The Sound of One Hand Clapping (tm)

1.What is most critical to the overall progressive momentum of the human species -- sealing the catastrophic ruptures afflicting the most challenged areas of the world, OR causing the leading edge of humanity to go even farther forward?

Obviously it’s not an exclusively either/or type of situation, but, perversely, perhaps the best course of action would be to let the ‘failing states’ burn themselves out, and rebuild from the ashes. Intellectually this seems acceptable, but emotionally, morally, and aesthetically it is almost too horrible to contemplate. It takes far more energy and commitment to build something up than to destroy it, so in the long run, over the next 20 years, it will be critical to establish fully functioning, robust networks that can absorb the impact of destabilizing forces in the world. A visionary model, as lived through extrordinary individuals will be vitally important to the continuation of civilization. What is the nature of these individuals? They are information synthesizers and meta-distributers- in the parlance of P2P networks, they are the global ‘seeders’, cross-disciplinary loci of awareness, processing, communication, and action.

2.What sort of world will exist in 50 years if both the most liberating and regressive trends of today are carried forward together?

This is difficult to acertain, since so many unforseen factors can tip the balance in favour of one side or the other. I think an analogy to the early universe would be apt: we will see cooling and condensing ‘clumps’ of coherent intelligence emerge from the hot chaotic global state. Small groups of highly technologically sophisticated people will essentially ‘recolonize’ the wastelands left by the die-off of the regressives. This to my mind is the most likely scenario, and follows the same kind of development patterns seen after any historical mass extinction event. We just have to make sure that we are decentralized and portable enough to withstand the accelerating social breakdown.

3.What type of inner practice for individuals is most likely to steer their being in the direction of effective socio-political and ecological action?

If we are speaking of so-called ‘regualr’ folks, the best course of action i could suggest would be to undego a crash-course of self education via the internet. There is an astounding quantity of high quality freely accessible information out there, such that a moderately intelligent and open individual could have a solid foundation with about a years worth of intesive study. Once the knowledge base is in place, the next step is application of that knowledge through technological liberation, ie. the creation of genuinely sustainble systems of living, such as permaculture food production, micro-scale renewable energy harvesting, and ecological manufacturing via design-on-demand, digital fabrication, and good ol’ fashioned recycling and reappropriation. Then its a simple matter of spreading this knowledge/application through networking with other individuals, building up larger and larger sustainable structures.

4. Which 3 technologies, about to emerge, have the greatest potential to disrupt even our best anticipations and estimates of the overall situation?

I think those i covered in the last question are the biggest ones, but rapidly emerging fields like nanotechnology and open-source biology are going to be big. I think the dark horse in the race will be some form of strong AI in the next two decades, which will radically accelerate our design capabilities as well as information management. Human-machine interfacing is a logical outgrowth of nanotech coupled with strong AI, but it remains to be seen if this will be truly viable. A good book on the subject is Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near. Also, this shows some more intriguing fields of developemt.

5. Which saints, heroes, visionaries or events are among the most applicable symbols for the needs of any current transformative movement?

There are almost too many to count! And i think this is fundamentally the strength of this movement, that it doesn’t have any real leaders, but is a confederacy of equals, all working, all contributing. It is a systems approach that sees everything as inexorably linked together into a non-linear web of causality. For me the greatest sign is that this movement has already become so decentralized that no one person or organization can claim to speak on behalf of its goals and concerns. Paul Hawken’s book Blessed Unrest details this phenomena, and i would direct anyone who is interested in these sorts of things to check it out for a fuller exploration of this process.