On "Future By Design," And The Vision Of Jacque Fresco

The Documentary

I will begin by listing the documentary that first exposed me to a 20th/21st century genius named Jacque Fresco. His vision for the future has captured the imagination of many, and rightly so.  This documentary seems a great introduction, and so far, I have scarcely gone beyond it in my studies of its tenets.  But I have never been more interested in studying anything than I am in studying this man and his vision.  So this blog entry is certain to be the first in a series as I seek to fully comprehend what is barely comprehensible.



Jacque Fresco

Fresco, now ninety five years old, denies being a "Utopianist" or a philosopher, but if he is not, then Utopian ideas and philosophies are nonetheless forced into one's mind by exposure to his thinking and his work.  He has spent his life thinking about and doing what he can to make things better for the future of mankind, from the perspective of an engineer/inventor who has a profound gift for understanding what simply makes sense.

I'm sure he would say that the critical thinking sparked by his ideas is nothing more than a problem-focused rather than a solution-focused mode, supported by our status-quo training.  He seems to have freed himself from that in his creative thinking, without becoming unrealistic.  He admits that the profound changes in technologies, societies and cultures necessary to realize his vision will be extremely gradual and problematic; but he does not let that fact slow him down in his work.  He has thousands of models and drawings that illustrate his ideas and concepts.


Lofty Fundamentals

It seems more important to me, though, that his thinking and work have a fundamental genius to them: it has to make sense, or he has no time for it.  His beginning point is always, as he said it, "What do you want?  What kind of world do you want?"  What he wants is judicious and wise use of the Earth's resources (and one needs to think of a resource in the broadest possible terms here), including technologies, toward two simple goals with which no one in his right mind would argue: to free mankind from want and need (which, he says, is indeed possible considering all the Earth's resources), and to improve and preserve Earth for the benefit of the planet and its inhabitants.  Megalomania?  No question.  Worthy of every person's best efforts in life?  More than any two ideas I ever heard -- at least from the perspective of the value of human life and Earth ecology.  To quote the "Venus Project" website:

One of the basic premises of The Venus Project is that we work towards having all of the Earth's resources as the common heritage of all the world's people. Anything less will simply result in a continuation of the same catalog of problems inherent in the present system.

He firmly believes in science because of the lack of ambiguity in its language.  He goes so far as to wish for the development of language that is more precise than most language has become, and that reflects knowledge rather than opinion.  That one concept alone threatens to really boil my melon!  And there are very many more concepts shared in the documentary.

Jacque Fresco believes that technology, infrastructure and environment that make sense will lead to a society that makes sense, primarily by solving problems permanently, and freeing mankind from the unnecessary deprivation from which most of it now suffers.  He believes that lack of access to tangible and non-tangible resources, of every description, is the basis for all human suffering, need, conflict, waste, and limitation.


From A Spiritual Perspective

At the very least, these unabashedly lofty notions make sense, and serve as a beginning paradigm for our creative thinking on what we need to be about in this life.  Fresco envisions Heaven on Earth, and my spiritual beliefs include a certainty that, one way or another, such an Earthly existence is indeed coming.  My belief in God includes the belief that He loves mankind, and intimately loves and knows each individual living thing that has ever existed, or ever will.  So, from a spiritual perspective, I believe that God already and wholeheartedly (just consider that word in relation to God for a moment!) supports such notions as these -- and means to see them come to pass.

Why shouldn't we get on board with that?  Why shouldn't we dream as big as is the ability to dream with which we were created?  Why shouldn't each and every one of us devote everything we can to a loving and reachable goal for mankind, starting today?  Why shouldn't we believe that it is necessary for us to devote ourselves to a better world fifty generations from now, or however long it takes?  Why?  Unrealistic?  Pshaw!  Everything mankind has ever achieved was first considered to be so!


Mankind has been, if nothing else, self-limiting.  It's time we each put an end to that, no matter what it takes.

Jacque Fresco appears in his statements about spirituality to be agnostic.  But if the God I know Himself believes in something any man has in mind, that God will get behind it.  Will He do so in your life?  I would literally die to preserve my belief that He will.

The only important question I put to myself and to you today is, "Will you seek and 'get behind' the will of God?"

