I often hear about mind control in religion. It's true that many a minister asks their parishioners to believe something that defies all reason.
But I don't hear enough from secularists about mind control in the marketplace, where corporate advertising gets customers to accept promises as outrageous as those of any skulking millenarian or snake oil vendor.
Or from philosophers about mind control in politics, where the two mainstream political parties publish planks and promises as far- fetched as those of any mystic prophet or diet fad salesman.
Or from realists about military mind control, which promises "strength" and "security," conditions surely as elusive as any hellfire salvation or "peace" in a pill bottle.
I haven't gotten my fill of complaints about college academic departments, whose professors are as wedded to popular faith, personal glory and tainted research as any Mercedes-driving tent revivalist.
Today, mind control is practiced by all of society's large institutions. These huge agencies, characterized by heavy concentrations of power in the hands of a few special personalities, are the new religions of the 21st century.
Give me some of that good, old-time democratic religion any day. (Salt Lake Tribune - 6 June)
Apparently Malraux was right when he prophetized that the 21st Century would either be religious or it would not be, faced with the modern godless future projected by Fukuyama.
In his book "God is Back," *The Economist* editor J. Micklethwait considers the return of God to societies and politics and the global surge of religion based on real data such as: the increase in pilgrimages and adult catholic confirmations on the old continent; religious controversies in news media; or the bountiful creation of church-houses all over China alongside rising church attendance.
It is true that God doesn't turn away from man, but rather consistently leans towards him to benefit him and show him the path to heaven for which he was created.
It depends on man to accept God's invitation to become ever more divine by rejecting his baser instincts with the help of God's grace. (Maldives Chronicle - 11 June)
