The Man On The Corner

Bit of oddness from last night. Drifting off to sleep but suddenly this thought came into my head in the form of a picture and I couldn't make the picture go away so I started writing about it. Wrote a little bit, tried to go back to sleep but thought some more about it and had to write some more. 

 No idea where this is going. Maybe it's going nowhere. It's interesting just as it is but I might want to expand it.

The problem is I have no idea where to expand it it's just an idle fought from drifting off to sleep.

Anyway you look at it, I like it. 

 

The Man on the Corner

There was a man sitting on the corner of the empty street. The kind of man you'd glance at and ignore, except there was no one else in sight and that made him odd. Short hair, bit messy, stylishly dirty brown. Mostly shaven and just a little bit not. Either well tan or Hispanic. Wearing dark blue sweats. The kind of sweats you looked at and thought not I wonder what brand those are but instead I wonder if he's just so rich he doesn't give a damn or so poor he can't afford anything better?

The odd man on the corner just sat there, leaning against a lamp post. One leg stretched out one up at an angle. His hands just laying across his thighs, dangling. He was staring across the street. But there wasn't anything there to see. Just an old storefront. Empty now. Waiting for October when it could transform into a Halloween store. But right now it was nothing; just an empty store.

Trevor wouldn't normally have given the man more than a momentary glance without a single thought but he would either have to walk between the man and the store, putting himself in line with that empty stare or he would have to walk the narrow space on the sidewalk right behind that post. Close enough to be  reached if the man turned out to be aggressive. It shouldn't bother me thought Trevor. I'm bigger, heavier, damn all in better shape. So why does he concern me. What is it about him that it makes me uneasy?

Deciding the whole thing was stupid, Trevor  walked on but just as he reached behind the man without breaking his stare the oddball began to speak. He had a deep voice. A rich voice. Sounded like a professional voice actor narrating a deeply meaningful scene. "Its not too late," he declared. "You aren't committed yet."

The voice was rich and pleasant but somehow Trevor broke out in goosebumps and hustled off down the street. He glanced back.  The man was still sitting there, as if he never moved, never spoken.  Still rather ragged, still staring.

But that isn't right, he thought. The man, he thought, is me.

And so it was. he was the man. Sitting there staring. The empty window stared back. It was full of Halloween horror already. Only it was real. And then Trevor realized he really had to pee. But  although the dream was creepy and weird he didn't want to wake up. Waking up meant throwing away the warm covers, getting out into the cold bedroom. He had takien the advice he read on the Internet,  begun to sleep at 65°. It did make for a better sleep, but damn it was awfully hard when he had to get out of bed before morning when the smart thermostat had warmed the room up .

He struggled back-and-forth for a while. Eventually he had to admit that he couldn't get the dream to start up again. As he headed for the bathroom he couldn't help thinking, "What would've happened if I'd stay asleep? Where was that weird dream going?"

The Dumbing Of College

I really hate to contradict myself, even an earlier self, but I must admit that the prevalence of screens in the lives of younger generations has had a disturbing impact on the ability to read effectively. Of course, a huge portion of the culpability is a direct result of the inanity of no child left behind and other educational atrocities we have inflicted upon our children.

Competition for scores makes no sense in the collegial and highly social setting of education. It's as if we told doctors that we would pay them according to how many of their patients recovered (or survive,) so that they would hide the secrets to their success in order to can earn more money by letting the patients of their competitors die.

I can give my 40 year younger self a pat on the back for having recognized the stupidity of competitive based education and standardized testing abused as a measure of teacher and school effectiveness; which greatly contributed to the inability of our younger generations to read it understand lengthy and complex texts.

Still, I think screens are playing a part in all of this.  