Inasmuch as His will is reflected in Jacque Fresco's vision, we darn well better.

A Peculiar Energy

I feel it.  I have rarely felt it before, at least at this intensity.  If I am a writer, I should be able to describe it so that you can relate to the experience.

My morning coffee could have something to do with it, but it is certainly not a major factor.  Being in love seems to be a pretty major part; but of course, when you're in love you don't really know anything for sure.  My mind wants to use it for good, but my heart doesn't care about that so much as it does about using it at all, come what may.

Funny thing about energy: it is part of the whole universe and beyond, and yet it can affect a mere cell within that universe.  It even seems to affect every cell in my body, the cells within a cell.  Reminds me of Walt Whitman, which, actually, in my case, is not a good thing.

And I have heard that energy, by its nature, never ends, but only moves from one place to another.  If so, then I suppose the production of this piece of writing is such a process, and you are receiving energy from me.  Wow, huh?

And from where did I receive it?  Other writers?  All contact with humans?  Also contact with God and nature?  The energy from food, etc. going to my brain, which was involved in this process as well?  To every question above, I think "yes."

Now here's where it gets deep: as this -- let's say "energy transfer" -- takes place within a time-space continuum, is there a particularity, a singularity, a uniqueness, a peculiarity to it? Surely this exact thing has never, ever, since eternity past, happened before, nor will it again.  At least, in my mind that is the case.  We know so little.

Regarding all the above, I say that whatever energy is, it is a small part of God, His creation, or both.  I think He is into uniqueness.  I think He blesses what we do, whenever we will simply allow that with our free will.

So I think that my writing this, and your reading it, is a peculiar transfer of a peculiar energy, and this is no less than a miracle.

Follow?

~

So It Is

A friend quoted this today:

To please God…to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness…to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son—it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is. ~ c.s. lewis

My reactive thoughts begin with the scriptural statement that Christ is the part of the Godhead through which all was created.  We also read that The Father is The Creator.  I wonder if The Father, in some sense, self-created or "self-actualized" when His nature was, or is, expressed in Christ.  Certainly we would not presume that God is a mere organism such that we are, or that the term used to describe a human process would fully encompass this notion.  But there is, both expressly in scripture and implicit in Lewis' statement, an idea that "God The Son" (eternal), who is "The Son of God" (as He was on Earth) is a source of great pleasure and happiness for The Father, and that this delight has something to do with us -- at least, the "us" that can be said to be "in Christ."  Modern Christian theology seems usually to include a belief that fallen man can only be ultimately pleasing to and accepted by God inasmuch as he is "redeemed" by this being "in Christ."

Further, a scripture argument can be made for the notion that the Earthly Christ went through a rather natural growth process during His early life:

And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. Luke 2:51-52 (NIV)

and this could easily be thought of as a process of self-actualization.

Now, I don't know about you, but this drive for self-actualization has been prominent in my life, at least from a negative point of view.  What I mean is that, personally, I have keenly felt a lack of reaching much of my potential.  Psychology has offered me little to help with this, but belief in Christ (not as the man-made religion, but as a personal relationship with a currently-existing spiritual person) has offered much.  Self-actualization as a human endeavor seems to me to be, at best, a striving for and some degree of attainment of a "better" self.  I suppose that, today, I can honestly claim some of that.

But then, in comes this statement of Lewis', as do so many of his, to completely blow out of the water any such humanistic ideas.  To personally be a delight to the only sovereign and unique Creator of all things?  As a work of art of His, or a son of His?  No wonder Lewis' contemplation of this thought resulted in words that, even for him, were extreme: seemingly impossible, even a "weight or burden of glory."

But I must agree with all the above.  Christ was and is eternal; was actualized as an Earthly human; fully so as The Son of God; and He invites mankind to be "in Him."

For those less familiar with Christian thought, these statements are part of what was called "the gospel" by the early Greek Christians.  That word simply means "good news."

So it is.

