There's always the next tomorrow. It is always being prepared by the few creative types who jounce along between the gigantic claws of the commercial marketplace and the political landscape. Both of these places are created from the will of the majority, serve the majority, and always will. Since the creative and thinking types are the distinct minority and are not favored by the majority they have only one role and that is to prepare for the next tomorrow. It will happen. It will happen because the people, even the majority, are quite smart and understand that what they make out of themselves is very haphazard and transitory and needs to be overthrown every generation so that the new can germinate and flourish. This is a vital element in a free society.

I read a review of an article by Bill Joy on the future of computers. For someone who co-founded Sun Microsystems and is considered a pioneer, he says some startling things. It poses a very interesting cultural question. Will human beings become obsolete? Will the machines self-replicate themselves and create a world where the humans are merely museum pieces? Without sounding prejudiced I'd say that a person heavy on intellect and low on imagination would come up with a pessimistic view like that. The opportunity is developing for human beings to re-discover and re-define their nature as they off-load so much information from their own brains. It's a very mystical concept, this emptiness of mind that one finds in all schools of mystical belief, west and east. So when fear and pessimism begin to show up among those who have created the damn thing it's really a call for the creative types to start re-imaging the world, assuming that much of the content of the brain will be displaced. It makes it a dangerous time, a time that needs creativity and responsibility.

Pessimism is mostly a clever ploy to withstand empty enthusiasm and come up with some heroic angle of attack to rescue the original idea from its inevitable destruction. Pessimism is the highlight of a cynical era that is always trying to get to the root of problems. This has become an automatic response that is very predictable, though not without its vitality. Intellectualism has been defeated in our era since it depended on a social/political root that is no more; that has been rejected by the very people who fought and died for the idea. So, reduction to the root becomes most likely a hole into the infinite universe and not the groundfloor for a new angle of attack on problems raised by technology or capital.

A person considers himself fortunate when he passes through a pessimistic period, like the past 25 years, and still has his laughter. We who were young during that time believed that the world was ending. We believed that the world was doomed to extinguish itself because of its stupidity. It appeared that men relished chaos and death in those days. They spoke recklessly about the desire of extinction while others kept conjuring up images and statistics of doom.

I think it can be chalked up to inexperience and nothing more. It is obvious that no one in their right mind can know the fate of the Earth except geologists who project its end several billion years from now. No one can predict the miracle that will rescue things in the nick of time. And something will happen in the next billion years to take humanity out of the dilemma of their home being destroyed.

However, the experience of doom is very profound and can be fatal to the good nature of human beings.

And what else is there to counter the pessimism that always swirls around the young but hard work and the regenerative power that pushes out of stale boredom to create anew?

Perhaps through that infinite hole is the possibility of a wisdom that grasps the constructive principles at work and encourages all of the splendid human attributes that need to spring forth, alive and seeking manifestation.

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David Eide
January 24, 2014