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The Paradise Perspective: Commentary from a Free and Compassionate Alternate Reality Volume 1, Number 18 Crystal Ball by Glen Allport Exclusive to STR May
14, 2007 "I
know what you'd spend 500 million dollars to see: the
future." –
Ben Affleck as engineer Michael - - - - - Last
night my wife and I saw the movie Next,
based very loosely on
a story by Phillip K. Dick and starring Nicolas Cage, Jessica Biel,
and Julianne Moore. Cage plays a low-key Ordinary
humans are stuck with mere guesswork about the future, although we do have an amazing ability for analysis and for what Leonard Shlain
calls deep-time navigation.** Still, people do not sense the future but instead simulate
it in their minds; we compute possible futures rather than detect them
directly. Thus, we cannot dodge bullets (as Johnson does) by seeing
precisely when and where the bullets will be coming. In Next,
Johnson does even more than that; he can preview dozens of different
versions of the future, trying them out as he considers different
approaches to, say, introducing himself to a woman in a diner. He doesn't
have to guess how the woman will react: He sees her reaction as if it were
happening right now. For Johnson, a bad event – whether that means
getting shot dead or merely making a bad first impression – doesn't have
to happen in this timeline; Johnson not only sees his future but can
change it. There
is some experimental evidence
that humans (perhaps only some of us) have a vague, limited ability to
sense the future, especially when high-valence events are about to occur.
This sense is small, weak, and unreliable (if the ability exists at all),
but the possibility of any
future-sense in humans is intriguing nonetheless. Anecdotal evidence
suggests that occasionally someone may even have a clear, vivid, and
accurate view of the future. I
remain agnostic on whether we have such a sixth sense, but the advantages
of any ability to predict what is
coming are obvious. Oracles
and fortune-tellers of all types, along with methods alleged to help
foretell the future (palmistry,
the reading of
entrails, "throwing
bones," the I
Ching, Tarot
reading, and so on) have been popular throughout history and surely
long before recorded history. Modern investment
services, insurance actuaries, and many other businesses and
professions are involved, to one extent or another, in predicting the
future, at least statistically. -
- - - - Writers,
like everyone else, see the future. I press the "a" key on my
keyboard and expect the letter "a" to appear on my computer
screen; I drop a glass in my wood-floored kitchen and expect the glass to
shatter when it hits; I walk across the porch to the door after working
outside and expect Zoomer to bark at my approach and then jump up to greet
me, body wriggling and tail wagging, when I step inside. Like me, Zoomer
sees the future often, as when he hears me preparing a meal and rockets
into the kitchen in response – "food!" Zoomer says (predicts)
to himself, in that non-verbal, midline-consciousness way that dogs have,
and that humans also have, if they listen to their feelings. Moving
farther into the future, into the deep-time that only humans seem aware
of, I see other things as well, although not always as clearly. Old
feelings and prejudice from various sources (genetics, for one) can
distort the view; if I am pessimistic by nature, how well can I disconnect
that effect from the history and
data I am using to predict, say, an economic downturn? Despite
that conundrum, when enough history and current data point in a given
direction, I begin to feel increasingly certain about related predictions.
For example, in Destruction
by Paradigm, I predicted increasing trouble for the dollar and for the
Peter
Schiff Apr
27, 2007 As
the Dow burst through the 13,000 milestone this week, few understood the
hollowness of the achievement. Measured against the rising
dollar-denominated prices of just about everything else on the planet, the
Dow has actually lost value over the past seven years. Measured
against the truest benchmark, the price of gold, the record high for the
Dow was set back in January of 2000 when its price equaled approximately
43 ounces of gold. Today it is only worth about 19 ounces. To
better appreciate just how much of stock gains can be attributed to
inflation, consider that the record high for the Dow in 1929 of approximately 380 also equated to
19 ounces of gold. So despite all of the hoopla and a thirty-fold
increase in stock prices, the Dow has actually gained no real value during
the past eighty years. The entire
rise from 360 to 13,000 has been an illusion made possible by the magic of
inflation. .
. . Despite its recent eclipse of 13,000 the Dow now buys 30% fewer euros
than it did then back in 2000 when it was priced at approximately 11,500.
It also buys 35% fewer gallons of milk, 40% fewer bushels of corn or
wheat, 65% fewer ounces of silver, 70% fewer barrels of oil, 80% fewer
pounds of copper, and 90% fewer pounds of uranium. Try figuring what the
Dow will buy in terms of other necessities, such as housing, insurance,
college tuition or hospitalization. Any way you measure it, the Dow is
worth far less today then it was in January of 2000. [Emphasis
added] Another
prediction of mine – couched as a concern, but then, what is
a concern if not a worrisome prediction of less-than-100%-certainty? –
is that the $385 million dollar contract (to Halliburton) for a gulag of
detention camps in the United States signals the potential for an
impending democide here in our own nation. (See An
Open Letter to the Red Cross). New
events and revelations continue to feed my concern about where our
police-state path is leading in this country. Recently, for example, it
has come to light that "homeland security" types see
libertarians as "terrorists" – --
In
Alabama, Libertarians are Terrorists Recall
that by labeling someone a "terrorist," the government can now
imprison that person indefinitely without trial, without habeas corpus,
and without any consideration of their rights to humane treatment; the
"terrorist" can be tortured or even executed on the flimsiest of
evidence, including third-hand hearsay, without a civilian jury trial or
any of the other niceties Americans (and their British ancestors, going
back several hundred years) have always taken for granted. Other than Keith
Olbermann, I cannot recall anyone on television expressing the
slightest concern about this (and my apologies to anyone else on the tube
who has also stood up for human rights and simple decency in this regard). Not
every prediction of mine has been dire; in particular, I have repeatedly
predicted that a widespread understanding of the duality of love and
freedom would lead to a healthier, more free and compassionate world. In
particular, I have predicted that compassionate treatment (i.e., love and
freedom as opposed to unlove and tyranny of any type) of pregnant mothers,
newborns, infants, and children would literally change the character of
the human world in a profound and positive way. -
- - - - The
film Next highlights the idea that if one can see the future, one
can change it. Humans have always been attracted to the idea of
fortune-telling for exactly that reason: seeing the future (or at least
having a reasonable guess about where things are headed) can help us avoid
disaster and create positive outcomes. Too often, the vision of the future
we are given by the big-power media and by government interests is
designed to create support for tyranny and special interests. I encourage
readers to think carefully about the future we are being shown by the
power elite and to ask whether the
realities of the present are aligned in harmony with a future that
will benefit humanity in general – or that will preferentially benefit
those in power, at the expense of the rest of us. -
- - - - *
Paycheck, like Next (and Blade
Runner and several other SciFi films), is based
on a story by Phillip K. Dick. The rumor that EVERY science fiction
film ever made is based on one of Dick's stories is clearly overblown,
however. **
Shlain uses the term "deep-time navigation" in the sense of
mentally revisiting the past and simulating the future to learn from
experience and to plan ahead, something that the hugely enlarged human
neocortex is extremely good at. See Shlain's Sex,
Time, and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution. Glen Allport is the author of The Paradise Paradigm: On Creating A World of Compassion, Freedom, and Prosperity and maintains paradise-paradigm.net. This is one in a series of columns on the human condition.
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