So … What’s the Plan?

It has come to my attention that mankind as a whole has no real plan.  No goals really, or defined purposes as a whole.  Without this basic idea in place of what we should be doing, it is virtually impossible to define what mankind’s ideal scene is because there is nothing to judge our actions by so as to determine if that scene is being achieved.  It seems there are many group goals and purposes, and individual purposes (often related to financial or material success) but no overall goal or purpose, for humanity en masse.

Perhaps a more basic problem is the ability to even communicate or think as a whole to start with.  Perhaps mankind is too dispersed on the four quarters of the globe, and too individuated to agree on anything.  Yet it is such an important concept that I am reluctant to give up on it easily.  For example, did we not once have a goal to explore the stars, and colonize the universe?  It seems these collective thoughts were flying around much more in the 60’s and 70’s before our space program mysteriously stagnated.

Or what about all the thinkers and writers who have purposed various Utopian societies.  Plato, and Republic, The New Atlantics by Bacon, The City of the Sun by Campanella.  Should we factor in Machiavelli’s and Voltaire’s take on society?  Or from political/economic angles, Morris or Marx.  But with all these ideas, there is one thing abundantly clear.  We have not agreed upon any ideology and been successfully at it either on a local basis for more than a few centuries, or on a global basis ever.  It is also clear that humanity’s current course is not heading toward a positive goal but declining in a ethical and spiritual decay.

So it is time for a change.  Perhaps as Eisenstein wrote recently, we are as a civilization in our adolescence and hitting a late puberty crisis.  Perhaps our self-indulgent stage of growth is coming to an end and we are ready to mature to a new more adult responsible state to meet the future.  Perhaps we will stop behaving like teenage gangs at war with each other and become the guardians and custodians of the planet and instead of its destroyer.  But to do this we must think deeply about our values.  This crossing into adulthood may mean rethinking our basic beliefs about what is important.  Perhaps the very basis of our society, economies and exchange, must change to units of value not based on accumulations of goods and power, but of service and value to mankind.

But maybe I am just a dreamer, and you are just a dream.  Nevertheless, I hope there are other dreamers out there too.