In British Columbia, Canada, a few noisy parents are overreacting about the introduction of yoga into their school as a means to combat childhood obesity. The claim is that yoga is a religion, and if we're going to strip Jesus from the classrooms, we shouldn't allow yoga either.
My first reaction was "It's nice to see that this kind of reactionary pharasitical thinking isn't confined to just America." Then I got sad to thinking about how this kind of fundamentalism is spreading. It seems that as the Islamic world is itself embroiled in a kind of reformation movement, so too is a larger tug-of-war between atheists, moderates, and arch-conservatives consuming the Christian world.
It makes sense to me that some people would run into the shelter of fundamentalist religions in a time of great uncertainity. The last 15 years have been overwhelming and distressing to many people, especially since 9/11. Cultures are spreading faster than ever, and forces like the internet make it nearly impossible for the would-be censors and morality police to tamp down the fires of change.
Economies are shifting, bulging, and blossoming around the world, and then vanishing again. We are bombarded by contradictory figures and shouted at on all sides by bloviating populists, all who have different agendas.
So for a few parents in a more remote section of British Columbia to protest the introduction of yoga is not, surprising to me. But it disheartens me. It disheartens me because there is so much information available now, there is so much transfer of culture, there is so much opportunity for learning, and the spreading of tolerance, and understanding.
The very same earth-shaking forces that scare people so now are the same forces that can change the world for the better.
The new economy that made Bill Gates so stunningly rich has made it possible for him to potentially solve an issue like malaria. The internet has made it possible for people around the world to speak to dissidents in places like China and Iran and help them seek freedom for themselves. It can give children in British Columbia a way to exercise that will them be healthy and live longer. Yoga will probably even help children in school, as it can calm and center a person.
Sure, the origins of Yoga came from a religious discipline, but that no more makes it a religion itself than Tai Chi is a religion, or makes the running the Tendai monks do a religion.
H.P. Lovecraft said once (in a slightly different context):
"The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."
So again I'm sad, because it seems that instead of pushing forward into the new world and seeking those new vistas of reality, people are averting their eyes, and quickly assembling walls around their hearts and minds, so as to shut out the light and truth. They're not just fleeing into a new dark age, but flinging themselves into the shadowy abyss of ignorance.
