A FUTURIST MANIFESTO – NOTES FROM THE TELECOSM
An Exercise in “Far-Seeing”…
A Projection of Five Major World-Scenarios…
An Exploration of Some Global, Planetary, and Postmodern Themes…
A Preliminary Reconnaissance-Sketch of Possibilities…
For Philosophers and Babies only…
Preliminary Calisthenic. Nation states in the future will be like North Carolina or Wales or Szechwan: municipal, regional and/or local designations denoting an appealing charm complex of cuisine, language dialect, and history/tradition. Harmonious contact and thorough-going tourism will supplant the terrorism of non-contact and estrangement…
1. Major Regression. A widespread reversion to barbarism, mercenary armed forces, and a new feudalism; the triumph of fragmentation and chaotic heterogeneity; futuristic fiefdoms; nomadism…
2. Empire. The triumph of over-unification, uniformity, and stimulating and/or pacifying homogeneity (McDisneys)… Global commercialism reigns; “the society of the spectacle” (large scale programmed events); wealth and power continue to concentrate, anonymitize and recede into the background while new foreground versions of bread and circuses capture and encapsulate our attention…
3. Centrifugal Cultures. An array of postmodern tendencies and technologies will define varieties of posthumanity (“in situ futures”); the triumph of radical diversity and divergence [see Mark Dery’s Escape Velocity, and Paul Virilio’s The Art of the Motor]… “Humanity”, a temporary abstraction housing a congeries of different impulses and temperaments, makes a leap (a la Nietzsche) and becomes different species in an acceleration that befits an expanding universe… the confluence, exponentializing and hybridizing of technological streams… This will result in obvious (space “ships”) and unobvious (cyber-realms) multiple leavings of the home planet. [See Roger Shattuck’s Forbidden Knowledge, esp. Part Two, “Case Histories”, and Michael Zey’s recent The Future Factor.] There will be, for example, genetic, cyber-, and spacefaring hybridizations, as well as new strains and braided variations… Technology, as McLuhan saw so clearly, simply empowers all tendencies and abilities and raises them to new qualitative and exponential degrees, resulting in radically new and unprecedented environments… Different visions and worldviews, but more significantly, different actual in-process constructions of what it means to be human will be far more important
than nation state ideological quarrels and aggrandizements…
4. Planetary Enlightenment. Balanced Human/Planetary Evolution. The triumph of harmonious differentiation and coordinate unification… Ecology and consciousness, technology and wisdom, evolving in tandem… A billion flowers blooming in a cosmic meadow… A collective human transformation a la Teilhard de Chardin, Arthur C. Clarke, Olaf Stapledon, Douglas Harding, and Tarthang Tulku [ See The Phenomenon of Man, Childhood’s End, Star Maker, The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth, A New Diagram of Man in the Universe, and Time, Space, and Knowledge, A New Vision of Reality, respectively.] There is something deeply benign and much larger than our conscious intent being built (in stark contrast to a complete surveillance society wherein “intelligence” represents the convergence of an umbrella of police and military agencies worldwide, coupled with continuing technological refinement) -- say the intelligent and sensitive infrastructure of global community where no pain or distress goes unnoticed or unaddressed, a proper sensitive sheath or ensoulment of humanity… Perhaps this vision of the beloved community is an archetype of the fundamentalist, utopian, or prophetic imagination… Teilhard: “On the cosmic level, only the vastly improbable is true.”
5. The Alternation Cosmology. The Steady State / Unsteady State Scenario. The world will never stop being “the world!”… No matter how sublime the possibilities of cosmic pottery, things will always and forever have a “surd” quality, an irrationality factor and/or unfathomableness, at their base… We are always off-balance. Here the world always changes and yet remains the same, remains the same but nonetheless constantly changes… Here, the Buddhist “samsara”, the merry-go-round of existence, the reincarnation of all tendencies and types, the world-structure and composition essentially the same… The world remains quintessentially defined by tension and the inevitable generation of opposites and contraries… Perhaps, as in Hinduism and Buddhism, some resolute and doughty souls emerge now and then from the existential morass and matrix of selfish desire, and its exquisite permutations of anguish, to the eternality and safety of a beatific state… Regardless, there have always been different “worlds” (‘maya’, ‘lila’, etc.) played out in exacting detail in what is ostensibly the same arena (for example, different kinds of death prepared for and consequently experienced). Our dreams prescribe our realities. Different temperaments, philosophies and worldviews have always defined different human species masquerading as one. The kaleidoscope of evolution tends to obscure the “eternal recurrence of the same.” Be different worlds as they may, tendencies will always develop in relative isolation from each other, and despite temporary dominances, will always create the conditions of instability. The world will always be volatile. The world will always be ec-centric, off-center, throwing us off-balance, making us forever vulnerable to minor, cometary and tidal influences and uncertainties. Towers of Babel, Twin Towers, and space colonies will always topple or eventually dis-integrate. Ultimately gravity will triumph. Upsurges of novelty will constantly upset the devil but not change the nature of the game. [See James Carse’s profoundly stimulating Finite and Infinite Games, and of course Herman Hesse’s classic The Bead Game. Also, see Simone Weil’s theologically incandescent Gravity and Grace.] So, Siddhartha the Buddha: ‘Existence is inherently unstable… Work out your salvation with diligence.” And Jesus, “The Kingdom of God is within you.” Or, as with some sages like Ramana Maharshi, Bankei, Krishnamurti, Thich Nhat Hanh and others, we should REALIZE that we are ALREADY in the wondrous kingdom, our deep home.
A postscript and brief commentary:
The above represents a dramatic enlargement of scope, a suggested kind of inquiry, in which to consider the current maelstrom of tactical and instrumental-weaponry thinking. We need to have a vivid conception of a global community as a source, a hope, and a counter-vision to paroxysms of patriotism and paranoia. We need the quiet but unmistakable leavening of the “third force” of conscience, the wholeness of moral knowledge, that sees the loving solidarity we must journey to.
The above represents a context for thinking about:
- terrorism as an ineluctable feature of highly technicized societies [See Andrei Codrescu’s The Disappearance of the Outside, A Manifesto of Escape, and Robin Morgan’s prescient first chapter, “Everyman’s Politics: The Democratization of Violence,” in her The Demon Lover, On the Sexuality of Terrorism.]
- the preservation and growth of international law in the coming era of diffuse Orwellian conflicts
- refining the mechanics, soft and hard, of a complete surveillance regime with international police and other agencies dovetailing (versus truly intelligent and sensitive infrastructures)
- an array of postmodern critiques and incipient cultures forging ahead to new domains of experience
- the convergence of spiritual traditions that go far beyond denominationalism and sectarianism to the ‘mystical heart’ of religions; a hearty ‘no-religion’ that sees the sacred latent in all things
Dan Novak, September 9, 2002
