01-18-2019, 02:45 PM
(01-17-2019, 08:11 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:(01-13-2019, 12:37 PM)David Horn Wrote:(01-12-2019, 11:08 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: Dependence on large-scale organisations like states and corporations is the root of the problem. We have to either go back to more a natural way of life, like the Amish did, or find a way for high tech to be usable in independent small scale communities.
The first option is not just unlikely, it's nearly impossible in today's world. The second option is possible in the intermediate future, but not now. Tech is not that good yet, though it's certainly heading that way. For instance, Toyota, that most staid of Japanese companies, is working on robots for the home. When that gets to be common, the idea of human work will become optional or even recreational. Scale will be of no concern. What human society will look like is an open question I will never have to explore in person. You might.
I was born in 1985, the last Xennial year. Labour should be obsolete around 2200. I don't think I'll live that long, but it remains a possibility. If there are nanobots able to rejuvenate human bodies, or brain transplants...
https://www.futuretimeline.net/23rdcentu...e-timeline
Space colonisation might also be a factor, allowing people to live an idealised version of ancient life in small-scale habitats. Kim Stanley Robinson's novel "2312" explores this possibility.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2312_(novel)
Quote:We're geared for challenges, which may make our soon-to-be less demanding world less compatible with our inborne humanity.
The "power process". Perhaps in the post-scarcity world we will satisfy this need by playing virtual reality games? Or human nature will have to be altered.
It's interesting to speculate about the future. For myself, I have to add a more esoteric spiritual perspective. Renicarnation is a likely fact, so we all may be back for this brave new world ourselves. How much we learn to remember of our past lives is another frontier of human knowledge we can cross in the new age.
Rejuvinating human bodies, space colonies, home robots, all are definite possibilities. I agree humans are inborn to challenge. But there's so much to challenge in our world besides physical labor for survival and material prosperity. That doesn't even begin to cover it. We will continue to explore and discover, advance science and technology to ever more frontiers. If we can re-discover the actual purpose of liberating ourselves from work, we will have so much more to do in building ever-greater and more beautiful temples, already such a great part of human legacy. We will have more to discover about our past, and so much more art, music and literature to create. And how many athletic challenges remain, just for the sport of it. How many more of us can become great athletes than in the past? Can medicine advance enough to make physical and mental handicaps a thing of the past?
And the most difficult thing, how will we overcome our human inabilities to relate to one another in peace and harmony? How do we become one people on one planet without any national, ethnic, racial or gender barriers at all, without subjecting ourselves to a monolithic, borderless, tyrannical new world order corporate global state? Will we learn to travel beyond light-speed, and meet and relate to other civilizations in the galactic federation? How do we end war for good, and abolish all weapons, including all guns? How do we make our technology fully compatible with the Earth, without any pollution or any threat to any life, and how do we keep our climate livable into the far future, even in spite of natural cycles, asteroids and volcanoes? How about our messed up social, economic and political structures? How can we improve our friendships and our romantic and sex lives, and our ethical sensitivity, and remove inhibitions without any need for stimulants and drugs, so we don't need "me-too" movements and traditional family values anymore? Technology, medicine, transhumanism and brain manipulation I think will have precious little ability to advance very far along these paths; only spiritual and personal growth work will suffice. That is the greatest frontier. There are so many challenges for humans.
Rediscover the new age movement, overcome philosophical Enlightenment-era physicalism, and ditch ancient authoritarian religions and superstitions (not to mention all conspiracy theories), and we will meet so many more challenges. The churches and religions of the past were stuck in traditionalism and authority. Science has ignored the soul, the reality of the hard problem. So the real esoteric level of spirituality as knowledge rather than belief remains largely virgin territory for most people, but now it's all open to us in the new age we live in.