Project Vision 21

Two millennia ago, at the time of the Roman Empire, people complained about the shortness of their lives. And they were right, since at that time the life expectancy for most people was only 35 years and someone in their 40s was considered “very old”. But, according to the Stoic philosopher Seneca, life is not short, but ill-lived.

In his essay On the Shortness of Life, written in the middle of the 1st century, Seneca argues that each person has all the years necessary to achieve during those years the achievements that they must achieve in their lives. But many people, perhaps most (and perhaps almost all), simply waste their lives.

As Seneca well says, the "people of the crowd", that is, the "unthinking crowd", complain about the shortness of life not because life is short (it is and that is a key and undeniable existential factor), but because they don’t live in such a way as to achieve their greatest achievements. They excuse themselves behind the shortness of human life for not taking responsibility for their lives.

Until just over a century ago, life expectancy in the United States was about 60 years. It’s now about 80 and today's children are anticipated to live to be 100 years old. Furthermore, the next generation could have a life expectancy of 120 years before beginning to age, that is, 120 years of healthy and active life before entering old age.

But, regardless of whether we live 30, 60 or 120 years, or even forever, each of those years is useless if we simply accumulate them, but without living them. As Seneca said, we live "without investing" in our own life.

Even more clearly, and with immense consequences for our lives in the 21st century, Seneca argues that we live our lives in such a way that "life passes before we become aware that life is passing."

For this reason, he explicitly says that "life is not short, but we make it short", or, as Seneca says, we “waste” life.

Let's be honest: we are more concern with networks, messages, posts, and even what happens to the characters of our favorite fiction (be they soap operas or sports) than with our own lives. We are distracted from the reality of our own and then when something happens and shakes us, when we become aware of life, it’s gone. 

There is not a moment when we have our lives in our hands, Seneca says, adding that we are "bad owners" of our own life. So bad, he maintains, that those who are good guardians of their own lives (the wise ones), noticing we are not, will not share anything of value with us.

Meanwhile, he says, we just live our lives “following the decisions of others”, either “paralyzed by sloth” or “exhausted by greed”, always making new plans, but going nowhere. We merely exist, but don’t live. 

Seneca spoke 2,000 years ago, but his message is true today and for each of us.

I was recently asked to give a (virtual) presentation on current trends and, as a consequence, the possible future that we would not be heading for. So, I started with a warning that I always use: “I do not predict or know the future”. And then I said: "If tomorrow an asteroid hit Earth or the Martians invade us, what I am saying today is worthless."

I always refer to the possible impact of an asteroid or a possible alien invasion to mention two highly unlikely events, although not with zero probability, which, if they occurred, would force us to put aside the beliefs, actions, behaviors, and habits that we now have. In other words, we always live with an undeniable level of uncertainty.

On this occasion, after my usual comment about asteroids and Martians, one of the participants interrupted me, saying: "Francisco, you are very wrong." When someone tells me I am "very wrong" I am tempted to say, "You are very right: I have been married for 33 years and my wife remembers every one of my mistakes."

Before I could say anything, our friend added: “Asteroids don't exist, and Martians don't exist either. No asteroid is going to destroy us, nor are the Martians going to invade us”.

Although we can (and should) debate at length the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life (and we should debate even more whether intelligent life exists on this planet), I wondered how anyone can doubt the existence of asteroids, something irrefutably known for centuries and probably millennia.

The only thought I had at the time was of those priests who refused to look through Galileo's telescope, arguing that there was no need to do so to determine that Galileo was wrong.

Our good friend (again, before I could say anything) continued: "The Bible doesn’t name asteroids or Martians by name and, therefore, they don’t exist." My intuition to think of the priests and Galileo was not so wrong. Furthermore, this participant added, “Science ended in the 6th century BC. The Bible says so."

I must say and emphasize that, as it should be obvious, I am not against the Judeo-Christian scriptures commonly known as the Bible. Quite the contrary. Those scriptures have been and continue to be the fertile soil of my spirituality and the constant motivation of my studies.

But to believe that the Bible is a catalog of everything that exists or will exist in the Universe and that something that doesn’t appear explicitly mentioned in the Bible doesn’t exist is much more than I can accept as a coherent or adult and mature thought.

Furthermore, the participant who expressed his rejection of asteroids and Martians because the Bible doesn’t mention them did so (what a contradiction!) during a video conference, using computers and other elements not explicitly mentioned in the Bible.

