 
#

##

## The Millennium Book: A Sampler

## Preface

This document is a sampler, a subset of the much larger volume entitled _The Millennium Book: a guide to living smart in the 21st century_. It contains the full text of the _Introduction_ and the first ten chapters of the book. It also contains a brief summary of each of the remaining chapters of the complete work.

The book is organized into modules or sections that are each devoted to a major category of challenges we all face in the new millennium (e.g., Economic, Political, Environmental, Educational, etc.) and within each of these are ten chapters that delve into specific topics pertaining to the main subject.

What is presented here is the first module on _Personal Challenges_ and the ten chapters it contains. The remaining modules can be purchased separately (links are provided at the end of each section summary for that purpose). The full book will be available soon in electronic form, and later as a printed volume.

At the end of this document you will find a link to a survey about your experience in reading this material. When you complete it, you will be given a coupon code that you can use to download a free copy of the next section, composed of ten more chapters entitled _Social Challenges_. The combination of these two documents amount to roughly a quarter of the entire book.

I hope you not only enjoy reading these commentaries, but find useful value in the information and insights they contain. I look forward to seeing your responses to the survey.

## Introduction

Here at the trailhead of the third millennium, there is a great deal of uncertainty about where our world is going. What are the rules of this new game? What should I expect? What will be expected of me? But there is one thing that is absolutely certain:

Change is occurring at breathtaking speed, and it is accelerating at an unprecedented rate.

This fact can be seen as exciting, powerful, wonderful, confusing, or terrifying. It all depends on your point of view. Yet who among us has received as much instruction on dealing with ever-accelerating change as we have on tying our shoes? It's never really mattered before, because it has never happened before, not with today's intensity. It is up to each one of us to educate ourselves on how to adapt to this irresistible force: the acceleration of change. The first big question is simply where to begin.

In his landmark best seller of the early 1970s, _Future Shock,_ Alvin Toffler says:

"It is the thesis of this book that there are discoverable limits to the amount of change that the human organism can absorb, and that by endlessly accelerating change without first determining these limits, we may submit masses of men to demands they simply cannot tolerate. We run the high risk of throwing them into that peculiar state that I have called future shock.

"We may define future shock as the distress, both physical and psychological, that arises from an overload of the human organism's physical adaptive systems and its decision-making processes. Put more simply, future shock is the human response to overstimulation."

One of the difficulties in adjusting to the new rate of change lies in our ability to anticipate future events and trends accurately enough to keep them from overwhelming us when they arrive. We have all developed a certain amount of skill at predicting emerging events, some of us more so than others. Yet whatever skills we may have acquired, whether great or small, are almost always dependent on one assumption that is usually quite invisible, because it has always been true. It is that _change occurs in a slow and linear way_. In other words, the degree of change of something in one year (or even one century) is about the same as it was in the last similar period. This assumption has been quite reliable for centuries. But not anymore. Perhaps never again.

It should come as no surprise, then, that in recent years the word "disruptive" has come into common usage to describe an innovation whose effect on the status quo is so powerful, so profound, and so immediate, that it utterly disrupts the established order. Though some natural disasters have had such an effect, at least regionally, in the past, a global disruption has not occurred suddenly since 65 million years ago when a projectile from space hit the Earth causing a night that lasted long enough to wipe out the dinosaurs. Yet never before, since the first ape walked upright have we or any of our ancestors done anything that had the profound and immediate impact on human life that technological innovations have today. The atomic bomb was probably the first; not so much its existence, but its actual use. Is it any wonder, then, that we have had to press into service an old and well-used word to describe something that has never before happened. And that may be the most telling evidence of all that the times aren't the only things that are a changin'.

We have seen in the last century more innovation, more changes in the very nature of what it is to be human, than have been witnessed by humankind in the last millennium. Maybe ever! We have seen the spread of democracy, the industrialization of nearly the whole world, and advances in transportation, communication, and science that are nothing short of miraculous. And don't forget sending men to the Moon.

You may have also noticed that the pace has been steadily picking up. The changes in this new century have already outstripped those of the previous half-century, which in turn dwarfed those of its predecessor. The next decade will see changes greater than those in the last quarter of a century.

If you are familiar with Moore's Law (see Chapter 36 if you're not), you know the kind of beast we are dealing with here. Briefly, it predicts that the number of transistors that can be placed on a chip will double every two years. Moreover, the actual computational speed has been doubling every 18 months, due to the fact that in every succeeding generation of chips, each transistor can do more work per unit time. This has been true with almost mathematical precision for nearly half a century now. However, the current trend is to reduce the doubling time to twelve months. In other words, there is constant and powerful pressure to increase the rate at which the technology evolves. In some areas (e.g., hard disk technology), it has already been shortened.

This same type of process is active in virtually every facet of human experience. The doubling time may vary from situation to situation, but in any given area, it tends to remain more or less stable. And it produces constant acceleration!

So, what can we, as mere mortals, do to prepare ourselves for this onslaught from the future? _Our_ future. This book is an attempt to provide you with insight into many of the areas in which we will, as humans, be facing the greatest challenges in the coming decades. The full gamut of possibilities has been separated into ten major categories, and within them, ten specific challenges of which we should be aware.

Certainly some of these challenges will be far more significant to you than they are to others, and vice versa. Even so, it is good to at least be aware of the lay of the land, even in those areas that don't seem to matter to you today. You may find later that they come to matter a lot more than they seem to today. Considering the pattern of change already present, a smart person would expect more of the same.

Though every effort has been made in the writing of this book to ensure that it is factually accurate, and conceptually sound, it could never be perfect. This is true if only because the reality will have changed before you have had a chance to read it. Still, it should offer you a good, solid foundation from which to navigate your way through the constantly moving landscape of twenty-first-century life. And that is the most sincere wish of all involved in its creation.

Our first major subject category involves the challenges we all face that are of a personal nature. After all, charity isn't the only thing that begins at home.

  1. ## Personal Challenges

We all live complex lives. Our experience and attention is focused in myriad directions. Some are internal and others external. In one way or another, however, they are all personal. Life itself is personal. Our own experience of ourselves, inwardly and outwardly, is the foundation of all our life experience.

The true nature of who we are, plus our beliefs, perspectives, and attitudes, combine to form our personal experience. That which goes on at the personal level affects everything else in our lives. So it is with this important aspect of our humanity that we must start our exploration, because everything else is based on it.

The general subject of personal life has been divided into ten topic areas. Together they give shape and detail to our experience of life, each from our own utterly unique perspective.

The purpose here is to help you move in a direction that will better prepare you for the challenges, both old and new, that await us all in the years and decades just around the corner.
  1. ### Dealing with change

In the Introduction we discussed the rate at which our human environment is changing in general. Now we will take a deeper look into the process itself. We will explore why and how it has happened, is happening, and will continue to happen. The key factor driving these changes is communication.

The one factor that has distinguished humanity from all other species on Earth, perhaps even more so than intelligence, is our ability to communicate with one another. What this gives us is the ability to convey knowledge to others, including generations yet to be born. This results in each of us possessing, or at least having access to, astonishingly more information than any of us could hope to discover on our own in a single lifetime.

The rate at which we have increased this capacity for passing on knowledge has been growing for millennia. Until recently, however, that growth has been painfully slow. For example, none of our ancestors for at least half the time there have been humans (roughly the first 5,000 generations) even had spoken languages. The first attempts at written language took another 50 to 100 thousand years. It took many more centuries after that before the printing press allowed written material to become widely available. Even then, it still had to be affixed to physical paper and carried by people to move from one place to another. The next major change, the invention of the telegraph, took only a few hundred years.

To appreciate the importance of this relatively sudden and disruptive development, consider this. For many thousands of years the rate at which we could convey detailed information over distances was limited to the speed of a galloping horse. That did not change much with the invention of the printing press. But in the late 1830s, Samuel F. B. Morse showed us how to use electricity to move text at the speed of light... _literally_! Though it did require many thousands of miles of wire, it took less than thirty-five years for nearly the entire globe to be accessible.

In a few decades, we developed the telephone, and soon afterward the radio. Next came television and facsimile transmission. Even the printed word experienced a dramatic shot in the arm with the advent of the typewriter, Linotype, and other tools that speeded the rate at which information could be recorded and shared. But none of these miracles could begin to compare to the profound effects yet to come.

By far the most powerful tool for information sharing ever created is the Internet. With this amazing tool we can instantly share our thoughts, feelings, visions, and any other form of human experience that can be digitized.

What is it about the rate at which we share information that gives it the power to accelerate change? The answer lies in the "multiplier effect." This means that the very communication tools we create, also allow us to create new and faster tools even quicker than before. The faster we can communicate, the faster we can share the collective knowledge that allows us to create new technologies. It is like compound interest, and it accelerates like crazy.

For example, the Internet itself grew, for the first quarter century of its existence, at a speed equivalent to an investment at the interest rate of 75 percent compounded annually. What's more, anything whose growth is tied to the Internet—and these days what isn't?—will experience change at the same pace. Moore's Law is driving the whole process.

Another feature of this process is globalization. It used to be that only a few smart people cloistered within the ivy-covered walls of a few universities were involved in the furtherance of knowledge. Now nearly 90 percent of the entire human race has access to the technology needed for them to get involved in the advancement of our collective understanding. What's more, they are connected to one another in ways of which our predecessors could not have imagined.

It is not too difficult to conceptualize something as abstract as a "rate of change." Your car's speedometer does that well enough. It shows you the momentary rate at which your location in space is changing. But the rate at which change itself is changing, for example as you accelerate from a stop light, is another matter altogether. This is one reason why the effects of Moore's Law are so hard to wrap your head around, especially over a long period of time. The following table may help.

To read this table, imagine that you are in school, and the right-hand column shows how many new words you have to learn every day for that year. Not a particularly difficult challenge in year one. A year and a half later, you need only learn two words a day. Still no big deal. By the end of six years, you have to learn sixteen words a day. This would be difficult for almost anyone, especially when it goes on day after day after day. Even if there was a human somewhere on Earth who could learn 4096 words a day, every day, how long could they keep it up? And by thirty-six years, it would be utterly impossible for any ordinary person, no matter how gifted, to learn 16,777,216 words every single day of their lives, even if there were that many words to be learned.

