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The Battle For Our Future

THE BATTLE FOR OUR FUTURE

I was sitting in a jet airliner high above the clouds flying from one side of the Australian continent to the other when the following insights came into my head. Reaching for a pen to make notes I did not then realize that internet travelers sitting at computers might later share these thoughts.

So what about our future together on this lovely blue green planet? A bright future or one filled with doom and despair?

Nothing exists, except as first a possibility.

Thought… intent, precedes all manifested action.

For example, go to Sydney central railway station the hub of the largest suburban rail network in Australia. There, you find many different trains setting off to different directions, so it will be your “intent” or “desire” that will get you to one of the hundreds of stations or destinations.

“Belief” also plays a big part in the process. If you don’t believe there is a station, or trains that work with electricity, and which transport people to another place, then you will not even go to central station, and board a train. A Papua New Guinea highlander who had never been to a rail station would not even understand what it was, and stand transfixed with either wonder and awe or terror! This analogy of course applies to all airports and airplanes.

The future is a bit like that. Some are indifferent. Some take control of it. Some fear it.

Does this make sense to you?

So what about traveling together into our common future on this planet we call home?

The future we all have together on this planet is nothing more, and nothing less, than a competing battle of beliefs, possibilities, desires and intents! All existing only in our mind, no where else.

That is the real battle we have on our hands, not The War on Terror launched by the fundamentalist George Bush Junior, or the War on Drugs nor the coming Trade War between China and the United States of North America.

Doom and Despair or Hope and Optimism? Two paths each leading to a different destination or outcome.

Hold a mirror to your mind and look both hard and deep at your own beliefs around your own personal future. I believe that there is no better place on Earth than to do this sitting in a seat above the clouds, in a plane moving between destinations. Those who are watching TV around you now, or are asleep are missing a great opportunity. So, when you turn off your computer may I ask you also to look at the beliefs your friends hold about the future, and see where you are positioned to them by comparison?

Next. Look one level deeper than that, and see how these beliefs about the future have been formed by mass medias since that “911” event. These future projection since 911 are mostly negative, however in the decade leading up to 2000, they were mostly positive. This next decade can slip back into positive territory again, but only with mass media’s permission. We proceed…..

All attitudes about our future on this planet reduce back down to either one of two simple options – tending towards either a positivist’s outlook, or towards a doomsday outlook, and degrees in each of those two opposite polarity positions.

Be optimistic or be negative.

To be embracive and open minded, or be fear based and restrictive. It is a very simple and clear choice.

So do you think that we humans believe in either a positive or a negative personal future? I believe there are no exceptions to this choice. Some people may claim that they are neutral and sit on the fence, but interview them closely, and at length, and many will then tend towards one position or the other. They may swing from one to the other position before eventually the pendulum of belief-opinion settles on one of those possibilities…… a Positivists or an Armageddonist.

That described me. I had been a swinger for years.

However this year I finally emerged from the tunnel of confusion and fear to take a strong position in the small camp of the Positivists high in the Mountains overlooking the position down in those deep dark valleys of the massed mobs of Armageddonists.

Actually it is just a numbers game. No one actually knows just how many millions are camped with the Armageddonists, or how many millions are camped with the optimists.

Quantum physics and the nature of the Universe itself prove – “nothing about the future is fixed in stone”. This, despite what the fundamentalist Book of Revaluation or Koran believers often state with fear filled emphasis. The future is a belief, not a fact. Quantum physicists understand that at the basic quantum level every thing in the universe first exists as an un-manifested possibility.

Even what scientists and futurists believe is only based upon computer models and data sets, and are only projections and possibilities, not fixed future outcomes. So those highly touted computer futures are not fixed in stone either, but are based on probabilities and possibilities, not certainties.

I sense there might be over a billion humans who believe our future is all contained in a the mind of a vengeful male God who wants to punish us. The ancient Greeks believed this was Zeus on Mt Atlas with a thunder bolt. But as we know this was just an opinion (belief) contained with-in their own human minds. Most off us seem to get offended if our beliefs are called beliefs not truths or facts.

So right now in 2010, I now see potential futures as a basic battle between the two opposing sets of minds, and what these minds create and produce.

This in some ways is an ideological war and conflict between those inspired by hope and those burdened with despair.

Perhaps we can also ask – “where do these beliefs and opinions come from”?

I “believe” that it is plainly obvious that most of our opinions in this age we are experiencing, come from mass medias. In previous centuries many of our beliefs came from powerful leaders; from decrees issued by Emperors, or from heads of large church organizations. Then since the invention of printing certain individuals. During the age of Darwin in the 19th century these writers and individuals became increasing influential. For example Charles Dickens had tremendous influence in England, which ruled a world empire.

Last century and this, due to the gateway of media, there are now tens of thousands of professional communicators competing for our beliefs. For example Stephen Spielberg is an American film director residing in American, a nation which culturally dominates much of the world. Today Spielberg has many other directors all over the world competing for a global audiences attention, his is not a sole voice.

In many respects our era is different to other eras. This is a fact not an opinion. Information technologies, and the ability to transmit information from one person to other people around the planet instantly just has no precedent in our recorded history.

Since the invention of mobile phones, and the spread of the Internet, just who has control over these technologies? Who exactly controls content on the Internet? No one -after the content is launched.

No one once they are launched.

There are too many churches with access to media today, too many individuals clamoring for a voice in the market place, and too many industry lobby groups like the military and political parties, all competing for beliefs, that no single voice seems to dominate anymore, as has happened in previous centuries when most of the working population and their children were illiterate.

For example there are 400 million people with a Google Face Book page, and if it were a nation it would be the third biggest in the world. Face Book Nation.

So returning again back to the two agendas: Those with hope about the future and control over their own mind, and those acting through fear and repeating opinions fed into their mind.

So just how do we ignore the role of mass media which seems to be setting the negative agenda? I think this is a really fundamental question we must all ask in this media saturated age

Look at any TV news bulletin and see if the information that is presented there is negative or positive. In print you will find hundreds of negatively oriented stories to just dozens of positive stories.

That is why I now work in the community media sector, where positive viewpoints can be expressed and be appreciated, and also experiment to find out how the Face Book Nation and the Internet can become a positive factor in our collective future.