A 21st Century Throwback Sect

[Jeff Gerke]

The smaller the community the more invested each member is. I lived five years in Sisters, Oregon, and loved that small-town feeling. You really did feel responsible to take action if someone did something to mess up YOUR town.

Jeff

[kirstymca]

Hi,

I can see a problem with an isolated 21st century sect - much of our culture needs us to be connected to the whole world - TV has to be broadcast from somewhere, the internet, pop music, fashion, food from other countries, technology made in factories - most stuff is mass-produced, so you can't make it at home to suit your lifestyle. You can't live a 21st century lifestyle on your own, or just with your family/commune.

Of course, you could have an interconnected web of cultists spread over the globe, owning (secret?) industry, making TV programmes, writing nonsense on the internet, setting fashions, and all the things that are needed to be 'real' 21st century. Then a small group can be taken away from their home, and lose all that.

Another thing - in this cult everyone is '21st century people' - even old people, because they've grown up with it. So you wouldn't have the thing we have now where older people (and I speak generally) are not so au fait with technology etc., and young kids talk about stuff you've never even heard of yet. Nor would you have constant innovation, which is a mark of the 21st century.

So I guess it wouldn't really look like the 21st century, but people trying to be like it.

Anyway, I'm not knocking the idea - just thinking of possibilities. It's a really interesting idea.

KIRSTY

[mongoose]

Or they could order everything on the internet, and be isolated physically, but not electronically. They'd have to use some kind of dead drop or blind cut out to avoid contact with the delivery people, but I think it could be done for a short time before those inside would get sick of the constraint and change something.

[Jeff Gerke]

Good thoughts, you guys.

And welcome to The Anomaly, Kirsty!

Jeff

[lexkx]

Nyeh. Isolationists and cultural change are two different things, both of which are hard to leave alone.

I grew up isolated. Homeschooled in Mormon country for a number of years, well aware of how little contact we had with "the outside world," and I went through severe culture shock for a few years when we moved and I was suddenly thrown into modern suburban public school. I've since forgiven my parents <g>, but the human race still baffles me sometimes.

Isolation is so much more mental than physical. All you have to do to a child is convince him that the outside world has nothing to offer. Ideological differences with the neighbors help, too.

Culture change, also, has much more to do with internals. The difference between a hundred years ago and now is really not so much in the technology. The way we rely on "stuff" and often hoard it is certainly a change, but stuff can be adapted to. And as technology changes so rapidly these days, dropping into a future with more technology wouldn't be such a shock. Between then and now, though, came a *huge* shift in thought. Moralism went away, as it was only held in place by an underlying Christian worldview. What you drive, how you communicate between towns and nations, how you store information--it's all stuff. How you drive, why you communicate, and what you do with that information--this is the cultural 2X4 that smacks newbies between the eyes and leaves a Christian (of any culture and age) broken at the feet of Jesus for a lost and dying world.

[mongoose]

The book "Thr3e" by Ted Dekker addressed one possible result, or maybe thr3e, of a child being isolated. The movie, IMHO, did an okay job, but I wasn't really feeling the angst of the character(s) or the perceived danger the way I did when reading the book.