Mark Manson is an entrepreneur, writer, and world traveler who since 2013 has been blogging about larger cultural issues. He's traveled to more than 50 countries and is only 29-years-old. He offers some thoughts on the role of technology and the global strength of fundamentalism (as it's defined not in the more narrow and historical sense as a Christian movement but broadly as a religious and anti-modernist movement, an idea popularized by Karen Armstrong and others).
There’s a demographic paradox going on in the world. While overall religiosity is decreasing and atheism and agnosticism are increasing, religious fundamentalism has also been increasing and become more politically influential than ever before.
In the centuries after the enlightenment, world politics was defined by the struggle between European imperialists and the world they sought to conquer. In the 20th century, the geopolitical fault lines shifted, the worldwide struggle became between the capitalist and communist ideologies.
Now, in the post-Cold War era, the defining conflict of our lifetime will be between those who embrace the accelerating change of the world, and those who reject it and try to stop it. They are the traditionalists and the modernists.
Read the entire article at markmanson.net.
In addition to the below, one could add many other examples, from Russia's anti-gay laws to the rise under the last Labour government in the UK of conservative religious schools (mostly Islamic but also Christian) which do not teach evolution.
a large strain of Christian fundamentalism has arisen in Brazil in recent years and the federal government planned to officially label homosexuality a psychiatric disorder and provide funding for corrective “treatments”
....
In India, an ideology of hindutva—or Hindu nationalism/fundamentalism—has been growing since the late 1980′s, leading to more religious-related violence, including the riots in Gujarat which left over 1,000 people dead and a recent attack on a Christian church on Christmas. In Mali, fundamentalists recently destroyed the ancient desert city of Timbuktu, much as the Taliban did to the giant Buddhas of Bimayan in Afghanistan 10 years ago. The recent mass protests in Istanbul...were about more than a park, but rather rallied against Prime Minister Erdogan’s years of corruption and forcing Islamic policies on the country at a federal level
In Israel...their religious right continues to push through their expansionist policies against a liberal and moderate majority.
Image via Wikipedia: '"The Descent of the Modernists", by E. J. Pace, first appearing in his book Christian Cartoons, published in 1922.'