>Educational initiatives such as No Child Left Behind and Common Core "emphasized informational texts and standardized tests for over two decades," said The Atlantic. As a result, teachers shifted from reading books to short passages, "mimicking the format of standardized reading-comprehension tests." Shifting toward truncated reading was meant to help train kids to better synthesize information from texts, Antero Garcia, a Stanford education professor, said to the outlet. But in doing so, we’ve "sacrificed young people's ability to grapple with long-form texts in general."<

https://theweek.com/education/college-students-read-books

Knots Of Time

 A Snippit About that Meme 

It was one of the  oddest cases that Dr. Philbine had ever encountered.

The patient was hysterically excited and displayed a deeply passionate conviction that the world owed him a debt of gratitude that should be boundless and immeasurable.

According to him, he had become the savior of the world by employing  a device that permitted him to travel back in time. In and itself, he was not even terribly proud of this remarkable accomplishment, which he at least, was convinced was true. 

No, he was instead obsessed with his glorious success in that he had gone back to Vienna in 1909 and there murdered a teenaged artist named Adolf Hitler.

When asked why this should be considered to be a positive accomplishment, he began to thrash about and scream, "Hitler! Hitler! Don't you understand, you  moronic jackasses!" And much more of the same.

When the staff continued to refuse to praise him for this bizarre "achievement" the patient withdrew into himself and became largely silent, only muttering  incoherently to himself from time to time.

The case took a very peculiar turn when agents of the FBI turned up and insisted upon interviewing the man.

Dr. Philbine declared that this was not possible due to the severe responses his patient had to being agitated with any reference to this mysterious artist. He demanded to know exactly why the FBI could possibly be interested in this case.

The agents indicated to him that there was in fact a device which, when activated, had returned an individual to 1909. This lead to inquiries to the Vienna police, who discovered that there had indeed been an obscure young artist named Adolf Hitler who was found shot to death in 1909.

The case had never been solved.

Sadly, subsequent attempts to determine why the patient had committed this bizarre act only served to drive him deeper into his delusional internal world. He was never charged with murder because of the unavoidable conundrum of can you charge someone with murder if the victim was murdered over a century before the killer was even born? This was a legal issue which neither the judicial system of the United States nor that of Vienna were prepared to undertake.

Lord Of The Woke?

https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/03/entertainment/lord-of-the-rings-amazon-controversy-blake-cec/index.html

A pox on on both their houses, from my frame of reference.

I will start with the original work of Tolkien.

> Some fans are even questioning if Tolkien was a racist.<

They finally noticed? Like so many of the greats of British literature, the human enemies were all dark skinned people from the south. Of course Tolkien was a racist. It’s very hard to find a Brit back in those days who wasn’t a racist.

This does not excuse the racism in the books, but it does identify why it is there.

That said, the issue of changing the race of some of the characters becomes a difficult one. If the changing of the races serves the storyline, then it is justified. If it is just done to make a token show of, “Look how non-racist we are!“ Then it is morally repugnant. Making a show of being not racist is not a good thing. Actually not being racist is a good thing.

Consider the remake of the Sherlock Holmes story which placed Holmes in our utterly non Victorian New York City and made Dr. Watson an oriental woman. When I heard the series was coming up I was interested because I am always interested in what is being done with the Holmes  milieu.  Nevertheless, I anticipated it would be a piece of garbage presenting itself as incredibly wonderful and ‘with it’ and all the great things that come with artificially and nonsensically casting minority characters in classically white roles for no good reason but only to engage in virtue signaling and good sales tactics.

I loved the show.  It had its flaws and it was far from perfect, not least of which was that it really wasn’t presenting the kinds of mysteries that Sherlock Holmes solved, but it was nevertheless an excellent and interesting adaptation.

So, at this point, I have no idea as to whether the casting of non-White characters in what was originally an all white series (with the exception of the evil Southerns) is good or bad. I can tell only after I have observed the results by watching the show.

In short, both sides are being excessive in their prejudicial responses.  

