Politics as religion.

I once wrote a futuristic story with a vast corporation as the bad guys. I had vague ideas that the corp had formed through a process of multimationals merging and taking oneanother over until there was but one all-encompassing corporation left. Yesterday, I was wandering up a bush track when it struck me that there was another possible origin. A political one.

Say a small political group begins to focus on the far future. Proposing radical things like long term environmental management and energy distribution re-structuring aimed at indefinite sustainability. It works out and makes up consumer-friendly representations of projections of what resources are left (oil, timber, etc) and how long they will last given current trends for consumption, then draws a vivid picture of what the future will be like in ten, tewnty-five and fifty years time.

Then it lays out it's proposed re-structuring of society - ten, twenty-five and fifty years time.

It probably has differential descriptions depending on the percentage of the population who are living by the party's guidelines.

The party would be a way of life - comparable to an evangelical cult. If you follow the guidelines, you will be healthy and make the world a better place. If you can encourage more people to join up, it will be of benefit to them and of benefit to the world as a whole.

If humanity can be viewed as a malignant infection, what more humane solution than to benignly infect the infection?

'course, when exposed to Human Nature, such things have potential to spontaneously mutate into less benificial forms. Buracracies spring up, factions form and war with oneanother. *sigh*