Big changes ahead
August 11th 2007 15:39
Ladies and Gentlement there are big changes ahead, big indeed. Step right up, get your big changes, right ahead, plenty for everyone, big changes up ahead.
But seriously, there are.
I think we will undergo such big changes in our own nature, that it will be more useful to give ourselves a new name, it will no longer be useful to call ourselves Human. Put another way, we will cease to be Human, we will be something else. But let's not get caught up in a language argument.
But what is this change? What to think? There are so many crackpots out there with their own theory on what is going to bring about change in our nature, some people say AI, other people say it will come out of our manipulation of our own genome, other people think it is to do with the internet becoming the main society, other people think it is to do with increasing spiritual awareness, other people think it will come out of a perfect scientific understanding, other people think it is merely a force of history.
Here's the scoop, they are all more or less right. None of them has it any more wrong than the others, they are all on the right track but might have slightly missed the point, especially in opposing themselves to the other methods. For it will be the convergence of all these and many more. It will be the absolute convergence of infinite parts, for it accelerates its own progression.
As Future consciousness evolves, its evolution speeds up exponentially. In the past many people have been blind to major social and political upheavals which stood before them. At the coming out party of the enlightenment a select few of the 2nd estate and a majority of the first estate could see the bigger picture and hitched their wagon to the third estate. But still many did not see that simply once the people had stood up and said "we are in charge now" that was game over. Still the question remains, why was the French Revolution so disgustingly violent? The only answer is because they had to be, and it's easy to see how one can take the next step and assume that they had the right to be.
But as I was saying, those were some pretty major upheavals in the way things were at the time, for those people to have the foresight to understand what was coming in the future enough to join up, that's quite something.
Most people have a problem thinking about the future, because they are too distracted to think about it. Others are bad at it because they are tricked into only thinking about what the culture industry wants them to think about, their future consciousness is to do with saving for purchases, planning events and holidays, maybe even predicting market trends. Those who do give some thought to future on a global social scale face an impossible task, so who is to say that those mentioned above are any worse at it? Nonetheless, here's my recipe for future thought:
1 - Change
when we try to think about the future, the first thing to accept is change. Most people accept change as inevitable today, while many still cling to the old and try to conserve it. Obviously change is a function of time, if you attempt to think about the future and there aren't lots of fundamental changes, then you're not thinking about the future, you're thinking about the present!
2 - Accelerating change
While many have got the hang of linear change, change is an inherently exponential process. So while some can look back, see the way in which things have been changing and predict the same ammount of change happening in the future, this is only useful for looking into the near future, as the real curved rate of change soon diverges too far for your predictions to be meaningful. It is plain to see, no matter which field you look in, especially evolutionary ones, that change is exponential, changes become more radical and also come at quicker and quicker periods of time. That means that if there has been rapid changes in your past ammounting to massive upheavals, then you can rest assured there will be unimaginably huge changes up ahead and they will come a lot sooner than you think.
3 - Trading on what you know that you don't know - being open to possibilities
By now I'm sure everyone is familiar with the technique of splitting your knowledge into four classes, things you are aware that you know, things that you are aware that you don't know (eg I know that I don't know how to speak spanish), things that you aren't aware that you know, and darkest of all: things you aren't aware that you didn't know. Forever our blindspot shall be those things that we don't even realise are out there and we have no knowledge of them. By analysing those things which we are aware that we don't know, we can come to know them better, and thus promote them to the class of something which we know that we know, from where it shall later become instinctive and be something we aren't aware that we know. But, we can also use our analysis of what we know we don't know, to humble ourselves in relation to those things that we don't know we don't know. This will force us to open up possibilities in our theories of the future, accept that we have no idea what it looks like, we can elaborate on some of the trees, but we must not mistake it for seeing the forest, so long as we realise we are not seeing the bigger picture we can always strive to see bigger and bigger pictures.
But seriously, there are.
I think we will undergo such big changes in our own nature, that it will be more useful to give ourselves a new name, it will no longer be useful to call ourselves Human. Put another way, we will cease to be Human, we will be something else. But let's not get caught up in a language argument.
But what is this change? What to think? There are so many crackpots out there with their own theory on what is going to bring about change in our nature, some people say AI, other people say it will come out of our manipulation of our own genome, other people think it is to do with the internet becoming the main society, other people think it is to do with increasing spiritual awareness, other people think it will come out of a perfect scientific understanding, other people think it is merely a force of history.
Here's the scoop, they are all more or less right. None of them has it any more wrong than the others, they are all on the right track but might have slightly missed the point, especially in opposing themselves to the other methods. For it will be the convergence of all these and many more. It will be the absolute convergence of infinite parts, for it accelerates its own progression.
As Future consciousness evolves, its evolution speeds up exponentially. In the past many people have been blind to major social and political upheavals which stood before them. At the coming out party of the enlightenment a select few of the 2nd estate and a majority of the first estate could see the bigger picture and hitched their wagon to the third estate. But still many did not see that simply once the people had stood up and said "we are in charge now" that was game over. Still the question remains, why was the French Revolution so disgustingly violent? The only answer is because they had to be, and it's easy to see how one can take the next step and assume that they had the right to be.
But as I was saying, those were some pretty major upheavals in the way things were at the time, for those people to have the foresight to understand what was coming in the future enough to join up, that's quite something.
Most people have a problem thinking about the future, because they are too distracted to think about it. Others are bad at it because they are tricked into only thinking about what the culture industry wants them to think about, their future consciousness is to do with saving for purchases, planning events and holidays, maybe even predicting market trends. Those who do give some thought to future on a global social scale face an impossible task, so who is to say that those mentioned above are any worse at it? Nonetheless, here's my recipe for future thought:
1 - Change
when we try to think about the future, the first thing to accept is change. Most people accept change as inevitable today, while many still cling to the old and try to conserve it. Obviously change is a function of time, if you attempt to think about the future and there aren't lots of fundamental changes, then you're not thinking about the future, you're thinking about the present!
2 - Accelerating change
While many have got the hang of linear change, change is an inherently exponential process. So while some can look back, see the way in which things have been changing and predict the same ammount of change happening in the future, this is only useful for looking into the near future, as the real curved rate of change soon diverges too far for your predictions to be meaningful. It is plain to see, no matter which field you look in, especially evolutionary ones, that change is exponential, changes become more radical and also come at quicker and quicker periods of time. That means that if there has been rapid changes in your past ammounting to massive upheavals, then you can rest assured there will be unimaginably huge changes up ahead and they will come a lot sooner than you think.
3 - Trading on what you know that you don't know - being open to possibilities
By now I'm sure everyone is familiar with the technique of splitting your knowledge into four classes, things you are aware that you know, things that you are aware that you don't know (eg I know that I don't know how to speak spanish), things that you aren't aware that you know, and darkest of all: things you aren't aware that you didn't know. Forever our blindspot shall be those things that we don't even realise are out there and we have no knowledge of them. By analysing those things which we are aware that we don't know, we can come to know them better, and thus promote them to the class of something which we know that we know, from where it shall later become instinctive and be something we aren't aware that we know. But, we can also use our analysis of what we know we don't know, to humble ourselves in relation to those things that we don't know we don't know. This will force us to open up possibilities in our theories of the future, accept that we have no idea what it looks like, we can elaborate on some of the trees, but we must not mistake it for seeing the forest, so long as we realise we are not seeing the bigger picture we can always strive to see bigger and bigger pictures.
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