Note: First, I must clarify that when I’m referring to a pox on both their houses I mean those who are defending and those who are attacking the changes without actually knowing anything about how the series unfolds.  Therefore, in fairness, I must add that the defense made of these changes by those involved in producing the series sound valid. But I will not attempt a judgment until I have seen the results.

Poem Visions

Must be in a poetry sort of mood.

 Visions

Heed me 

Hear me 

You who see the unseen

You who hear the silence

You who know the unknown

You who sense the unreal things

That form the structure of the world

Heed me 

Hear me 

You and I

We are then and also now 

We are here and we are there

We are the unreal and the real

We are one with the godhead and with man

Heed me 

Hear me 

We observe and we take part

We are the bond of yes and no 

We are the soul that others lack

We are at the living and the dead

We know the things that others won’t

Heed me 

Hear me 

We are here so they can be

We are what they will not see

We are the life they need to live

We are the ylem that first was here

We are the myth which forms the word 

Heed me 

Hear me 

We are the sight that is too clear

We are the truth they will not hear 

We are the thought that fosters fear 

We are the dark and we are the light

We are the mirror that they must hate

Heed me 

Hear me 

If you will

Poem Night Bird

 A throwaway line from a manga last night got me thinking so I wrote this poem.  It’s pretty much the way it came out of my head with a very few minor changes (change the word “the” to the word “a”, for example).

I can see a few ways I could make it much more structured instead of completely blank verse. But then I’d have to add a couple more stanzas. I like it the way it is, so I’ll probably leave it. Then again, maybe I’ll make a second version. I don’t know yet. Anyway, here it is:

Night Bird

Homeless

Flying 

Through a new moon sky

Flying free

Unfettered

Unbound

Homeless

New moon 

Dark moon

Black sky moon

Moon that is but isn’t

Guide me

Guide me with your darkness

Guide me home again

For I am all alone

Yet Another Isekai

I was an ordinary high school student. Except I was awfully good with my skateboard. Which is why I impressed all the girls by never wearing any safety equipment. Helmets? That’s for wimps who get bullied.

I was so good I invented my own maneuver. I hadn’t even named it yet. At the skate park I showed it off to everyone and it didn’t quite work. Which is how I fractured my skull and died.

Should’ve been the end, right? Only, yeah, it happened to me. Empty white room, funny looking old man. I’m not an otaku and nowhere near a hikkikomori, but I’ve read a few mangas here and there. I got it. I’m not particularly interested in swords and sorcery and magic and all that stuff but hey, better than staying dead, right?

So the old god guy is pretty nice. He  smiles and says “Welcome! You know what’s happening right?”

So I told him I did. I was gonna go on and explain how I was pretty popular with the girls and was a  respected athlete, but he never gave me a chance.

“Well, I’m new to all this! You’re my first one. I got curious about what all the other gods were into, thought I’d give it a try. Read a few manga and now we’re ready to go. Sorry I had to wait till that truck killed you but…”

That’s when I asked him what truck?

He looked awfully confused and asked “You died from a fractured skull didn’t you?”

I told him I did but it’s because I tried my new trick on a skateboard and I guess it was pretty stupid not to wear helmet after all… And that’s as far as I got.

“Oh, no! I’m so sorry! My fault! I can’t just send you back to be dead now. But it has to be a truck! Every manga I read, it started with a truck.” He thought about it for a moment and then he almost shouted,  “I got it!”  He looked at me and smiled, “Don’t worry, I’ll give you your harem and your magic powers and cat girls and everything you’ve ever dreamed of!” He waved his hand  and I was standing in the middle of a street and a truck was coming at me.

I jumped out of the way. And got in the way of a passenger car. Which killed me.

Back in the white room the god was looking confused and a little bit angry. “Why did you dodge?” It’s got to be a truck!”  He waved hand again before I could say anything and I was on a narrow curving mountain road; rock face on one side, steep cliff on the other, and a truck was coming at me.

So of course I jumped. And I hit the guard rail. Then I fell off the cliff. And then I was back in the white room.

