America and much of the world have been industrialized, modernized, urbanized, commercialized and de-christianized. We have thrown out perennial philosophies, centuries old, which reveal timeless insights into the ultimate meaning of life. Noble pursuits of the changeless purpose of life have been lost among a passionate desire to be like the pop cultural icons of our times. Our attitudes toward religious faith have surrounded our nation with a mordant atmosphere. While our technological ingenuity has made our technologies the envy of the world; and the phenomenon of our pop culture has created lucrative

Our religious faith "...is an imaginative 'cultural system'," a collection of symbols, images and stories organized to give meaning to religious phenomena impinging our national consciousness. These artifacts and stories provide answers to the issues of the ultimate meaning of life and explain what the world is. It used to be that the majority of us parented within American society were brought up as a Protestant or Catholic with strong religious faith. Our religious faith, with its symbols, images, and stories, provided us with templates for shaping human response to the world at large and to ultimately shape the world in which we lived. For Protestant's, religious faith was that of an individualist, because of an imagination of society as "sinful and God-forsaken." For the Catholic, religious faith was that of a communitarian because of an imagination of society as sacramental, that is, revelatory of God.

To be sure, the writer does not suffer from melancholia; these are the most exciting of all times recorded within the historical archives. At the threshold of the twenty-first century, we are privileged with life, technologies, and a wealth of experience and opportunities, to create a finer world for our posterity and ourselves.

The technological advances of the twentieth-century are astounding. From the primitive tools of antiquity to the most complex large-scale technological systems of the twentieth-century, our technology has affected global societies and has impacted the history of our culture right down to the present. Technology has characterized humankind since his earliest days when it yielded only objects of art. There was no orientation toward experimental sciences in the modern sense, nor were there any scientific production methods. For the most part, mechanical inventions were devised to illustrate science, to show the power of scientific demonstrations, or to amaze the public with little or no cultural impact. The progress of medieval technology was constrained. The craftsman was hidebound, working exactly as his forefathers had, using their experience as a guide. Fearful of competition, innovations and inventions were opposed. They were viewed as repugnant or as encroaching. Inventors were persecuted and their inventions were banned along with the products based on them, as well as advertising for them, especially if they promised goods for prices lower than those set by the guilds of that day. One example is a declaration of a municipal council in Cologne, France in 1412: "Let it be known that a Walter Kesenger came to us with a proposal to build a wheel for spinning silk threads. After deliberation and discussion with their friends, the council has found that many people in our city who spin silk for a living would be ruined. It has therefore been declared that no spinning wheel shall be built and installed, now or at any time hereafter," (unknown). We thank God that technology eventually came to be a possibility in the Renaissance. Technology eventually joined craftsman, scientist and engineer and it became common for an inventor to claim rights.

A casual visit to the university and college campuses across America will reveal the prevailing states of mind of our young people. Their mindset falls short of visionary or creative thinker. They simply want to go to school, to make the grades, to get the degree, to get the job, to make the money, so they can

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Approximate Word count = 2313
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)