25AR30-26

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AR 30:26 - "the most formative" global Christianity forces 2050-2100

In this issue:

GLOBAL POPULATION - cities get bigger, but not as one might expect

MEDITATION - antimemes as "a defense mechanism in response to cognitive overload"

Apologia Report 30:26 (1,715)
July 16, 2025

GLOBAL POPULATION

"Metropolitan Agglomerations" (Justin Long's Weekly Roundup, May 16 '25) --  "Fascinating" is the word Paul used to introduce this to me. (Scroll down through about 70% of the opening page to find this heading.) A Christian mission strategist, Long begins with a review of global population concentration patterns since the 1900s: "Up until the 1900s, less than 20% of the world's population lived in cities. From 1900 to 2000, the world rapidly urbanized, crossing the halfway mark in 2007 when the majority became urban. ...

   "This dynamic has fueled the rise of 'megacities' (typically defined as urban areas with over a million people) and sprawling metropolitan agglomerations. ...

   "Among them, the top 20 matter most. These cities [Long includes their names and, often, brief description, as he goes] are both barometers of global change and drivers of it - reflecting where the world is heading and helping to push it there. To see how this transformation has unfolded, it helps to trace who the top 20 cities were - and how that list has changed over time. ... 

   "In 1900, the top 20 metropolises were largely Euro-Western.... 

   "By 1950, the first 10-million cities had emerged. The top 20 still leaned heavily Euro-American.... The 20 now held around 100 million people - 4% of the world.

   "By 2000, the 10-million city was standard. ... Together, they accounted for 270 million people, still around 4% of global population.

   "As of 2025, the top 20 cities are dominated by Asia, with China and India together making up half the list. African cities are rising fast. ... In total, these 20 cities now hold nearly 500 million - more than the entire U.S. - and around 5% of humanity.

   "By 2050, the largest contender may be either the Pearl River Delta or Mumbai. ... Europe will no longer appear at all. ... The top 20 cities will together exceed 550 million people, close to 6% of the world. Though urban growth rates are slowing, migration into these centers will continue.

   "Projections for 2100 are fraught with uncertainty, but broad outlines are emerging. By then, no American, European, or even Chinese city is expected to make the top 20. Instead, Africa and South Asia dominate: Lagos is projected to be #1, Kinshasa #2, and Kabul - yes, Kabul - could rank #10, with 50 million.

   "The projections for 2050 and 2100 may seem remote - but they are the culmination of a civilizational shift that is already well under way, from the West, and even from China, toward South Asia and Africa. By 2050, the transition away from Euro-American dominance to Afro-Asian prominence will be nearly complete. By 2100, it will be an accepted reality.

   "Today, more than one in twenty people live in one of the Top 20 cities; by 2050 it will be one in sixteen. Yet these enormous urban agglomerations will not resemble the Western image of the city. ... Many are built from the ground up: self-constructed homes.... Poor governance amplifies environmental stress.... 

   "For all their fragility, these cities will exert extraordinary influence over the world's future. ... Of the top 20, thirteen seem to me to stand out as likely especially influential over the period from 2025 to 2100. These span the top-20 most populous regions for the period...." Regional descriptions are again included.

   "More importantly for our purposes, it is cities - not nations - that will increasingly shape the religious climate alongside politics and economics. Each of these 13 has a significant center of Christian teaching, witness, evangelism, and mission. Across them, more than 100 million Christians will likely reside by 2100 - well over 5% of the world's believers and more than 1% of the global population.

   "Some of these 13 will hold only a few hundred thousand believers....

   "Metro Manila, though smaller in absolute numbers, has a similarly high proportion of Christians. It already functions as a major missions-sending hub - both Protestant and Catholic - with seminaries, media ministries, and publishing centers shaping national and regional discipleship.

   "Dhaka and Karachi present a different case. Though their Christian percentages remain low, both sustain resilient church networks with the potential to reach deep into surrounding unreached populations.

   "Across all 13, the churches are vital to local witness and serve as gateways to regional transformation. Yet the mission structures emerging in these cities diverge sharply from Western norms.... [T]hese mission networks will be among the most formative forces in global Christianity from 2050 to 2100. Working with them will demand humility, flexibility, and a willingness to cross profound cultural and ecclesial thresholds." <www.tinyurl.com/kazt4unz> Any questions? 

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MEDITATION

"We Are Our Attention" - a  chapter from Nadia Asparouhova's new book, Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading (Cluny Journal, May 15 '25) -- a review of New Age meditation in the first quarter of the 21st century. 

   "For many people in the West, meditation is synonymous with mindfulness practices that emphasize open awareness. In this approach, meditators are encouraged to stay present with whatever arises – sounds, thoughts, sensations – without focusing too much on any one thing. The goal is to cultivate a sense of calm and nonreactivity, where a person can perceive all things as part of a larger experience without feeling moved to respond.