Therefore, if we only see what we see because our beliefs blind us, then we don’t see anything at all, even if we hide behind sacred texts. 

Someone recently contacted me asking for my help to "see the future with more clarity." This is a businessman who, due to the changes caused by the pandemic, considered it prudent to spend some time thinking about how his business could be part of the new future. But, despite his request, he didn’t really want to see the future with clarity. 

When we speak of "seeing the future" we are not talking, obviously, of any kind of divination or prophecy. We are talking about carefully analyzing the present on the basis of the information already available to see where and in what direction the new future emerges.

There is nothing to guess, but a lot to study. But first you must understand two things: the future is always already here, although not necessarily in its full form; and the future is not a time after the present, but an expansion of consciousness.

Regarding the first point, let’s share this example: the first airplanes have little to do with modern airplanes, except that in both cases they are flying machines. And, to give another even clearer example, the first phones have little resemblance with today’s smartphones.

But the first airplanes, as well as the first telephones, already indicated a certain direction of the development of those technologies and, in fact, many thinkers at the beginning of the last century were able to imagine and anticipate those developments. At the same time, although the examples given are technological, the emerging future is not limited only to new technologies.

And that brings us to the second point: the future is not a time that comes later, but an expansion of consciousness in which consciousness unfolds to embrace the potential for new opportunities for self-discovery and action previously unexplored.

In other words, the future is an open mind. One who has a closed mind, as happened with the man mentioned in the first paragraph, cannot and does not want to see the future and, therefore, only seeks an infinite repetition of the past or a perpetual continuity of the present. But for that person, there is no future because their consciousness has not expanded to see it.

Something said, and for good reason, that the opposite of "love" is not "hate", but "indifference", because in indifference there is not even any relationship between one person and another. In the same way, the opposite of "future" is not "past", but "dictatorship" (in whatever form), because in dictatorship there is no place for the future. Dictatorship is often self-imposed.

Therefore, when I invited the aforementioned businessman to think about a future that is no longer a continuity of the present (which now includes space hotels, trips to Mars, general artificial intelligence, constant pandemics) his answer was none of that is relevant to his business, when, in fact, it is.

Closing our eyes to the future does not invalidate or modify its arrival, but it certainly excludes us from the new future. Therefore, let’s open our eyes. 

One year after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a global health crisis that in many ways paralyzed the planet, what lessons has this pandemic taught us? The answer is clear: many lessons. But how many of those lessons have we learned? The answer is also clear: none.

I have heard many times that there are two kinds of children with bad behavior: the badly educated and the “badly learned”. The badly educated children are those who, for whatever reason, did not receive a good socio-affective education from their parents or the adults in charge and could not or knew not how to adapt to society.

The “badly learned” children are those who were educated in the best possible way by their parents or the adults in charge and, even so, for whatever reason, they do not manage to adjust to an acceptable social life and, in fact, generally cause problems and pain for those close to them and even for strangers.

On a planetary level, we humans act like “badly learned” children: no matter how many good lessons we are taught, we never learn them. By now, we should have learned to be mature, responsible beings. 

The COVID-19 pandemic (one of the many pandemics that has plagued humanity for millennia) exposed the fragility and irrationality of our actions and our thoughts, always and only obsessed with the ephemeral, the superficial, and the inconsequential, regardless of the irreparable damage caused to the planet and others. 

So, any lesson we might have learned from the pandemic is long gone. In fact, I think we put more mental energy into not learning those lessons than fighting the pandemic.

The virus still continues, and the threat is still real. We have not yet stopped the pandemic, yet a whole way of thinking based on anti-science and anti-rationality has clearly gained new momentum. (By saying "anti-science" I am not suggesting for a moment that science should be deified or considered the final word. And true rationality surpasses mere syllogistic thinking).

The virus removed the veil of self-deception that we had imposed on ourselves believing that everything was fine and that everything was going to be fine. Or, if you prefer, the self-deception that mistakes new technologies for progress and useless and debt-creating purchases for happiness.

The days of not listening to human noise to listen to the messages of nature did not last long. It was considered unnatural to stay home and ask parents to help educate their children. Human lives took second place because, obviously, the important thing is to save the economy, that is, the same economy that caused the pandemic. 

All the lessons that we could have learned and could have led to a rebirth and transformation of humanity were quickly crushed by countless conspiracy theories and by a religious fundamentalism so uncompromising it hurts to think it is real.

Our foolish presence hurts the planet. Earth is in pain. But we still haven't learned it. We are bad learned adults.