Years from now, people will peer into the
afterlife using advanced technologies, in the same way modern medical tools
make possible observation of a developing fetus. A novel scientific method providing
demonstrable, repeatable access to numinous fields of energy will make plain
what mystics and seers have known for millennia; that the dead are never far
from us. Unprecedented advances in all aspects of human inquiry can be expected
during this time, inspired by an intellectual rigor that places less stress on ‘certainties’
and more focus on ‘ideas’, an ‘epistemology of possibility’ rather than one
based on institutionalized doctrines or dogma. Meanwhile, Earth’s solar system
will be gradually colonized by a consortium of private and public interests.
Needless to say, with access to fuel sources from nearby planets and asteroids,
Earth’s energy problems will gradually diminish, and with them, geopolitical
tensions and obsessions with profit and consumption. By the mechanism of a to-be
created economic system, wealth will be measured in a variety of ways, allowing
each person fair and ample share of food, property, shelter and disposable income.
This reordering of value follows a period of upheaval, which people are still
in the midst of experiencing. When the upheaval is over, there will be no more ‘religion’,
‘politics’, ‘knowledge’ or even ‘humanity’; at least, not as these things are
currently defined. The change will be quick, and it will be lasting. In the
future, commuting to the outer planets, to Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, will be
as common as airplane travel in the middle of the last century. Our kind will
move off-world will the sort of vigour and curiosity that best exemplifies the
species. There will be problems on occasion, but the difficult period
associated with the 10,000 year curve in our evolution will have ended, and it
will be clear to all that humanity’s future lies among the stars.
(2012)
(2012)
