The future ( Archived) (48)

Looking at the future is a interesting subject. It carries our hopes, dreams and promises. Apart from holding our hopes and dreams, our promises of something better or worse , we inevitably becomes a part of the close part of it, in actuality, as it transmute into becoming the past, through the present. This has happened since dawn of time, whether we are talking the human history, or more. If one look rationally at what the future is, we will also quickly realize that the future is the past, modified through the presence. The future will be what the past has been, modified by the presence. And with that in mind, we can look at the future in perhaps a different way than discussing and quarreling about beleifs, opinions, hopes and dreams, and by avoiding excuses and justification based on their destructive nature, we can perhaps ask some serious questions.

I am suggesting that if we follow the same pattern as we have followed the last 4000 years and still follow, the next 4000 years technology may lead our future into the stars, although during the last 4000 years, that road has been soaked in blood. Our blood. This is not my imagination or my wish, this is a fact. As the concentration of energy and power intensify, the difference in consequences of our stupidity, will moved from being local and global to stellar.

We all try to create a better place, but it does not matter where the utopian system comes from, whether it comes from personal beliefs, religion, political ideologies or science, if it is made out of compassion or cynisism. We have basically preached this and attempted it, and we are still doing it, through thousands of years (it becomes ridiculous in the end to think about), and we have used it and we are using it to create one abomination after the other, and we have taken it in some real absurd directions. Beyond belief, hope and opinion with their projection of time, in the factual and actual world we live in, we are operated by envy, fear, desire and the occasional act of love. The regular misundertanding is to believe in a illusion, then acting to make it real, or avoid making it real. A nice car, a wreck, a piece of cloth made out of a nice fabric, a way of life, god, hell and all that, is in one way quite similar, and "what" then "how" becomes one of the root questions for all of us.

What now, is usually based on a opinion about what is. To move from one thing to another, you have a idea what you are moving from and what you are moving to. Accurate or completely in the dark. What is, or the latin word "truth" carry meanings like endless, timeless, limitless, both everything and no things. Based on the capacity of human perception and understanding, the inevitable limitation becomes devestatingly clear and establish the role and nature of opinion and belief, and expose a serious flaw in our management, not attached to evil, hell, a ugly car or a group who has a untrue god or untrue political ideology, but attached to a dysfunctional part of the human as a whole.

As one seek one thing to get or become, or avoid the other, a dysfunction in the mind is created and usually perpetuated, and that is usually the outcome of "what now". "what now" can be done the right way or the wrong way, and that is basically the quest of all the ruling forms we've had, religion, politics and science etc. We don't need to argue to see the results of all three through history, and by doing that you sort of get a understanding that we may sometimes ask ourselves the questions the wrong way, which can never provide the right answers.

This dysfunctional part is currently the strongest international regulation entity, as well as for individuals and their most intimate parts of their life. This is what has been unchanged since the missing link started to make spoons, eating bowls and various tools. One may in that case wonder if it is good or not that our tools and toys becomes increasingly powerful, through a science that does nothing about the real problem. If anything, it makes competing groups or nations increasingly dangerous. This dysfunction is hard to examine, because one of its mechanism of self defense is to shut down intelligence, and revolving things into what "we just know", aka stupidity.

I would like to mention revolution - Revolutions has been following re-definitions of what is, and looking to the world where a increasing number of individuals and groups are ganging up on the increasingly powerful authorities, the question is becoming increasingly important. But revolutions will never fully be able to provide a solution, because they are mere modifications of a already existing flaw, which inevitably leads to its own destruction. The world history support this with its vast collections of Suppression-Oppression-Implosion or revolution eras, that being the ancient Asian dynasties, the European or the American Empires, tribes, nations and organizations, including those of today. Basically all of them followed or is following the same loop of illusion, whether it is a god or some other fancy epiphany, but in real-time that is eluding the real problem by self delusion. Opposed to revolution which is a modification of a already existing system in its failure, evolution is the complete abandoning of any such existing flaw.

Ps. Apology to the sms/ facebook generation

Per person, each year brings less violence in our world so we we must be learning something. As well, the advent of terrible weapons such as nuclear have actually saved hundreds of millions of lives if not billions so once again, we have used technology to advance peace.

Not sure if I agree. The per person should just be statistics, so that is easy. That is, if a billion people the last 12 years, and 6 billion more people the last 111 years did not affect this statistic. Also, if you are thinking about all the states which have nuclear bombs and one wont press the button out of fear of the others retaliation, I guess its not unreasonable.

But - we are not more peaceful creatures than 3000 years ago. I can claim this, because the civilization in classical Greece was according to various professors, works, and the text from that period, one of the more civil civilization of all time, including ours. If you know about it, you know that never before and never after, have so few people done so much, and being remembered so long. There was a not coincidental explosion of art, literature, music, philosophy and science. Most societies and civilization today governs by a version of the forms that came while they advanced their political science. Karl Marx was influenced by Plato, in our courts today, lawyers still use the Socratic method. It was the most notable turning point in human development. You get the picture. The point is, that after Athens did the mistake of going to war and to its destruction against Sparta, the civilization collapsed and the people started to sacrifice other peoples to the Gods.

This civilization is not unique, a few of the civilizations in Latin America was extremely sophisticated as well, and we know the Chinese dynasties, the Rome Empire, the the Mongolian Empire, the Ancient Hindus of India, some more advanced than others. All of them special in their own way. All of them saw both the positive and negative human potential, just as we do today.

Likewise, if you look around you today, in various zones of one type of conflict or another, you will see that when money and structure isn't reaching the masses, blood flows in the street. While I lived in Greece earlier this year, several banks got blown up, and people got killed (one of them was a pregnant girl just exiting her teens). In other zones, you see acts like the Iraqi helicopter shooting, we have suicide bombings, we have deliberate bombing, and some of the terrorists are probably real.

Since the earliest recordings of history til now, we are behaving about the same - thankfully we do have excellent leaders and people who do a genuine effort, but still the world, in my opinion, is at more unrest than at any other time I've heard about, and more dangerous - largely due to its complexity and size.

Basically, science isn't looking at the real problem for this, it can just make this and that item for dummies. Politics tries, religion was more intimate, but all have failed so far.

Well, congratulation for completely missing the point.

Why don't you go read about Socrates, AND examine your conclusions, it would help yourself too.

Try looking at the percentages not the numbers and you will see that in the past many many more folk were effected by war.

The fact that in many countries ALL MEN had to train and be ready to fight, for their land, their masters and always for their lives.

In medieval England all men had to practice Archery on Sundays.

Now all that is left to the professional armed forces. And these are a small percentage of the population.