revert to racism. Once you learn that women are just as capable as men in everything except weightlifting, you can’t revert to misogyny. Gaining knowledge is a one way process—for the individual and for the world.
So we are destined to achieve gender equity, probably within the next forty years. I hope I’m around to applaud when it happens.
Love to all,
Ron
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