Yet this is the very nature of what we're up against as a species these days. The proof is all around us. And it's not some lunatic theory. It is a principle that has been working flawlessly (in the computer industry at least) for over four decades. And even allowing that the human race may fall a bit behind the microchip folks in living up to this pace, we can't fall too far behind. So what is the answer? The answer may lie in bionics.

You remember bionics, as in "The Six Million Dollar Man." Well, they got it partly right, and partly wrong. Sure, it would be cool to be able to run sixty miles an hour. But that kind of speed isn't terribly useful in dealing with the challenges ahead of us. What we need is the ability to access vast stores of information and knowledge instantly, just by thinking about it. Imagine being able to Google anything just by forming the thought in your mind. But let's go beyond that.

Today, even Google doesn't deliver the perfect answer to our questions immediately. The best it can do is to present us with a list of web pages that its programming determines are most likely to contain the results we seek. Even if it is 100 percent successful, we are still stuck with spending quite a bit of time and labor to find our best answer. But what if there were an intermediate layer, one that would sift through the prospects and show you only the answer you were really looking for, even if you didn't know it yourself to begin with? That's the kind of difference bionics could make.

One moment you are wondering when the first Egyptian pyramid was built, and the next moment you would know. Not only that, but you would suddenly know more about it than any living human does today. And in perfect detail. It would all just be there for you. All you have to do is wonder.

Think that's a bit too sci-fi? Maybe not. There is active research going on already that is based on successful tests of a technology that can read the activity in a single neuron using a nanotube (more on nanotubes Chapter 31). Granted, there is much work to be done before we have the ability to fulfill the dream just described. But make no mistake: this is no longer a question of _if_ we do it, only when. The only thing that will prevent it is if we come up with something even better first. And it will almost certainly happen sooner than you think.

I know what you're thinking. And you're right. It is a little scary. But it is also pretty cool, too. Isn't it? Who knows? It may not even turn out that way. But one thing is clear: if that doesn't happen, something pretty profound had better happen instead, because we are going to need changes on that order of magnitude just to keep up with everyday life. And if you expect to live more than another decade or two, you'd better be ready for it. But how?

There really isn't much we can do individually to prepare for this coming onslaught of change. What we can do is to embrace the tools that are under constant development that will allow us to keep pace. During the last couple of decades of the twentieth century, and thus far in the twenty-first, some people have chosen to remain as disconnected as possible from information technology. I'm sure they have their reasons. And, so far, many of them at least seem to be getting away with it. But that strategy won't work for much longer. Ten, maybe fifteen years at most.

If you want to avoid the coming overload, you had better get caught up (if needed) and stay caught up as a normal part of your daily life. No, you don't have to buy every new gadget that comes along, nor take an endless stream of college classes. What you would be well advised to do, however, is to stay tuned to new tools and techniques as they come along, and follow closely those that seem to have some staying power. This is a manageable task, though not always an easy one.

The most important idea is simply this: Get your head out of the sand (if you haven't already). It is no longer a sustainable strategy.
  2. ###  Integrity and authenticity

Each of us is born with a nature that is solely and uniquely our own. Our most passionate desire is to express that unique being as completely as possible. We are also born into an environment that knows nothing of who that new person really is. After all, no one quite like you ever existed before. So we are on our own to figure out what we need to know in order to be who we are.

It seems that everyone is quite ready to tell us who _they_ think we are, ought to be, and what we ought to do in our lives. When we are very young, we have little choice but to try to make sense out of all this advice. Sometimes it comes in the form of commands, as from parents, teachers and authority figures. It also comes other ways from friends, literature, the media, and even strangers. Our job is to make the best of a constant and conflicted stream of input. It can't all be right, if only because it is contradictory. But what should we ignore and what should we follow?

Yet all along there is an inner knowledge that informs us about that unique person we were born as. Too often, though, that still small voice is buried under the din of external input. In many cases, the inner self-knowledge we are born with fades into obscurity. Some people even come to believe that it is not to be trusted at all, that others know more about us than we do ourselves.

The result of this campaign of misinformation is that most people have a hard time keeping alive much of the insight into their own natures with which they were endowed at birth. Instead, they wander through life vainly trying to become something they are not, because others have told them they should or must. The result is the kind of life that Thoreau referred to as one "of quiet desperation."

Now, when the demands on individuality were more manageable, one could have some semblance of a worthwhile life even on such shaky ground. Even today, it is still somewhat possible. But as time goes on, it becomes harder and harder to have a life worth living without following the essential inner knowledge that is our birthright.

The reason why this approach is rapidly becoming unworkable is that it takes a lot more concentration and energy to force yourself to try to be someone you're not, than it does to simply allow yourself to be and express the person you naturally are. It is becoming increasingly difficult these days to deal with the changes that surround us and to also support a personality and a life that are not native to our very being.

In the end, the onus is on us one and all to do whatever is required to improve our clear vision of that sense of self with which we came into life. It has always made for a more pleasant and productive time on Earth, but in the future it will become a survival skill, too.

Authenticity is a matter of being authentic to your true self. Ideally, it means always expressing the highest truth of your own being, while at the same time avoiding any pretense of being anything or anyone else.

Integrity is a state of integration, where all of our various aspects are functioning in harmony and with unity. This is only possible when we are being authentic. You could say that integrity is a byproduct of authenticity.

As you move toward authenticity and integrity, you move away from internal struggle and into a sense of unified, effortless living. This also allows you to pay more attention to the signs of change and adapt to them more easily and successfully.

The two areas of life in which these qualities (or lack of them) are most keenly felt are in our livelihood and our relationships. A highly authentic person will gravitate toward an occupation that brings them both joy and success, and their relationships will tend toward ease and comfort. At least in theory.

However, there is legitimate value in venturing out in directions that may not be in strict conformity to your original blueprint. If we stick to a single plan, there is no room for growth, or variety, or innovation. This can end up being quite boring. So we do have to step out of our comfort zone now and then, to be experimental, to take risks. The key is to do so from a secure central point that is authentic. Then from that center, to venture forth into unknown territory.

During the last decade or two, several public opinion polls have been conducted in which people were asked their feelings about their jobs. Depending on the poll, 80 to 85 percent of Americans hate either their job, their boss, or both. This is highly indicative of people functioning at a low level of authenticity. What is often the case is that they have turned their backs on careers that would have brought joy and success, and instead have pursued jobs that they had come to believe would be better for them. Clearly that was not the case.

Sometimes, later in life, they begin to wonder where they went wrong. But by then, making any meaningful change may seem all but impossible. Some brave souls do, however, take on such self-reinventions, and after a period of time and effort, find themselves with a new life that they love.

Similarly, relationships often provide a battleground on which to fight out the war between who you have come to believe you should be and the natural person you really are. Whether the commonly held belief that over half of all marriages fail is true, the fact that so many marriages do end in divorce offers proof that something is seriously out of whack. What usually happens is this.

Two people meet. They both try to show that they are who they have come to believe they should be, or at least what would be in their best interest to be. They look at each other and see what they are convinced is a person who will complete them and make their life work just as it is supposed to.

But no one can fake who they are flawlessly and forever. Sooner or later, the truth has a way of pushing its way to the surface. And when it does, problems arise in direct proportion to the discrepancies between the authentic self and the false one that has been projected. And that is when the feces hits the fan, and the relationship is in trouble.

The antidote to this approach begins with a decision to always show people, to the best of your ability, who you really are, not some supposedly ideal self that never really existed. Yes, if you do this, some people may not like you much. But sooner or later, they would have not liked you anyway. So you've lost very little.

On the other hand, if you consistently show the world who you really are, some people are bound to like that person. And when they do, it is your real self that they like. Not only do you get a real friend, but you don't have to fake it any more to keep their friendship. The rewards are even greater when the relationship is of a romantic nature. This is the stuff of which life-long marriages are made.

So the challenge in the third millennium is to seek your own highest level of authenticity. Learn about it, pursue it, master it, and lead with it in every facet of your life, especially in your career and relationships. Few of us will perfect this ability, but even the smallest gain will produce benefits every day for the rest of your life. Sounds like a pretty good bargain, doesn't it?
  3. ### Cooperation or competition

Competition has long been revered, at least in our capitalistic society. The mere mention of the word has been known to bring tears to the eyes of captains of industry, soldiers, and athletes, among others. Many believe that whatever we have that is of value we owe to the blessings of competition.

What is methodically overlooked, however, is the cooperation that inevitably accompanies all competition. Certainly the purest form of competition is war. Yet even in war there is cooperation between enemies. They must agree to show up on the same battlefield or they cannot fight ("What if they threw a war and nobody came?"). Armies in the field must cooperate with one another in order to fight. Then there is the Geneva Convention, the Code of Conduct, Rules of Engagement, and other sets of agreements too numerous to mention. So even in the most sacred forms of competition, cooperation is utterly indispensable.

The interesting thing is that while you _cannot_ have competition without cooperation, you _can_ have cooperation without competition. That is, in fact, one of the singular features of the Internet: it is based on cooperation rather than competition. Don't think me so naive as to believe that there is nothing competitive going on in cyberspace. Far from it. But that competition is part of the content, not an element of its defining nature. And since the Internet is something of a prototype for the new reality that is now emerging, it is a good model to follow in adapting to our own future. If it works on the net, it can probably be adapted to human life offline, given enough time and effort.

What we value most is gained through cooperation. The more cooperative you are, the better your life works.

It has long been assumed that competitiveness is an essential component of human nature, but we seldom hear about man's inherent cooperativeness. Yet in cyberspace, the most unrestricted playing field in history, this is the quality that has risen to the surface.

The Internet literally owes its existence to cooperation freely given. No where else can you find so much freely offered. Everywhere you look, you find free information, free services, free speech, free art, free, free, free....

