Robert Wright - Fundamentalism vs. Modernity: A Worldcentric Perspective

Robert Wright, evolutionary philosopher and contributing editor at The New Republic, Time, and Slate.com, is also a regular contributor to EnlightenNext. In this conversation with Carter Phipps, Wright looks at the growing phenomenon of political and religious fundamentalism as a direct reaction to the global spread of progressive ideologies.

Given civilization's inexorable forward motion, identifying and implementing creative strategies to decrease potentially crippling polarization is essential. But actually bridging this gap between the world's postmodern and premodern cultures is no small challenge. Undaunted, Wright and Phipps pursue solutions to a few of the more pressing issues we face today:

• Can a truly postmodern (that is, non-mythological) religion develop without directly threatening God-based beliefs and traditional theologies?
• Is it possible for progressive, pluralistic, social ideologies and attitudes to spread without upending tribal and traditional cultures?
• When will theology fully embrace the scientific, evolutionary perspective and when will materialists show more humility in the face of the metaphysical?

BIO

Robert Wright is an award-winning author, a prolific journalist, and a scholar with wide-ranging interests. He is a Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, where he is writing on foreign policy, particularly in relationship to the war on terrorism. During the 2004-05 academic year, he was a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University's Center for Human Values, and he has been a visiting scholar in the psychology department of the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught a course entitled "Human Nature and Social Change.”

Wright's most recent book, Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, approaches the issue of morality by examining ways in which it is interwoven into the very pattern of evolutionary history. It has been published in nine languages and was named a New York Times Book Review Notable Book for 2000. His previous book, The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life, was published in twelve languages and named by the New York Times Book Review as one of the twelve best books of 1994. His first book, Three Scientists and Their Gods: Looking for Meaning in an Age of Information, was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award.

Wright is a contributing editor at The New Republic. His 1994 cover story, "Be Very Afraid," warned about the dangers of weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of terrorists. He writes the column "The Earthling" for Slate magazine and has written for Time, Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, Foreign Policy, as well as various op-ed pages in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Financial Times, and other newspapers. He previously worked at The Sciences magazine, where his column "The Information Age" won the National Magazine Award for Essay and Criticism.

Wright is completing a book on the history of religion that touches on a number of contemporary issues, including how to foster interfaith tolerance amid globalization.