Interested, excited and intrigued about the future

Look from almost every perspective the future looks grim and learning more about the reality and causes of that grimness makes it look even more overwhelming and grim.

We're mostly aware that things can't go on as they are and that change must come, or that we face a number of rather odious scenario based probabilities... No-one is quite sure of what's going to happen next or collapse first.

Not to mention that we still got our own personal stuff to deal with.

So in the midst of this, how do we stay positive, excited, relevant and interested in playing a role in this unfolding future?

And here's the thing, if we're not positive and excited about the future we're anxious, fearful, timid and reluctant. Not a good place for creative, innovative and productive efforts.

Mastery; insight or understanding and skill. There is no secret insomuch as we don't know how to do this, and no quick fix.

It took us eons to create the culture and the challenges we have and it's going to take us time to change paradigms, ways of thinking, create new human values and new systems.

It's a bit like the overweight person going to the doctor saying, 'doctor, how do I loose all this weight quickly?' The doctor replies, 'and how long did it take you to put it all on?'

Interested and excited though depends on deeper levels of autonomy and freedom especially from the garbage that normally occupies our intellectual bandwidth. It requires deeper levels of conversation, personal identity and purpose and a deeper connection to community, support and care.

It requires that we get and practice the traditionally spiritual art of surrender and action, of the transformation of suffering, of awareness and presence, because that's the only place we find real joy and autonomy.

And I believe it also means that we do all of this, knowing that whatever we do, may in fact be to late to change any of those rather grim probabilities.

This is why more than ever we need to learn the skill to moderate very intentionally and skillfully which thought, feeling, concept is allowed to grow in the garden of our awareness, and of increasing the scope and depth of that awareness.

Our greatest and first gift though should be mastery. And then from that place of deeper understanding and skill tackle the challenges we have according to our developed interests and passions... joyfully and skillfully.

Engaging and grappling creates solutions

From the moment the first bucket of gold was extracted from the earth, or the first barrel of oil was pumped from a well, the end was in sight. It's naive to believe that a finite resource can last forever, especially when consumption doubles every set period.

On the upward slope of the bell curve, there is more than is needed (it's easy to get) and the cost to extract it is relatively inexpensive, but on the downward slope, every barrel, every bucket costs more to get.

Have you noticed prices going up?

Eventually a point is reached when a barrel out costs a barrel to get and the utility of the resource has come to an end.

On a local level we get it... on a global level we seem to think that the resource is inexhaustible, which it isn't, the same law of a finite resource applies.

A little blue ball hanging in the blackness of space, finite in dimensions and resources.

When multiple exponential curves collide; energy, debt (economy), environment, population, technology and complexity it's going to be time to rethink the very principles and values upon which our global culture is build.

It's going to be time to [re]ask, what it means to be human?

It's possible but not probable that technology will solve the problem (immediately). It's possible but not probable that the next generation will suddenly develop the mastered complexity of thinking to solve the challenges, but are we willing to bet on possible over probable?

Although the solution depends on new and different ways to behave, how we behave depends on how we [on the leading edge] understand and think, and our thinking only changes when we engage and grapple deeply with the challenges.

And believing that a solution will miraculously present itself denies the opportunity of grappling, but also relieves us from the responsibility of making uncomfortable choices.