~

On Human Emotion

A friend wondered why emotions are never simple.  Indeed, with all the understanding there may be in academic, scientific, and practice circles, the complete nature of human emotion remains mostly a mystery.  Anything at all can trigger one.  They are the joy, spice, and passion of life, and the source of its greatest suffering.  They are wholly contained within the person and his boundaries, they are no one else's responsibility but that of the one bearing them, and they account for both the source and much of the fallout for what we call "mental illness."

It is common to include the factor of human spirituality.  Among those who believe in a single God in the Judeo-Christian traditions, most, if not all, believe that even He has emotions.

Wikipedia has a pretty comprehensive article about such a broad subject, but reading it simply offers a look at the many facets of it.  Doing so offers no real, palpable answer to the question with which we began.

In psychotherapy, we often attempt to help people simplify how they think and speak of emotion in order to provide "handles" that can be grasped for conceptualization and conversation.  It has been said that there are only five feelings: mad, sad, glad, scared, and hurt.  All the words that we use to describe emotions can be conceptually squeezed into one or more of these five words.  It is not an academic concept, but merely a therapeutic tool to attempt such a thing.  At least, this simplification process can help us be as precise and descriptive as possible when thinking or speaking of our emotional experiences.

In my humble opinion, human emotion transcends everything about human existence, save for spirituality, which is a much more nebulous concept, and will have to remain so within this discussion.  But few people would characterize spirituality as being unrelated to emotion, or even emotion to spirituality.  What about this idea of transcendence, though?  It is this transcendent nature of human emotion that best answers our question.  To fully understand the complexities of emotion would be to fully understand what we are.

The arts have provided perhaps the most comprehensive attempts in human history to approach the human experience, and usually from an emotional standpoint.  Surely when we see Michaelangelo, hear Bach, or read Tolstoy, our human experience is enriched, almost as much as our experience of real life itself.  Ancient cultures seem to have usually supported artistic expression in its finest forms, from the ranks of royalty to the most humble of people.  Perhaps when (if) our culture becomes more aged, it will have the collective human wisdom to do the same.  As the most purely capitalistic culture in history that I know of, I have my doubts.  So far, in our brief, newborn-cry as a culture, what have we done about the arts?  Perhaps more importantly, what have we done about the arts enriching the lives of our own human race?  Perhaps more telling, what resources have we committed to more base pursuits as opposed to the more valuable?  The broad subject of education in this country comes to mind easily, in light of recent events.

To me, the final question is the most disturbing: what will happen -- indeed what has already happened in our culture -- to human. social, and cultural emotion and experience as a result of what we have or have not yet done about the arts in America?

~

Am I a feather on a brook, or refuse in a tsunami flood?

Am I a rescued infant, or a worn-out rescuer?

Am I more aligned with my own problems, or with the world's Solution?

~

Do I care about my loved ones, or just that I am a caring soul?

Do I see the glass as half-empty, or the toilet overflowing?

Do I want what is best, or do I only see as best that which I want?

~

Who is the greater enemy, others or myself?

Who are those who love me most, those who know me best and do not pray for me, or those who don't know me at all and pray for me every day?

Who pays attention because they care, and who cares because they pay attention?

~

Love is the simplest thing in the world, and complicated things kill it.

Peace is easier than war, but so often we feel like wastefully doing it the hard way.

Joy lives in infants who are loved, and in the elderly who have loved.

~

Many questions, few answers.

Many trials, few acquittals.

Many miracles, few who believe.

Many poor, and besieged, and few to help.

~

Crossing My Line

A friend said, "I wish I could be less effected by the moods of other people. What's the secret to that?"  My off-the-cuff response was, "Cement this thought into your head, and recite it every time: "Her feeling is hers, not mine. My feeling is a gift to us both."


Maybe it's mostly the coffee kicking in, but this has me thinking.  People often do not understand one of the basics of healthy relationships: healthy boundaries.  In mental health circles, this has been discussed and hashed over and taught for decades.  But such things as developing healthy boundaries are learned from parent to child, in relatively functional family systems.  So the impact of this broad notion will take many generations to sink into our culture, and, of course, in many family trees, never will.


What is a healthy boundary?  I Googled it, of course, and the top thing on the list was this short PDF article, courtesy of someone at Mississippi State University (I think; MSState.edu?) that does a pretty good job of introducing this.  Those who are interested enough to read for just a couple of minutes would do well to take a look.


