PRAKARSA

EKOPOSIAL

adalah jurnal online yang diterbitkan oleh ZENTRUM FUTURE STUDIES MALAYSIA (ZENTRUM) yang mengandungi naskah-naskah maklumat berkenaan dengan gravitas aktiviti yang diusahakan.

Jurnal ini akan menjadi saluran maklumat dan makluman berkenaan dengan penyelidikan-penyelidikan, projek-projek dan program/rancangan yang diasakan oleh ZENTRUM bagi membolehkan segenap lapisan masyarakat mengetahui perkembangan semasa dan masa depan.

EKOPOSIAL adalah kata akronim dari kata EKOnomi, POlitik, soSIAL yang menganjurkan falsafah “kesan serentak” terhadap TIGA ELEMEN dalam semua kejadian, krisis dan ancaman.

PETIKAN SISI PANDANG FUTURE STUDIES

The Futures and I

It’s not easy being a futurist, and it’s even harder being a futurist who has a focus upon domains of knowledge which are usually off-limits in modern education.

The essence of my belief is that we are short-changing ourselves. Our social structures, cultural norms and education systems don’t permit a full expression of the human experience. The development of society, and our road-maps to the future, need more than just economic blueprints and discussions about which machines are going to make life more comfortable or interesting. I have no problem with high-tech futures. I’m writing this now on my computer, and am about to upload it onto my web site. A few decades ago I would have been scrawling this on the back of a bit of paper, then hoping I could find someone to print it.

Yet something has been lost. And something could have been gained, but has not been allowed to emerge. These are the inner dimensions of mind: the deeper reflective, intuitive and spiritual experiences which I believe should be the foundation of human life. A balance of technology with rational and intuitive intelligence is necessary if we are to live full and meaningful lives. This is not only needed by individuals, but by the collective of humanity. I see a vital need for us to rediscover the bigger human picture. Our futures depend on it.

In Futures Studies we call futures that we have neglected “disowned” futures. At present the images and conceptions of the future are dominated by corporate concerns and narrow vested interests. We need to reclaim the future from what I call “the machine imperative”. No, this has nothing to do with machines taking over the world, as in Terminator movies, but the increasingly narrow range of cognitive experiences entailed in living life in the 21st century. The machine has become the defining image which drives modern society. And this image is unconsciously driving the way we see the future, and the way we live in the present. But we need to understand that if we live life in an overly-mechanistic way – working, eating, sleeping, relating to others – in rigid and shallow ways, then we lose the essence of being human. Human beings are not merely flesh-and-blood machines, and life and society do not have to be mechanistic. We are not put here on this earth to exist as a purely biological entity. The largely unexplored realm of consciousness is where we can begin to move beyond narrowly mechanistic futures. By “consciousness”, I mean the inner realms of mind.

I discovered something extraordinary as I explored the mind. I found out first hand that human consciousness is not confined to the brain, and that it expands far beyond the limits of the human skull. I saw for myself that the “world” is a lot bigger than the physical plane upon which we focus upon daily. Consciousness goes way beyond what mainstream psychology and cognitive science are currently willing to admit (to generalise). It even goes beyond the death of the physical body, hard as this is to believe if we adopt a mainstream “science” perspective. I know science will eventually shed its currently limited view of the mind, but it will take a while. The scientific method is not really the problem. The problem is firstly that modern education has restricted our ability to “see” deeply, (including that of scientists); and secondly the culture of science itself has become mechanistic. The range of questions being asked, and thus the research being funded and conducted is prohibitively narrow. This is what I call “paradigm blindness.”

My own life path has been a little unusual. I have spent a lot of time exploring the inner dimensions of mind. Working over many years I deliberately developed both my intuitive and rational abilities. I have explored consciousness studies, dreams, meditation, visioning; and the spiritual dimensions of mind; and I have developed the so-called “left-brain” also: logical and critical thinking, mind science, history, futures studies and so on. I did this all in own time, and at my own expense. Nobody encouraged me to do it…

Kind regards,

Marcus T Anthony
www.mindfutures.com

07.07.08