Most often, I see people speculate about the immense possibilities alien technology might open to us. Infinite power. The ability to travel between stars.
But it has ALWAYS seemed to me that more technology is not really our most pressing issue. We have the ability NOW to provide for every human being on the planet. We have the technology NOW to create comfort and security for every human being on the planet.
What is of vastly more interest to me is the CULTURE of alien civilizations: their “religion”, if advanced races have such a thing, and more important how they have made peace among themselves, how they have integrated their technology into their lives, if they have done it harmoniously.
Better CULTURAL ideas are what we really need.
After putting it off for many years, I have finally started reading Tarthang Tulku’s first major book in English, “Time, Space and Knowledge.”
He writes this in the Preface:
The emphasis on reaching an understanding of reality and solving material problems through science and technology has had such impressive and useful results that most of the world has started to follow suit. But in doing so, many cultures are now abandoning their heritages–although these latter often include insights which are necessary for a balanced perspective in living, and even necessary for the success of the scientific solutions to life’s problems. The highly developed industrial nations have led the world in adopting this path (to the exclusion of other approaches); we should now consciously consider our responsibilities to restore a balance, an integration of material advances with the deeper values of humanity. And when there is a balance of the two ways of thinking, technology can be utilized as a very valuable and creative force.
To my mind, most of the morality in the world–I can’t even really use the word spirituality, since where the word still exists it often feels shallow and weak to me–is in effect a different level of Consumerism, which is what most Americans, in any event, view as the TRULY sacred.
The dominant cultural conflict in our country at present is between Christians (and Jews and Muslims, and other people of faith and tradition), and people who have bought into a prefabricated, artificial, plastic mode of being and emoting. If you join what I have often called the cult, you get–you are empowered to consume–simple ideas of moral superiority, and superficial social belonging.
But what might be called Thing-ness, as a synonym for Consumerism, is a very, very weak basis for a social order. It teaches that everything should be easy, even morality, even spirituality. The fact that this is not true is responsible for most of the frustration, depression, anxiety, anger and conflict in our present era.
It is easy to generalize the Amazon ethos to life in general. All problems are supposed to be simple. People are supposed to be simple. Point and click and you get a complete worldview, with everything you need.
Is it not accurate to say that viewing people in categories is really just a form of laziness? Is it not a direct result of the belief that life is supposed to be easy, and everything provided with very little effort?
There is no shortage of solid spiritual work out there, no shortage of deep, insightful thinkers who have much that is useful and practical. There are many books out there–obviously I am a partisan of Tarthang Tulku’s work, but he not the only smart one out there providing solid and wise templates–upon which we could easily base a much better civilization. What is lacking is people who feel the lack sufficiently to step back from their lives and do something HARD, that take daily work across many years.
I was watching a retrospective on Esalen a few years ago, and the old-timers, the old hippies, said that what really made a difference for them was meditation. Daily spiritual work. Not drugs.
Now, I may try Ayahuasca at some point. It seems to be a useful tool. But ONLY to complement my daily practice. Only to, hopefully, open up some pathways, to open some gates I have been pounding on for many years, and which I will then seek to integrate in my daily practice on my mat.
We live in a time of such POSSIBILITY. So much good is possible right now. Global peace is possible. Global prosperity is possible. But not when we are lazy, when we are running around all day like lunatics, and not when we depend on conflict for psychological stability.