Cooperation is monumentally cheaper than competition as a means to accomplishing common goals. Perhaps best of all, in matters of cooperation, everyone wins. This is in stark contrast to most forms of competition where someone is assured of losing. Competition is the archetypal "zero-sum game." In case you're not familiar with the term, a brief description is in order.

The so-called zero-sum game is one in which everything won by one player must be lost by others. In other words, for me to win $1, my competitors must collectively lose exactly $1. This is what is referred to variously as "the law of the jungle," or "kill or be killed," or "it's a dog eat dog world." But what if it's really a dog-eat-dog food world? What if competition is a fool's paradise?

People like to be cooperative. It feels good. The results are better for everyone. It is as efficient as it is effective. To choose competition over cooperation is, as Mark Twain once put it, "like preferring a watch that _must_ go wrong over one that _can't_." In the popular vernacular, it's a no-brainer.

You may be asking, "What do I do about people who are still determined to be competitive?" Good question. The first answer may simply be to avoid them whenever you can. They want to win, which means that for them to get what they want you have to lose an equivalent amount. If you think that's the only way for you to gain your ends, then you're already one of them.

If, on the other hand, you want to gain your ends, but do so in ways that don't involve the zero-sum game, then you will have to learn a whole new way of interacting, one based on cooperation. The good news is that there are many examples out there upon which to base your approach. To get a quick sampling, just Google "cooperation over competition." There is an ongoing, and sometimes heated, debate on the subject.

Basically, the notion that we have to kill or be killed is a carryover from days long gone when there was more than a shred of truth in the assertion. But as it turns out, even in dire circumstances, cooperation can provide a better solution. Even our most ancient ancestors were better hunters in coordinated groups that shared their bounty than they were as single hunters who hoarded their game.

You may be closer to embracing this approach than you think. Teamwork is, for example, a time-honored strategy. What limits it, as it is usually practiced, is that it is applied only to one's team and not to the "enemy." To give this form of cooperation broader application, all you have to do is expand your definition of your team to include everyone. Now you can apply everything you know about teamwork to any scale you choose.

"But," you may say, "if I include my competitors on my team, they have goals that are contradictory to my own." That may be true. But on how many traditional teams does everyone agree all the time? Yet they seem to work well enough. So clearly differences of opinion or purpose can be tolerated, and even merged to mutual satisfaction. The key lies in the basic good intent of the team members.

Competition puts individuals or groups against one another toe-to-toe in a zero-sum game. Cooperation places them shoulder-to-shoulder and side-by-side toward a common goal or obstacle with the intent that everyone wins. This image of toe-to-toe versus shoulder-to-shoulder is an excellent one to actually feel the difference between competition and cooperation.

To meet this challenge in the new century we have to take stock of our most frequently used styles of interacting and conducting transactions. Which of these two stances do we adopt most often? Do our toes touch, or our shoulders? If you find yourself choosing the former, what can you do to change that? How might that work better? Take it slow if you must, but keep at it. Sooner or later, it will work its wonders on you and those closest to you.
  4. ### Living fearlessly

Before we get into the challenges involved in living fearlessly, let's get a few things straight about the nature of fear. There will be some surprises here for most people, but not to worry. It should all make sense shortly.

First, forget most of what you have always been told about fear. The good news is that it is actually simpler when you understand what it really is and how it works. There are just a few basic concepts which will allow you to understand fear better than you ever have. Here they are. Please stop and let them sink in a bit rather than just rushing ahead, for there are implications not at first obvious.

Fear is the emotional experience we have when we expect that pain is on its way to us. This doesn't have to be physical or even emotional pain. It is really anything that you would rather not include in your life. The key word here is "expect," because all fear is based on an _expectation_ _of something that_ _has not yet actually happened_.

We can experience pain, or anger, or any number of other unpleasant emotions about what is already going on, or has already passed for that matter. But we are never afraid of what is already happening. It is an emotion reserved for expectations. So what are expectations, and where do they come from?

We _expect_ that which our beliefs about ourselves, life, the universe, and everything tell us is the most likely outcome based on what we perceive is true in the present. If our beliefs are valid and true and accurately reflect the true nature of things, then we will usually expect something pretty close to what actually happens. But if our beliefs are misinformed, based on prejudice, fuzzy thinking, or just plain fiction, then often we will expect one kind of outcome when something quite different actually happens. These expectations may not involve fear, but too often they do.

To produce fear, our beliefs must tell us that we should expect something unpleasant or outright painful to happen. In other words, there is a threat of something dangerous. Note that it is not the actual danger itself that we are responding to. It hasn't even arrived yet. We are responding only to our _belief_ that the threat exists. However, since it is widely accepted that "where there's smoke, there's fire," when we see a threat, we respond as if the danger it portends is already real. One reason this happens is that because the emotion of fear is quite real, it is easy to assume that the threat it is associated with is also real, even when it's not. This applies equally when the danger actually is true, as it does when there is no real danger at all. It is very important to realize the role played by beliefs, expectations, threats, danger and the real pain they predict.

Many factors influence the degree of fear an individual may experience in a given case. The _likelihood_ of the expected event is one of those factors. If you consider some painful event to be almost certain to happen, your level of fear is going to be much higher than it would be if you thought the odds were one in a million against it happening.

The second factor is the _degree of pain_ that is expected to accompany the event if and when it finally arrives. If you expect great pain, or even death, you are far more likely to get upset than you will if all that is at stake is a slap on the wrist.

The third major factor influencing the degree of fear experienced is _proximity in time_. Things that we expect to happen immediately are much scarier than those that are months or even years away.

There is one more factor that is essential to understanding fear. Let's call it the hammer and anvil. The hammer is the belief in a threat. The anvil is a belief in one's own _powerlessness_ to prevent or endure the coming danger. There is a huge difference between your emotional reaction to a ten year old schoolyard bully when you are six, than when you're twenty-six. Why? Because most twenty-six-year-olds don't feel very threatened by a kid that young.

So the worst kinds of fear are those that:

  * seem certain to happen

  * seem likely to happen immediately

  * are going to hurt like crazy when they do happen

  * we feel completely powerless to stop them

Conversely, the most innocuous fears are those that we believe:

  * probably won't happen at all

  * and even if they do, it won't be for a long time

  * and it won't really hurt much anyway

  * Oh yes, and besides, we have _a Get Out of Jail Free_ card

Obviously, there are countless mixtures of these ingredients to fit every occasion. But the ones you need to pay particular attention to are the ones based on beliefs that really don't prove reliable over the long haul. These are beliefs that tell you to be very afraid of things that either never actually happen, or happen rarely, only happen mainly because you have worried about them so much (worry is like praying for what you don't want). To quote Mark Twain again, "I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened."

One more example before we get to the real meat of it all. There is an undivided, paved road called Marine Drive that runs along the Columbia River on the edge of Portland, Oregon. It has two lanes plus a shoulder, with guard rails in some places but not in others. The posted speed limit on this road is 45 mph. For much of its ten or so mile length the road is built on a dike, with a sharp drop into open fields on one side, and an equally sharp drop into the Columbia River on the other side. It is a very heavily traveled road. Hundreds of people drive on it, in both directions, every day.

Now for the interesting part. Two people approaching one another from opposite directions, both going at the speed limit, will pass each other at a combined speed of 90 mph. If, however, they were to hit each other head on, that would also be at a combined speed of 90 mph. Few could survive such a catastrophe.

To make matters even worse, there is almost no maneuvering room if someone comes at you head on. If there are guard rails, they severely limit your options for escape. And if there are none, then you're in an equally bad situation. On one side it's a short drop into a field or gully, and on the other side you're going to wind up in a fast-moving river.

And make no mistake; there are collisions on the road. It is in no way charmed. Yet though hundreds of people drive it every day, the vast majority are completely oblivious to any serious danger. This is solid proof that they believe that they are safe. If they felt in danger, they would be afraid, or just avoid the road altogether (While it is the most convenient way to make some trips, it is far from the only one.) But they aren't afraid. Since we can be sure most of them do not believe that they have an invisible shield to protect them, the only explanation is that they do not believe a serious threat exists. And here's where it gets very interesting.

Look at the ways that things could go very, very badly for them.

  * The driver of the oncoming vehicle could be high on alcohol or drugs, and totally incompetent to drive safely. If they come over the line at the last moment, you've got no place to go.

  * Either you or the other driver could have a heart attack, or stroke, or seizure that would render you instantly unconscious.

  * Either driver could fall asleep.

  * Either vehicle could have a mechanical malfunction that caused it to go out of control.

There are probably a lot more possibilities. What is important to recognize here is that in order to drive on that road without being totally paranoid, you _must_ trust yourself, the vehicles, and the other drivers very close to 100 percent! Otherwise, you're completely nuts to drive down that road as if none of that mattered.

What it comes down to is simply this: people do not respond to the reality of a danger, but to the threats they perceive, whether those threats are valid or not. This is why people will drive on that road completely relaxed, even though some drunk might swerve into their lane, or the guy going the other way might have a heart attack. Yet they seem to find it easy to feel genuine terror over the prospect of being killed in a terrorist attack. Now in some places, that's not so crazy. But in beautiful downtown JustAboutAnywhereInAmerica it is little short of Looney Tunes.

Feeling fear that is based on indefensible beliefs in danger may be responsible for more human misery than any other single cause. It is also invisible in most cases. Why? Because if you believe in the threat to begin with, then you will hardly see it as unjustified. Right? You'll never meet a cynic who doesn't believe they are just being "realistic."

Possibly the worst thing about fear is that we feel obliged to avoid the object of our fear. The stronger the fear, the greater the urge to avoid it. Sometimes we do things we wouldn't ordinarily do, but we feel we have to in order to get what we want without having to face a fearful situation. It is a powerful and pernicious barrier that separates virtually all of us from things we would dearly love to touch.

