What Kind of a Future is in Store for Us?

What determines our future? Our future depends upon many things. Essentially what kind of futures we have depend upon the ways we think, what we think about, and how we think about ourselves as human beings. We also have to think about how we are going to run our civilizations in a fair and just manner. Our future depends upon what we think about nature, how we look at the Earth, and whether we find innovative ways to preserve the environment. It also involves what and how we think about the nature of the universe, theology, and spirituality.

These issues are all philosophical. What kind of a future is in store for us? It will be a philosophical one! The challenge to us is whether our philosophical differences will take precedence over our ability to combine our wisdom. If, instead of pooling our knowledge and understanding of life, we descend into a spiral of religious and ideological conflict, we will not be able to successfully address the mounting social, economic, environmental, political, medical, and educational issues shaping our future. On the other hand we can have a philosophy driven future that involves encouraging creativity, developing new means for invention, inventing new ways of thinking “outside the box,” and generating new interdisciplinary fields to help synthesize all of the mounting information generated by the Age of Knowledge in which we live.

Philosophy has a wide scope and is more popular than ever. All we have to do is look at all the books for sale in the bookstores with topics on everything from world religions, to alternative science and medicine, to Yoga, to the paranormal, to science fiction and cosmology (the study of the universe). The future of philosophy is not only a study of language, logic, and the science of the mind, it covers a much wider area. Political ideology, self improvement, the study of being, general systems, computer logic and artificial intelligence, strategic planning, ecology, and design science are all philosophical in nature.

When we think of philosophers the ones that come to mind are all dead – people like Socarates, Plato, and Aristotle. They were considered wise and brilliant thinkers to whom people listened and sought out for inspiration. Today we have to find our own Platos and Artistotles to help solve our problems. We still call them philosophers, for their knowledge must encompass a wide variety of areas, including those of the universe, current events, spirituality, politics, religion, culture, and the environment. In an age of increasing specialization, philosophers can help lead the way toward combining knowledge, making sense of the information chaos of daily life, and fostering interdisciplinary synthesis. Philosophers can help provide a meta-scientific perspective not available from each of the differing scientific fields.

Unfortunately the very resource that we as individuals need to empower ourselves to make sense of the world has fallen into disuse – in favor of mass consumption, escapism, the replacement of thinking and reading with entertainment, mindless conformity, and the blind acceptance of authority and whatever media sources are available. At the same time, the scope of the field of philosophy has been severely restricted in regards to its role as a professional discipline. It is pretty hard to find philosophers’ shingles hanging in front of their offices downtown or even listed in the telephone directory.Much has been lost in the domain of philosophy as it has become mainly the academic study of the intellectual history of dead thinkers, focusing on logic, the study of language, and the study of the mind. All of these areas are important, but fall short of the grand task of shaping our future.

Unfortunately the very aspects of philosophy that could prove critical for assisting individuals make better futures for themselves and each other have fallen by the wayside. This situation is sad, but things are changing. Philosophers have had quite a fall from the expansive universe of ideas of our truly great thinkers throughout world history. At this point in history we need these broad minded, freethinking students of life more than ever. Beyond merely serving as a tool for argumentation, deconstruction, or the intellectual vivisection of existence, nature, life, and consciousness, philosophy may also be an art of life. Philosophy involves a love of wisdom (good judgment), but it also includes the wisdom of love. Philosophy is also a source of imagination and inspiration, a spiritual technology for innovation and enlightenment. These are some of the directions the field of philosophy must take as avenues for development if it is to be a meaningful field at all or relevant to anyone in the 21st century. Luckily there are philosophers out there who understand this emerging from fields as diverse as design, music, art, ecology, future studies, social theory, psychology, and physics.

Perhaps we are still at the dawn of philosophy - after all, we hardly grasp what a human being may be, what the universe is, or what potentials there may be with life and consciousness. Perhaps philosophy is a field that has languished too long and needs its own Renaissance of Creativity - and maybe this is exactly what humanity needs to successfully address the mounting challenges facing the future survival of our species. It just may be that we need a Philosophical Revolution in thought to take us beyond the agricultural, industrial, and digital revolutions and thereby shape a better future for our children and their descendants - for many of our old ways of doing and thinking are now obsolete and don't work so well in successfully dealing with an increasingly complex world.

There is an emerging realization by people all over the world that human beings are unique geniuses with invaluable artistic possibilities of limitless potential. We must share our genius with each other if we are to develop sustainable methods for the continuity of human civilization on Earth. For the first time in history all of the peoples on the planet are connected through some type of communication. We are now in a position to develop interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, and interfaith dialogues to re-evaluate all of the old myths, world views, and primary assumptions upon which we still base our individual and collective realities. We are in a position to share scientific knowledge and spiritual wisdom that was never possible before. For this sort of activity, philosophy is an ideal resource.

Now there are more specialists, scientists, and thinkers at this time in history than ever before - and yet people seem less and less satisfied about their solutions for living life. Humanity has a great need for advances in the ways that the fields of philosophy and spirituality can evolve our consciousnesses, expand our creative horizons, deepen our wisdom and understanding, and increase our enlightenment. We need a new generation of generalists – philosophers – to facilitate a coming together of the understandings from all of the diverse scientific fields in a way that makes sense to everyday people.Finally we have enough new historical evidence and discovered scientific knowledge available to us to say entirely new things about humanity and the world in which we live. What is missing is a coming together of all of our new information and knowledge about ourselves and the universe. Novel ways of thinking must be developed for us as individuals to translate all of our new knowledge generated by modern society into personal action in our daily lives. Globally, each of us is individually undergoing paradigm shifts in our world views and understandings of what we are as human beings. This is a necessary process for humanity in order to embrace a shared future and to prepare ourselves for incorporating all our new understandings in science, art, and spirituality.

Together, the people of the world can come together through global communications and social networking to invent new approaches to philosophy and replace outdated world views and inspire each other to develop new insights. With help from the professional philosophers to pilot through the information chaos of the modern world, everyone can begin to explore their own unique philosophical and creative genius. We are now all able to be philosophers and combine our diverse artistic, scientific, spiritual, understandings of life, and cultural wisdoms and traditions. Otherwise, if we do not engage in this dialogue of wisdom between people of differing faiths and cultures, we risk falling into a chaos of ideological conflict as old ways of thinking and acting slam headlong into the problems facing our continued existence. The challenges facing the sustainability of global civilization will not be successfully addressed using obsolete ways of thinking and acting. The world is far too interconnected and complex for old fashioned simplistic solutions to work in solving today’s problems. The future of humanity hangs in the balance of whether the world moves towards philosophical collaboration and creative dialogue, cultivating a Renaissance of Creativity - or devolves into conflicts between people unable to rise to the occasion of the challenges facing us, basing their decisions and actions upon outmoded world views. The future of philosophy is that of the development of our shared imagination, creativity, and vision working together towards the co-creation of positive futures for all the citizens of our planet. Our continued existence depends upon it!

Copyright 2010, B.E. Foley