The Internet is one of humanities greatest tools yet devised. It adds a whole new angle to the phrase ‘The Pen is Mightier than the Sword’. For the first time peoples can communicate with one another across the globe in an instant. Imagine how it was before the net? There’s no way you would’ve picked up a phone and dialled a number at random hoping you’d get someone to talk to. If you did and you managed to hit a proper sequence of numbers and someone answered you would’ve been most likely told to ‘piss off’!’ But now people can ‘communicate’ with each other over most of our planet. On the net you will always find someone with similar interests to yourself and with them you can swap ideas or debate theories. In such an environment humankind must flourish if people can swap views and ideas. Then you must start making the building blocks of a new world purely by default if not intention? Things will begin to change ever so slowly at first as humans become much more psychologically cosmopolitan and the more contacts we make with other people then the better our understanding of the ‘whole’ must become.
The biggest problem humankind has faced since we first walked out of the Rift Valley has been the lack of raw data needed to begin our journey of discovery towards the understanding of the whole. All the shortcomings of humanity arose out of the lack of raw data and has lead us to use stopgap measures to fill the gaps in our understanding called ‘religion and war’. Any perceived weakness in our basic systems of the past was rectified by the simple and straightforward expedience of ‘religious fervour’ or ‘patriotic wars’, ‘any or’ could do the trick or combination of both to cover our lack of understanding of the whole. To this very minute both work every bit as well as they did to our ancestors in the very distant past. Bullets that have been blessed now strike their targets with a precision that at one time only gods or god could’ve attained with the fabled flaming spears and lightning bolts. To the pious or the politician it matters not who the recipient of the blessed bullet is. If they die by it then it was God’s will that they should die.
That is basically how the human thought process has been forced to work since we started writing rules and laws for the use of civilisation as it was and is, and have been our guide and our downfall in far too many instances since. All have been utilised to our detriment by the so called ‘enlightened ones’ against the rest of us who aren’t ‘enlightened’ in the past and is sadly still being used for exactly the same purpose. It’s quite ridiculous that we should collectively be still thinking along those lines especially in view of the huge advances humankind now has at their fingertips. We should be way beyond the ‘old ways’ and be moving into the threshold of the new. No longer should we tolerate the dogmas of the past to interfere with our mapping of the new horizon that lies in front of us. Let the time machine of life move forward and let us go willingly with it into ‘time’ and use the new tools to our best advantage. Of course the old must come to the event horizon with us because we link the old and the new. But as we replace the old with the new let us for logic’s sake diminish the influence of the ‘old ways’ by the proper use of our new technology.
There is little point in lighting the International Space Station with candles so you can see the electronic marvels that control it in space. But if we continue using the old religious and political dogmas like the candle then there is little point in our having scientific wonders at our disposal when we can only see them in the dim guttering flicker of light from a greasy tube made of paraffin wax. We must light our way to the future with the brightest most advanced illumination we can possibly create. Do away with the shadows of the past, let us look with eyes that see ‘what is’ our new ‘event horizon’ instead of always wondering ‘what is’ lurking in the shadows.
The computer was created for war and at first it broke the enemy’s codes then later used to aim missiles at one another but today we have them in our homes and even our pockets. New horizons do await us if we have the sense to look and navigate towards them. For the first time in our history we have the ability to plan the future so that when we get there we have a system ready for us to use in place. In the past the new horizon of course has always been there and only by time passing we moved forward to new pastures in space and time. And be they good or bad we were stuck with them. Now we have the tools to navigate to any point in the future and the ability to project our future plans over the event horizon where we or future generations only need on arrival to initiate the well thought out directives minus dogmas. Barring natural disasters we do have the ability to make it so. No longer do we need to be at the vagaries of the cosmic wind nor the tides of time as our ancestors were. We ‘can’ set a course and follow it or indeed change course if we so wish to land on another point on our cosmic horizon. In that future place humans should need no longer fear the church nor politicians and their fickle moods, where their influence can no longer destroy human advancement, a place where if they exist at all are only for spiritual comfort for one and simple daily administration for the other. Only at that point can humanity truly say it is at last out of the Rift Valley.
The only qualification I have in writing the above is that I have read ‘Brand Loyalty’ the book that allows you to ‘Think!’ and no matter how poorly constructed my diatribe and statements may be that book encouraged me to ‘think it’ and ‘say it.’
Pat Hutchison
Find more of Pat's writing at McStorytellers, at Sanners Gow Blog and from Unco books