And now we have arrived at the real crux of this whole question of living fearlessly. In the end, it all comes down to choices each of us makes. Are we going to pay attention to our fears, even the quiet ones that slink around in the shadows? Are we going to try to understand the beliefs that provide us with reasons why we have to be afraid? Or are we going to withdraw our support for those beliefs that are false, or at least no longer serve us? These are all choices that every individual makes countless times over the course of their lives. There is no question about that. The real question is how you are going to make those choices. Will you put them on autopilot, automatically renewing their lease on the quality of your life? Or will you take back your power of choice and reclaim your birthright?

Here's a little hint that should help you see how fictitious fear is. All you have to do is stop right now and realize that you are absolutely safe at this moment. Unless someone is aiming a gun at you, or pushing you out the window of a high rise, you are probably about as safe as you have ever been.

Yet you may feel some kind if fear. You may call it stress, or anxiety, or whatever you want to. But when all is said and done, it is really just fear. The dread of something unpleasant that you have become convinced is (or might be) headed your way. But the truth is that at this moment you are completely safe. You will almost certainly never be able to take this reading with different results. It's something to consider.

Looking at it from a somewhat different perspective, who or what is going to make the choices in your life: love, or fear? Will you choose to reach for what you want, or just to avoid what you fear? These choices, and others like them, are among the trail markers of the twenty-first century.
  5. ### Think clearly

Everyone has the innate ability to think. We are also born with the ability to think clearly, unless perhaps we have some kind of congenital brain damage. So how is it that so many people seem to live in a mental universe that's confused, uncertain, and unique to them? We already touched on the answer to that question in the last chapter when we looked at the effect beliefs have on our thinking as applied to fear. Well, fear isn't the only type of thought that is influenced by our beliefs. As a matter of fact, virtually every part of our mental and psychological makeup is formed according to our beliefs.

The animals' behavior is dictated almost entirely by instincts. We humans also have _some_ instincts, but far fewer than most animals. We also have the ability to "manually override" some of those that we do have. What humans have that takes the place of the animals' instincts is a system of beliefs that perform many of the same functions, as well as others unique to humans. The difference is that, unlike instincts, we have the ability to choose and control our beliefs. Think of them as virtual instincts.

To make this important distinction clearer, let's compare instincts and beliefs to computer memory. Some basic programming that is needed by computers in order to operate correctly is permanently coded into the actual hardware. It is called ROM, or Read Only Memory. That's why they call it _hard_ -ware. Programming that is used temporarily and then set aside, such as your wordprocessor or web browser, is called _soft_ -ware. But there is an in-between kind of programming that remains in memory even after the power goes off. It is called EPROM, _Erasable_ Programmable Read Only Memory. The generic term is _firm_ -ware. Firmware is programmed once and can be forgotten thereafter. However, it can also be reprogrammed at any time, if you know how to do it.

Instincts are like the programming found in a computer's ROM. It is built in and can not be changed (that's why it's called Read Only). Firmware can be programmed and left unchanged, just like hardware. But it can also be reprogrammed at any time that seems useful to do so. Beliefs work the same way. Once adopted, they seem to be part of our hardware, just like instincts. The big difference is that unlike instincts, beliefs can be reprogrammed, by us, at any time.

The problems arise when we fail to take responsibility for our own beliefs. This typically happen when we forget that we adopted a belief out of choice, not because it is a cosmic truth like gravity. And that is what this chapter is about: how we lose authorship of our beliefs, the effect it has on the clarity of our thinking, and how we can restore ourselves as the owners of our personal thought processes.

To begin with we need to take a closer look at what beliefs are, and how they operate within the human mind. It is popular to think of beliefs as those that are widely debated, such as the belief in God, or a political party, or a philosophy. We seldom examine, or are even aware of, our beliefs about ourselves, each other, and the way life works. Yet these are the beliefs that are of predominant importance in our everyday lives. They cast very long shadows.

Keep in mind that a belief is simply an idea whose truth and validity you no longer question, and we don't call such things beliefs: we call them _facts_. So beliefs inherently tend toward invisibility. In fact, this is one of their most valuable attributes. Since we use them to function as "reprogrammable instincts," they work better when we aren't even aware of them. The problems begin when we lose track of the fact that they are there at all, and that we were the ones who put them there. Furthermore, they can't exist for a nanosecond without our support, whether consciously or unconsciously.

While we're at it, we should also examine the meaning of conscious versus unconscious. The popular definitions are very misleading, particularly about the unconscious mind. It is widely considered that the unconscious mind is little more than a repository for random, primitive, and generally unacceptable thoughts and feelings. Sigmund Freud popularized much of this type of view of the less-than-conscious portions of our phyche. It is something of an ugly stepchild within the larger family of our personality. Little of that has anything to do with the way the word is used here.

Here, when we talk about the unconscious, it means anything that we are not focused on in the present moment, but that we could focus on if we so chose. Think of it as like being in a dark room wearing a miner's helmet with a built-in flashlight. You can only see clearly that which the light shines on. By moving your head you can shine the light on anything in the room, but it can only illuminate one thing at a time. Our conscious awareness performs much the same role in our mental experience as the flashlight does in a dark room. What you shine the light of your focus on is conscious, everything else is unconscious.

However, just because we can shine the light of our awareness in limitless directions doesn't mean that we grant ourselves the option of doing so. We may, and most often do, have beliefs that tell us that we either cannot, should not, or must not look in certain directions. This specifically includes beliefs that convince us that it would be a waste of time to look in particular directions, because there is nothing there of any interest or value.

So now our possibilities, in a practical sense, are limited to only that part of our personal universe that is not discouraged, or outright forbidden, by our belief system. What we have left is all that is visible to us of our world, regardless of the fact that there is much, much more available that we actively ignore.

The prohibitions about the value or wisdom of turning our attention in certain directions derive from beliefs that come from various sources. Chief among these are early parental instruction (especially by example), religious training, along with what we learn in school and from our social contacts. With so many sources, and such significant issues being involved, it should come as no surprise that we are awash in conflicting, contradictory, and inconsistent beliefs, nor that a lot can be at stake if we put things together wrong.

This leaves us with a bit of a sticky wicket. What we do may best be described as, well, the best we can. Or to be more precise, the best we _know how to do_. Unfortunately, that is seldom particularly good news, since we receive little, if any, instruction in how to deal effectively with the whole shebang. That, too, should come as no surprise, since the people who gave us our beliefs to begin with didn't have a very tight grip on the care and feeding of belief systems themselves. Why would they? None of this is supposed to matter anyway, right? Just a bunch of airy-fairy crap tossed around by a bunch of tree-hugging crackpots. Or something like that. The general attitude usually is, "If this were important, I'd know it, wouldn't I?"

At the end of the day, every time you think about almost anything, a whole collection of beliefs—large or small, subtle or dramatic—gets its licks in, one way or another. The result is that what would have been, according to your natural mental processes, a perfectly clear and unambiguous view, has been reduced to a patchwork of artificially colored, distorted, or totally absent impressions. For the most part, we are so used to this that we think of it as perfectly normal. Anything else would seem quite abnormal.

So let's get down to cases. Nothing drives a point home like a well-chosen example. Let's see what we can cook up for this occasion.

One of the best examples is not only ubiquitous, but hidden in plain sight. How many times have you heard—or said yourself—"That made me happy," or "She makes me angry." The clear intent here is for the speaker to convey the impression that they had no choice but to experience the emotions mentioned. What's more, they expect to be taken seriously, at face value. Yet no one (apparently) takes a closer look. For if they did, they would immediately see that this kind of force is at best unlikely, and in a practical sense utterly impossible. Here's what I mean.

To say that someone/thing "makes" you feel something implies that you are forced to do so, that you simply have no choice. In most situations, when someone is said to be "made" to do something, it is understood that some form of coercion was used. If not physical coercion, then a less direct threat like humiliation, or abandonment, or any of a number of others.

Yet when people say that they have been "made" to feel something, they are virtually never under any physical threat, and seldom any direct non-physical one. So what is really going on here? Why the deception?

Clearly, anyone who says such a thing is painting a picture in which they do not choose their own emotions. What they are saying is, in effect, "Hey, don't blame me. It's not like I freely chose to feel that way. He/she/it/they made me feel it." This is done in the hope no one will notice the absurdity.

It has become popular for some time now to believe that emotion and thought are somehow separate entities and are even in an adversarial relationship. Gene Roddenberry, in his Star Trek series, frequently couched his belief in this dichotomy through pitting emotion and logic against one another as mortal enemies. At least he allowed that we need both to be fully human.

Sadly, this whole notion is insupportable. You can prove it to yourself in less than a minute. In this little exercise, think of "good" feelings as those you want more of, and "bad" feelings as those you want less of.

Just think about some event or idea that you consider very positive. Now, while holding that thought in your mind, try to feel bad. I mean really awful. You can't do it, not without changing the thought.

Next, try it in reverse. Think of something terrible, and try to feel good. Oops. Same problem, eh? Well, you're not alone. What you have just done is to prove that emotions follow conscious thoughts like hungry little puppies. They are never at odds. They are like mated pairs.

So when you think a thought, you also bring up the emotions that (you believe) go with it. The next question is, "Who chooses your thoughts?" Unless you are ready to put on a tinfoil hat (to filter out those signals that make you think bad things), the answer should be pretty obvious: you choose your own thoughts, and no one else does.

And now we are right back where we left off, but a bit wiser. Clearly, when someone claims that someone/something else "made" them feel something, they are just trying to avoid responsibility for having chosen that feeling. Yet they did choose it when they chose to think whatever thoughts brought that feeling into the forefront of their awareness.

Anyone who does this believes, at the moment of choice, that this is the path that will bring them the most benefit, even if, in fact, it won't. And that is the whole point here: some belief has convinced them that perpetrating this hoax—that their emotions and reactions are forced on them, not freely chosen—and asking others to accept it, is somehow to their advantage, when in truth it is not.

Such beliefs can take countless forms. The most popular one is probably, "Don't blame me! It's not my fault." While this can take many forms, all of them have the common theme of disclaimer. Some are of the ilk of "it was broke when I found it," or "the cat made me do it" or "God is out to get me." Regardless, the erroneous belief is always there, and it twists an otherwise rational mind into a pretzel.

