Either Way

It occurs to me that it might not be clear that I don't really care which version of the future arrives. I prefer whatever version gives the most health at the least cost. But there's two parts there. MOST health and LEAST cost. I lean towards most health rather than least cost and I think the preponderance of the evidence suggests a system that combines the most cutting edge high tech therapies with safe, natural holistic therapies of old is the ideal. It might not be the cheapest, but its worth paying for something if it has value. Freedom from much of the suffering of old age would be worth our current costs to most folks and it can probably be had for even cheaper. (As I write, congress is preparing to override the shrub's executive order banning the development of new stem cell lines from discarded embryos. The main reason is that so much progress has been made in other countries in the last three years, there is a real
concern about the brain drain fromm America).

Basically, there are a few possible scenarios. After much consdieration and relfection over the past two decades, I have come to the conclusion that one version of a high tech future one is most desirable. Others apparently feel otherwise. If anyone has evidence that anything short of a technological advance will reverse our fate, please share. Anything else is just a bandaid.

1. Scenario one is the current path of destruction. If there are no major advances in technology to clean up the environment and improve medicine, etc., we will exceed our carrying capacity and a dark age will ensue. There would be a high chance of a terrorist attack of a nuclear or biochemical nature as societies degenerated and tribalism increased. I may or may not survive this era unscathed, but at some point (about 40-60 years) I will get sick and die and then my flesh will be eaten by worms.

2. Another would be choosing to live simply and not acquire new gadgets and keep pace with advancement in technology that save time, energy, etc. Ride your bicycle everywhere. Eat only organics, etc. Avoid synthetic anything. This doesn't usually go to the extreme of giving up all technology for most advocates. But the idea is that if we all left a light footprint on the earth, the rate of pollution would slow and reverse over the centuries. Assuming enough people signed on, most ecologists think its too late for measures such as this to have enough effect. And most folks will not sign on. Most folks are still waiting to catch up with us and have no inclination to step lightly along the way. This includes 3 billion asians and 2 billion africans. But lets say they all go organic. Same ending as number 1 for me. Perhaps the world is a better place after I die. People might get along better in such a cooperative utopia and there would be rewards in quality of life as a result. But we might also forestall the development of technologies that could actually solve some of these problems while the inevitable bears down on us anyway. We will be able to console ourselves in our relationships and our faith and our hope of eternal life of the spirit. But some might call that the opiate of the masses.

3. Something that definitely is not going to happen short of some uncontrollable catastrophe is a loss of all modern technology and being plunged back into some pretech paradise of the imagination. But, even so..... same ending as numbers 1 and 2 for me. My guess is that things would get nasty pretty quick in such a world. Pure darwinian thuggery. Short and brutish for most. Now if all humans were killed, things would sort themselves out in a few thousand years, but that would certainly be no fun at all for me.

4. Some major advance in technology that allows us to fix the excesses of 20th century technology. This will be a double-edged sword. Maybe we will destroy the world as a result, but that seems inevitable under the first two scenarios and pretty much a done deal under number 3. Or we will emerge into a new world still wrestling with lots of old problems (racism, sexism, class, religion), just no longer plagued with some of the old ones. Just as very few living physicians have ever helplessly watched a tetanus patient die before their eyes, perhaps the same will be true of cancer. It was unimaginable to cure tetanus and rabies and plague and leprosy once upon a time, so we cannot really make any safe bets about the future of medicine. And the mapping of the human genome really has changed everything. I might get to a live very long time in this world or get bored and kill myself.
Either way....