Crossroads between Islamic Spirituality and the Fourth Industrial Revolution (original) (raw)
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Theological Quarterly, 2021
Current research acknowledges the unprecedented effects of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) on socioeconomic development, human interpersonal relations, and day-today life. It is worth scrutinising how this shift may cost infrastructural development, economic growth, and human development worldwide, shaping the planet's future. Within the scope of maintaining human's centrality in the era of 4IR, it is critical to draw serious attention to the relevance of spirituality in developing new and existing technologies. This study examines the Muslim framework of spirituality and its proposed pathways for 4IR. This study further concludes that for Muslims, spirituality adds meaning and value to the ethical design, production, and management of 4IR and enables it to better serve the composition of human societies and their emerging needs without harming the well-being of the planet, its resources, or the future of humankind.
International Journal of Exclusive Management Research, 2018
This paper was presented at the 8th International Conference on "Sustainable and Human Development Through Spirituality, Peace Economics and Peace Science" on 6th April, 2018 at Hotel Le Meridian at Bangalore, India. Spirituality is a possible solution to today’s world of hatred and violence. Spirituality is commonly associated with god and religion. The problem is that major part of hatred emanates from religion. Firstly, Spirituality is highly misunderstood and needs to be correctly and scientifically defined. Secondly, the problem is not of spirituality being inaccessible to majority. What’s missing is know-how to tap our spirituality or spiritual power, which is already present in and accessible to every human-being. Prem’s paper explores solutions to these two problems. It defines spirituality with scientific flavor - as a science of human-mind. Advances in material-science (Physical science) brought in the industrial and information revolution. Advances in mind-science (still in infancy) will usher in a new revolution – the Spiritual Revolution. Whereas earlier revolutions enhanced our muscle-power and brain-power, Spiritual revolution will help us tap our untapped mind-power. Prem not only provides a new vision-cum-dream of spiritually-evolved human beings and a violence-free peaceful world, he suggests new possible areas of research in mind-science to actually realize the vision. Prem’s paper provides alternate framework for humanity to seek an elevation in their emotional well-being with a new definition of spirituality which is more scientific, less religious. Keywords Spirituality, Spiritual Revolution, Emotional Well-Being, World Peace, Religious Divide, Bridging Religious Divide
Engaging the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Perspectives from theology, philosophy and education
2020
The reality of a radically changing world is beyond dispute. The notion of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is a heuristic key for the world of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing, big data, the internet of things, and biotechnology. The discussion of emerging technologies and the Fourth Industrial Revolution highlights urgent questions about issues like intention, function, risk, and responsibility. This publication stimulates further reflection, ongoing conversation, and eventually the production of more textured thinking. The conversation with technology and with thinkers on technology, holds the promise of a certain fecundity, the possibility to see deeper into human evolution, but also, may be, into the future of humankind. Contents: Chapter 1 - Technology and theology: Finding the real God - LCH Fourie Chapter 2 - Close encounters of the fourth kind: A theological essay about new technologies - RR Ganzevoort Chapter 3 - Theologising emerging technologies - R Venter Chapter 4 - The “Fourth Industrial Revolution”: A case of South African techno-messianism - JH Rossouw Chapter 5 - From Harari to Harare: On mapping and theologically relating the Fourth Industrial Revolution with human distinctiveness - DP Veldsman Chapter 6 - What is the shape of future ethics? - AA van Niekerk Chapter 7 - Towards transforming university pedagogy and curricula for the Fourth Industrial Revolution - F Strydom & H Prinsloo Chapter 8 - Embracing the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Adaptive changes for sustainable distance theological education - M Naidoo Chapter 9 - Religious leadership and the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Towards a competency framework - IA Nell Chapter 10 - The impact of emerging technologies on liturgical practices: A thanatechnological exploration - N Matthee & C Wepener
An Issues paper on evolution of the concepts of spirituality Including case study: Slovenia, , 2020