This time the old guy was not a little puzzled. Just angry. Very, very angry.

“What’s the matter with you? Don’t you want to be in your wonderful dream world that you’ve always wished you had as you locked yourself away in your lonely little room?”

I tried to explain him again but having died three times in a row was making a little hard for me to talk.

“Let’s get it right this time,” he said sternly. He waved his hand again.

This time I was standing in a forest.  I looked around. Behind me there was a cliff that looked an awful lot like the one I had just fallen down. All around me was, you know, the forest. Trees and plants and stuff. Then there was a shadow over me, so I looked up and a truck fell on me.

Back in the room again. The old god guy looked really happy. “Finally got it right!  I’d have thought that after dying a few times, you’d stop being afraid of it.”  Then he stopped, looked a little thoughtful and said “Of course being a god, I’ve never died, so maybe I got it wrong.” He smiled at me in his kindly old senile god way, and added, “I made it easy for you. Just made a truck lose control, had the driver jump out time to save his life and let it fall down on top of you so you didn’t have time to dodge. Clever, huh?”

I tried to tell him that if he really wanted to reincarnate me, how about just sticking me back in my old world. I liked it there. I was good at it. I was in a good high school. I had a great career ahead of me. I dated a lot of girls. I was a popular guy. But I had just had too many deaths in the last 3 1/2 minutes for me to stop shaking long enough to say anything.

At least he noticed. He told me to calm down and wait a while before sending me the new world because there’s no way I could survive in my current condition. Eventually I calmed down enough to start screaming.

“Why did you keep killing me!? It doesn’t have to be a stinking truck! One guy got stabbed and there was another guy who fell out of his bed and bumped his head and died for no particular reason. But they got isekaied!”

He looked a bit puzzled, “Oh? Guess I haven’t read enough isekai then. I’ll read some more. Thanks for letting me know.  Anyway, you look better, so I’ll let you start your wonderful new dream life you’ve always wished for.”

And then I was in this place.

So, I repeat, I got to admit it’s better than being dead. I mean, what isn’t? But magic is confusing, swords are stabby and sharp, and harems aren’t as much fun as you might think. Just take a little time and  actually think about it for once. I have to live with four incredibly demanding, pushy, selfish little brat girls. Each one wants everything her own way. All they do is fight with each other, except when they unite forces to fight against me, which happens a lot.  

And worst of all, you can’t divorce a harem.

I miss my old life.

First (Second?) Contact

 In many ways first contact actually proved to be quite simple.   It turned out that the scientists and mathematicians were correct. Mathematics was mathematics. Engineering was engineering.  

What worked for us, worked for them. How could it not? Differences in cultural and artistic inclination aside, reality remained real for both species.

Unfortunately, then there were other kinds of communication. Utter complete failure. No matter how hard we tried. No matter how hard they tried. Nothing being “said” made any sense to us and nothing we presented to them made any sense to them.  We couldn’t even begin to guess how they thought and it became clear that they couldn’t do so with us either.

The big breakthrough came when someone finally realized that the answer was not linguists, scholars, or professionals of any kind. It was only when they brought in Martha Murray that  advances were finally made.

In retrospect, it should have been an obvious choice. Instead, it all resulted from the moment when Martha sent in that now famous email that said “Well, obviously this is what they mean.  Can’t you tell?”

Martha, and many millions of others, were very experienced in communicating with alien species and conveying meeting back-and-forth between them. Of course, you all know the punchline. Who doesn’t in our media connected world? Martha was a cat lady. 

Best of all, it didn’t require a person who was obsessed with cats, just a person who has lived with a cat for years and was able to understand and send out effective messages between these two so alien species. In truth, cats and people really don’t fully understand each other and the aliens and we don’t either. Nevertheless, we can somehow convey desire and intent back and forth  enough to get along and even enjoy each other’s company. Homo sapiens and silvestris catus, we owe our peaceful and mutually beneficial alliance with our alien friends to you and your relatonship.

