Future

There are 18 posts tagged Future (this is page 1 of 1).

The Big Picture

Its been a while since my last update to this journal. The monthly payment notifications that I receive from subscribers like you feel to me like little nudges, reminders that I haven't published anything in some time. I apologize for not keeping you as updated as I should be.

My life priorities have shifted a lot since the birth of my daughter, who, at three months old yesterday, is at this moment bundled in a soft pink blanket sound asleep in my left arm, my iPhone in my right hand typing this in between glancing out the airplane window at the Earth far below. We're somewhere over Delaware right now, en route back to Boston after spending two weeks in Florida. She has done amazingly well with flying and hasn’t cried at all. In fact, she does better flying than she does driving. Maybe it has something to do with how she flew fourteen times before she was born.

I say that my priorities have shifted, but maybe that's not true. I feel the weight of responsibility in my life has shifted dramatically, yes--suddenly it's no longer just me that I need to think about--but I still have the same personal goals and ambitions as I did before Ananda was born. I still want to write and publish. I still want to find a way to contribute to humanity. I still want to travel. I still want go to Mars.

Sure, I have family responsibilities now--father and spousal responsibilities--but everything else is still there, everything else is pretty much the same. None of it is number one of course, but it's not all irrelevant or unimportant either.

In many ways what has been the biggest challenge for me is finding a way to continue pursuing my personal goals--or for that matter, just finding the focus to work on something--while having someone else in my life to whom I am a father, someone who depends on me and who will, over the course of her life, look to me for wisdom, support, attention, and love.

I'm a big picture thinker. I’m always considering the long-term implications of a decision or an action, but since the day I learned that I was going to be a dad I've felt the need to stay away from the big picture, to not worry so much about the future. It feels too big now, too complex and blurry.

Yes, my decisions and choices will directly affect Ananda as she grows into her own person, but she will be her own person, someone who will make her own choices and blaze a path through life that is uniquely her own. I feel the best thing that I can do for her as a father is to provide her with what I feel are the best tools for trail blazing and to be there for her when she needs me, to be present when I’m present.

It's her future, not mine. It's her big picture and I'm just the lucky dad who gets to make sure that she has the best tools with which to create her life.

Raam and Ananda

Envision an Unwritten Future

When I was younger, I thought that my future held my circle of friends; we seemed inseparable. When I owned a house, I put my heart and soul into its maintenance, sweating and struggling to hold onto it because I was so sure that it was in my future.

I thought the same thing about my job, that my future held a high-paying career as a computer programmer, or a security consultant. At one point I was certain that my future held a position in the military. I was sure it held my ex-girlfriend.

But I was wrong, about all of it.

I learned that by telling ourselves day in and day out that we know what the future holds, that it must hold this thing or that person just because we always thought that it would, we lock ourselves into self-limiting and self-destructive patterns.

We hold onto these expectations because it’s safer that way, because our primal instinct wants to feel secure, because it wants to know that we’ve been somewhere and that we’ve done something and that all of this must mean we’re going somewhere, with someone, or with a specific group of someones.

We want to see ourselves making tangible progress, moving laterally from one direction to another, swimming toward a specific destination and making specific, measurable progress. We don’t want to think three-dimensionally, to look down into a dark abyss and imagine sinking to a undefinable place that holds so much unknown, to a place that has no certain depth and no measurable end, a place where anything can happen.

We don’t want to imagine that, but that’s exactly what the future holds, a dark unknown. We have no light to shine on the future. We have no map to lead us through. There is no rulebook that determines what happens and what doesn’t, who lives and who dies, who comes, and who goes. Life isn’t a two-dimensional surface with birth and death clearly marked on either end. It’s dynamic. It’s unpredictable. It’s raw.

You are not who you were yesterday and tomorrow, you won’t be who you are right now. But who you are right now is real. It’s tangible, and the only thing holding you back from blossoming is what you take with you into tomorrow, and what you expect to find when you get there. Your vision of the future is flawed. It’s a mirage. It’s an island that you’re swimming toward that doesn’t even exist.

Stop swimming.

Every heartbeat is a heartbeat you’ve never experienced. Every breath is a breath you’ve never taken.

Envision a future that is so unwritten, a future that is so strange that you have trouble holding it in your imagination. Envision a future so blank, so pure and unencumbered by the past or the present, so savage and wild and deep that it remains unrestrained by preconceptions of yesterday and unchained from expectations of today.

