The Search for Perfect Futures

What really started my blogging experiments (which for the moment is what they are) was my visions of the future. Not exactly specific things taking place like a character in Heros might experience, but short journeys to a land where wristwatch computers and artificially-made animals are commonplace. My experiences with LSD and meditation, in that order, seemed to have opened up some kind of gateway, through which I could view this wonderful new world. I saw wonderful for the simple reason that, whilst it is certainly not perfect, the future I was viewing was obviously a nicer place to be than our current world.

I went there in wonder at the new devices- an internet viewer on my wrist, which my mind could be merged with, to see the past history from the year 200 up until 2040, hydrogen-powered cars- but also to see new problems. I was shown a ‘female’ android who had taken children hostage because she was furious at not being respected as a woman. I saw myself in some future life, having fallen in love with someone from a lower chaste, a relationship that was forbidden. No, the future is not perfect; there is still the pull of greater freedom for those without it and the reality of exploitation for society’s victims. The line between the two is, as ever, blurred. Have you ever felt sorry for a coffee machine? Maybe one day you will!


Life for me is both something to enjoy and also a search for justice. I don’t say a struggle, as this phrase is both overused and suggestive of some degree of violence, one against another. In fact, this search for justice is a mutually-beneficial thing, a turning of strangers, or even enemies, into friends. It is the real-world process of creating a heaven on Earth, in recognition that we are all God’s creatures. Yet, the freedom of luxury still means that someone needs to do the work- be it robot or human, the temptation will always be to have some form of slavery in place, slavery of beings that will sooner or later wish to share in the freedoms they helped make possible. No system yet known to man has relied solely on fairly rewarded work- the exploitation of immigrant workers, or developing countries is just the latest example of this in our ‘slavery free world’ (not!)

This being so, we need to always move the barriers back and make life fairer for more people, which will also make it ultimately safer. My visions of the future show me this- that the technological challenges can be met, though the human ones need just as much attention. Who knows what challenges will really confront us? All I know is that to a great extent, technology is both the answer and the question- how much, when and how to apply it- which moves the question back to us again. It is we who make the world.