   "But this is only one version of what is possible with meditation. Less commonly practiced is a style where, instead of keeping awareness wide and open, a person trains their attention on a specific object.... Distractions fall away, a sense of self fades, and perception of time dissolves as a person enters a heightened state of effortless concentration.

   "If you've ever been in flow state – lost in a great conversation, toiling on a creative project, deeply absorbed in your workout – you know exactly how this feels. 

   "A highly focused mind, in a state of flow, amplifies whatever it's given. ...

   "Most casual meditators never encounter these states, simply because this style of practice isn't as widely known or discussed. Most popular meditation schools in the West, such as Vipassana, don't teach the jhanas. ...

   "Many also believe that meditators need years of practice to achieve these deep mental states.

   "In recent years, a handful of teachers in the West revived the jhanas. New teaching methods made them easier to access in shorter amounts of time....

   "I signed up for a retreat myself. I had virtually no meditation experience, save for a Zen retreat I'd attended with a friend over a decade before.

   "With the guidance of my retreat instructors, I found myself in first jhana – intensely euphoric, comparable to taking MDMA [a drug commonly known as ecstasy or Molly] – in less than an hour. Over the next four days, I progressed through nearly all the jhanic states, each with its own distinct and surreal qualities. In fifth jhana, my mind floated out of my body to gaze at an infinite space. In sixth jhana, it exploded with indescribable, psychedelic beauty that – in seventh jhana – dissolved into nothingness.

   "The jhanas offer a rare glimpse into the extent to which our minds construct the world around us. ... Their existence demonstrates that attention, when summoned to its full strength, can pull off some incredible and counterintuitive feats. ...

   "As I type in a café right now, I am able to write because I'm unconsciously filtering out the café's music, the murmur of other patrons, and the clatter of baristas preparing coffee.

   "This skill – which some meditators hone to an extreme – are a marvelous bit of wizardry that comes pre-installed in our brains. Using only our minds, we can make the world as beautiful or ugly as we wish. ...

   "Economist Robin Hanson and Kevin Simler – in their essay "Going Critical" – explain how attention shapes conscious experience in their book, The Elephant in the Brain. <www.tinyurl.com/533yvju8> ...

   "The Elephant in the Brain is about one type of antimeme: selfish motives that threaten our self-image and social standing. But this same energy-preserving mechanism filters out any antimemetic idea or task that demands significant mental effort to process. ...

   "Hanson and Simler note how ideas that emphasize altruism or cooperation spread easily: 'By working together, we can achieve great things!' These ideas are memetic because they're inspiring and easy to share. By contrast, ideas that emphasize competition or harsh realities often 'suck the energy out of the room' and struggle to spread.

   "From this perspective, antimemes are an immune response to cognitive overload. Whereas memes only require a small fraction of our attention and are cognitively cheap to engage with, antimemes are highly consequential and are cognitively expensive to grapple with. ...

   "When you're happy, you forget what it was like to be unhappy. When you're in a fulfilling relationship, you forget what it was like to be single. When you're financially comfortable, you forget what it was like not to have money. When you have close friendships, you forget what it was like to be lonely. When you're healthy, you forget what it was like to be physically impaired.

   "This type of antimeme poses a challenge for medical professionals who prescribe treatments for ailments that must be followed long after symptoms have subsided – such as antibiotics or physical therapy – or mental illnesses, such as antidepressants, anti-anxiety medication, and antipsychotics. When these treatments work well, patients feel good and have difficulty recalling how they felt before – so they stop. ...

   "Given that tradeoffs are inevitable, I find myself wishing for some sort of moral framework with which to evaluate whether I'm investing my attention wisely."

   Asparouhova reviews "attention activism" at length. Included is "the Friends of Attention collective, a network of 'collaborators, colleagues, and actual friends' that formed in 2018 due to shared concerns that our attention is being hijacked for others' private gain." Further, "I first encountered attention activism when I read Jenny Odell's book, <www.tinyurl.com/ye9srhrn> How to Do Nothing.... Odell, an artist and activist based in Oakland, California, frames 'doing nothing' as an act of political resistance to what's often called the attention economy, or the buying and selling of attention in a market, like that between advertisers and media properties. ...

   "Nevertheless, I find myself somewhat dissatisfied with the solutions offered by the attention activists, who tell us to 'remain in place' as a means of reclaiming our attention, but in a way that seems disconnected from our responsibilities to the network. ...

   "Viewed through the eyes of the attention activists, I feel less like an empowered individual and more like a forever-branded piece of cattle that has been rescued from its captors: unchained, yes, but lacking purpose and direction."

   Asparouhova concludes in part: "We must pick up a paintbrush, find a blank canvas, and paint the world as we wish it to be. Instead of hiding in our safe and quiet communities, we need to summon the courage to step forward and attempt to do great things.

   "If antimemes are a defense mechanism in response to cognitive overload, we now know how to make things more or less antimemetic: by mastering control of our attention and wielding it to shine a light on whatever we want to make more real in the world." <www.tinyurl.com/286j2ubv>

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