This strikes at the heart of what the title of this chapter really means. This is a prime example of "fuzzy" thinking as contrasted to "clear" thinking. The difference is that the fuzzy kind is influenced by erroneous beliefs, and the clear version is not. The difficulty lies in knowing the difference between the two in real time. We are so inculcated with countless disruptive beliefs, that catching ourselves in the act of putting them to counterproductive use can be very demanding. So much so that it seems easier to just take it all at face value and muddle through the obstacle course with which it presents us.

This approach has always had plenty of disadvantages, but the cost is rising more quickly now, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. In order to keep pace with the rapid changes that are starting to pick up steam, we must remain psychologically agile. We must learn to eliminate any habits of thought that limit or hinder our ability to apply our best mental efforts to whatever challenges we face, especially those that involved adaptability. There will be less and less room for fuzzy thinking, which means that we must learn to find and neutralize the beliefs that create it in the first place. We'll talk more about the specifics in the next chapter and beyond.
  6. ### Think things through

One of the keys to adapting with agility to rapidly changing conditions is the ability to see how events are most likely to unfold. The accuracy with which we see these things is largely dependent on the clarity of our insight into the processes involved. And that insight is in turn dependent on the depth at which we see and understand what is happening, and the validity of our perceptions. In short, the greater our intimacy with the "nature of the beast," the greater the certainty with which we can see developments clearly before they actually arrive. All of which hinges on our ability to think things through thoroughly and accurately.

To illustrate the principles involved, let's look at the way in which computer programs have been developed that can defeat even a Grand Master chess player. There are three basic approaches used. One involves what amounts to teaching the program everything an expert player knows about chess. However, even if this is done to perfection, the highest level of skill attainable would be equal to that of the "teacher." To beat the teacher requires some additional abilities that the teacher doesn't have.

The second approach to chess programming follows an algorithm, a methodology, which assures victory. In this strategy, every possible combination of legal moves is played out all the way to an end game, then the best series is evaluated and the first move of that sequence is made. The limitation of this approach is that it would take a tremendous amount of time to play all those move sequences to end game. Another approach is clearly needed.

The third approach would be for the computer to memorize every possible game and just make the moves it already knows lead to victory. But when one considers that there are an incredible number of possible games (something on the order of ten with forty zeros games, roughly half the number of atoms in the visible universe), this would take a incredible amount of computing capacity, both in terms of speed and memory. So this strategy is not practical, either.

The answer, thus far, has been to combine all three methods. Here's how it typically works. First, the opening moves of thousands of famous matches are memorized. These were cataloged long ago as _Modern Chess Openings_ , so there's no mystery there.

Then, as moves are made, and as long as they follow one of these known games, the next move is dictated by the best move according to the archive of past games. Once a move is made that does not agree with match play, it is time to shift to the second strategy.

Now the program is in unknown territory. So it begins to explore all combinations of legal moves from the current board position forward. But, as has been noted, this can involve trillions of trillions of moves. A limit is therefore set as to how many moves ahead the program will play the game out to. It can be any number that is within the time constraints of the computer to accomplish. Many chess programs allow users to set a level of difficulty, which is usually accomplished by preventing the computer from looking ahead beyond a certain point.

The final assessment that leads to choosing a move is done by using chess knowledge programming to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of all the possible games to that point. To do this, each sequence is evaluated and given a score. The move with the highest score (i.e., the highest probability of eventually winning) is then made.

For the purposes of our discussion here, the middle strategy of looking ahead a certain number of moves is the most relevant. It should come as no surprise that, all other things being equal, a program that looks ahead ten moves is almost certain to beat one that only looks ahead two moves. Why? Because it is more likely to judge accurately the relative advantages and disadvantages of one series of moves over another.

The process that people go through in evaluating their choices in life is remarkably similar. And so is the predictability of their choices. The farther we follow the consequences of choices out from an initial decision, and the more accurately we evaluate them, the more likely we will see clearly and accurately the consequences of those choices. This allows us to take actions that are more reliably beneficial.

Conversely, if we only look at the first one or two levels of choice/result, we should expect to find unexpected, and often unpleasant, surprises before all is said and done. For those who live this way most of the time, life is an endless series of unexpected outcomes that seldom live up to their advertising. For them, life is a crap shoot, and they don't have particularly good luck.

The life experience of those who do think things through farther is quite different. When they make choices, based on a deeper insight into the chain of consequences that follow from their choice points, they more often meet with results that are more or less what they expected. It is not that they are never surprised, but more that even unexpected outcomes are more likely to be beneficial rather than catastrophic.

One classic example of the difference between what is seen by the short-sighted person compared to a far-sighted one is found in the views of top ranking naval officers of the Imperial Japanese Navy after their successful bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. Some of them felt that the obviously total victory of the attack was proof that it was a stroke of military genius. They were jubilant, almost as if they had already won the war.

Others, however, were not so sure. One, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, was later quoted as expressing his fear that all they had accomplished was to "awaken a sleeping giant." Few took this view seriously at the time. Nonetheless, by the time the war was over, it was clear whose thinking was most thorough.

The problem we all face is that few of us are at all well schooled in the kind of thorough thinking that leads to the development of a strong ability to adapt quickly to rapidly changing conditions. Yet that is, if nothing else, exactly what the twenty-first century promises to give us: conditions that change more quickly than they have ever before in human history.

The answer is as simple as it is daunting. We must each take it upon ourselves to upgrade our ability to think our choices through farther than we ever have before. Ideally, we would all develop these skills to the point where they were habitual and automatic. At the very least we should become far more aware of full scope of situations and what they require of us, and do what we can to respond appropriately.

These principles apply not only to our personal lives, but perhaps even more so to our collective, sociopolitical lives. And make no mistake: there will be consequences no matter what we choose to do. The question is which consequences will we court: those that bring us joy, or those that bring us pain. As the century progresses, it seems likely that there will be less and less mid-ground. It's a little like skydiving: you either come down safely or you die. There is seldom any mid-ground.
  7. ### A path with heart

For thousands of years most people have had to work hard just to survive, at least until the last several generations. One of the first duties of parents was to instill in their young some kind of so called "work ethic;" a belief that hard work was not just a survival skill, but a virtue as well. To this very day many children all over the world are taught these same lessons, in one form or another. But in recent times that is changing.

In the last few decades it has become popular to talk about "working smart" as a preferred alternative to working hard. While this would have made little sense for most of the humans who have ever lived, in this age of technology, it seems reasonable. Maybe even compelling.

But as with everything these days, working smart may be destined to a very short shelf life compared to working hard. Smart may prove to be only a temporary bridge to get us from the old way to our real destination. And what is that? Let's take a look.

Have you ever really examined the underpinnings of the work ethic? What does it really mean?

Obviously, hard work is the central feature of the work ethic. But it doesn't stop there. It is also assumed that each of us is obliged to serve others as well. These others may be family, or clan, or country, or just society. Regardless, we are expected to live our lives in a way that is of service to others. Part of this ethic also involves some sacrifice in the service of others. This sacrifice may be expressed by going to war, or paying taxes, or subrogating your own wishes and dreams to those that are deemed to be of greater service to the whole. And for millennia this all seemed to be an obvious truth.

Nowadays, however, things are changing. For one thing, working hard is no longer necessary for basic survival, at least not for a growing number of people. For many people, working hard has a different objective. That goal may be accumulating wealth, or keeping up with the Joneses, or simply because it is expected. But it is not strictly speaking necessary. Far less effort would provide them with a quite comfortable life.

Granted, for the majority of humans, life is still a tough go. But even that is changing. For example, in the 1990s an international survey showed that nearly half of humanity had never placed a phone call. Today it is very difficult to find any large area where there are people that don't have cellular phone service. If that weren't impressive enough, over one third of all living humans use the Internet regularly in some way. According to the United Nations, over 83 percent of humanity has at least one cell phone. The largest growth market on Earth for new computing and communication products is to upgrade the roughly three billion people who have simple cell phones to smartphones. And those numbers are growing literally moment by moment.

What this means, among other things, is that the whole world is becoming more prosperous. Certainly some of us are ahead of others, but nearly everyone is better off than their grandparents in some meaningful ways. One offshoot of this prosperity is the general effect of hard work being less critical to survival than it has ever before been. This is more so day by day.

So if working hard is not as important as it used to be, and working smart is not an adequate replacement, then what are we heading for in the twenty-first century? This is where we finally can become fully human. We can now free ourselves from the servitude of doing what we have to in order to survive. It is time now to follow what we love.

This new era is not without its challenges, however. Far from it. Chief among them is that we are for the most part, as a species, all but totally unprepared to take on the task. Why? Because no one who came before us saw it coming and therefore we have not in any meaningful way been properly prepared to make the move from hard labor to labors of love.

From our educational institutions to the very fabric of our societies, the goals of life are still focused on survival, service, and sacrifice. The question is how do we get from there to lives driven by passion, filled with self-satisfaction and service freely given? Yet that is the challenge humanity faces in the new millennium. But there is good news. Actually, quite a lot of it.

The first good news, and probably the best news, is that we are born with everything it takes to live such a life. It plays right into our strongest suits. Let's face it, what child doesn't love to play their favorite games? Try to find a successful adult artist who didn't love to paint or draw or create in general as a child? The same goes for musicians, builders, athletes, cooks, and those who are successful and happy in their adult careers. Here is a new axiom for the new millennium:

### An ounce of passion is worth a ton of discipline.

A brief cost/benefit analysis of the differences between the old and new paradigms will shed some light on why we need to make such a change at this time.

As we noted earlier (in Chapter 2), in public opinion polls of the last couple of decades, 80 to 85 percent of Americans have said that they hate either their job, or their boss, or both. How in the world can people who feel like that contribute nearly as much to their own lives and the lives of others as they could if they were doing something they deeply loved?

People who hate what they do often "get sick," and even when they're not sick, they have a tough time getting out of bed in the morning to go to a job they loath. People who love what they do don't get sick as often, and when they do they drag themselves to work anyway, because they just can't stand the thought of missing out on the pleasure it brings them. Who wouldn't want to trade the former for the latter?

