I (like a lot of people, I think) spend a lot of time thinking about the future. "If only X and Y already existed", I feel, "I could work on my project, Z." In my experience, dilemmas like this are characteristic of working on big, real problems in the world today. Working on real problems requires confronting the fact that not all of the resources necessary to solve those problems exist yet, which is paradoxically precisely why they are worth working on.
The philosopher Alan Watts talks about how the organism and the environment go together, how their relationship is symbiotic and in fact in a sense they are the same thing, an organism-environment. So, viewed one way,-- when we look at real problems worth solving today, like creating an economy based on life-serving values, social and organizational structures based on generosity and support, energy solutions which will save the planet, and so on--these are all solutions which do not exist yet in a sense because their environment does not exist yet.
What is the environment, or context, in which an economy based on life-serving values can exist? Well: a preponderance of minds who want, demand, and, with more than words, really viscerally expect that kind of economy to exist. We need a consciousness shift in order to support the best values humanity has come up with, we need the valuers who can create and sustain that kind of world.
I love the novel Hyperion, by Dan Simmons, and especially the powerful images and metaphors coming through that book. One of the best was the idea of travel backwards through time, and the ripple effects such a possibility might have on the world. Here's a small ripple: What if the perfection of life, consciousness, and human society on Earth was traveling backwards through time towards the present? How would we know, what would it look like? Somehow it would have to interface with the present--how would it do that? It's the reverse of another question: How do we get from here to there?
And I think it's important to think about such things, to give the question space in our minds. I think beliefs about what is possible condition what in fact is possible. So I'd suggest if we want to make a big change, we should think about 1) where we are (personally, in a relationship, in the world) 2) what we want in the respective domain, and 3) small changes that would move us the in direction we would like to go. In considering each one of these, I would suggest we mull over it, just be curious, and observe what comes up.
Here we are, at one stage of the world's development, looking at better values and better possibilities, wanting to shift towards it. I think the way progress will eventually be made--the way all change occurs--is, essentially, through projection. We will look at this world, and really expect it to be better. Regarding the world exactly as it is now, and also the possibilities
for growth that the same place holds, we will see the new world before
it is here. The future will become immanent, its environment arising out of pure possibility, and, totally new and never seen before, it will be born.
When you see it, you should make space for it in your heart.