Envision a future that is so impossibly unimaginable that it creates an abyss of nothingness, and then, allow yourself to float into that unknown, leaving behind everything to embrace a future you that is flawless and free.

Traveling by Intuition

A big part of how I create and travel involves tapping into energies, these invisible and hard to describe forces that seem to connect my physical self with another realm, a realm that, if I could see it, I imagine would look like strings of energy crisscrossing each other and linking together other, highly focused endpoints, all changing in response to the location, the environment, and the energies of the people who were present.

Trying to describe these invisible forces always conjures up images similar to those neuron maps of the brain and the maps of the Internet, only instead of being fixed and static, they’re alive and moving, constantly changing, like a universe inhaling and exhaling, birthing new galaxies with each breath.

I believe that we all have the ability to feel and sense these energies, to receive their signals and tune into them, to redirect and focus them like a magnifying glass focusing otherwise weak beams of sunlight.

When I travel, I feel the different energies and forces present in each place. But there seems to be a catch: I usually can’t feel or tap into them until I’ve settled down for a few weeks.

When I’m moving from one place to another — flying in an airplane, riding on a train, or doing a road trip — the energy generated by the motion is itself extremely powerful and chaotic. This chaotic energy seems to obscure the more stable energy that I can feel when I stop moving, the energy that I feel when I begin creating within a framework of daily routines.

Whenever someone asks me how I decide where I’m traveling to next, my response is always the same: I travel by intuition. I don’t travel to check off a list of places, or to experience a set of cultures, or to taste different foods. I travel by intuition. But what does that mean? What does it mean to ‘travel by intuition’?

It means that when I connect with the energy of a particular place, I allow myself to linger, to tap into the creative energies and allow them to change me, to give me fuel for creating and contemplating and growing until something (usually my intuition) tells me it’s time to move on. In traveling for the past three years, I’ve recognized that the “time to move on” feeling usually occurs within three months.

I’m convinced that I’m not the only one who taps into these energies and I suspect that various places around the world known for attracting artistic and intellectual types are that way because they’re actually strong sources of this invisible energy, sources that most of these people are unknowingly tapping into by living and working there. I suspect that cities appear where they do for the same reasons.

When I arrived in Tasmania a little over a month ago, I could tell within the first few hours that the energy here was strong. I wasn’t at all surprised when I learned that Tasmania is fast becoming known for attracting artistic types.

However, I was caught off guard when, within the first week of arriving, I felt an unrelenting desire to cancel the rest of my travel plans — a week in Perth and a month in Thailand — to spend more time here in Tasmania.

Now, after spending six months in Australia, I’m preparing to leave to visit family in the United States. I’m thinking about where I’ll go next in January and the only place that keeps calling back to me is Tasmania... and I haven’t even left yet.

Why Tasmania? I’m really not sure. All I can say is that my intuition tells me that I should return, that something says this is where I should be and that this is where I will find the creative energy that I need. Creative energy that I need for what? I’m not sure of that either. That too feels like an invisible force present in my future but undefinable to the present.

Release Preconceived Notions

Three years ago I was commuting in bumper-to-bumper traffic when I saw a duck in the grass and felt jealous of its freedom. Yesterday my office was a cafe near the Sydney Opera House. Today I went off-roading in "the Australian bush", visited the largest deep space radio telescope in the southern hemisphere, and walked among wild kangaroos. Think outside the box. Release preconceived notions of reality. The heart can only stretch if the mind is willing to let go.

Toward the Stars in Search of Answers

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to walk around on another planet?

Imagine building a machine, placing it on top of 600,000 lbs of liquid oxygen and explosive rocket fuel propellents, then launching it into outer space and guiding it for more than 8 months and 350,000,000 miles.

Well, that's exactly what NASA has done and their little robot, Curiosity, will be landing on Mars today.

This isn't just another robot going to Mars. This is a machine, built by fellow human beings of this generation, sent out toward the stars in search of answers to questions that our species have been asking for thousands of years.

And you can watch it all for free, from wherever you are (thanks to another wonderful invention by our species), using nothing more than what you're using to read this. Tune into NASA TV online today, August 5th, at 11pm EST / 8pm PST / 3am UTC. The rover has successfully landed! In case you missed it, I recorded the whole thing. You can watch it on YouTube or see the embedded video below.

Notes: The Laziness Paradox

In The Laziness Paradox, Scott Young writes about something that I've always had a hard time putting a finger on: why short-term estimations often fail and long-term plans often turn out to be inadequate.