This Ain’t Your Father’s Isikai

 

This Ain’t Your Father’s Isikai

Manny decided that Terkel and Gundar were good traveling companions.  Like any dwarf in a good fantasy world, they were strong and carrying huge packs in their backs was something they seemed not to even notice. That meant he didn’t have to carry much. And they didn’t even mind!

If you had to be stuck in a strange new world, having been summoned by some weird unknown power, it was  good to have friends like these.  

They knew the route. The low level monsters around were scared of dwarves so the journey was as easy as it could be. It was like a vacation. The more he thought about it, the more Manny realized that it wasn’t so bad being in this world. It’s not like he had left much behind. At least he hadn’t left anything behind that he could think of with regret. He was never very popular. Didn’t have any friends. Really wanted a girlfriend but the harder he tried, the more the girls just turned away.

It’s not as if anybody hated him, it’s just that nobody liked him. But now, he was in a fantasy world! Monsters! Magic! Cat girls! He knew what would happen next. 

As soon as they got to the city of Karenthal, The dwarves would take him to register at the Adventurers’ Guild. There it would be discovered that he has amazing magic powers.   He would level up a super high speed, gathering a harem along the way. A bunny girl, no, a fox girl. And a loli who is actually several hundred years old, so she’s an adult, so that’s OK. It’s not really bad at all. I mean she’s older than I am right? Also,  a whole bunch of other girls too.  Finally, all those impossible dreams are going to come true for me!

He suddenly snapped out of his daydream when he thought he heard a certain word muttered from one of the dwarf brothers to the other.

“Uh, hey guys?” He could hardly control the trembling in this voice. Could it be? The ultimate of fantasies applied to him?

The two stopped and looked at him. “Yeah?” Gundar asked in his typical half mutter, half chuckle.  “You need to piss again? You humans! Spend all your time off in the bushes“

Terkel gave a creepy, rather nasty snigger, and added, “That’s what we get for traveling with a human.“

“No! I was kind of listening to what you guys were saying there.” His voice was starting to tremble.

The two brothers looked at each other. It was a very concerned look. It’s intensity set a thrill through Manny. It must be true. They are in awe of being in my exalted presence.

“I knew it! I did hear you say it! That’s why you’re taking me to the city. It’s because of a prophecy, isn’t it?” He was smiling now. He was lost in visions of a great stunningly glorious future featuring him . He was the Hero who would save the world.

“About that,” Terkel paused, made a stiff little gesture of purshing his lips together, stared up at the sky, then looked at a rock nearby, finally scratched his beard as he studied a tree off to the side of the road and then continued, “There’s some sort of a prophecy somewhere. Just can’t remember the details. I suppose, maybe, it might be about you. Possibly.”  He then poked his brother elbow rather sharply with his elbow.

Gundar, looking as vacant as usual, wrinkled his brow, scratched the back of his head and then added, “Yeah. Yeah. I remember some sort of prophecy, or something. They talked about that in like, you know, church.”  When his brother glared at him he looked puzzled for a moment and then added, “Sometimes. Sometimes the priests talked about something like that in church. I think.”

Tetkel nodded and added, “You know priests. Always going on and on about stuff like that. It’s not like anybody listens. It’s just, you know, you got to go to church, right?”

His heart was pounding so hard Manny thought he could hear the ocean in his ears. “It’s about me, isn’t it? It’s about how this guy from another world is summoned and he’s a great hero and he has magic powers in and he’s super strong and all the girls love him and he saves the world and then a noble and he’s rich right?“ The words ran together without any punctuation. To put it mildly, Manny was excited.

The two brothers shuffled their feet, looked up the sky, looked at each other and finally, Gundar shrugged at his older and more intelligent brother. (It should be noted that being more intelligent than Gundar was not a very great accomplishment, but at least, somehow, Terkel had managed it.)

