Sunday 13 January 2008

Pic of the day: There is a way to a brighter future, and as always it is the young who must go ahead.

Utopia 2050

I began writing a letter from a young person around 2050, who had studied how people in the beginning of the century thought about the 2020s and 2030s. Almost immediately, some interesting concepts from that future jumped onto the page: DL, Saints, Innerways, and especially Oldlings – that would be us. Soon I could glimpse that imaginary future, at least as through a glass darkly.

Somewhere between 2000 and 2050, science has begun looking in earnest at the inner life. What makes people happy or unhappy? What makes them good or evil? A new science that blends psychology, neurobiology and spirituality, its goal is a higher level of sanity, where ordinary people can live happy, productive and meaningful lives... if they want to. Studying the esoteric traditions of world religions and mystics through history, they discover the Innerways: The spiritual frameworks that are common to these traditions, that describe an experience anyone can reach by following the necessary discipline. Freed from the undergrowth of myth and legend, the Innerways are available to all men and women who seek them, regardless of religious dogma. As a result, sainthood eventually becomes as normal as it is abnormal today.

Through the Innerways, anyone can reach Samadhi (or rapture), the spiritual ecstasy that temporarily sets aside the ego and revels in the experience of consciousness itself and the unity of all things. It is no longer necessary to use pleasure drugs or loveless sex to try to gain a brief respite from a painful and confusing life.

Perhaps even more important, the Innerways help people detect and escape the "mind parasites" or "thought bubbles", semi-independent structures of the psyche that force people to do crazy things. (The closest concept is probably "complex", but this is poorly understood by the layman, I'm afraid.) When people know what they should do and yet do the opposite, powerless to resist their desires, it is the thought bubbles that temporarily take control of them. Through training in the Innerways, people learn to identify these fluid mental structures and dis-identify from them. As a result, a lot of unhealthy behavior ceases and the use of medication is drastically reduced.

People who are proficient in the Innerways are called "saints"; this does not imply any particular religion. Saints are happy, friendly, and actively doing good. Their most important role is as examples, though. Other people are learning from them in a process similar to how small children learn from their parents. This is called DL (from "download", but in 2050 the word DL has evolved to be used about mental content rather than electronic.)

The normal mode in 2050 seems to be what we today call "higher consciousness". I should write about that one day, if I haven't already. For today, suffice it to say that ordinary consciousness is only half awake, smothered as it is in "mind viruses", independent balls of thought or feeling that care little enough for the survival of their host, much less the greater good. Faced with the challenge of lifting 10 billion humans up to a decent standard of living, something had to give. Either the viruses would have to go, or mankind.

In this happy outcome, people learned to find happiness in the Innerways, and their material needs are far less than those who constantly need to impress each other like peacocks in mating season. (This is unfortunately a very apt metaphor, because mating rights are at the heart of material excess. That, and status in the pack. Good old ape thinking, not so good when the planet is full of us.)

And yeah, I am aware that the new improved humans of 2050 are quite a bit like me. Although, to be honest, much more so. I see myself as a kind of missing link, less ridden by mind viruses than I used to be and seemingly less than the average, but I still have my share of them and I cannot really trust myself... not if I want others to be able to trust me, at least. More about that elsewhere.

Be that as it may, I thought it was a fascinating glimpse of a possible future. It is very different from my childhood concept of "future", which was more along gleaming spires, cities in space, flying cars etc. There may or may not be such things eventually – well, there already are some gleaming spires – but that is not the essential part of the future. Making a society where life is worth living even when the planet is on a budget is the essential part. It is already too late to ship our population off to other planets; there is barely time to mine the moon and asteroids. Luckily some of us have already learned that there is an inner space to explore, where we can grow wisdom, peace and happiness. We should get to settling it as soon as possible.