DEEP FUTURES:
Possible, preferred and alternative visions of tomorrow. Now.
It's the future, Jim, but not as we know it... There's more to tomorrow than robots, flying cars, and a faster internet. 22C+ is all about Deep Futures, futures that matter. Welcome to futures fantastic, unexpected, profound, but most of all deeply meaningful...
Simon Buckland on his blogoflove, recently wrote about the revitalising capacity of beautiful parks, and in particular the charming the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, in Paris, where he lives. Deep connectivity, including an intimate connection with nature – green time – simply has to be a priority for policy makers in any city or country in the world. A future without this precious connection with the environment is quite a simply a future not worth living.
When I tell people that I am a futurist, the first question people typically ask is, “What is going to happen in the future?” In fact, predication is not really a key element of Futures Studies, and most futurists stick to the position that the future is ultimately unknowable. Instead, most futurists like to engage in scenario work, where they attempt to contend with the issues and problems related to several possible paths which may unfold. Another process is horizon scanning, where futurists gather together as much data as they can about a particular issue, and then extrapolate the possible and probable futures which appear to be emerging. All this involves standard logical and rational ways of knowing, and the processes are conducted in normal states of consciousness. To do otherwise would invite the possibilities of ridicule and the questioning of professional credibility. Such is the nature of dominant culture in science and the professional/corporate world.
I am thus a little unusual for a futurist, in that I am also a mystic. Besides writing and researching, and gaining the preferred academic qualifications (a doctorate), I also spent many years working on the intuitive and emotional dimensions of mind. It’s not so easy to develop both the intellect and the psyche, as the cognitive skills required are completely different. Most academics have little or no understanding of the deeper mind, except at an intellectual level. This makes my attempts at communicating insights gleaned at a first-personal experiential level quite difficult. Many in mainstream culture are quite hostile to the attempt. My perception is that this largely stems not only from the challenge to their worldview, but also from the fear of the vulnerability required to move beyond the intellectual mind, and to explore the deeper emotional and psychic realms.
Which brings me to the question, “Can we see the future?” To answer this I am not going to refer to philosophical arguments or empirical evidence, but to personal insight.
I'm running a bit short of time today, so here's an entry from my web site, mindfutures.com. It contains a common message found in many of my posts, but provides a very simple process to help relieve a large degree of human suffering...
It was 1993, and I was wondering along the “main” street of Byron Bay, in northern New South Wales, Australia. Byron Bay is a beautiful little coastal town in one of the most scenic parts of Australia. It is well known as a center of alternative culture, and the streets were (and still are) lined with veggie restaurants, Thai dye shops, and alternative folks offering all kinds of new age therapies.
On that sunny winter’s day, I spotted a little book shop, and wandered in. There, amidst the plentiful supply of spiritual literature, I spotted a little tome called Words from Silence, by Leonard Jacobson. Something about the book grabbed me, so I picked it up and began to flick through the pages.
We are within a decade or so of building the first electronic brain, exhorts writer Drew Turney in yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald. (A brain, but not as we know it ) Yet how much fact, and how much speculation, assumption or pure mythology lie behind the claim? Apologies in advance, but I'm going to get a little philosophical and intellectual.
A few days ago I awoke during the early morning hearing a particular song in my head. As I’ve mentioned before, this is one of the most common means by which I am given spiritual guidance, so I always listen carefully for the message. Here is the song that I heard: U2s Love is Blindness. If you heard this song as a message from Spirit, what would you make if it? Watch the video before you read any further:
The video from my last post got me thinking about personal futures. We are under so much pressure from society to conform to dominant ideas about what an ideal life should look like. A recent book by Maggies Hamilton, called What’s Happening to Our Boys , suggests that boys as young as eight years of age are obsessing about their image, and advertising, consumerism and IT culture lie behind the problem. There are primary school students who are worried about what they were wearing to school, while some teenagers are scared to take their shirts off at the beach because they don't have abs. The problem is thus more acute than ever.
Here’s what the Sydney Morning Herald story noted about the problem.
Some of this is because marketers are recognising boys as the last great untapped market.
