31 Dec Into the Heart of It
The past is history. The future is mystery. We only have the gift of now, which is why we call it the present.
2020 hindsight. It’s a bit cliché, but given the lack of foresight among so many issues today, a bit of hindsight might serve us well.
Will this coming year be the one where we look back and say uh-oh, we should have seen this coming? Is this the year we sow our regrets about not acting sooner on climate change; not stopping the Trump phenomenon before irreversible damage took place; not seeing the writing on the wall of gun violence, homelessness, racism, economic inequality, and weather catastrophes? Will this be the year we turn things around? I certainly hope so.
First the hindsight:
There was lots of social uprising in the last decade, some of which made a difference:
- Arab Spring
- Occupy movement
- Black Lives Matter
- Me Too movement
- Hong Kong protests
- Same sex marriage legalized
- Cannabis Legalized
- More diverse candidates: women, persons of color, a gay man
But at the same time there were environmental and social catastrophes
- 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill
- 2011 Fukushima
- 115 extreme weather events over $1 billion in damages
- 95 Environmental regulations lifted or rolled back by Trump administration
- 2342 separate mass shootings since 2012 with 2019 being the highest rate of any year
- Opioid deaths reach 70,000 in 2017
But let’s compare that to where we were 100 years ago:
- 1919 WWI ended: 10 million men killed, 21 million wounded
- 1920: Women get the right to vote.
- Mass production of automobiles (Model T cost $300)
- Rotary dial phone (could dial yourself instead of going through an operator)
- World population at 1.8 billion (we hit the first billion in 1804)
Also, during the last century we:
- Put a man on the moon
- Established the birth control pill (1960)
- Made personal computers and cell phones ubiquitous world wide
- Established the Internet
- Facebook reaches 2.45 billion monthly active users, 1.62 billion daily. (but has 83 million fake profiles)
- Worldwide yoga practitioners reached 300 million
So where does all this leave us?
We’re obviously in a state of upheaval. The last decade has been, for better or worse, a decade of disruption. Nothing is certain anymore—socially, environmentally, or politically. Previous norms have been upended. A lying, juvenile narcissist has seized the presidency and apparently a good part of the population’s support. Elections can’t be trusted to be fair. America is polarized. Rising temperatures create tipping points that could trigger other alarming environmental disasters, too uncertain to predict. Rampant denial still rules.
And given the technological and scientific advancements, we can barely predict what is coming: Individual flying vehicles? Uber wants air taxis by 2023. (70 companies now working on them) Human minds merging with machines, computers, or the cloud? Artificial intelligence running more of our lives? Virtual Reality becoming the new addiction? 3D printers that can build a house or create a gun?
So if everything is unpredictable, what do we do? How do we navigate going “into the heart of it” with climate change, social upheaval, and technological advancement?
My Predictions:
The lines that used to separate us are gradually eroding. After a last gasp of nationalism, we will begin to recognize ourselves as a planetary civilization. Climate catastrophe will be the game changer that forces global cooperation and a complete transformation of our industry, transportation, and environment. The need to draw down carbon will promote a greening of everything, with more efficient technology, cleaner air, green rooftops, and tree-planting every place possible. Disasters, while devastating, do promote social unity, with people helping each other out.
We will learn to live lighter, with less possessions, already a trend among the millennials. We will gradually eat lighter, moving away from beef (which contributions greatly to climate change), and other meats, which will become more expensive.
We will work fewer hours per week, with more leisure time for personal growth, yoga, meditation, and education. Research on UBI, (universal basic income) is proving that it does far more good than harm, and will eventually be tested in larger populations. (check out the book Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman for more on that)
Now that we are staying viable into our elder years, and people are having fewer children, communities, co-housing, solar micro-grids, and other cooperative ventures will replace nuclear families and centralized grids or goods distribution.
And of course, the point I am always hammering on: The operating system based on the love of power that has been our organizing principle for the last 5000 years, will gradually mature into one based on the power of love—a civilization of compassion, collaboration, peer to peer networking, spiritual awakening, and an overall evolution of consciousness.
So fasten your seatbelt for the decade ahead. The painful contractions of the birth process are coming closer and closer. But that means we are getting ever closer to the birth of the next era, one we can now barely imagine. But imagine we must if we are to operate from a vision of what’s possible rather than the demise of what has been. That vision, which I call the creation of heaven on earth, is a dream worth living for.
No Comments