The Future
"Today is the Tomorrow you worried about Yesterday." Being born is not a good omen to escape death. Clearly, as the World turns, none of us are going to get out of this little venture of living, in a 'little gleam of Time between two eternities', ALIVE. This may be about the sum of what we really know about the future. Each species throughout God's created evolutionary process has lacked the 'wisdom' to properly envision the succeeding advanced species in the evolutionary process. Each species lives an egocentric existence, concerned primarily with individual survival. The more advanced species have social structures with all sorts of social behaviors including tribes of some sort, loyalty, group defenses, etc. For all creatures, large and small, simple or complex, any wisps of understanding are limited mostly to individual trees of life, not the forest of life---the big picture is invariably overwhelming, beyond our grasp. Humans invent a God or Gods who purportedly, IF we have our religious dogmas straight, and our rituals in place, will guide us through our lives carrot and stick fashion, and when all else fails, God will give us FORGIVENESS for our 'sins'. This seems self serving illusionary to me.
I personally don't see any ample evidence that God interferes with His own created evolutionary process. We all seem to be governed by the laws of evolution. It is hard for me to accept inherited religion as the means whereby God, through our faith, communicates behavioral dictates. Faith, of course, by and in itself, can provide hope and comfort in daily battles. It also generates some of the cruelest and and most explosive wars on the earth. Beware of people carrying out the 'Will' of God. I wonder why God needs us to carry out His will? Another absurdity.
To the extent any of the above is true, the future as the song says "is blowing in the wind". Many believe we are God's favorite species or created specifically to 'rule' the world, or that certain tribes in certain places on this earth have a God bestowed 'manifest destiny'; that God's work is done in that humans are the final product of the process, however one imagines the process. Any vision of the future, which emanates from this basis, assumes a static cast of species and a static global environment which has the endless resources to support a continuation of this current 'play'---I guess forever.
It seems every species has always had vulnerabilities. The environment of our planet is not static. It changes. Always has over millions of years, and thus probably always will. So if we are thinking about the future of mankind, and be egocentric about our thinking, we must envision what human vulnerabilities are in this evolutionary process. We already know about our own personal future on the planet---death. Does anything else really matter? Thinking in depth always gets dicey.
In my own mind, the most humungous human vulnerability is the inability to practice responsible reproduction. We have seen countless other species overproduce themselves into extinction through degradation of their environment, but humans pretty much are oblivious to their own overpopulation. In the past humans just expanded into unpopulated areas of the globe. Unless we are going to migrate to other planets somewhere out there, expansion is gone. Where are the homeless, the unemployed, and all those suffering in varied places across the globe supposed to go in these times?Hey, nobody wants them, and where life is still good no one welcomes any others to elbow their way in---the Inn is full. By any measure, it is not a pretty picture. It frankly, from any ethical perspective, is grotesque.
Overpopulation has already led to dangerous depletion of our natural resources including water, cultivatable land, and food. Where there is still abundance, the lifestyle creates so many pollutants that climate change virtually has become inevitable. Foresight is not a highly developed human trait. We all have tunnel vision. Our brilliance is of a momentary self serving sort. Almost all humans understand the Golden Rule and accept it as the moral guide for human behavior, BUT----practicing it in the face of personal sacrifice is often beyond our reach. We are always under the learned illusion that we 'earned' some advantage, we 'need' it, we have 'family' loyalty, community loyalty, religious loyalty, ethnic loyalties, patriotic loyalties, etc. Today we even have a popular notion that 'family' values trump any Golden Rule clap trap. Of course that is how evolution works, all parts taking care of 'their own' generating a competition which, in the end kind of describes survival of the fittest. Interestingly, at least for humans, there is more to life than THINGS, POWER, GREED, etc. The truth is, he/she who is content with little, is more blessed than those for whom enough is never enough. Of course those with virtually too little or nothing can never be content.
