There’s a saying that goes: “In a mad world, only the mad are sane.” From the perspective of modern civilization, opposition from a traditional worldview appears as a disease, because it hampers the functionality of the modern system.

However, from the perspective of the natural world and the traditional cultures that live in balance with it, the modern system is the disease, and whatever tries to stop it, including fundamentalism, is the cure.

The crux of the matter is space travel and technology. If the modern world system collapses as previous energy intensive, technological civilizations have done, it will be proof that it did not really represent an overall improvement in humanity’s condition.

This would invert the situation. Rather than modern beliefs being superior to traditional beliefs, the traditional beliefs would be vindicated. This is why the humanist perspective depends on the hope of avoiding this inevitable fallout by means of technology, hoping to make up for the resource deficits through new technology and resources from space.

Each previous civilization has recovered from its collapse by accessing a new pool of resources, by expanding. But we are now living in the first truly global civilization, so there is nowhere left to expand except for space. The trouble is that the hierarchy necessary for the development of the infrastructure required to develop space travel technology leads to massive inequality and oppression, which adds a social dimension of collapse. Because humanism is the prevalent ideology in places the United States and Europe, for whom it is the purpose of life, the media and schooling train the masses to ignore the impossibility of continuing this way of life, and instead implant them with hope of salvation from space.

Fundamentalists then become the enemy that would threaten this promise of salvation.

But the reality of the present is enough proof that this promise of the future is false. Far more people are harmed and more damage is done by the psychological angst and material excesses of the modern lifestyle. By comparison, the damage wrought by excesses in religious fundamentalism is mild.

But casting fundamentalists as the enemy plays a very important role. Focusing on an external enemy diverts attention from internal problems that would require very difficult, long term changes to fix. These changes would also require admitting some fault, and giving up some of the illusory moral high ground.

Focusing on the external conflict yields short term, gratifying results, but ignores the underlying cause of the conflict. In fact, it actually worsens the underlying problem.

The simple fact that we will never live in a Star Trek universe. Rather than expanding into the universe in a never ending ascension toward more and more progress, modern civilization is a cancer that has reached the limit of its expansion and is killing its host with its unrestrained growth.