I believe optimism, hope, ambition and all that general self-help pabulum work best as far beliefs. That is, being overconfident works best when it is a generalized ideal you use to think about the long future, not when you're planning your to-do list tomorrow.

The truth is, most people make two errors in their judgement. They are overly optimistic in the short-term, because inherent overconfidence and the illusion of control convince them they can achieve more than they can. But people are also too unimaginative about the future--we tend to imagine the future as mostly resembling the present.

I suggest two cures: first, acknowledge your short-term laziness more. If you know you're lazy, you can work around it. Most people don't because we like to think of ourselves as being industrious and in control, not easily manipulated automatons. Second, be more imaginative about the future, even small ripples can turn into big waves over time.

I often allow my imagination to run wild when thinking about the future. I really do think anything is possible. I believe that civilian trips to a colony on Mars will occur in my lifetime. I believe that the standard of living for all human beings can be vastly improved within my lifetime.

But while dreaming and believing in those dreams are big first steps, they're not enough. How to act in a way that works towards them is arguably the more challenging task.

Knitting Life Together

If we're looking forward -- into the unwritten darkness of the future -- then how can we possibly expect to create something coherent and comprehensible in the present?

Should we not, then, be looking behind us, allowing the lantern we're holding onto (the present moment) to illuminate the steps that we've already taken and then use that knowledge to understand where we're going?

It seems almost counter-intuitive (walking backwards to understand where you’re going) until you actually think about it. I tried to come up with a good analogy and I found that knitting works well.

In knitting, two needles are used to stitch together yarn and create clothing or other items. The yarn usually sits bundled up in a ball somewhere on the floor or in a bag and is unwoven as needed.

Like someone knitting, our focus in life shouldn’t always be on where the yarn is coming from (the future), but rather at the point it's coming together in our hands (the present) and occasionally at what has already been created (the past).

Using what has already been woven together, we make small adjustments along the way, pausing every now and then to step back, take in the bigger picture, and use that to reevaluate our progress.

If at any point in time we don't like the direction we're going, we shouldn’t search furiously for answers in the darkness of the future — we shouldn’t try to make sense of jumbled ball of yarn. That won’t tell us anything.

The interesting stuff isn’t actually in the future at all; it’s in the past, the cumulative result of everything we’ve already done. The future simply represents the source of material from which we can weave together anything.

The most interesting point, the point that deserves the most attention — the point where all the magic happens — is the present moment. The story of our life comes together in our hands, in this moment, not somewhere on the floor in a heap of yarn.

Notes: Climate change is a moral issue on par with slavery

This article in The Guardian gave me an entirely new perspective on our responsibility protect the environment for our future.

[...] current generations have an over-riding moral duty to their children and grandchildren to take immediate action. Describing this as an issue of inter-generational justice on a par with ending slavery, [leading NASA climate scientist Prof Jim] Hansen said: "Our parents didn't know that they were causing a problem for future generations but we can only pretend we don't know because the science is now crystal clear.

"We understand the carbon cycle: the CO2 we put in the air will stay in surface reservoirs and won't go back into the solid earth for millennia. What the Earth's history tells us is that there's a limit on how much we can put in the air without guaranteeing disastrous consequences for future generations. We cannot pretend that we did not know."

It's unfortunate, and I believe unnecessary, that it should take us humans several generations to learn such big and important lessons, but rather than complain about it we should take a proactive approach within our own lives.

I'm constantly looking for ways that I can change existing habits, or create new ones, that will work towards sustainability: Telling the cashier that I don't need a bag when I'm purchasing items I can simply carry; requesting reusable cups/mugs at cafes, declining receipts when I know I'll just throw them away. Every little bit helps.

Notes: The Next 50 Years

In The Next 50 Years: Why I’m Optimistic Because Everything Will Be Terrible, science fiction writer John Shirley talks about where we are now and where we're headed.

It's worth remembering that he is a science fiction writer, so there's a lot he talks about in this article that I feel is a bit "out there" (or at least several hundred years off), but the highlighted points below stood out as particularly thought-provoking.

I believe in the power of human good and in natures ability to find natural ways of correcting imbalances, but I also feel that our growing mastery over the elements and our growing usage of technology is tampering with those natural checks and balances; we're putting more responsibility in our hands without actually accepting the responsibility.