"Parents are very worried about not looking cool," she (Maggie Hamilton) says." Advertisers have ... done an effective job in undermining parents' confidence, leaving them constantly worried they're inadequate and/or uncool unless they are buying this or that," she says in her book.
Australian parents spend around $1000 per child per year on toys and related products for kids aged zero to three, Hamilton says.
Her book quotes James McNeal, a Texas-based professor who has published books on children and marketing, as saying that consumer behaviour patterns start at 16 weeks of age.
Meanwhile, the former president of children's clothing retailer Kids-R-Us, Mike Searle, is quoted as saying "if you win this child at an early age, you own this child for years to come".
Kids are basically growing up in rooms full of branded junk watching DVDS over and over," Hamilton says.
"The kids associate (branded toys) with the character they have seen in the DVD ... they don't even have an imaginative repertoire around those characters. What they do is replay the stories they have seen over and over on the DVDS."
Boys' natural attraction to computer games and gadgets means that many are missing out important interaction with not only other people, but the outside world, Hamilton says.
"Our kids are becoming like battery hens, they rush home and it is into the bedroom, onto the computer, iPod in the ears and all that wonderful activity that was going on outside is now happening on the screen," she says.
David R. Hawkins is a modern mystic and spiritual teacher. I have referred to him many times on my blog, because I believe that there are no more profound spiritual teachings around today, than his. One of their greatest strengths lies in the teachings' practical simplicity.
It is easy to misread what Hawkins writes, especially if you don’t have much experience in doing spiritual self-work. But anyone who has explored the spiritual dimensions of mind with a true intention will readily recognise many of the truths contained in them.
Some people get caught up in arguing the merits of Hawkins’ claims to be able to calibrate (measure) levels of consciousness. He says that by using muscle kinesiology he can give a numerical value to any given teaching, teacher or concept. Scientific testing fails to back up this claim, but I believe that it would be a mistake to dismiss Hawkins’ writings based purely upon this single issue. There is simply so much profound wisdom contained in his writings that any genuine spiritual devotee will deride great benefit from them.
In Transcending the Levels of Consciousness there is a very simple but profound summary of the qualities and attitudes required to make spiritual “progress” (progress is something of a misnomer, but I won’t go into that here). Hawkins points out that what is required on the journey is really very simple. One can be led astray by constantly learning more, becoming more knowledgeable, becoming more clever, more full. However, genuine transcendence requires an emptying, a letting go. This is where we tend to run into trouble, as the mind prefers to stay in control.
Here are the ten tools which Hawkins refers to:
1.Be kind to everything and everyone, including oneself, all the time, with no exception.
Take a look at this photo. What is happening? Now, take a closer look at the man in the background, the small figure just to the left of the tree. Recognise him? No? Here’s a hint. He is captured here just moments before he is about to commit an act of such unfeasible courage, that it will lead to his being named one the 100 most influential people of the twentieth century by Time magazine.
Here's a little more help. Turn your attention to what is rolling down the road, just a few hundred metres away from the man. Perhaps now you’ve got it. This fascinating image was taken just moments before the man confronted the advancing tanks, shopping bags and all. This video will help jog your memory.
It is commonly believed in many circles - particularly those dizzying circles one finds oneself in within academic and educational institutions – that the rational mind is the highest cognitive set currently available to human beings. The rational mind is higher than the emotional mind, it is assumed, because the emotional and unreflective mind led us into mass superstition during the dark ages. Then science, with its empirically founded scientific method, led us out from the darkness and into Enlightenment. Thereafter came massive progress in science and social science; and the benefits to society are obvious. Just look at all those clean hospitals, computers on office desks and airplanes that can whisk us around the world in a matter of hours.
In the dark ages of prehistory people pretty much believed whatever Mum or the village idiot told them. Most people couldn’t read or write for a start. It was said that there was only one literate man, a clergyman, in all of Britain after the fall of the Roman Empire. Now almost everyone in Britain can read and write; and you take your capacity to make sense of the black squiggles on this page for granted. Thank about that for progress!
People haven’t always employed the critical/rational mind the way we do today.
