What Unger calls for as an alternative is nothing less than the empowerment of democracy -- a revolution not just in our religious beliefs but in our society, a revolution that will reform and transform our market economy, education, politics, and civil society. It will be a revolution designed not to "humanize society," but to "divinize humanity." It will be a revolution that encompasses both individual transformation and institutional reorganization; a revolution that will create change in the life of the individual as well as in the structure and organization of the church and of society.
The ultimate goal of Unger's "new more democratic Religion" is to shed all illusions and replace them with a new level of authentic human awareness about the possibilities of ordinary life, so that societies built on a foundation of truth, may be better able to reach a new threshold of intensity and capability.
The first part of the program is that of individual transformation, in which, through individual awareness, we as members of society will be compelled to awake from the haze and dreams of immortality. We thus will stop wasting energy reaching for feel good theologies, philosophies and other anesthetizing alternatives.
The second part of the program of social transformation requires supplementing the metaphysical revolution with institutional practices that create social institutions that allow us to constantly overthrow the constraints of our limited existence, and to make this overthrow not a one time event but an ongoing process.
Thus, Unger's paradigm is clear even when some of its details are not: by clearing away the fog and debris of "death denial," man creates for himself, a new clearing in the forrest of humankind, one that is based not on fantasy but on the only certain truth of our existence: that we all will eventually die.
Living according to this single truth thus liberates us from the world of fantasy, make-believe, from belief in angels, spirits, devils, heaven and hell, as well as gods and other kinds of myths and hobgoblins. This new democratic freedom can be parlayed into building a world based on authentic love and cooperation among humans, so that even if we cannot live forever individually, the institutions created by an authentic love and cooperation, can. Ten stars.
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