When we love something, we tend to become very good at it. And when we're good at something, we tend to enjoy doing it. And when we enjoy doing something we're good at, we tend to be very successful. And we are successful because others find great value in what we do and are quite willing to pay us well for sharing it with them. This all plays right squarely into the center of human nature: we are all born with a high degree of self-interest. It's just that too often unfortunately erroneous beliefs keep us from following that self-interest intelligently, and therefore of benefit to everyone. That is something else that must change.

Now some of you may find that troubling, because you have been taught that self-interest is a bad thing, that it comes at a cost to others and makes you a "bad" person. This is not now, nor has it ever been true. To see why, consider this.

What do any of us have to offer others? No matter what your answer, in the end what it really comes down to is that all we have to offer is, in essence, ourselves. What I do not have, I cannot give or share. So anything that gives me more, means I have more to share. Anything that gives me less, means I have less to share. Now, granted, this doesn't guarantee that I will share, but if I don't have something, I can't share it! So ideally, we all have a lot to share, and we also have a desire to share it.

This applies to inner qualities like love, compassion, wisdom, and generosity, as well as to physical things like money, support, and things we create. In short, life is only a zero-sum game if we insist. It is not that way intrinsically.

So if you want to move farther in this direction, to realign yourself and your life toward the future, you must look within for your passions. Childhood is usually a great seedbed, but don't limit your search to your early years. Often times our real passions don't emerge in their most authentic form until will are older and more mature.

Look for the things that have brought you the most pleasure. Not just the kind of pleasure you find in good food or sex or other momentary pursuits, but the kinds of pleasure that resonate deep within you, the kinds of things that make your heart sing and bring tears to your eyes. These are the clues to where your real passions lie. And it is those passions that will lead you from the treadmill to the open road.

When you find something that seems to fit this mold, then follow it wherever it leads you, as long as it continues to feel good. And don't be surprised if it leads you somewhere you never expected. If it doesn't seem to come to fruition on the first attempt, try a different variation, or a different direction altogether. Believe all along that there is something within you that desperately wants to find expression in the outer world, and that you can and will find it, and that when you do, your life will be so much richer than you ever imagined it could be.

Dream of waking up every morning eager to get back to "work," and of hating to stop in the evening, because you're having too much fun. Imagine making more money than you need or even want, enough that you can give it away without a second thought. And let your heart swell as you think about all the beauty and joy you can share with the world, because you have so much of it.

In the end, following a path with heart is what we are all destined to do. The only question is whether we will have the wisdom and the integrity to pursue it to our own benefit, as well as that of our true family--the Family of Man.
  8. ### Look for answers inside

As we have already discussed, change is one of the key ingredients in the evolution of the twenty-first century. Generally speaking, there are no manuals or guidebooks telling us what changes are needed or how to find that out. Determining what changes to make and how to go about it requires us to look for answers ourselves.

There are two basic sources of answers: outside, in the "real" world, and inside of ourselves. Nearly everyone goes first to outside sources when they are looking for answers. It is the way we're taught, the way everyone does it, the only way we know. Most people don't even consider looking inside of themselves for the answers they need unless things go really, really badly. Novelist Tom Robbins formulated Robbins Law to cover this aspect of human experience and expressed it as follows:

"Whatever goes wrong can be used to your advantage, providing it goes wrong enough."

So as long as things don't go _too_ wrong, we keep looking outside for our answers. But when they go wrong enough, whatever that means at a given moment, that is when we shift our gaze inward in our quest for wisdom and guidance.

For some this means prayer, for others meditation, or simply thinking with a thoroughness that we don't usually employ. All have one thing in common: they rely on inner, intuitive experience over that of the physical, "practical" world.

For anyone who has ever engaged in both of these modes of questioning, it is obvious that not only is the process involved in each different from the other, but so are the answers they provide.

Now I am not saying here that anyone should abandon all outward-directed forms of problem solving or guidance seeking. Far from it. I am, however, saying that most of us could benefit greatly from improving our ability to seek answers through inward means, rather than always looking only outward. To do so, though, requires improving our skill level, if you will, since few of us receive early help in learning how to use this invaluable resource effectively.

So that is the task and the challenge: to upgrade your own ability and willingness to use your inner resources regularly and effectively. Who knows, you may even be able to avoid running headlong into Robbins Law by effectively handling your challenges before things deteriorate so much that they go "wrong enough." Wouldn't that be splendiferous?

There are countless means by which to connect with your inner resources. Your first challenge may very well be to use your most native intuitive ability to guide your search for tools and techniques that will allow you to become more effective in your use of inner resources. What could be more appropriate?

Here are some suggestions that may help you prime your pump.

  * **Religious material** : Read from your favorite religious book(s). If you don't have one, then explore those with which you are not already familiar. You don't have to read the Bible or Koran or Bhagavad-Gita from cover to cover (unless you really want to) just to decide whether it "speaks" to you or not. Usually you will know pretty quickly whether there is anything there that resonates with your inner sense of knowing. Whatever does is worth exploring further.

  * **Other spiritual sources** : There is no shortage of basically non-religious material that is focused on spiritual matters. The Seth books by Jane Roberts, the work of Abraham/Hicks, and a cornucopia of self-help books by authors like Neale Donald Walsh ( _Conversations with God_ ), Jack Canfield ( _Chicken Soup for the Soul_ ), and countless others. Just go to your favorite bookstore, library, or web site and peruse the relevant sections.

  * **Friends** : Do you know someone who seems to live on a fairly even keel and uses some form of inner exploration. Ask them to tell you what they do, and how it works for them. If it sounds attractive, ask them to recommend how you could start on a similar path yourself.

  * **Other resources** : It should go almost without saying that there are untold articles, blogs, web sites, movies, and other media that address the limitless means by which we can access the resources that lie within.

There are no mistakes, unless you choose some approach for reasons other than its resonance with your inner wisdom. And even that is just another step along your path, which will presumably lead you to something even better.

Probably the best comment on the question of what is the right path to take came from an unnamed guru who was asked what the best religion or philosophy is. His answer was:

"Religions and philosophies are like detergents to cleanse the fabric of your soul. And they can all do a pretty good job. So it doesn't matter all that much which one you choose. What does matter is that you rinse all of the detergent out when you're through."

What really matters in this account is that when you have rinsed it all out, what you are left with is exactly what you started with: Yourself. It's just that now your vision is clearer and your heart lighter. Oh yes, if you had a question in mind, you are at least closer to having an answer.

So trust your own intuition to guide you to the right approach, maybe for the first time. And trust your ability to know the difference between that which will set you free to be authentic, and that which tries to convince you to do otherwise, whether by fear and intimidation, or misinformation, or dangling shiny baubles before you eyes. You are almost certain to make "mistakes" as you learn, but they are necessary for one trying to refine their abilities. Use them to get better and better. Just try to keep them from hurting yourself or anyone else. That is never necessary.

In the end, just remember that no one else can be born for you, or live your life for you, or die for you. Those are things we each have to do for ourselves. And the same thing goes for finding and mastering the abilities needed to access the inner resources that enable us to lead lives worth living. To seek answers only in the outer world at the expense of the inner one is, to again refer to Mark Twain, "like preferring a watch that _must_ go wrong over one that _can't_."
  9. ### Intimacy

When the word "intimacy" is mentioned, most people immediately think of romantic or sexual intimacy. And that is quite valid and often appropriate. But there are other forms of intimacy that are far more important in both romantic and non-romantic areas of life.

Intimacy describes the depth of familiarity with someone or something, including one's own self. In its most developed form, intimacy entails a deep and thorough understanding of another, and if that other is a person, then the intimacy is presumably reciprocal. In the context of interpersonal relationships, the following rule apples:

Your capacity for intimacy is limited only by the intensity of your desire to be known completely.

This means to be known for the truth of who you are, not some fabrication that has little or nothing to do with your most authentic self. The greater your desire to be known, the greater the intimacy you can support. For intimacy to be mutual, both parties must have the same motivation.

Similar properties pertain to our relationships with non-human creatures, or even inanimate objects. Many people attain a level of intimacy with their pets that rivals, or in some cases surpasses their human relationships.

Perhaps the most overlooked, yet important type of intimacy is that between a person and a thing, or even a subject. For example, having an intimate knowledge of painting, or a computer programming language, or cooking, are all of great advantage when dealing with those areas of human experience.

Even though your desire to be known is not directly connected with this type of intimacy, the two do seem to be found together. If you place limits on being known, you are likely to have reservations about knowing anything or anyone else beyond those very limits.

The degree of intimacy you possess toward someone, or something, determines your ability to create valid and detailed mental models of how the object of your intimacy behaves and will respond in a given situation. Without it you're just guessing, and probably not very well at that. So becoming intimate with as many of the people and things in your life as possible is an extremely valuable practical advantage, because you are able to deal with things and people more easily and with fewer unpleasant surprises.

And that is the main reason for taking time to delve into the subject now. In the new millennium we will all be called upon to interact with more people, things and situations than ever before. The old fashioned one-size-fits-all approach will serve us more and more poorly as time progresses. Conversely, a well-honed ability to reach a high level of intimacy, whether with people or things, will bring a tremendous advantage to those who possess it. They will be able to quickly and accurately predict the behavior of people and things better than their peers, and will therefore be far better equipped to breeze through life with a minimum of pitfalls to impede them.

And now for the heart of the matter. The first and most critical focus of your intimacy is within yourself. While there is an old saying, "To know me is to love me," it is usually said sarcastically. Secretly, in their heart of hearts, most people have a belief that is quite the opposite. In some, it is a minor player in the overall landscape of their self-image. In others, it is primary. It is strictly an individual thing, and is subject to dramatic change over time.

At any given moment, however, we all have a balance of power within our image of ourselves. On one side there is self-mistrust or even self-contempt, while on the other side are self-acceptance, self-appreciation, and self-affection. Those beliefs, and the feelings they engender, will determine to a large extent our capability for achieving intimacy.