This research-based paper is intended to foster discussion of the relevance of traditional, ethnic, pre-religious spiritual knowledge and related schools of wisdom for contemporary spirituality and for the sustainable development of civilisation. It examines the potential role of spirituality to provide for prompt responses by humanity to todays' key challenges, and the term 'spirituality', key definitions, and the evolution of the concept of spirituality. For this purpose, the term Generation Spirituality 4.0. is coined to encourage reflection on current trendy discourse about industrial revolutions that promote the transition to so called Industry 4.0., and to underline the need to think spirituality and production/consumption simultaneously, again as two interwoven processes. Once these two processes were unbundled in the past - and some arguments are offered about when this could have had happened - the predatory culture started to flourish and prevailed for roughly two millennia. This is the epoch referred to in this paper as Generation Spirituality 3.0., that was substantially assisted, enabled and also fuelled by some Spirituality 3.0. (infra)structures coloured largely by the phenomenon of religions. It is argued that humanity is transiting from Spirituality 3.0. to Spirituality 4.0. while the Colonial age and the predatory culture is being phased out. This transition has been made possible and is conditioned by re-emergence and new validation of ancient traditional spiritual knowledge (Generation Spirituality 2.0. and Spirituality 1.0). Furthermore, Spirituality is promoted as a potential shortcut to compensate for the (potentially) negative effects of, digitalisation, data-euphoria and the pending massive deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The relationship between positive and negative potential impacts of the digital era and AI are framed in direct dependence on the truth-worthiness of applied spirituality. The primary focus of the paper is Indo-European heritage and Mediterranean. However, limited but valuable research into other indigenous heritage on other continents is introduced and that cognition hereafter applies to indigenous knowledge and spirituality both generally and globally. It is also argued that the knowledge incubated and embedded in indigenous cosmologies, and in particular in ancient schools of wisdom, survived the colonial age and the long lasting predatory culture in some regions, the Mediterranean and Europe for example, through the protection of cultural codes and rituals. This occurred through the movement of hermits, early schools of mysteries, gnostics, monastic orders and heresies and, in its later phase, historic movements of reformation, renaissance, anarchism and finally liberal/ liberation political and cultural movements. Particular attention is given to the wisdom-threads sustained in the past by Bogomils, Essenians, Bohemian Husits, Pitagoreans and Cathars in the Balkans and Mediterranean, and to Jains in India since those were the cosmologies that drew authors attention repeatedly to the convoluted complexity of 'spirituality'. The core of these movements is an urge for individuals' spiritual liberation as a foundation for individuals' responsibility. In this core or threads of wisdom stands a tangible conceptualisation of spirituality, allowing for in-depth understanding by individuals of interconnectivity of manifest phenomena on Earth. If colonial nations wanted to force enslaved local populations to destroy their own natural resources for the profit of predators, they needed to remove the spiritual leadership and the spiritual codes embedded in cultures as habitat-protection mechanisms. Therefore the elites who gained power, the imperial and bourgeois coupled with military and religious headquarters, systematically and intentionally dismantled all accessible aspects of traditional, libertarian spiritual wisdom in order to continuously manipulate and subordinate the colonised populations and, consequently and continuously, to exploit people and resources in colonised regions and thus maintain the predatory culture. The traditional spaces for warship, the knowledge of rituals and sacred language codes, were systematically converted to their opposite, destroyed or kidnapped by imposed alienated concepts of spirituality that were forcibly deployed over a large proportion of the world population. However, the thread of authentic wisdom and spirituality remained vibrant, it was sensed and discussed by intellectuals throughout the history of humanity. Some of those voices are recalled in this paper to underpin the conclusion that traditional knowledge needs to be thoroughly reintegrated in contemporary culture. Some examples of language codes will be given, unveiling the richness, spiritual depth and beauty of Slovene language, authors native language - which is presented in the paper as a case study, substantiated by recent extensive revival of ethnic, nature centred faith which will be synoptically presented as a chronicle displayed from the research point of view of the participant-observer. Colonial practices, supported by religious authorities, have been responsible for apocalyptic damage to native spirituality concepts and the destruction of natural resources, and have contributed to the present climate crisis. The most recent examples of such practices were manifested in 2019 and 2020 through burning forests of Brazil and Australia. Political and governance considerations of both countries illustrate the impact of colonial age policies on our planet today and that humanity is still at the very beginning of the de-colonialization process which began little more than half a century ago with the adoption of the UN resolution on the rights of indigenous peoples (UN, 1960).