Beyond Heaven and Earth: A Cognitive Theory of Religion

Abstract

tend to view humans as “digital units integrated into networks and technical formats” (77), a phenomenon ever replicating itself globally. With this order imposed on the international community, nation states become progressively unable to meet societal needs and human identity is distorted, if not repressed, by the varied hallmarks of contemporary globalization. In this surrealist scenario, humans emerge as victims of a perversion of reality caught between a defense of their integrity and rights and their potential recourse to insurrection. Currently, and in future, the field of battle paradigm “encompasses and penetrates everything, from the molecular scales of genetic engineering and nanotechnology to the sites, spaces and experiences of everyday urban life to the planetary spheres of tangible space and the global scope of immaterial cyberspace” (78). By way of dissent, Rodrígez wisely advocates a return to the timeless normative features of civilized coexistence: morality, ethics, international law, and diplomacy, among others, that harmonize the clash of political wills, shifts in the configurations of power, and that restrain extremist types of power and their attendant systems. While these are persuasively illustrated and analyzed, this reviewer feels more attention could have been devoted to an updated assessment of diplomacy’s ever evolving patterns of adjudication and reconciliation that even now are systematically consolidated on a global scale in creative new ways. Indeed, these challenging innovations, designed to productively monitor and re-integrate the variant spatial/temporal dimensions of transregional power-relationships, also have within their purview the very planetary transhumanism and calamitous impacts on our modern world the author so deplores. This omission tends to render his work out of step conceptually with current International Relation scholarship. Many of the passages in Field of Battle draw on Rodrígez’s earlier book The Femicide Machine: sections are either adapted or expanded with new insights, interpretations, and conclusions, thus making the book more relevant to contemporary conditions and needs. The translation, from the Spanish, is highly readable and the end of chapter notes are informative but, alas, there is no bibliography or an index. In sum, Field of Battle, is an important, original work, that cuts across conventional scholarly parameters and casts important, clarifying light on highly disturbing, if not ominous, realities within the current global order.