The last few weeks of news have shown us a microcosm of the choices humanity faces as the future unfolds from the present, choices that pit our ideals and altruism against our cynicism and fear.
We saw our idealism and goodwill blossom in President Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID relief package, approved by both houses of Congress, which will help alleviate childhood poverty and a host of other ills in New Mexico. And altruism has shown its practicality in two important urban experiments with basic guaranteed income plans. Stockton, California gave its low-income residents $500 a month, “no strings attached,” for two years. Stockton reported that after a year, not only did full-time employment increase but most who received the benefit used the money to pay off debts and buy food and medicine, thus increasing their emotional well-being and ability to find work. St. Paul, Minnesota has taken up a $500 guaranteed income pilot project of its own. And there are now some 25 other cities who have joined the coalition of Mayors for Guaranteed Income.
We are seeing governments acting as servants of the people once again, banishing policies of cruel austerity and helping people help themselves instead of punishing them for the brutal bad luck of poverty or for being victims of long standing systems of oppression.
The recent news has also shown us, sadly, what happens to the world when our ideals and altruism give way to venality, fear and indifference. A report published last week by the non-profit Rainforest Foundation Norway states that logging and development had destroyed nearly two-thirds of the world’s rain forests, one of our planet’s principal natural means of recycling and disposing of greenhouse gases that cause climate change. This is catastrophe in the making for the future of our species.
When I read reports like this, I think of the title of a book published in 1969 by philosopher-scientist-engineer Buckminster Fuller entitled “Utopia or Oblivion.” The title alone helped me as a young person to redirect my perspective from the immediate present to the future rushing toward us. Fuller invented the geodesic dome and spoke of “design science” (which I take to mean rational consequence-aware technology) as the savior of humankind. When he wrote about utopia or oblivion, he was very clear that the choice had to be made: Do we act out of altruism and foresight to create a world that humans can flourish in, or do we remain mired in myopia and blinding self-interest and watch the carelessness of our vices devour our future?
For me, Fuller’s worldview was supercharged by Alvin Toffler, the businessman and futurist who was the author of the 1970 book “Future Shock.” I see them both as visionaries into the mysteries of how cultures and societies can evolve into their best variations, or go murderously wild with stress and anxiety, stagnate and turn to dust.
It turns out that both men were also pioneers in coming to terms with a future dominated by two of humanity’s most dangerous follies driven by fear and venality — the potential of a nuclear Armageddon and ideological denial of climate science and climate change, both still plaguing the future of our children and beyond.
These thinkers knew that the future grows out of the present and that all responsible problem-solving is based on an idealized vision of what is good, wholesome and flourishing in the future world that the present creates down the road.
Toffler’s “Future Shock” was as meaningful for some of us as looking through a telescope for the first time. He helped us see the future not as far, far away, but as growing part of the present, directly related to the decisions we were making in our daily lives, not necessarily as inventors and originators, but also as consumers and investors. While we may all be suffering from some form of “information overload,” he said that it was understandable because the future tends to pick up speed as it presents itself to us as innovation and the consumer love of novelty.
“A new civilization is emerging in our lives, and blind men everywhere are trying to suppress it. This new civilization brings with it new family styles; changed ways of working, loving, and living; a new economy; new political conflicts; and beyond all this an altered state of consciousness as well…” Tofler wrote in his 1980 book, “The Third Wave.”
Fuller spent his life as a tireless advocate for a future age of “omni-successful education and sustenance of all humanity.” At 88 he wrote, “I am… a living case history …of what, if anything, an unknown, moneyless individual … might be able to do effectively on behalf of all humanity that could not be accomplished by great nations, great religions or private enterprise, no matter how rich or powerfully armed.”
He came to the conclusion that cooperation and human comradery had become the best, and perhaps the only, survival strategy left to us, a cooperative effort to create, with the tools of design science and the abundance of green revolutions, a utopia for everyone. “Selfishness is unnecessary and hence-forth unrationalizable… War is obsolete,” he said.
Utopia or oblivion. If we reactivate our idealism and embrace the altruism that comes with compassionate and open-minded goals, we might still have a chance at utopia. If we hug our cactuses, take pride in our bleeding sores, wallow comfortably in our hatreds, slam shut the doors of perception and deck ourselves in the medals of our suspicions and terrors, then the future that emerges from our choices will obliviate what chances we have for fulfilling the best potential our species.
*Nullius in verba: take nobody’s word for it
(Image derived from works by Edgy01 and Cédric THÉVENET)
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