In the spirit of holiday goodwill…
Pictured here is the Christmas Kitty. His job is to interest and placate you long enough so that you'll read the words in this article.
What it would take to bring about actual peace on Earth? The behavior of nations is hardwired into geography and resource access, but it stands to reason that there should be some way to override those via additional technologies.
Since I’ve resigned myself to being somewhat optimistic, however naïve that is, I have a few half-formed ideas that make me feel warm and fuzzy.
Social revolutions
The history of the 20th century has been a graveyard for big ideas. Fascism and communism were horrible. Capitalism is ugly, heartless, and brutal, but it has the benefit of – you know – usefulness. What we’re left with is a middle way: Walking the line between socialism and capitalism. As we’ve learned in recent years, you can’t kill the golden goose. However, you are apparently permitted to force feed it sleeping pills and hallucinogens.
We’re a ways off from a social revolution, but in a few more generations we’ll probably be hungry for it again. Let’s hope we need to build fewer caskets. Maybe we’ll change some of our existing social norms for the better. I think most Americans agree that caring about civil rights has been really cool. What will the next round bring us?
Longevity science
Old people are the future. Seriously. One of the many core developments that allowed humans to create civilization in the first place was having old people around so that we wouldn’t forget really important stuff. Okay, writing helped too. But old people who could write? Those buffs stack well.
I would love to see a world where annoying geriatrics (which I hope to be, some day) move us further toward greater co-existence. Taking some of the intense heat out of youthfulness would actually be attainable if we could gang up on them. While it’s certainly no bulwark against geopolitical conflict, it would work nicely in concert with other technologies.
Cheap, clean energy
We keep getting promised this stuff, but it still hasn’t happened. There’s a lot of hostility toward nuclear power in this country in spite of the fact that it’s probably the least dirty and most efficient method. I suppose it would help the PR campaign if people didn’t historically associate it with mass murder.
Orbital solar cells could double as a giant laser and we could be afraid of that. Let’s hope that wind farms never get used to lop off heads with those massive blades. After the usual mess of direct government control, my hope would be that, over the long term, it’d trickle down. Once the tech becomes ubiquitous and sufficiently redundant, nations would have one less factor to work into their realpolitik equations.
Proof of concept
Warfare is already more civilized. Rape and pillage still happen, but they’re not state-sanctioned anymore. A quick read about the classical world followed by a few episodes of HBO’s Rome certainly makes me appreciate the technological development called the Judeo-Christian ethic.
That there’s a broad acknowledgement of rules for war still astounds me. The United Nations is a failure in many regards, but in one important way, it hasn’t been. It’s yet another venue to go to in order to put off killing each other for just a little while longer. The WTO is a monster… or not, depending on your slant. But it also provides a venue for working out business arguments that doesn’t involve tanks.
To do that, we’ll sacrifice our stated and often imaginary values. That sacrifice is less shocking to me now than in my younger days. I have my values, to be sure, but sure care less about those -isms. Humpty Dumpty needs to be put together again. I’m not about to bitch that we start with the duct tape rather than super glue.
But all this can be done. I’m increasingly convinced that American character will undergo another renewal. The one thing that throws my entire thesis into disarray, though, is this: It’s almost 2010 and we still don’t have jetpacks.
Happy holidays.