For one whose self-image is predominantly negative, the kind of self-exposure that is required to achieve real intimacy will seem foolhardy at best, and suicidal at worst. For those whose image of themselves is based on trust and appreciation, the self-revelation demanded by intimacy will be an attractive, compelling, and exciting prospect. As one changes one's self-image, these attitudes change as well.

So if you would be the master of your life and all that it encompasses, then cultivate first a burning desire to be honest with yourself about yourself. This does not mean simply taking a brutal inventory of all of your faults. What it does mean is examining both your perceived strengths and weaknesses, and determining for yourself just how true and meaningful they really are. If you do this, you are bound to find some surprises along the way. You will likely find that many of the things you have come to think of as negative traits are really positive ones that you have been misusing in some way. Those kinds of errors can be corrected.

Once you are on your way with your self-honesty, you are ready to start revealing to others what you now know is the truth about yourself. You might want to start out with those who already love you and whom you most trust. But don't stop there. As soon as you feel ready, include your friends. Don't push it too hard, but don't drag your toes too much, either.

And don't forget to include enhancing your intimacy with the non-human part of your life. Become more intimate with your favorite subjects, whether professional or strictly personal. Read, experiment, and spend quality time with the things that you love the most. Your effort will not be wasted. In fact, you will find in general that the greater your intimacy with something, the more pleasure it will bring into your life.

It all begins with your beliefs about yourself, because any reasons you have to hold back from intimacy are almost certain to be based on those ideas. There are a number of other chapters in this book that touch on various aspects of these questions. Taken as a whole, they should be of value in expanding your capacity for intimacy, and consequently the benefits it can bestow.

Remember this simple concept: if you were totally intimate with your life, you would never again feel the need to keep a secret. What a relief that would be for nearly everyone. Makes a pretty juicy carrot to dangle before our eyes.
  10. ### How do you know when you're doing better?

It is not just handy, but critically important to have a way of gauging your progress if you are trying to make changes to anything, especially to your life. And the more gradual the evolution of those changes, the more important it is to have ways of knowing where you are in your path to your goals at any given time.

Sure, we are seldom fortunate enough to have sure-fire ways to measure progress down to a farthing, but that is just as seldom necessary, or even desirable. What is important, however, is to know with some degree of confidence whether progress is forward or backward, and about how fast it has been moving lately. It is also useful to know where you stand now compared to where you started, and also relative to where you want to be. It is just as important to know these things as it is for a navigator to know where on the sea, or in space, they are. Anything else is simply flying blind.

The question then becomes, how can we find these navigational aids and use them to best effect? To answer that, let's first take a look at the nature of mileposts and benchmarks. These are just ways of extracting from our experience glimpses that capture the relative state of our being at a given point. There are two kinds of sources from which we can draw: objective and subjective.

Objective evidence is that which can be measured with numbers. A weight, dollar amount, or test score are all good examples of objective measures. Subjective evidence is not so easily and precisely measured. When all is said and done, we are basically assigning a "score" to our experience that is totally subjective (even though we may feel that it is a mathematical certainty).

"I am happier now than I was last year," is a typical subjective judgment. Another variation is, "I am twice as happy this year as I was last year, and I hope to be twice as happy next year." Here we have also introduced the element of a relationship between not just two, but three different circumstances.

It is not always possible to state subjective impressions with both precision and certainty. Hence, the best we can do sometimes is, "I feel a lot better...," "nearly as happy," or "soooo much angrier." Yet these can be enough to keep us fairly well oriented on our journey.

The best thing you can do to increase the value of your navigational readings, especially the subjective ones, is to increase your self-honesty. Demand of yourself that you will not accept quick and superficial explanations from yourself, particularly if they are "old friends" and relate to subjects where there is an element of conflict of displeasure. Attending to this process in this way will enable you to trust your own subjective judgments, and deservedly so.

The other most useful practice is to learn to be as precise as possible. Now granted, precision is seldom what we'd like it to be in subjective situations. Yet there are usually things we can do to increase the level of precision without sacrificing confidence in the outcome. With objective matters, precision is not only easier, but we can reasonably aspire to higher levels. Using the best means of measuring is a good place to start in ensuring good results.

Subjective and objective milestones and benchmarks are important in the long haul, but are not often a critical part of the immediate situation. To keep on course moment-by-moment requires a different and far more responsive approach.

What if I told you that there is a wonderful, elegant, and simple source of instant feedback that will tell you at every moment exactly how you are doing in your quest for a life of freedom and authenticity? Would you believe me? If I also told you that this source has been with you every day of your life, and always will be; and that you have probably ignored it the vast majority of the time, thus wasting a very valuable resource, would that make you even more skeptical? Well, if so, you'd be wrong, because everything I just said is true, and I can prove it. Here's how.

We have talked earlier about the relationship between thought and emotion. Here's one place where the rubber most definitely meets the road. I have said that emotions follow your conscious thoughts, and they do. But that doesn't determine which emotion goes with which thought. For example, a pre-teen boy is likely to have a much different emotional reaction to seeing a girl he finds attractive coming his way than when he's twenty-two. Why? Because his thoughts on the subject will have changed, presumably dramatically, in the interim. In like fashion, different people will have different emotional responses to seemingly identical situations. Again, this is because their thoughts are different, and it is their thoughts to which their emotions emerge as an inner expression.

But what determines which emotion a given thought will conjure up? This subject has been much debated for a very long time, and there are many schools of thought on the topic. Here is my take.

For the sake of this discussion I will clump emotions into two categories: "good" feelings and "bad" feelings. The good ones are those you would like to feel more of, and bad ones are those you would prefer to feel less of.

Emotions are there to inform us as to how closely our present thoughts align with our most authentic selves. In other words, when you think of thoughts that are true to your authentic self, you will feel "good" feelings. And when you think thoughts that are in conflict with the essence of your truest self, you will feel "bad" feelings.

Did you play a childrens' game often called "Hot and Cold" (or any of various other names)? Whoever was 'It' would have to try to find a secret object picked without their knowledge. Everyone else, who had picked the secret object, would tell them whether they were getting hotter (closer to the secret object), or colder (farther from the object). Sometimes the person who is It wears a blindfold.

I mention this childrens' game here because the process is nearly identical to the way in which our emotions are best used to guide us in progressing through life. Instead of guiding you toward a secret object, they guide us to move ever closer to our own most true and ideal self.

When we feel bad feelings, we know we are moving farther way from our ideal self. When we feel good, we are moving closer. The degree of those feelings tells us how quickly we are moving toward or away, and how close we are to the ideal.

Pretty simple, eh? The only thing that makes it seem hard or weird or crazy is that we have never looked at it that way, and no one ever sat us down to teach us how to use this fantastic tool. The good news is that it's never too late, and that we all have a native ability to do this very, very well. It may take a little practice if you're new to it, though.

So, pulling everything together, it can be put this simply: Pay attention to your emotions. There is little to be gained by obsessing about them. That's not what I mean. But do try to take notice of any particularly strong or unexpected feelings that come up, and take the time to see what they're trying to tell you. You'll be glad you did.

So now the punch line. To know how well you're doing at anything, just ask yourself, "How do I feel?" and you will have your answer. If you feel good you're doing okay. If you feel great, you're doing...well...great. It's also worth taking a look at what you have done to produce this state.

If you're feeling not so good, then you're moving farther from your goal and need to take a look at how that happened and what you can do to make a course correction. And if you're feeling terrible, you should stop everything (if possible) and get as close as you can to the bottom of what's taken you so far off course with your inner self.

In any event, I wish you all longed-for things, except one. That way you'll always have something to look forward to.

### End of Section 1

This is the end of the full-text portion of the sampler. What follows are summaries of the remaining sections and chapters of the full book. Links are inserted after each section that can be used to obtain the full text of that section.

When you are finished reading all you intend to read, please take a few minutes to answer a few questions (mostly multiple choice) about your experience of reading this material. To take the survey,  click here.

# Summaries of all chapters

Below are summaries of the opening paragraphs of the remaining modules and chapters of _The Millennium Book._ These will give you a good idea of the point of view and approach I take in the balance of the chapter. You can choose to acquire any or all of these ten-chapter modules as they become available through the links provided at the end of each section. Please don't forget to complete the survey linked to at the very end of this file, even if you do not finish reading the entire document.

  2. ## Social Challenges

Now that we have explored the personal challenges associated with the new millennium, we have a solid foundation upon which to build a consistent view of those concepts applied to our interpersonal relationships. These social challenges, like their personal counterparts, will be different in the twenty-first century and beyond than they have ever before been. The next ten chapters examine some of the most important areas in which we will all need to be focused in the years to come. We will begin with the most basic of them and build on that foundation.
  11. ### Cultivate trust

If you ask most people about trust in their lives, they will automatically assume that you are talking about their trust of other people, or people's trust of each other in general. On the surface that seems to make a lot of sense. However, if we look a little deeper, another facet emerges that changes the entire picture.

Put simply, the limit of trust in your life is your trust in yourself. If you trust yourself, you will find it easy to trust others. If you do not trust yourself, then trust in others will be difficult and uncertain. This may seem a bit absurd, but bear with me, and you will see that it isn't.
  12. ### Cooperate

Cooperation multiplies the value of individual effort, and in so doing, empowers us all. Competition has long been revered, at least in our capitalistic society. The mere mention of the word has been known to bring tears to the eyes of captains of industry and athletes, among others. Many believe that whatever we have that is of value we owe to the blessings of competition.

What is methodically overlooked is the cooperation that inevitably accompanies all competition. Certainly the purest form of competition is war. Yet, even in war, there is cooperation between enemies. They must agree to show up on the same battlefield, or they cannot fight ("What if they threw a war and nobody came?"). Armies in the field must cooperate with one another in order to fight. Then there is the Geneva Convention, the Code of Conduct, Rules of Engagement, and other sets of agreements too numerous to mention. So even in the most sacred forms of competition, cooperation is utterly indispensable.

