Winter 2006

Will Religion Still Seem an Illusion?

by Wilfred M. McClay

The Future

are suddenly a lot of women with mustaches?) And when those 43 percent of sexually indifferent women get a libido boost, husbands will stop fleeing intimacy or watching sports all weekend, and those "little things" of shared domestic life will no longer grate. Trust between the sexes will finally prevail. Men and women will discover that they’re really more alike than different. Or that they’re more different than alike, but that’s OK—vive la differénce! And when everyone’s more maritally fulfilled, opposition to gay marriage will evaporate too. After all, shouldn’t everyone share the joy?

That old relationship snafu, lack of self-knowledge, will be a thing of the past as well. A saturation of talk-show therapeutics and self-help bestsellers finally will have solved that little problem. Your own motives will no longer be a mystery to you! Goodbye to "acting out" (though it was fun while it lasted, if less so for those on the receiving end). Other people will be transparent, too, because we will all be so much more psychologically astute. You will know absolutely where the other person stands. The mystery will be gone—but so will the terrifying uncertainty of romance.

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