UTDPPL: Remixing Religion
It was bound to happen. Technology and design have been disrupting almost every facet of our world over the past two decades. Apple did it with phones and computers, Facebook did it with connectivity, Netflix has done it with media distribution. While we have seen changes in virtually all industries, one area that has basically remained static for the past thousand years is religion. United People (UTDPPL) is attempting to flip the script (or scroll), by compiling insights from all of history’s greatest minds to reveal deeper truths about how to achieve the most optimal human experience.
Take Buckminster Fuller for example, Mensa president, inventor, author, theorist, and architect, a recognized genius who crafted such books as The Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth and Utopia or Oblivion. Fuller is a brilliant mind who has already done so much work in providing these solutions. In “Operating Manual…”, Fuller describes Earth as liken to a spaceship that has a finite number of regenerative resources upon it, and our job is to manage those resources in such a way that allows for the maximum number of forward days of human survival. Had we always held Fuller’s perspective, our views on wealth and social contribution might all be different.
Nobel Prize winners like Einstein, Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr, Marie Curie , are all sourced for thought in United People. Designer Thomas Brodahl, a Norwegian native living in Los Angeles, has taken to revealing the core insights that these figures and others like them have held. ” The most brilliant people have been giving us the answers to our civilization since the beginning of history. They have all been repeating the same things, we just need to listen.” explains Brodahl. The form this endeavor currently takes the shape of is, non-other than, a website. It represents an initial center for the ideas that are being posed.
Brodahl describes United People as a New Human Operating System, an update to the core ideas we use to navigate our lives. The central theme of United People is that we are all here on Earth together, and no matter what our differences, the simple truth of our shared existence binds us all irrefutably.
Born from a previous project of Thomas’, HEROWALL ,UTDPPL makes reference to history’s great minds in all fields of study citing scientists, artists, and theologists from all faiths. It is, “a graphical manifestation of an emerging world view that combines the best and brightest of human history to create a people centric operating system for human progress.” as described on its website.
If the future of our world is increasingly digital, would United People be the first digital repository for the greatest notions from all of the humanity? And if such a repository existed, what insights could be revealed and how can they help us in our day to day life? After everything else that has been shifted by design disrupters, it makes sense that at some point the hand of innovation would touch the system of human belief.
Updating the most basic framework of humanity is in no way a small feat. But UTDPPL‘s proposition is so big that if successful, has the potential to effect wholesale change in a space that has largely been untouched since Jesus and Muhammad. It remains to be seen what will happen with United People as it grows and leaves many questions yet to be answered about its philosophy in practice and how it will be received. One thing is certain, the divisive institution many religions have become are not satisfactory anymore.
Perhaps the next evolution of the digital age will turn out to be spiritual enlightenment.
That is an app everyone should download.
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