Addiction to social media, videogames, cell phones and the internet is now a recognized phenomena and that has implications for our relationship to future tech. Because its addictive capacity will only increase as its experiential quality improves.

It's strange—most of our technology is about extending our reach... but paradoxically, we're in danger of a relationship to technology that actually cuts us off from one another. Cartoonists already caricature families who sit together talking to everyone but each other on their plethora of devices...

...

The real singularity will be simply an unprecedented cybernetic intelligence explosion to many orders of magnitude, combined with astronomically improved interactivity—but the Kurzweilian singularity that allows us to interface with machines until, in his words, "there will be no distinction between human and machine" , will not come about sustainably because the psychological and social consequences would be so dire.

People who are quadroplegic have noted that they feel less emotion than they did, when they could still feel their entire bodies. The projection of the self into electronics reduces our relationship to the body, the seat of our emotions, and for several reasons that might lead to an increase in psychopathology.

And empathy may be a precious commodity in the future. Most people unconsciously cut off their empathy when they're feeling endangered — when the population increases to 8 and 9 and 10 billion, we may instinctively become, as a race, proportionately less empathetic — unless, with self-observation and cognitive therapy, we actively struggle against that kind of degeneracy.

...

Mastery of technology must include acknowledgement of its dark side. Mastery of technology means accepting of limitations. Limitations have value, eg limiting electricity to what will work for a particular power line means electrical flow isn't wasted. Water is good; a flood usually isn't. Technology too needs limits.

An invention which pollutes is only partly invented. And a lot of the time we rush into technology so quickly we don't realize it's going to pollute... It was recently discovered that every time a garment made from synthetic fabric goes through the wash, it lets go of thousands of tiny plastic fibers which end up fouling coastal environments throughout the globe. No one expected that. No one thought that form of manufacture through.

...

It's time for a new philosophy of technology—one that acknowledges its dark side and thinks pro actively about the consequences of new technology so that technology can be tweaked and negative consequences prepared for. Technology needs to evolve a conscience.

...

Only world government — not an autocratic one, but a world governance committed to human rights, the rights of women (which are integral to population control), and environmental justice — can deal with the kinds of international crises that will arise in an environmentally stricken and overpopulated world. World government will not mean anyone gives up their culture, except the bits that reject human rights; it will not be a great gray conformity; there will still be at least as much national sovereignty, for most issues, as states in Europe have in the EU — and remember that the EU, a fuzzy foreshadowing of world government, is in a very early stage. It's having problems, and that was inevitable as it's still evolving. But it does have the right idea. Toward the end of the 21st century the world will move toward a framework of consensus, on some basic rules regarding population growth, the environment, and access to technology. Empowering third world people with education and technology will give them a step toward the resources and coping ability they'll need to survive.

I believe we'll achieve a collective progressive consciousness as a result of the revelatory shocks we'll endure in the next fifty years. We'll learn... we'll come to understand that we can't treat Spaceship Earth as a party cruise ship.

Notes: We are the revolution

Paulo Coelho writes about a rising revolution and changing attitudes:

I’d say that the new political attitude for our era is to "die alive and commited."

In other words, being aware and participating in things until the day we die – something that does not occur very often – people end up dying for the world on the day they renounce their dreams.

We are the revolution taking place. We are responsible for the world in every sense – political, social, moral.

We are responsible for the planet. We are responsible for the unemployed.

Of course, we can blame the banks, the disaster that irresponsible people created in the financial system, the political repression, the inability of the Govts. to hear what people has to say.

But this will not help the world to become a better place. We need to act, and we need to act now.
And we don’t need permission to act.

We are much more powerful than we think we are. Let’s use this power, use the strength that everyone has when he/she is following his/her real Bliss, Personal Legend, you name it.

We are the dreamers, but we are also the revolution.

Dreams are not negotiable.

Also worth reading is his Declaration of Principals. I've been keeping notes for the past year to write and implement a declaration of principals for myself.

Notes: We need a public majority of intellectuals

Jason Caldwell, the lead developer at WebSharks, Inc. (a company I recently started consulting for) and a Zeitgeist movie advocate, wrote this bit about how the Occupy Wall Street movement has the potential to awaken a sleeping society and get us all to begin questioning the accuracy of the information we take in.

I agree with his ending point that presidential elections will slowly become more and more meaningless as we recognize that in the age of instant global connectivity, a future system of governance will be that of the people, not a single figure who makes decisions, but a system that recognizes the collective will of those who the system affects.