Terkel sighed. It was not a happy sigh. It could, I suppose, be called a resigned sort of sigh. The kind of sigh a ternaged boy gives when he realizes that the love of his life doesn’t even know who the hell he is.

“Look , we  like you. Cause you remind us of us,” Terkel spoke slowly, focussing all his very deficient intellectual skills into trying to pick exactly the correct words.  “See, we don’t got a lot of friends. You being nice to us, that made us feel real good. That’s why we’re taking you to the city. Because it’s nice to have a friend. It’s good to travel with you.”

“And because of the prophecy, right?” Manny wasn’t going to back down.

“Yeah,” Terkel thought about it for a moment and then continued, “There is this sort of, I guess you could call it a prophecy, that says stuff about, you know, somebody saving the world.”

Manny stopped noticing the brothers and even the whole world around him as he gazed off into his future. “And he’s handsome, and overpowered, and super strong, and all the girls just rush to him cause they can’t resist him…“ His voice trailed off as he dreamed he’s beautiful dreams.

Gundar, who, while not terribly bright, was surprisingly sensitive for a dwarf, shook his head sadly. His brother tightened his jaw, straightened up and looked very very determined. “Who knows? What I know is you gotta go register at the Adventurers’ Guild, right?  So let’s get going.”

Manny woke up enough to realize that he was standing in the middle of the road staring at nothing. He had a weird half smile on his face, but he had a new purpose in life.  He looked at the dwarves, his dear friends who were going to lead him into his glory and demanded, “Tell me the prophecy.”

“Don’t remember it,” Gundar muttered.

“That’s right,” Terkel added. “Who remembers all the church stuff anyway?”

The two of them turned and started back on the journey. They stopped after a few steps when they realized Manny wasn’t coming along. They turned to him. He looked at them with that ridiculous smile on his face, but he didn’t move. The brothers looked at each other. “Well, come on then,” coaxed Gundar.

Manny’s smile spread across his face, “Not till you tell me the prophecy.“

Terkel, ever practical, declared “Prophecy don’t mean nothing if you don’t make it happen. We got to get you registered.“

Manny’s a smile turned into a manic grin. “So there is a prophecy about me!“

Terkel started to say something, and then realized he had trapped himself. There wasn’t any way out of it. He glared at Manny, grabbed his brother by the shoulder and pulled him further away. The two of them started talking in very low tones. Manny couldn’t hear a word they were saying but every now and then Terkel would look up and again glare at Manny. Eventually they reached some kind of conclusion and Terkel lead the way back to deal with their human friend.

“The prophecy is a prophecy. It says stuff. You know, somebody, like somebody from another world, does certain things, other stuff happens, the Dark Lord is defeated, the world is saved. Yay. So let’s get going and get it all happening, right?”

Manny walked over to a low rock, sat down on it and, still smiling, said “No. Not till you tell me the prophecy.”

Turkel was getting frustrated. “If you don’t do the stuff in the prophecy, then the prophecy don’t happen, got it?”

Manny just smiled crossed his arms and waited. Tekel got very red in the face and stomped off to kick a few rocks here and there.  It was up to Gundar.  Responsibility was not something Gundar liked. Life was pretty easy for him. He let his brother make the decisions and then he just went along with it. But his brother, once he got into one of these rages, probably wouldn’t be able to speak for a few hours.

“Manny. You know, my brother and me, we were like you said you used to be in your world. Not a lot of friends. And I mean, actually, to be honest, no friends. We like you. And you like us. Isn’t that enough? Can’t we just go get done what we gotta do?” Gundar might not know how to to think very clearly, but he know how to feel things. He felt this particular situation was getting very dangerous. He also knew the prophecy had to be fulfilled.  

Manny said nothing. He just crossed his arms and waited. 

