Unlike machines, however, ecologies rarely settle down to a steady state. Something is always springing up or passing away. The rivers shift their banks, the mountains wear down, the glaciers advance and retreat. In the next religion people will not expect their ideas and practices to carry on unchanged for all time. They will instead expect the world to continue to change as it always has, and they will plan to change with it. In the next religion change is not imperfection, it is just the way of things.