There are some modern philosophers that have commented, “The young do not question the wrongs of adults, they just suffer the poor decisions.” We are at a critical point in human history where our descendants will look back on us all and I have to wonder what they will have to say about what we have been doing and what we will do now! There is no shortage of doomsayers running around espousing negative scenarios and spreading fearful outcomes. Some have the best of intentions, but as the old adage says. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” In the field of sustainability I find that we are all too often faced with polarized opinions on what we should be doing to ‘save the Earth,” let alone the polarization of old worldviews embedded in the use of fossil fuels and the Heat-Beat-Treat (HBT)’ mentality of manufacturing as it differs from a truly Sustainable worldview. Regular readers of my blog will recognize that I always add, and emphasize, the socio-cultural-spiritual dimension of sustainability that too often is dismissed in the rush to give us green technology.
As I study the realm of quantum physics I see the next generation of technology evolving that will be much farther beyond present green technology as current technology is beyond simple muscle power. The biggest problem with these new evolving technologies is that they will make the current HBT industries as obsolete as the buggy-whip. For those not conversant with the buggy whip idea, it comes from a scene in the 1991 film ‘Other Peoples Money.’ While there are many problems with the economic ideas presented in the film, a line about obsolete technologies stands out to me. “You know, at one time there must’ve been dozens of companies making buggy whips. And I’ll bet the last company around was the one that made the best goddamn buggy whip you ever saw?” What saw the demise of the buggy whip was not the technology of needing to control the horses pulling the buggy. It was the simple fact that the eons long era of the horse as the primary mode of transportation was over – automobiles had become the new mode. I’m sure that there are still specialized buggy whip makers out there selling to the horse farms and horse-trot racing sports community, but the point I am making is that auto-technology (for better or worse) completely changed everything in the modern humans style of living. The old technologies just had no place anymore. What if auto-technology had been suppressed by the merchants and the Aristocracy thriving off the agrarian horse culture. What would our current global societies look like? What if the city leaders of at the turn of the 19th century had not invested in treated and piped water with extensive sewage systems? Hopefully you will understand that modern living with all its pros and cons is something we take for granted because we did make those changes. What if we didn’t? Then I’m sure today’s populations would probably be lamenting the controlling technophobes, of just over a century or more ago, who prevented the rise of technological systems we use today. I’m also sure that there would be a smaller group who would thrive in an agrarian society where muscle power still dominates.
The luddites of the early 1800’s were not necessarily against technology, but against the loss of the agrarian socio-cultural systems and ‘commonality’ that they understood and the rise of ‘Robber-Barons’ that used the new mechanized technologies in a “fraudulent and deceitful manner” to get around standard labor practices.
Now, let’s look forward to our descendants might say about us just over a century from now. There are two basic stories that can unfold. The first is one in which the modern-day Robber Barons (the Transnational Corporate Systems) are incredibly resistant in us adopting newer greener technologies that move us past the HBT mentality. They do this by suppressing new technologies that interfere with the old ones – the fossil fuels and standard practices of manufacturing that produce extensive polution and destruction at all stages in the manufacturing cycle, including the acquisition of raw materials and the disposal stage. More about this in the next post. It is fascinating to think that the Robber Baron mentality that created our modern technological world is the same one that now acts in a Luddite-like mentality to prevent us from moving forward with innovative technologies. These new technologies are not only clean and renewable, but the innovations I have been reading about are literally galactic in nature. If we are held back from the next technological revolution, how will our descendants think about us with the world we are leaving them. It will certainly not be one where technology was simply held back, as might have happened in the early 1800s, but one where the current technology is left to ruin the world in which we now live.
The world will continue and adapt to the Anthropocene age we are currently creating, where rampant environment problems are affecting all the systems that the planet uses to create a homeostatic environment. It isn’t the world that will suffer, it is humanity and its seeming inability to adapt to changes produced by the technologies we have used for two centuries. Our descendants are not going to speak of us kindly – quite the opposite I warrant. How could we keep doing what we are doing in blind support of a socio-cultural system based on destruction to maintain profits at all costs.
The second basic story is much different. The main step is to focus on the greener technologies while making the corporations release their strangle hold on so many innovative even revolutionary technologies that are already out there, let alone needed to be researched. I believe that our descendants will be much more appreciative of this story that leaves them a world healing and more compassionate in how humanity lives. What kind of story do you want to be remembered by? One of blame, or one of joyful thanks? We individually, and collectively, have the power to enact the second story. But will we? It is all up to us to make that choice – a better world or a worse world for humanity! Evolution means to change and grow, to adapt to the environment. The last step of technology allowed us to reach a point in technology that we currently exist within, but it is now time for the next evolutionary revolution to take us out of that paradigm and to a better technological future where humanity and the world thrives and not just exists.
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