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.
