354 becoming more human by becoming more godlikebe unrepresented and unaccommodated by all established structures of
life and of thought is another thing. What exactly that other thing is and
what it requires, by way of re orienting life as well as of reconstructing
society, is one way to describe the content of a religion of the future.
What lies beyond the established structure also lies beyond the pres-
ent moment. We reach for what we do not have and despise what we
do. So arises, in the course of the attempt to reconcile solidarity with
empowerment, the daunting problem of our estrangement from life as
we can alone live it, in the present.
Th e view of self- transformation in the religion of the future bears
directly on this problem. Th e reconstruction of society takes place in
historical time. We do not control the relation of our life spans to those
social events; at best, we can aspire to a foretaste, within our own life ex-
perience, of the social future that we seek.
Th e re orientation of life, however, is a task that falls squarely within
the bounds of biographical time. It is ours to achieve or not. It begins in
clarity about what we can and cannot change. We cannot escape our
mortality, our groundlessness, or our insatiability. Th e attempt to deny
or to overcome them amounts to a vain struggle against the nature of
our existence, a refusal of our humanity.
In coming to see this truth, however, we free ourselves to confront
another facet of our experience, which we may easily mistake for a
fourth, incurable defect of human life: our susceptibility to belittlement.
Th e chief form of the susceptibility to belittlement is the failure to exer-
cise our powers of transcendence over the established regimes of soci-
ety and of thought and the willingness to allow these regimes defi nitely
to shape our dealings with one another.
Th is failure can be remedied by both the reconstruction of society
and the re orientation of life. Th ese two remedies support each other. A
society whose institutions are hospitable to the higher forms of coopera-
tion and whose public culture and education recognize and sustain our
condition as embodied spirit is one in which the needed re orientation of
life can more readily occur and more quickly advance. In the absence of
the institutional and cultural changes permitting these results, the re-
orientation of life becomes at once more diffi cult and more important.
Within a broad margin, self- transformation can stand in for the remak-
ing of society and of culture. Th e virtues, redefi ned, can help supply the
defi cit of our established institutions and prevailing beliefs.