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14:8

(In »Syntheist temples and monasteries in the global empire«)

Syntheism’s sacred locales might just as well be dance floors on Saturday evenings as quiet rooms of contemplation on Sunday afternoons. Periods of unbridled carnival celebrations could be alternated to advantage with periods of meditation, yoga, fasting or quite simply just silence and concentration. The four quarters in the syntheist calendar – Athea, the three months after Atheos (winter solstice), Enthea after Entheos (spring equinox), Panthea, the three months after Pantheos (summer solstice) and Synthea after Syntheos (autumn equinox) – open up possibilities of celebrating a host of different festivals and commemorative days, coupled with specific rituals and ceremonies. But the question is where the inspiration and guidance for the development of these rituals and ceremonies is sourced from. Traditionally, philosophy and theology have of course had that specific role. But at the dawn of the Internet age, these disciplines are in deep crisis. In fact, they have not even succeeded in predicting the arrival of the Internet age, the netocracy or syntheism, and now that these are established facts, both philosophy and theology are having difficulties in formulating relevant questions, never mind any credible answers. These disciplines are helplessly stuck in the past, fixated on increasingly irrelevant social antagonisms, unable to see and reflect on the utopian potential of the future.