THE SPECTACULAR SPECTRAL SPECTACLE

When I was a boy, the future still occasionally looked like a 1950's scifi
flick with gleaming cities (no trees in sight), flying cars (no visible
means of support), and people wearing skintight Jetson duds. That future
was a logical extension of that present, a present that is now past.  The
way we see tomorrow is changing, and so our visions and imaginings about
it are different than they once were. 

The pissy thing about the future, of course, is that it's always
completely different than planned.  That's also the wonderful thing about
it.  So I'm not going to risk predictions or musings about the next
century; hell, I don't know for sure what next year will be like.  But I
can and will speculate about three things I think will have an
effect on making the future better than the present. "Better" meaning more
peaceful, safe, fun, interesting, ecologically sustainable, politically
relevant, and economically viable.  You know...BETTER.

The three things are:  retrospection, introspection, and perspective. 
Notice that they all have the root "spec" in them, which has to do with
seeing, as in "spectacles" and "spectrum."  The metaphor we're using
here is one of sight, in physical, emotional, and spiritual terms.  We are
looking somewhere, and what we are looking for are the keys to a future
which will include happy, healthy, prosperous, and evolutionarily advanced
humans.  With or without the skintight Jetson duds.

(The Jetson's seemed happy, but they had the same problems we have now: 
an insane dog, crazy kids, boring work, tyrannical bosses in a
capitalistic/corporate context, marriage conflicts, family conflicts; in
other words all the same interpersonal and inner-personal crap.  And
even though we may or may not have flying cars in the future, we may not
have these same problems, either.  Regardless of what technology looks
like, if even there is a common notion of "technology,"  the human heart
and mind, the spirit and soul, could change in ways no one now can
anticipate.)

"Retrospection" is defined, according to my online dictionary, as "the
act, or the faculty, of looking back on things past" and "memory for
experiences that are past."  When we look back, not selectively, but with
the most accurate information we have, we can discern patterns which
inform the present and future.  Take each decade in the last five thousand
years as one frame of film, then run that film to the present.  What
patterns might we see?  I see one of those changing patterns as being
technological; of doing more with less, but also having an increased
impact on the earth as our population and technics increase.  Yet the
pattern fleshes out as minimization, of great masses of information
flowing from person to person at a faster and more efficient rate.  Of
being able to process that information for practical use ever more rapidly
and clearly.  Another changing pattern is, despite the crime rate, the
movement of humankind from a general acceptance of violence and war as a
natural part of life and being human, to a place where they are regarded
as unnatural and subhuman.  I can't go back and confirm this, but it seems
to me that there was a great deal of hideous violence in history without
much of the conscious examination of it as a human and social anomaly. 

As never before, we humans are looking at our own behavior with new eyes,
with new spec-tacles, and critically examining destructive behavior in
ourselves and others as if it were an illness, a state of dis-ease.  It is
unlikely that our culture, as primitive as it is compared to what I think
it will be, would conceive of the afterlife as a place where one could
hack enemies up all day, only to have them whole the next morning so it
could start all over.  For the Vikings, Valhalla was heaven.  Frankly,
that would be my idea of hell.

So, inherent in the vision of shifting patterns through the course of
history is the idea that there is cultural, social, and personal movement.
That change is part of our legacy.  And that change is not, in the long
run, random, but purposeful and with direction:  away from conflict and
towards resolution.  In the book "Overshoot" by Mona Clee, two geneticists
discover a specific genome associated with the human capacity for harming
others, the gene which suppresses empathetic relationships between people
and nature, which then allows the hurting of living beings because the
hurter is numb to the inter-relationship and empathic connection to the
hurtee.  It's a fascinating concept that may be worth investigating, for
even if there is no such gene, it may lead us down paths that prove
fruitful in our continuing struggle for physical survival and spiritual
understanding.

"Introspection" is "the act or process of self-examination, or inspection
of one's own thoughts and feelings; the cognition which the mind has of
its own acts and states; self-consciousness; reflection."  In other words,
the ability and will to carry on a dialog between all the various parts of
our personalities and spirit as a tool for self-maintenance.  Does my
behavior hurt me or harm others?  Does who I am and what I do feel
genuinely good, healthy, sane, productive?  Or is it the opposite?  The
ability to ask these questions is step one, and the will to follow them is
step two.  Together, they form a healthy introspective personality, one
capable of taking basic human conduct into account, of being able to live
with others and support ourselves, of assigning value to ourselves and
others. "Love thy neighbor as thyself" is a fine example of this
fundamental altruism.

Introspection is not self-flagellation or guilt.  It is the simple ability
to live with others under an ethic of co-existence.  It is the absence of
the propensity to hurt others and nature to the point of self-destruction. 
It is living as if yourself and others mattered.  There is no religion or
ethical system I know of which does not address this ethic.  It is sanity,
maturity, and compassion.  It is the end product of human evolution. 

Some people seem to be bereft of the ability to assess they're behavior in
light of this ethic of "harm none."  They wreak havoc without being
conscious of their ethical crimes, without stopping to think, perhaps
without even knowing why they are acting the way they are.  Bringing the
sources of our behavior and feelings into the consciousness is what true
introspection can result in.  Often trusted friends and allies can help by
providing a reality check for us.  Introspection, at its most advanced, is
a continual inner reality check that is closer to intuition than thought.

Finally, there is "perspective."  The analogy here is of being in a
hot-air balloon over a town.  When you're on the ground, everything
matters, you're caught up in the rush, details are important and obvious,
but you can't see very far.  The buildings, the trees, the necessity of
being present with city stuff vying for your attention and energy all
inhibit your vision.  The balloon lifts upwards, and as you ascend, there
is a sense of peace, of slowing down, of being yourself more fully. 
Details blur and fade, but in exchange your perspective widens, becomes
richer, and larger patterns can be perceived. You can see more, but at a
distance.  Things become smaller and less important as single objects, but
your perspective becomes all-encompassing. 

Another fascinating thing that happens with increased perspective is that
objects that seemed far away from each other, even opposite, on the
ground, move closer together, and at a certain height, they are no longer
separate.  So it is with ideas:  with enough perspective religions,
political factions, ideologies, and philosophies that once seemed
diametrically opposed are now right next to each other, just two slightly
different blips on a wider scope, really very similar after all.  I call
this the resolution of polarities.  At the distance of an astronaut
orbiting the earth, everything is One.  The planet is whole and everything
on it is whole.

The trick here is to both attain such a wide perspective while still be
able to handle to day-to-day details.  Yes, you can see over the next hill
into the distance, but you still have to pay the bills.  So the balloon
has to have an up and a down, and the balloonist has to keep sight of
where s/he is and how many sandwiches are in the gondola.  The Church of
All Worlds, a neo-Pagan religious organization of great perspective, says
that we should have our "feet on the ground, and our head among the stars"
which is good advice on both counts.  Without the first you can fly off
into la-la land and join the ranks of space cadets who have beautiful
ideas but can't get along with anyone.  Without the second you can trudge
along the mud-slick streets, slogging through life without seeing, and
therefore knowing, the larger world, both of ideas and subtle physical
interconnections.  

To gaze into the distance of time, into the future, given our new tools of
retrospection and introspection, we may glimpse a world where humans live
in a state of inner and outer peace, free to pursue adventure, have fun,
and love themselves, others, and the natural environment in an on-going
process of emergent evolution and spiritual balance.