Conscious Owl: Bright Future… Are You Kidding?

Have you ever placed bets on a future outcome, whether a horserace or your favorite hometown team? If so, did you bet on a negative or positive outcome? If you’re like most of us, it is more fun to bet on a result that truly excites you, one that would make a difference in your life.

However, when it comes to the future of the world, in the face of a constant barrage of horrific headlines from the digital media, including superstorms, massive floods and droughts, political upheavals and saber-rattling from the nuclear superpowers, it takes an act of faith to believe that we will all be here the day after tomorrow.

Did The Apocalypse have it right? Or is there something going on contrary to appearances that deserves our careful scrutiny?

The Nightmare Scenario of the Future

Blade Runner 2049, the long-awaited sequel to the original Blade Runner, was recently released to intense critical acclaim. I went to the theatre and found that it was, indeed, a masterpiece, with an epic sweep, and a visual intensity, as gothic as it was, that quite simply defies comparison.

This breathtaking sequel makes a truly dismal scenario strangely beautiful, even though it portrays an overcrowded world where human life is empty and meaningless. No one knows what it is to be human, or even if they are human. A whole new generation of replicants has multiplied. Even worse, you can no longer quite be sure if anything is real.

William Gibson, the great cyberpunk novelist, reminded us that science fiction is about the present. In the Trump era, you can never be sure who is telling the biggest lie, and you can never fully trust the established media. We are most certainly moving toward robotics, advanced A.I., drones and autonomous vehicles and virtual reality. You can now date in virtual space, while never being sure your companion is whom you imagine him or her to be.

The Dream Scenario of the Future

By contrast, we have Barbara Marx Hubbard, who at 15 years of age, confronted President Eisenhower as the U.S. tested its first hydrogen bomb. Barbara asked Ike if there might be a good in our military-industrial complex as great as the evil then exhibited.

Barbara pioneered conscious evolution, having befriended the great Jesuit paleontologist, Teilhard de Chardin. This evolutionist introduced the Noosphere, as a shell of conscious intelligence around our planet. He also predicted the Omega Point, when our Planet would become conscious of itself and humanity would finally unleash the overwhelming power of divine love. As Chardin put it, we would “invent fire for the second time.”

Barbara made this vision her lifelong mission. In her 80’s, she reinterpreted the foreboding year, 2012, mistaken for the end of the world, as per one of the Mayan calendars. Barbara saw, instead, that this would mark the birth of a new humanity, what she calls Homo universalis, a whole new species. Barbara thought through the implications of our awakening to the universe. We are moving beyond tribe, sect, race, company and nation to embrace a greater whole. We are all citizens of the planet; our birthright is to speak up on Her behalf.

Wild Cards

If you were to judge strictly by appearances, we would appear to be doomed. If you took all the current demographic trends and extrapolated them in a straight line, we would have no room to even breathe. Experts rarely notice that life doesn’t work that way. Expect the unexpected. If you don’t believe in God, make One up, as the Universe appears infinitely intelligent.

The New Paradigm
Einstein’s Relativity and Heisenberg’s Quantum Mechanics have redefined reality from the inside out. This is a far greater shift than from the sun orbiting the earth to the earth orbiting the sun. Through extensive, rigorous experiments over decades, it is ever more clear that there is nothing really out there. Whatever we observe, we create. We participate in whatever we encounter. Separation no longer holds water as a concept. Appearances are just that, appearances. They are no longer a reliable measure of what is true.

Integration of Eastern Mysticism
With the emergence of China and India as technological superpowers, their ancient traditions are being revived and reinvented. It began all the way back in the 19th Century with revolutionaries like Mahatma Gandhi. Indians began to recognize they had the world’s oldest continuing spiritual tradition with infinite subtleties. After the Maoists had their day, China awoke to the beauty of its own Confucian, Taoist and Buddhist traditions. What had become taboo is now again celebrated. With deep globalization, Asians are impacting how people all over the world experience life.

Our Global Brain
In the 1990’s, the commercialization of the Internet unleashed a dramatic expansion of the world’s communication infrastructure. Fiber-optic cables were laid out across the oceans, and whole continents lit up. In the early 2000’s, we discovered that we had overbuilt. Prices plunged, and the emerging world joined the technological revolution via mobile and social. Facebook now has billions of participants, and Apple and Google are welcome in almost every country. With knowledge doubling every year or two, we can now invent new possibilities, not in generations, but in seconds, minutes, hours and days.

Bet on the Nightmare? No Thanks!

It is clear that our Mother, Gaia, is very upset with us, and in terms of international human relations, we are in very serious trouble. ISIS has demonstrated just how readily people will through their lives into suicidal missions. A human life has become very cheap. So many of our world leaders have become clueless. In response, we note that both France and Canada have risked very young Presidents: Emmanuel Macron at 39 years old, and Justin Trudeau at 45 years old. Clearly, these nations are ready for a change.

Notwithstanding all this, there are too many wildcards to bet on a dystopia, such as Blade Runner 2049. It is noteworthy that this masterful movie was attended more by baby boomers than millennials, who couldn’t resonate with the message. Many people have observed that the millennials have the social-mindedness and openness to take humanity to a very different place than the aging leaders of the Superpowers.

Most importantly, spirituality, as opposed to organized religion, is on a dramatic upsurge. The greens and pluralists have begotten a new generation comfortable going within to discover and invent new possibilities. Breakthrough religious leaders, such as Pope France I, have broken many of the arcane rules that made the Catholic Church next in line for the mothballs. We witness, as with the Dalai Lama, a dramatic return to the power of divine love.

How to Smile at the Future

We are discovering that it truly is all within. This is not wishful, fairy godmother thinking. It is quite simply the way things are. Rational empiricism as a viable belief system was snuffed out in the laboratory. It no longer makes sense in our extremely complex, interlinked world. We are all one, scientifically, as well as religiously.

We need not panic, as did many Americans in the recent Presidential election, over the loss of smoke stack industries. Nor do we need to bemoan our moribund public school system. We need to mobilize what we already have at our disposal.

Think Elon Musk with Space X, and his commitment to initiate viable colonization of Mars. With anyone else, this might be a joke. But Elon has actually succeeded in launching a rocket into near space, and then have it return and land face up on an aircraft carrier. People like Elon, are able to create whole new industries, just like Steve Jobs before us.

In fact, Steve Jobs, himself, lives on through Apple. He practically gave back to education many times over in the form of the iPad. Now you can sit under a tree and learn on your own with Google, Facebook and Wiki. You can receive formal instruction via Udemy, Coursera and The Great Courses. You can even enjoy classes at the great universities, such as Cal, Harvard and MIT, for free, via MOOC’s.

There is no reason to hold onto the past. Focus on how you can contribute and become useful in the future. It will pay off in spades.

There is no reason to hold onto the past. Focus on how you can contribute and become useful in the future. It will pay off in spades!

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You can smile at the future with the realization that you are unalterably divine. No one and nothing can ever change that. Be happy that the world is finally catching up with you!