[lkcl]

this is basically the time of transition to the “Golden Age” that maharishi mahesh yogi was talking about back in 1965. up until age 25 i firmly believed that capitalism was good, and that communism was bad (born in 1970 i’m a child of the 80s – margaret thatcher, the berlin wall was still up). up until age 35 i firmly believed that the 1st world society was the peak of human existence, and that it was absolutely everyone’s right to strive to that level of consumption. now on von-goethe-esque style i rename “corporation” as “canceration” and i can at least appreciate why religious extremists, russians and chinese all use the phrase “The Decadence Of The West”.

then i heard about “the golden age”. in 1965 maharishi was asked “what will the future be like?”. he took a *long* time to answer the question, and when he did, the first thing he said was “there will be NO machines”.

think that through for a minute.

with the 1st world being only 25% of the world’s population and consuming over 50% of the world’s natural resources, anyone can do the maths that we’re on borrowed time.

luckily we have the internet (at the moment), we are able to communicate world-wide and see the writing on the wall.

now, the thing is, the transition from 1st world “city-size” culture down to nature-based “community” culture can be an easy one, or it can be a hard one. the choice is up to us.

i’m doing my bit by thinking “big”, and designing environmentally-conscious computers, as well as researching and designing engines that have 50% better fuel economy than current engine designs. the aim with both these projects is to reduce power consumption as well as reduce the barrier to entry for manufacturing, so that even a local factory could consider building and selling computers and transport locally, with minimal (modern) tools.

so the choice is ours, people. we can set up local communities that are self-reliant but still have a similar standard of living that we have now…. or we can deny the writing on the wall and be forced – abruptly (if we survive at all) to live scraping the land with our bare hands.

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