Belief in an afterlife has been one of the more destructive features of the Earth’s many organized religions. By living in hopes of a glorious tomorrow, we can conveniently ignore the problems that plague us today. A number of these problems could be lethal for many of the planet’s species, including humans. Most of the problems were created by humans as a by-product of technical civilization, and it is incumbent upon humans to act upon our new knowledge and restore planetary homeostasis. And, we must do it quickly.
As long as we cling to our outmoded dreams for Nirvana after a lifetime of trials and tribulations, nothing will get fixed. Only when we realize that our primary moral directive as a species is to promote the life on Earth of which we are a part, can we bring to bear the emotional urgency to quickly and wisely apply our cleverness to cleaning up the mess, reducing our impact to acceptable levels for the over-all health of life on earth, and controlling our numbers and fixing limits for our consumption of resources.
Earth First! Should be more than just the motto of a radical environmental group; it should be our mantra as humans; one of the basic rules of law that govern all human planetary societies. We must reestablish our spiritual connection with nature, much like the pagan religions from the olden days, and apply our new-found wisdom in the biological and social sciences to integrate ourselves smoothly and seamlessly back into life’s family tree. By submitting ourselves to the cycles of life we ensure its arrival at that final mysterious destination in the distant future. We must be reverent enough about this course of Nature that we do not allow ourselves to derail the process, regardless of human needs or expediency in response to some emergency. Like the dinosaurs, we may simply be a speed bump on the DNA road to the future.
In doing things the way the old religions dictated, we have become a devouring cancer on the planet that threatens to destroy the results of 3.5 billion years of painful evolution from single-celled organisms through all of the genera that ever lived afterwards. And we are carrying the baggage of ancient evils. From our saurian ancestors to the winners of the Neanderthal wars, we have incorporated life’s most venal impulses into the cores of our beings. The Devil lives in our dark side, and has evolved right along with us. God dwells in that part of our cortex that is devoted to music, art, beauty, harmony, poetry, literature and mathematics. He evolved with us as well.
Once we realize that these creations of our imaginations are simply abstractions of basic core human impulses, we can refocus on what really matters: Our husbandry of the Earth and its resources, in a human-dominated world. For the first time in our existence we are confronted with limits on our dreams and desires, needs and wishes. Our new gestalt is humans as passengers on spaceship Earth. Sharing the ride with several million other species, all interdependent, and bound for unfathomable destinations, we now must take responsibility for our actions and do our part as a species to further the common good.
Assuming we come up with the moral fiber and determination to limit our numbers drastically, shrink our consumption of resources, and give up cherished habitat to species with whom we have no beneficial or symbiotic relationship, what sort of society should we create? It seems to me that it should be as nonrestrictive as possible. Because we will be living under self-imposed restraints relative to planet earth and its other inhabitants, we should really allow ourselves are much freedom as possible to invent and ‘try on’ new social systems. Freedom of expression in a world bounded by limits on personal wealth and consumption will be required for the general mental health of the population.
One of the marvelous attributes of human beings is our seemingly infinite adaptability. In the past 10,000 years, we have invented almost every kind of society imaginable, many with strange sexual, dietary, and social quirks. We need to nurture and encourage this urge to explore the nature of human relationships, for out of these discoveries will come our maturity as a species. We will become ‘refined’ in the purest sense of the word.
And it will keep us from getting bored. Besides, regional weirdness promotes tourism, cultural and economic exchange. Important virtues for the 21st century. But while cultural diversity will be encouraged, an underlying set of ‘Universal Laws’ will be established and universally applied to all of earth’s inhabitants. These laws will supersede any local or regional laws in effect or enacted.
A world governing body must be assumed. Global management of human activity must be ensured, and global scofflaws and eco-criminals quickly captured and punished. Under an umbrella world government, perhaps a council of highly educated and otherwise qualified elders, local or regional democracies would be allowed to develop in a wide variety of forms. As far as the ‘rule of law’ is concerned, all legislation should be derived from agreed-upon first principles, codified as the global ‘Ten Commandments’ so to speak. In general, it has been shown that the rule of law functions best in a climate of little or no encumbering legislation. The fewer laws, the better, and the least government is the best government. Those laws we choose to enact as ‘First Principles’ must be scrupulously enforced on the entire global citizenry. They should have the same emotional currency that we give to the original ‘Ten Commandments’.
We must slay the beast of politics just as we dealt with religious mythology; ruthlessly crushing or closely controlling the activities of special interest groups who attempt to influence the outcome of governmental decision-making processes. Governments must be staffed by highly educated people with the right qualifications to fit the job description. Bureaucracies must be strengthened such that ‘career employees’ present civil ‘overseers’ with basic choices and parameters for decision-making at the top. And the people at the top should have very limited terms in power. Ideally, these would be uncompensated, voluntary, elective positions.
Whatever the form of this world government and the subsidiary democracies that operate within its confines, the whole business must be organized to adapt with blinding speed. As Ray Kurziweil has pointed out, the next fifty years will see the emergence of a number of technologies that lead to a ‘Singularity’. It is difficult to imagine what ‘killer’ applications develop to transform society. One thing is for sure: The dangers lurking in MEMS, Nanotechnology, Synthetic Biology, and other emerging technologies in human medicine will require continuous scrutiny and approval or disapproval for specific applications of the new technologies. The utility of the application in question will always be weighed against the environmental and human costs of its application prior to first use.
Because it is impossible at present for me to include photos in my blog posts and images in the comments section since the blog engine here on Vivaldi was modified recently, I have decided to suspend making further posts at present. I realize Vivaldi is a work in progress, but unfortunately, I am not.
