Much is said about the need to update Kardec, due to the fact that we are living in a new, technological world, and that those concepts of more than one hundred and fifty years would be out of date. Perhaps this is a view of those who - in the work of the distinguished master from Lyon - look for a manual of direct application to the things of life, a table of guiding commandments, like a sacred book, to exempt them from their free will.

This article aims, through a Storytelling, to address this issue. For this, let us imagine a busy Kardec, after having released the first version of The Book of Spirits on February 18, 1857, immersed in the production of the new edition of this book, which would be launched on March 18, 1860, in which the 501 dialogues would become 1,018 questions (some say it would be 1,019, due to a mistake by the professor in numbering the question after the number 1,010).

In our exercise on the imagination ship, Kardec receives a visit from an imaginary character, Doctor Who, taken directly from a British science fiction series, produced and broadcasted by the BBC since 1963, and it shows the adventures of an alien, the Time Lord, who explores the Universe on a machine that resembles a London police station.

The traveler, then, invites Kardec for an irrefutable time travel towards troubled 2020, about 160 years ahead of his era, to Rio de Janeiro - one of the places where the Doctrine of the Spirits reached an expressive number of practitioners -, to see, in that future, realities that could help him in revising the first work of Spiritism.

Thus, armed with a built-in alien device that automatically translated his words, that distinguished French gentleman walked through the lands of Rio, hidden, visiting Spiritist Center, and gradually became involved, managing to consult Spirits at mediumistic meetings to, in the manner of his usual methodology, ask questions and answers, and compare the statements of intelligences invisible to his questions.

Amazed by that new world of the 21st Century, in view of technological innovations and changes in social and family relations, the Encoder decided to question the Spirits at that time, and take part of these answers back to his time, and perhaps incorporate them in the review of The Book of Spirits. He thought of, who knows, helping those people of the past in the face of new problems (but with an old root), in a search to understand the new problems in the light of the nascent Doctrine, which remained strong in that century.

Following, as an exercise, some questions formulated and selected by Kardec, accompanied by the answer of the Spirits:

Question 10-A: Is there room for God in this so technological world?

A: The fact that he lacks a sense to understand God, does not mean that God does not exist, even though He does not depend on man, as the ancient religions thought. The space for God is showed in man's respect for His work, including himself, and technology can be a powerful and effective tool for the betterment of the world.

Question 54-A: What about the idea of ​​the right of a race, considered pure and superior, to dominate others?

A: Those who take this position insist that they do not understand that all men are brothers in God and Spirits in evolution. From this lack of understanding, innumerable problems arise that men themselves bring to their evolutionary process. Everything stems, in material life, from his actions or omissions.

Question 148-A: Can it be said that ignorance is as pernicious as materialism?

A: Ignorance is Humanity's darkest night.

Question 185-A: So, does planetary advance depend on us, as incarnated Spirits?

A: Yes. Evolution is always an individual issue, but it only makes sense in the collective. The incarnate generation is responsible for the actions and decisions for the materialization of a better world. And it is for everyone.

Question 359-A: And in the case of women who are raped, what can be considered? In these specific cases, can she make an abortion?

A: Each person's conscience will dictate how to act. Consider, however, that life is much more than simply the beating of your heart. There are psychological deaths that end up, in the medium and long term, literally killing people for the suffering imposed. So we leave men with the questions: Could someone judge a woman who resorted to abortion in a case of violence? Who would have the authority to say this or that? The Law of God, of course, does not become relative, but who among you knows it fully? We have already told you before: - there is a crime whenever you break the Law of God, but the knowledge of this Law expands as the Spirit progresses, to know it in spirit and truth.

Question 705-A: Can it be said that the bread needs to be better divided?

A: God has offered a world with sufficient resources for all embodied creatures. God is not to be blamed for the lack of love in the hearts of men. Didn't Jesus say that you should be like the shepherd who cares for all the sheep?

Question 761-A: What to think about the criminal justice system promoted by popular people on the streets?

A: Call it what you want. Hatred manifests itself in various ways, revealing your inferiority, and showing that the path of progress for these men is still a long one.

Question 777-A: As he becomes part of the civilizing process, man creates for himself needs that are considered unreal. Can this be said?

A: Man's unreal needs vary according to the time in which he lives. What was superfluous at one point in human history will not be at a later time.

Question 922-A: Can the struggle for happiness become a path to unhappiness?

A: The misunderstandings of your unbridled doom by happiness are rooted in the very concept of happiness that you employ. You call happiness the mere search for material things.

Question 943-A: Going a little deeper into this issue of the disgust of life, there would be, in some way, such disgust a pinch of the merely physical element, even material, which can collaborate for the man to come to think about the suicide idea?

A: In fact, suicide is a complex and multifactorial issue and we cannot, therefore, just place it on account of obsession and other spiritual factors. There are, yes, the physical factors involved, which, therefore, invite men to get closer to science so that, together, the science of matter and that of the Spirit, can establish strategies together to improve the living conditions of man on the material plane.

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The exercise that we did above, based on the thought presented by the Spirits of the Codification, can be expanded, adding as many other questions, whose answers will be in tune with the original ideas of the Doctrine of the Spirits.

It is a way of demonstrating that the issues that disturb the inhabitants of the current world can and should drink from the source of the Spiritist principles, without needing to be, those, updated in verbis. New questions are possible and necessary, and should be the subject of evocation of superior intelligences, in Spiritist institutions in various parts of the planet, with a hypothetical (but necessary) comparison between the answers, without any intention of composing a “new” doctrine, but to discuss reality, a permanent need.

This is the invitation that we make to the “true Spiritists” - as presented in Chapter XVII of The Gospel according to Spiritism - to resume the systematic, organized and intelligent consultation with the Spirits, similarly to what Kardec performed in his time. And, moreover, while this does not happen and whenever it is necessary, for beings that are in a progressive march, what really needs to be updated, always, at all times, is our perception of the world. ⁽¹⁾

⁽¹⁾ “Make a 21!”, which gives the title to this article, is an allusion to a piece of advertising by a telecommunications operator, starring a television actress, who became famous at the turn of the millennium.