My thoughts as a retired mental health professional follow.  I remember a friend, mentor, and colleague who was the most assertive man I ever met.  "Assertiveness" has to do with boundaries.  Perfect assertiveness would be behavior that always protects one's own interests while completely allowing all others to protect theirs, and never being the source or the chooser of conflict.  The result of his model-assertive behavior was frequent conflict with others, usually coming from their side of his healthy boundary.  Generally speaking, people in our culture expect us to maintain an unhealthy, too-loose boundary of our own so that they can "get in" to us to whatever extent they want at the moment.  The same people often have a rigid, un-crossable boundary over which none may pass.


One of his patients provided an example of healthy boundaries and assertiveness that he often cited.  He worked for many years with men who had been referred by the courts for domestic violence, and was regarded in a large metropolitan area as the local expert.  This patient had learned well, and had come a long way.  After his treatment, the man's wife became very angry, in part because she could no longer cross his healthier boundary when she wanted to.  She became so enraged that she was out in the yard, violently destroying some of his favorite and most irreplaceable possessions.  She was making a lot of noise, and several neighbors had gathered to watch her.  For his own reasons, some of which should be obvious, he chose not to retaliate in kind.  Instead, he stood with the neighbors and watched, talking calmly with them about what she was doing.  He had no appropriate way to control her behavior -- indeed, none of us ever does, since each person is responsible for his own behavior -- so he had to accept what she was doing, for the moment, and maintain his own healthy boundary, assertively protecting his own interests -- to the extent that he could.  Funny thing (?) is, the less he did to respond to her inappropriately, the more enraged she became.  Perhaps she wound up behind bars that evening.


Reminds me of a ground-breaking philosopher and psychiatrist who wrote a poem that became the content of a best-selling poster in the 60's.  Known as the founder of Gestalt Psychology. his name was Frederick S. "Fritz" Perls.  He was writing about healthy boundaries, but he was far more honest and wise about them than the publishers of the poster.  They left out the last line:


Gestalt Prayer

I do my thing, and you do your thing.

I am not in this world to live up to your expectations

And you are not in this world to live up to mine.

You are you and I am I,
if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful.

If not, it can’t be helped.

~

On Divorce and Loss

I wonder if other divorced people have an experience closely similar to mine, one in which there finally comes a time when you know you have "moved on."  Perhaps it usually comes to people as mine did, after a long period of thinking you had moved on, but really hadn't.  It seems as if one doesn't realize the moving on has taken place until after it has.  I'm assuming this kind of experience is pretty common, since the aftermath of divorce is really a grief experience, natural to people when they experience a loss of any kind.

I notice a different outlook on life, one that is less centered upon the past hanging on, and more centered upon creating a future.  Remembering all that came with the loss is rueful, but settled, like the sludge in a stream, stirred up by a storm, finally becoming part of the bedrock.  I have learned the modern term for this "stage of grief:" acceptance.

Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross forever changed mankind's understanding of grief in her 1969 book On Death and Dying, still required reading for anyone studying the human experience.  During my education and career in human services (including hospice work), I sought to apply my knowledge of such foundational work to my own experience.  At age 56 now, I have survived many losses of all kinds, including loved ones, a marriage, and even the former relationship of my children to myself, which always suffers some sort of change in a loss.  In my fortunate case, my children are wonderful adults, and the change has been as healthy as our grief experiences were.  I am even more fortunate that my ex-wife is still a valued friend who is able to enjoy time with me, the children, and their families.

Not so for many.

The clinical term for a troubled grief experience is "complicated," which always secretly amused me.  "Complicated" is a good, non-alarming term for post-surgical infection, but a bit mild for grief.  When someone is troubled or "stuck in" the grief process, the suffering can be deep, and permanent.  In the specific case of a divorce, this can even have many multi-generational aftershocks.

So what is my point?  The grief, of a divorce or other loss in life, is important, to each of us and to all those around us, not to be taken lightly, or its peaceful resolution for granted.  It deserves our attention in many forms for us to heal, and the attention of our loved ones especially, who often mean well, but nonetheless can throw a lot of fuel onto our grieving fire.