Before we can really discuss possible solutions in a way that might bring about change, the public majority needs to understand what the problems are. We also need to be more responsible. We, the public, need to do their own research, in order to verify the accuracy of the information we take in, and also to understand the world around us. I believe the Occupy movement may help us accomplish this in the long term. A movement like this causes people to question their existing train of thought, to re-examine their belief system; based on the information that is currently obtainable; and also, based on what is realistically achievable once the current state of affairs is understood by the masses. It also sets a platform for discussion and artistic expression by the people, instead of by Hollywood alone.

Sadly, many people do NOT yet have a good understanding of what our problems are. In fact, many people don't even question some of the establishments we have in place today. The mainstream media puts a selective spin, or party-based opinion on everything, which keeps people quite confused about very serious issues. This leads people to gossip around the water cooler, about varying points of view among pundits, rather than having any serious discussion about change, based on our own personal knowledge and understandings.

In addition to the mainstream media, we have our current form of society, which is very much based on a motive to obtain profit, even on a personal level. Whether we realize it or not, the profit motive has corrupted us all, and we'll have to rise above this societal impulse, on some level, in order to discuss how we get rid of it completely over the long term.

Many of us today are also afraid of being wrong, and so we really don't speak our minds. Creative thinking and artistic expression need to become a larger part of society. We need to be more willing to share our ideas openly, so that others might work with us, and/or contribute to our broader understanding. Being wrong is part of a natural learning process. If we are wrong about something, and we understand that we we're wrong, we're more intelligent because of that occurrence.

I believe there is hope. People are naturally losing faith in their politicians, and in mainstream media corporations that color things to match their larger objectives. As we seek out alternative sources for information; and in our own research, we begin to understand just how complacent we've all been as a society. We also begin to see that it's not politicians or money that we need, as some may suggest. Politicians, bankers and economists are not trained to solve these types of problems. And, given the current structure of society today, it is impossible to reach a position of influence in the world, without having ties to corporate profit-seeking entities, on one level or another; making most of our existing and future leaders untrustworthy.

Our problems today have a very technical and emotional orientation. Our society today, is also too large and too diverse, to be governed by traditional figures, such as a president or a congress, which really serve as an arm of the corporate world anyway. Instead, we need a public majority of intellectuals, which takes education. We need to become the leaders through education, instead of asking others to do it for us ( i.e. an Obama, or a Herman Cain, or a Ron Paul ).

As the public begins to understand our current problems for what they are, and as we begin to accept emotionally how wrong we've been about many things in the past, I believe that a solution will manifest itself out of the will of the people; and I am hopeful that will lead to a positive change, which may improve things over time. In the short term, I think presidential elections should become more and more meaningless, taking place in the backdrop of a larger public movement that is more relevant to our needs and productivity.

Hang a Question Mark

Nature has no broken status quo because the moment the status quo breaks down, nature adapts. When the status quo stops working, nature takes action and changes to maintain its harmonious existence.

Humans have the ability to adapt as well, but our intelligence -- our ability to ask 'Why?' -- also gives us the ability to resist adapting. Unlike nature, we can maintain a status quo even if that means causing harm to ourselves, our family, and our environment.

When something is accepted as-is, its flaws, no matter how great, are irrelevant. The status quo is the status quo because it's not questioned. This can be -- and usually is in the long-run -- disastrous.

If no one ever challenged the status quo of wheel design thousands of years ago, we'd still be rolling around on stone tires today.

If no one challenges the wasteful and irresponsible culture that exists today, we will have a future human species diseased with distrust, living on a planet depleted of resources.

The gift of curiosity and intelligence comes with a responsibility to adapt and to look towards the future. It comes with the responsibility to determine when the status quo is broken and when it needs to change.

Accepting things as they are now ignores the one thing that makes us all human: the ability to hang a question mark on the status quo and ask, 'Why?'

Envisioning the Future

When Martin Luther King, Jr. envisioned a future America where the color of his skin didn't determine his rights as a citizen and as a human being, he couldn't see the path between that point in history and the election of a black president. But did that stop him?

When Mahatma Gandhi envisioned a future where India was free and independent, he couldn't see the path between that point in history and a free country with the largest democracy in the world. But did that stop him?

When Nelson Mandela envisioned a future South Africa with a multi-racial democracy, he couldn't see the path between the 27 years he spent in prison and the day he became elected president of that country. But did that stop him? Continue reading →