Futurescape: An overpopulated, under-qualified, potentially unsustainable race inhabiting a planet with limited resources. A growing world population where more individuals will each have to settle for less, with an ever-wealthier but smaller (in terms of percentage) group of "entitled parties" increasingly keep subsisting based upon an increasingly 'acceptable' enslavement of the uneducated, overworked poor. And one of the best ways to keep them poor is to them struggling to pay off their enormous debts and to allow their minds to suffer the the atrophy, institutionalization and complacency which comes of a lack of education. I shudder when politicians speak of cutting back on education -- this is clearly diminishing potential quality of the future of the species in inequitable of the engorgement of the small wealthy, well-educated population of dynastic, wealthy families and other exclusive groups.
Perhaps the idea (whether consciously maleficent, or simply a function of a poverty of vision) is to keep the bulk of the general populace too busy working to even have time to be thinking about bettering themselves. The citizenry continues to look to governments and their agencies as being responsible to provide jobs and benefits. The sad irony is that the governments, for the most part, are bankrupt, interested in their own neoplastic growth, and tend to reward compliance and conformity instead of extemporaneous and spontaneous creative thought.
My view from miles above (my macro-perspective) and as a trend-watcher and Global Futurist is that we are all becoming increasingly complacent at the prospect of "letting the future take care of itself." But in truth, the seeds of the future must be planted in the fertile soil of the present. This requires education, incentives to innovation, and inducements to entrepreneurship. An interesting article follows:
From the UN Newswire, October 27th:
UNFPA population report warns of a squandered generation
Governments around the world should increase investments in education, infrastructure and job-creation programs to maximize the potential of a growing population, the United Nations Population Fund says in a report released days before the global population is expected to hit 7 billion. Failure to act decisively could leave the world's 1.8 billion people between the ages of 10 and 24 unable to contribute effectively to development in the future. [*italics and underlining inserted by Douglas E. Castle for emphasis] Click here to view the Guardian's ongoing "Crowded Planet" series. The Guardian (London) (10/26)
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In all reality, the most powerful parties in the world today (not those merely vociferous albeit well-intentioned ones such as the United Nations, Amnesty International, and various grassroots movements and organizations which have Humankind's future earnestly and passionately at their core, but the ones which have a consistent history of increasing their relative proportion of the world's wealth with every massive economic tragedy).
The prioritization and allocation of the world's resources through a tacitly understood partnering of major monopolistic industry, the military and the governments 'charged with protection the very people who have entrusted them with the power to attend to the most critical aspects of their lives and of the lives of their offspring for generations to come') is much more favorably disposed toward protecting institutional greed, pyramiding unsupportable monetary schemes thorough the banks (and the script which they mass produce) and having the world's populace continue to work ever-harder at lower wages and longer hours to subsidize the existing plutocracy.
Education, and the inquiries and innovations which it brings, can only foment discontent, and ignorance, as proven through the sad course of history, helps to sustain the entrenched and entitled elite. Education, you see, is an investment in change and in the future -- apparently (speaking a bit, I know, like a paranoid conspiracy theorist), the bulk of us are not meant to participate in it. Frightening, as it is unreasonable from the prospective of the Human species, the tried and failed status quo is struggling to sustain itself at the cost of the future of generations... Cry the beloved species, indeed. Neglecting education is failing to invest in the permanence and improvement of the species. It is not unlike anticipating a long, cold winter, and failing to stockpile firewood in the spring and the fall.
Education provides preparation, innovation and is one of the essential keys to the survival of our species.
Douglas E Castle
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