future – To Infinity & Beyond Forever

A friend of mine, with no intended malice, labeled my perspective in a particular thread on G+ as providing “a yummy dystopian outlook.” At first, I was taken aback, surprised that he would consider me thus, and a bit hurt, too. Then, he went on to explain when I challenged the charge. He said:

I find that many of your outlooks on society verge on the dystopian.

Personal opinion of mine, but I’m not ready for my robot overlords to take over or a Basic Living Wage. That’s very nightmarish to me although incredibly realistic in regards to how fast society is buzzing along.

And, yes, thinking on it, I tend to agree with his evaluation. I, too, am not ready for robot overlords or robot servants, for that matter, and, while the basic income model may make some sense, it’s neither practically functional nor possible, not in our present economy, neither the national one nor the global one. It’s beside the point, though. Yet, I will provide you my response, which was:

What I aim to do with my ‘dystopian’ posts is to bring an awareness of potential consequences, consequences that we are already seeing. I’m not and have never been ready for some of the horrible, absolutely horrible, consequences that have come to pass since I was a kid. I’m watching the worst and the best unfold, and it’s a compelling experience.

But Ken Beghtal’s words stirred some thinking, always a dangerous thing, yes. So, here, in a nutshell, is my outlook encapsulated in two, short bullet lists:

The Awesome

Advances in technology and science across every field have opened up the greatest potentials for us to truly move ourselves from primitive savages to a responsible, enlightened, benevolent species, capable of achieving wondrous things.
Multitudes of us care, share, and work hard to tame our species’ destructive nature, promoting good for all, promoting tolerance and caring, preserving what’s best and what is wonderful and native to our planet, from nature and the biosphere, from cultures, our own and not our own, from intellect, reason, and, yes, even ideology, utilizing every tool possible, including artificial intelligence.

The Terrible

Simultaneously, advances in technology bring us ever closer to enslavement, loss of freedom, loss of our own free will and thought, along with hellish war machines and weaponry so destructive that we face planetary annihilation every moment of ever breath.
Multitudes of us fear and hate, craving violence and wishing death upon those, human and other, with whom we share the planet, but of whom we have no tolerance. From microbes to plants and every type of animal on up to other humans, we eradicate, destroying, in ignorance, greed, arrogance, intolerance, and callousness, life around us, life that sustains our very own existence.

We live in a wondrous age of extraordinary potential. We live on the brink of self-imposed and self-perpetuated annihilation.

I had to laugh this morning. Today’s Word of the Day from Dictionary.com is “dearth.” It means scarcity, lack…an inadequate supply.

Dearth: It applies to the economies of the world, including the U.S. and it’s job market. It applies to U.S. politics and the lack of common ground, common cause, and common sense. It applies to our species’ levels of tolerance–the lack thereof these days–from Western societies to Middle Eastern societies to Far Eastern societies. It applies to human-to-human and human-to-other kindness–severely lacking now in this our 21st century. In short, the word “dearth” applies to us as our socio-political reality.

Prior to 9/11/2001, that infamous day when the skies of New York City darkened with the World Trade Center disaster, and despite the stolen election of the U.S. presidency by the pretender G. W. Bush, there was hope; there was, in fact, a growing sense of peace, prosperity, and, yes, a kinder, gentler America…which would, in turn, one trusted, lead in time to a kinder, gentler, less selfish world.

That all changed in the moment whoever was responsible for the 9/11 attack on America instigated their act (…and I still suspect those who had to most to gain–the strongest motive). It stirred a sleeping dragon, a nest of hornets. America reacted to 9/11 with vicious determination, its people hurt and angry, the flames of their sorrow-born rage provoked and encouraged by a political agenda that desired nothing more than to feed the lucre of power and resources to itself via its industrial war machine, greasing greedy wheels with human blood.

Gone in that moment were all the gains toward a more peaceful, benevolent world–kindness, tolerance, economic prosperity, the hope of a better future for all of us. Instead, hate, intolerance, and fear dominated our national psyche, the result of which pitched us and the world to the brink of political and economic fascism–the dearth of billions for the enrichment of the few.

No longer do the voices of benevolence and kindness, of civility and tolerance, hold forth within the public ear. Instead, schisms between ideologies, theologies, and cultures, are cultivated and encouraged by gleeful profiteers, collapsing civility, solvency, and plenty, and replacing them with dearth–dearth for the poor and for the middle class, dearth for the general human populations, dearth that leads to further degradation of the world environment.

Hatred, fear and rage has replaced common sense and tolerance, a hatred and fear engineered using the power of influence to seed its seepingly insidious corruption into a vulnerable public mind that fails to grasp the agenda of the elite socio-political masterminds behind it who are bent on owning and controlling everything to the benefit of themselves–the mighty few–to the detriment and dearth of everyone and every thing else.

Dearth, a word to think on.

Tag: future

How I See It, the Super Short Version

Dearth