Regarding losses that have come, or certainly will, to you and to those you love: read the book.

~

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Sleeping Dog

Late Saturday afternoon.  Dog sleeping.  Bored with the movie in the DVD player.  Meal didn't quite hit the spot.  Cold rain outside.  Friends all otherwise occupied.  Think I'll call my sons.

Son #2, called him first because he has weird work hours right now, and it happens to be the time he's usually up.  Left voice mail.

Son #1, voice mail: "To leave a message, press one."  Pressed one.  Nothing.  Couldn't leave a message.  I hanged up.

Now what?  This is a dangerous situation, idle hands and all that.  Bypassing deviant thoughts numbers one through four.  Maybe it's time to let my creative mind take over.  Concentrating.

Bypassing deviant thoughts number five through eleven.

Son #2 calls back.  He's busy.  Wish I were busy.  Everyone but me is busy.  What's that about?

Concentrating.

Go outside in the cold rain in shorts and a t-shirt.  Look around.  Nothing.  Look at the car.  No ideas.  Go back in.

What is this, writer's block?  No; writer's block is when you want to write but can't.  I tell myself that I should write, at least because I don't have anything better to do, but I really don't want to write.  Maybe I really don't want to do anything.

Bypassing deviant thoughts numbers twelve and thirteen.

Thirteen.  Now there's something to write about.  Unlucky number.  In tall buildings there are no floors numbered thirteen because of that.  Why was the last deviant thought numbered thirteen if people go so far as to purposefully skip that number when they number floors in a tall building?

Imagining myself in an elevator in my mind.  No thirteenth floor button.  I wonder about the button numbered fourteen.  Will it take me to a floor, a new deviant thought, or the same deviant thought I had that was numbered thirteen?  I decide I don't want to find out.

I have a fleeting thought about how they make movies as I look at the solid-blue screen left on the TV from when I stopped the DVD player.  If I dance around in front of it, can I later put in a background that makes it look like I'm dancing around in front of a waterfall or something?  Ah, that would be deviant thought number fourteen.  It was different than thirteen.  The scary thing is that I decided not to push the button.

Food.  Just ate, not hungry.  Dessert.  Don't have any, except butterscotch pudding powder, the kind you have to stand and stir for an eternity, because it tastes better than instant.  But it doesn't taste better if you never make it because you don't want to stand and stir for an eternity.

Besides, there's no milk.

Ok, then, go to the grocery!  Now we're onto something!  HA HA!  Get a dessert while I'm there, something really good, like one of those cheesecakes that costs as much as a whole bag of other groceries!  And get milk.

I remember my long grocery list.  If I'm going to go, I might as well get it all.  I'll be worn out by the time I get home with a trunk full of groceries.  Emotionally worn out, too, because of the grocery bill, fattened by several things like the cheesecake, each item a futile effort to comfort myself while in a comfort-less mood.  Then I have to carry them all in.  Then I have to put them away.  Well, at least the cold stuff.  Sounds exhausting.

Maybe I'm just tired.

Nap.  Not really sleepy.  Could probably sleep anyway.  Am I depressed?  One of the few things that ever depresses me is that I'm always wondering if I'm depressed.

Ok, that is most likely deviant thought number fifteen.  At least I'm moving up in the world.

plankton plantations whirl about my glass-paned face and rubbered head distant swimming shadows threaten or strike wonder eyes straining hoping the adventure will appear the treasure the bones a mermaid the Nautilus Johnny Depp that big-assed jewel from the old lady who was Kate Winslet falling past me love to float weightless weightless weightless

Guess I dozed off for a minute.  Maybe longer, it's darker now.

Dog still sleeping.

A Cow Peed On Her Car

You can't make this stuff up.  Just this morning, a friend was driving on the interstate next to a cattle truck, and a cow peed on her car.  On a rainy day, she went and got her car washed!  This kind if thing keeps reminding me of Roseanne Rosannadanna, played on the old Saturday Night Live by Gilda Radner, saying things like, "Well it just goes to show you, it's always something, you either got a toenail in your hamburger or toilet paper clinging to your shoe!"  She does an entire bit here on smoking!  LMAO!

