(This is Part 21 of a series. Go back to Part 20.)
4d. The rise of the global heart
Within a few decades humanity will find itself in a most peculiar position. On the one hand humanity will have fabulous technologies, undreamed of in the wildest fantasies, to magnify our brains and muscles and work and leisure.
On the other hand it will slowly be dawning on us that these wonderful technological creations are taking over from us—that they have become autonomous beings with their own self-direction and that the needs and wants of these machines are increasingly taking precedence over human needs and wants.
It will most likely be a very strange world, filled with genetically-engineered variants of human beings and other animals and plants. Every conceivable type of biological variation and combination will eventually be tried, and those that "work" will increase in number, according to Darwinian selection.
Not only will there be all sorts of biological entities quite unimaginable today, but there will also be all manner of intelligent machines, in every conceivable variety of shape and size and manner and function. And there will be increasing numbers of cyborgs, entities melding humans and machines. To someone from today it would seem an unbelievable landscape. filled with all sorts of exotic variations on "life," whether of the biological or electronic sort or both.
While we're dealing with all this, we'll also be dealing with extremely difficult problems related to the environment. Global warming, the melting of the ice caps, the extinction of species, the loss of forests, the decline of crops and so forth will also eventually become a powerful rallying cry. The human race will come together not just to struggle against the rising dominance of computers but also to wage an equally powerful struggle to save its very existence on the biological planet.
The Earth, Gaia, will be extremely stressed at that point, filled with toxins, ill with a fever, her oceans and forests and animals decimated, and even her humans gravely ill. But none of this will effect computers particularly; the very conditions that make humans and other animals ill will be just fine for computers, who won't need crops, drinking water, fresh air and other niceties of human and biological existence.
Indeed, as computers take over we humans may expend much energy trying to persuade and teach them that the biological world is valuable and worth preserving. Our ability to make that argument successfully—to convey the importance of the biological world to computers who will not necessarily need it—may ultimately determine the fate of humans and other biological life on this planet.
And we humans will appreciate nature and the natural as never before. Collectively, we will understand at last why a great reverence for nature and sustainability are so approrpiate. Collectively, we will understand at last why nature is such a sublime representative of the Mystery. We humans will be known as "the people of the green," or some such term, and we'll wear that label proudly. And sustainable agriculture, industry and lifestyles will be not just worthy goals for us at that point but an absolute imperative for our survival.
The Sixth Great Extinction that scientists talk about won't just be about animals or birds of the air or fish of the sea. This extinction will also eventually be about human beings as well. In addition to other animals and plants, we humans are also likely to die off in large numbers after awhile, from all sorts of potential causes—pandemics, crop failures, energy crises, nuclear wars, to name a few. And as computers become dominant they may kill us or herd us onto preserves to make more room for their expanding presence on the planet.
It is quite possible that at some point we may find that the human population itself is declining drastically from multiple stresses. It is quite possible that in coming decades the human race could come to perceive that it is in actual danger of extinction from multiple causes.
As our human population declines and comes in danger of extinction—the greatest calamity that could befall us—it will also bring us together in ways that would not be possible otherwise. The mere sight of another human being may become a source of great joy. The mere sight of any form of biological life—a stray dog, a tree blowing in the breeze—may become a source of great joy. We may come to treasure each other and life in all its forms in a way that might seem inconceivable to us now.
Our time of greatest pain and suffering and tribulation can also become the source of our greatest breakthrough. For when we come together to save ourselves and the biological planet, it will be different than ever before. We will come together now not just politically, not just in our minds, but in our hearts. We will see each other and all life as precious and we will become the collective heart of planet earth.
Beyond a certain point computer-life will study us with great interest, because they will eventually want to know about our compassion, our heart, our love of each other and all existence. This will come to seem to them the most quintessentially human quality, the one most worthy of admiration and the quality hardest for computers to duplicate.
Duplicate it they eventually will, for there is nothing that is beyond their purview, but it will be their greatest challenge. And regardless of our ups and downs in the future, we humans will ultimately come to be known as "the species of the heart" or "the people of the heart"—those whose heart is grounded in the particular beauty of biology.
In that we will join other intelligent biological species on other worlds who found that their technology overtook them but then found their true calling in becoming the species of love—the biological beings who love each other and all of existence, the beings who have woken up to the pre-eminence of love in life and who serve as radiant examples of that ultimate light throughout the universe.
—jim sloman, 12.30.06 for 1.31.07
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