Maybe it was the right thing to do and maybe it wasn’t; remember that Gundar wasn’t the greatest at thinking things through, including the ultimate consequences his actions might cause, but his brother was out of control and someone had to make a decision. So he made one. “Look, if I tell you the prophecy, you promise you’ll go and get registered like we planned?”

Manny said, “Sure! I just want to know all the wonderful stuff that’s going to happen.“

Gondar looked very sad. “No matter what the prophecy says?“

Suddenly, Manny was very worried. “You mean, like it says I get killed? Or something horrible happens to me?“

“Nothing like that,” explained Gundar. “It’s just the prophecy...it isn’t quite like what you think it is.” He thought for a moment while Manny waited in terror.  “You get to go home after it’s all done and our world does get saved and you don’t get hurt real bad or anything.“

“Then why won’t you tell me!” a very worried Manny was beginning to whine.

Gundar took a deep breath for courage and blurted it all out, “The prophecy says a sad clod from other world comes and that he’s not very bright and he saves the world because he makes just the right mistakes and does just the right dumb thing at the right time.”  He looked at the shocked expression on Manny’s face and added, “I’m sorry. We didn’t want to tell you because we knew you wouldn’t like it.“

Many felt like all the times he’d ever done something really stupid and was so ashamed he wished he could just curl up and die on the spot. “What about the girls?“

Having already said the worst that could be said, Gundar didn’t hesitate to add “It don’t say nothin’ about no girls.”

Manny sat for a very long time. Gundar sat next to him. Terkel finally kicked so many rocks that his feet started to hurt and he just stormed off somewhere out of sight.

Eventually the three got it together and they continued their long, sad journey to the fabled city of Karenthal.   There was a prophecy to be fulfilled.

Article Of Faith

 

https://apple.news/AN7nlmhN5Rku8XphHr10nEw

Very interesting article which I might have ignored had it not been in Scientific American.  It does make some excellent points. I remember reading an article in the LA Times perhaps 30 years ago which pointed out that while Europe was very secular and non-religious, that was in terms of organized religion. Most Europeans were, in fact, quite spiritual. They believed in something, whether it was an amorphous spirit of humanity or the Gaia hypothesis.

I used to complain (when the Next Generation was still an ongoing series), that, while every starship had a counselor, it seemed wrong that there weren’t any chaplains.  Chaplains are an essential component of military service and I couldn’t see the “non-military” but somehow incredibly militaristic Starfleet not having a chaplain’s corps.

I expected America to follow Europe’s lead and then, eventually, the rest of the world to get there too. However, organized religion in Europe has not ceased to exist, so I expected it would still remain an important, if minority, part of human existence.

In the decades since, the decline in organized religion in America has been following the European model. (Europe starting it all back in the days of the French revolution and we just taking own sweet time to get around to it.)

 Furthermore, the decline in organized religion in Europe has also increased (with the exception of new immigrants, especially Muslims).

In other words, it more and more looks as if Star Trek had it right and I had it wrong. Organized religion may in fact continue to fade away in the world as it has in Europe, while a generalized, individualized spirituality will likely remain.

Which means I’m also in agreement with this article. Counselors (along with their psychiatrist/psychologist colleagues) should be aware of spirituality, if not religion. It can be a very useful tool in treating emotional disorders.

>The study also revealed key opportunities in patient care, particularly for younger and seemingly secular patients. Psychiatric folklore has long suggested that psychotic, manic and obsessive patients gravitate more toward spirituality, as do older adults. Our findings, however, suggest that patients benefited from SPIRIT irrespective of their diagnosis or age. Apparently, depressed millennials are just as likely to want and benefit from spiritual psychotherapy as geriatric patients.

Our results also suggest that spiritual care is not only for religious individuals. The largest group of patients to voluntarily attend SPIRIT (39 percent of our sample) were individuals with no religious affiliation at all. Apparently many nonreligious people still seek spirituality, especially in times of distress. In fact, such individuals may be most likely to attend spiritual psychotherapy because their spiritual needs are otherwise ignored.<