But what is the freaking Zen here?  Where is the meaning of this encounter with the oneness of all things?  (By the way, my favorite book on Zen is STILL Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig.  The best place to see it is on this page in the World's Coolest Stuff! store.  There are many categories there to browse, and it's all COOL!).  Where is the KARMA!?

I mean, you're driving along, not a care in the world, and SO many things are more likely to happen!  Why a cow and not a bird?  Birds have tagged my car like a million times!  Isn't there some kind of health law that requires cattle farmers to, I don't know, catheterize the beasts or something?!

In Rosanne Rosannadanna's honor, I'll continue the rant.  I HAVE had some pretty weird things happen to me in my long (?) life.  I am not proud to say that this is a true story.  Once when much younger, I had the poor judgement to walk into a smelly strip club -- just out of curiosity, of course -- to see what was what in such a place (ahem).  I did not want anyone to know I had done so.  LOUD music.  Colored lights.  Nudity.  The unfamiliar taste of beer.

I had a friend with me.  He proceeded to get blind-drunk enough to dance with a 55-year old trailer trash woman in a worn-out, white, fringed leather cowgirl outfit, and short, white, old-fashioned go-go boots.  He was so drunk he talked of taking her home.  I mean, this woman looked like Ghandi.  As I leaned my forehead against the wall in front of a disgusting urinal there, a guy next to me said someone had just broken into a car in the parking lot -- describing my car.  It was true; much stolen, including irreplaceable things.  Walking back inside, I immediately noticed the song that was playing.  It was one you should already know, download, or at least listen to somehow, both to get the impact -- and to have such a fine song in your collection.  It's called "Gotta Serve Somebody."  That means, "Well it might be the Devil, or it might be the Lord."

The next day the break-in -- including my full name, the time (2 AM), and the location -- was published in the newspaper.


It just goes to show you, it's always somethin'.  Either you're with a drunk guy that wants to sleep with Ghandi, or a cow is peeing on your car.

~

FaceBook Crazy

With some 660,000 members (way over half a billion, folks), Facebook is certainly a "thing."  Like very many of those hundreds of millions of people, I have been on it way too much lately, for a variety of reasons.  One reason is my new shopping blog, World's Coolest Stuff, which I certainly hope you will visit, bookmark, and from which start all your online shopping.  Hey, we all gotta eat.

Another reason is my fascination with it.  Yesterday and today I tried to look at all the "friend suggestions," a list of people who know the people you know.  Even though I'm sure that I have far fewer friends than average, both days I had to quit before getting to the end of that list -- if there is an end.  The little scroll bar would grow longer at every turn.  But what I saw thereupon was the fascination:

People who know people I know, of course.  Hundreds of them.  People whose names I recognized but didn't know why.  People whose names I recognized, did know why, but still I didn't know.  Interesting people.  People whose pictures showed interests that I share.  Handsome men.  Beautiful women -- lots of them.  Weird people, judging from pictures, or names, or both.  Organizations.  Activists.  All walks of life.  Baby-boomers.  Their kids and grandkids.  Friends of my kids, and their friends.  People with foreign-sounding names.  A cross-section of the world, so it seemed.

The beautiful women part got my attention on several levels, but one level was that it got my social-scientist, research juices flowing.  When I was in grad school, we studied various "isms," like racism, ageism, and some  less-recognized isms, like weightism and lookism.  Lookism.  Lots of beautiful women on Facebook.  (Forrest Gump voice:) "Ah'm not a smawt may-an, but ah know what lookism i-yuz."  One theory in lookism is that people who are culturally viewed as attractive get more attention, more friends, more favors, etc.  Hmmm.  I would love to see some research on this as it applies to statistics on Facebook.  I mean, after all, we're talking about what will soon be three-quarters of a billion people in the study population.  Geez.  Staggering.

So that other blog of mine I mentioned?  The one that is 75% shameless, capitalistic marketing and profiteering?  It came to be because I was already on Facebook all the time; and I recognized that sometimes people listened to what I had to say.  If they might buy something, and I get a few cents each time, why not?

This blog is another forum for what I have to say, too, but not about stuff to buy, as fun as that is.  It's a forum for more serious stuff, like the one point of this post:

Facebook is scary.