Overpopulation has coupled itself with a massive accumulation of wealth into the hands of a smaller and smaller percentage of people----all off the backs of those less wealthy. In the U.S. we have rapidly, within my lifetime, managed to let 1-3% of our population own 90% of our wealth. There is no politician, to my knowledge, who even suggests it is necessary to put limits on the accumulation of individual wealth. That would be un-American. I disagree. To deny some people a decent piece of the economic pie because of genetics, place of birth, physical abilities, poor schooling, health, dysfunctional family, etc. is by no stretch of the imagination either just or a level playing field. And for those who have had the opportunity to amass wealth via all of these unearned factors---or inherited wealth---is preposterous. All these unearned blessings simply, by the Golden Rule, dictate a responsibility to share, to help level the playing field for the less fortunate. That to me, is the true spirit of the American Revolution. The rest is self serving tripe covered with religious or political disingenuousness to justify ignoring the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule, incorporated into the ideals of the American Revolution, is a firm "enough is enough" in terms of individuals accumulating wealth. A good parent doesn't let a child eat every thing in sight just because they want to. A good government doesn't let individuals pile up absurd amounts of society's wealth because they are in a position to do so. There was a time, not that far back, when the American Government did just that via steep inheritance taxes and steep graduated income taxes. It saved our population from massive widespread poverty. We need the same such measures today but those with all this massive accumulation of wealth also have the power via lobbyists of various ilk. Every civilization that allowed this collapsed from the resulting disparate distribution of wealth. Today we have our priorities all mixed up and we refuse to restrain the pigs at the troughs. Gobble, gobble is everywhere. Add the blinders which support misplaced priorities and we have a recipe for disaster.
I doubt it takes a genius to understand the predicament we are currently in. What is different today about civilizations about to collapse from self destruction is the global situation. We can pretend this is still a planet with distinct independent tribes whose destiny is dependent on their own actions, but this is no longer true. Overpopulation is a global problem, climate change is a global problem, depletion of natural resources is a global problem, increasing accumulation of wealth into the hands of a few is a global problem, lack of a decent global minimum wage is a global problem, and dangerous political and religious patriotism is a global problem. Now add the newest and most rapidly developing problem. Modern communication devices like cell phones and the internet have created a means for all kinds of dissident groups, large or small, to generate effective terrorism against their perceived enemies. These groups no longer need to meet together in buildings or old fashioned means of communication. They don't need sophisticated weaponry. They don't even need any central coordination.
All they need is sufficient anger, a martyr complex, and a willingness to die for their 'cause'. As the numbers of people living a life with essentially little left to lose grows, so will terrorism. As we and other 'super powers' are finding out, all the missiles, smart bombs, tanks, uniformed armies, etc are increasingly useless. Unless you decide to wipe out the entire population of a targeted country, you are hog tied. We have found out in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, South American countries, Somalia, Sudan, etc, that killing people rather indiscriminately just generates more terrorists. The family, friends, neighbors, etc of the victims become dedicated to revenge, violence becomes an increasingly common way of life. In places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, etc, violence is firmly established as a way of life. One can forget talking about democracy, religion, and any other notions to people who now live in these areas. The average person living under these conditions just wants to survive. They really no longer care under whom or what system, they would just like to live peaceably and have sufficient food and health care. The number of Taliban, Warlord, or government supporters in any area changes almost monthly depending on who is in control of any area at a given time. You want to live? You support whoever is in control at the moment. The military can capture any area most any time BUT how do you provide security for the people after you have captured the area? Are you going to finance keeping military personnel on every street corner forever? Are you prepared to feed millions of people and develop their economy? Of course this is not possible. Terrorism, as a way of life---a life which can empower all kinds of dissident groups everywhere, may well turn out to be the evolutionary process which reduces world population. Mother Nature always bats last. Every species which ill fits the environment of the time, becomes extinct or replaced quickly or slowly by altered life forms which can adapt to environmental realities.
Thus the future seems clearly to be a planet with reduced human population---one way or another. Past this, how can one really know much of anything. I suspect we all like to imagine ourselves and those we admire to be the forefront of evolution at this point in time. Maybe so, but so were the dinosaurs.
"Say goodnight Gracie."
