Project Vision 21

I recently had the privilege of making a presentation about the emerging future to a community group. The presentation was an opportunity to listen again to a long list of excuses we (I include myself in the “we”) use to hide from the new future and to remain hidden inside a past which exists only inside a nostalgic imagination.

“I understand nothing about Artificial Intelligence (AI)”, told one of the participants. I asked him what he has read or heard about AI. He told me, “I read nothing, and I understand nothing. What’s the point of reading?”

In other words, he understood nothing about AI because he had no enough information about the topic and, at the same time, he didn’t have information because he understood nothing. An interesting vicious circle of excuses which with each repetition becomes more solid and less visible.

Another participant told me, “I can’t save money because I don’t have enough money”. Obviously, he doesn’t have enough money because he is not saving money, but that second half of the equation was never mentioned by him.

In addition, others expressed excuses I have heard many times, excuses using to rationalize why our mind, heart, and hands should remain closed. “That’s not what my grandma told me”, said one person. “My pastor/priest said it’s not so”, added another one. “My son told me that’s not the case”, added a third person.

I asked them, “So, what do you think?” They repeated the same excuses they just expressed a minute ago. And here they were, here we were, trapped inside the cave of our own thoughts such as those unlucky persons trapped inside Plato’s cave (in the Republic).

Somebody once said that the biggest addiction in our time is not the addiction to drugs or to horrible vices, but the addition to our own thoughts. It’s true. We are addicted to our own ideas and thoughts and the addiction is so strong we don’t even know how addicted we are.

We move in circles inside our own echo chamber to listen again and again only to our thoughts. Paradoxically, the unthought thoughts, the acritically accepted thoughts, are the thoughts we accept because they match our needs and desires. And we call them “reality” and “truth”.

Yet, the new future challenge us to challenge our own thoughts (and beliefs, actions, behaviors, hopes, and assumptions.) Without that challenge, the future would not be neither new nor future, but a mere extended repetition of the past and an infinite repetition of the present.

“You think the future”, said Enrique Santín. So, if we don’t think the future, we are not part of the future. And that’s exactly what is happening to us. We are so obsessed about learning about the past that we are unable to learn from the future.

How do we exit the cavern? Many mysteries in the universe and in life are solved as soon as we boldly accept we all are multidimensional beings living one-dimensional lives.