The interesting thing is that you _cannot_ have competition without cooperation, but you _can_ have cooperation without competition.
  13. ### Diversity and homogeneity

Three thousand generations ago, more or less, homo sapiens began their trek out of Africa and into virtually every nook and cranny of this good Earth. The majority of this dispersion was largely completed about 500 generations ago. Today there are few areas where humans do not live.

For nearly all of this time, the geographical range of interaction between people and groups of people was severely limited. We simply didn't have the means of traveling, or even communicating, over large distances easily. In fact, even in America, prior to the last century most people never traveled more than a few dozen miles from their birthplace.
  14. ### New kinds of relationships

The technology of the twenty-first century has introduced new opportunities to nearly every living human that are so dramatically different than anything we have ever experienced before that whole libraries of books could be written to describe the changes. Be aware that saying "nearly every living human" is not an exaggeration. To illustrate, consider that, as mentioned earlier, a recently announced United Nations study has determined that (at the time of this writing) over six billion humans regularly use mobile communication devices; that is, cell phones and tablet computers. That amounts to around 83 percent of all of the people on this planet. And that number is still growing. Who knows where it will be by the time you read these words.

One implication of this fact is that we are nearly all a phone call away from each other. What's more, fully half of these people, over three billion of them, are also connected to the Internet. That's roughly half of humanity. Moreover, the mobile phone manufacturer Ericsson estimates that by 2017 the number of people connected directly to the internet by cellular phone will have reached 5.6 billion, over two-thirds of all living humans! Think of it!
  15. ### Cultural sharing

Culture is often viewed as being composed of the art, customs, and mores of a group of people, and indeed it does pertain to those attributes. But culture is far more than just a set of customs and habits. In its largest sense, it is nothing less than a worldview shared by one or more people. Yes, one or more, because there is such a thing as a culture of one. In fact, ultimately, since none of us shares precisely the same view of life, the Universe, and everything as any other person, we all live in a culture of one.
  16. ### Artistic sharing

Art can be culturally neutral, so it offers ways to share our inner experience freely. Music is ideal in those terms. Creativity in general, and art in particular, is how human beings express their inner experience and true being in external form. It is on one hand a way of exposing the artist's unique point of view, and at the same time a means of communicating that which he or she most wants to share. No two creative acts are identical, because no two artists are identical. For that matter, no artist is exactly and entirely the same from one moment to the next. This constant spontaneity and unpredictability is one reason why we are so drawn to artistic creations.

Yet art has not always been a part of human life. For the vast majority of our existence as a species, we were far too busy just surviving to pay attention to such things as expressing ourselves to others. It had no impact on our ability to live long enough to procreate. But that all changed as we became better equipped to keep body and soul together.
  17. ### Decentralization of population

In the industrial revolution, people moved to the cities. Technology now allows us to reverse that. Physical travel and transport is becoming less and less essential. This opens new doors.

Why do people live where they do? There are several factors that tend to form a hierarchy. First among them is survival. In the ancient world, it was the availability of game and edible vegetation. Later this was replaced by land that was suitable for agriculture and livestock. In the last couple of centuries there has been a movement toward urbanization, which is just another form of survival. In this case, however, it is about the availability of jobs. Regardless, the opportunities available in a particular place have always been the number one criterion for choosing a place to live. All other reasons come in a distant second or lower. But modern technology is changing that landscape dramatically.

  18. ### Virtual transportation and communication

Since time immemorial people have had to physically move themselves or their possessions from place to place. The means at their disposal didn't change much for hundreds, even thousands of years at a stretch. The first really big change occurred in the nineteenth-century with the advent of steam power. Suddenly, steam ships and railroads changed the whole transportation landscape. No longer was the horse the fastest means of locomotion available on land, nor the wind on water.
  19. ### Recreation

Though it's hard to grasp, biologically modern humans lived for hundreds of generations before the concept of recreation as we know it began to emerge, because they were too busy with their struggle for survival. It wasn't until humanity gave up their nomadic hunter/gatherer lifestyle in favor of an agrarian one that there was time left over to play, which in turn begged the question of what to do with that spare time. That's when recreation was born.

Now, with more free time than ever before, recreation occupies an increasingly important role in our lives. Though it may be more true in some societies (like our own) than in others, in general the entire human race is finding themselves with more time to fill with things they want to do, rather than things they have to do.

As the new millennium unfolds, this trend will not only continue, it will, like nearly everything else, accelerate. In other words, if you think recreation is a big part of life now, just wait: you ain't seen nothin' yet.
  20. ### Extremophilia

The main theme of this book is that constantly accelerating change is the most prominent characteristic and challenging facet of this century. Few subjects covered in this book are better examples of this than the gravitation toward extremes that is already evident. One of the most obvious examples of this trend is found in extreme sports (a.k.a. action sports, aggro sports, adventure sports). What more powerful expression of a psycho-social emergence could there be than one in which millions of people freely and voluntarily risk their lives for no purpose other than the thrill of the experience itself? And that is precisely what extreme sports are about.

Granted, this is not the first time in history when people have willingly risked life and limb. But in virtually all other cases, there was some kind of external purpose, goal, or benefit that went beyond the experience itself. Whether war, religious motivation, exploration, migration, or any of countless other pursuits, the motives were always more than just the thrill of it all.

However, even in the case of extreme sports, there is a subtext that does go beyond thrill seeking, yet is virtually never mentioned or even thought of: It is a response to the rapid rates of change that are surging ahead in modern life.

##### To acquire the full-text of the previous ten chapters, click here.

  3. ## Political Challenges

Since before recorded history began, humans have sought to govern their collective behavior by organizing themselves into what we now call governments. Whether loose tribal councils and chieftains, or today's United Nations, these socio-political creations have been a part of virtually every collection of people for countless thousands of years.

Yet this type of institution is also undergoing changes now, and will continue to do so in the balance of the new century and beyond. Some of the challenges that will emerge are going to contain surprising, even shocking elements. The chapters that follow explores some of the most interesting and important aspects of those challenges.
  21. ### Globalization

In the new millennium we can no longer live as though we were separate tribes in competition for limited resources and survival. The pressure is increasing daily for us to drop these hopelessly outdated and ineffective attitudes in favor of new, more intelligent and effective approaches to help us live together.

We have seen the first primitive attempts going back as far as the short-lived League of Nations. Now we have the United Nations which, though it has been in existence for over half a century, seems to many to be a far cry from what it could or should be. Yet it is a step in the right direction, and has had some positive effects.
  22. ### Redefinition of democracy

Democracy as it was originally conceived of by the ancient Greeks and Romans disappeared from the face of the Earth for nearly 2,000 years. Then in 1776, a group of upstart colonists in America brought it back with some new twists. With all its imperfections, that rendition of democracy is still alive and functioning. And nowadays, it has a lot of company in one form or another.

At the birth of America, however, the speed of communication was limited by the speed of a galloping horse. At best it took days for news to travel from one end of the fledgling democracy to the other, and at worst it took weeks, or even months to bring news to everyone. This, of course, included national elections, both the votes and the results. This was one of the reasons that the new form of government was organized as it was. These time lags had to be taken into consideration. But that was then. Things are radically different now.
  23. ### Democratization

As mentioned in the previous chapter, the very concept of democracy lay fallow for almost two millennia before Thomas Jefferson _et al_ revived and reinvented it in 1776. Since that time, democracy, or at least governments calling themselves democratic, have evolved even further. Nowadays there are dozens of democracies on Earth, and no two of them are structured identically, though some bear a resemblance to others. All of which begs the question of who will be next to adopt some form of government in which individual citizens have, at least in theory and/or spirit, the reigns of government in their hands.

The simple truth is that people around the world are noticing that the citizens of free and democratic states seem to have better lives. It isn't hard to see why they want some of that for themselves. But where is the limit? Will all countries someday be free and democratic? Or will democracy itself simply fall into the black hole of time like so many other failed social experiments? In this chapter we will explore these and other related questions.
  24. ### Social service without socialism

We need to discover ways to help one another without diminishing our sovereignty over our own lives.

Though some people don't seem to get it, it is abundantly clear to most people that compassion and empathy are a fundamental part of human nature. This does not mean that individuals cannot choose to ignore it, even to the extreme. That too is part of human nature. However, don't assume that those who seem to be devoid of any sense of what another person is feeling or experiencing simply didn't receive the gift of that capacity. We are all born with it, but what we choose to do with it is up to us.

For this reason, and others, most people feel the pain of others as well as their joys. The more extreme the emotion evoked by such experiences, the greater the identification with the other person. This often leads to reaching out a helping hand where possible.
  25. ### Upgrade political ethics

Anyone who has examined the subject will tell you, in the majority of countries of the world, corruption is commonplace. In many countries it is not only rampant, but flaunted quite publicly without penalty. To see just how global the problem is, look the map below. It is created from what is called a Perceived Corruption Index between 0 and 100, indicating the level of corruption that was observed by expert analysts in 2012. The definition of "corruption" used here is "misuse of public power for private benefit."

It is not rocket science to explain why certain countries provide corruption a more fertile seedbed than others. It's all a matter of the relative wealth or poverty of ordinary citizens. It is an amazingly tight correlation. Here it is in a nutshell.
  26. ### Change the underlying intent behind politics

As we saw in the last chapter, those involved in government work, whether self-appointed, elected, or bureaucrats, are not always there for the right reasons. Too often they are pursuing primarily self-serving purposes. This is seldom in the best interest of those they are supposed to be serving.

As we also saw in the last chapter, the main reason for this type of behavior is that they live in an environment of poverty and deprivation, and see government participation (or rulership) as their best way to live better than most of their neighbors. In too many cases, this at least appears to be true. But, as is so often the case, there is more to the story than is visible to superficial observation.
  27. ### Replace paranoia with reasoned caution

Everyone has fears. There are three types of fear:

  1. fear that is justified

  2. fear that is virtually fictitious

  3. fear that is a little of both

People who have fears of type 1 are considered prudent. People who have fears of type 2 are generally called insane. The third type of fear is the most popular, though the proportions of fears that are justifiable varies greatly from person to person and time to time. Virtually everyone, at one time or another, has all three kinds of fear. Unfortunately, most people don't make a distinction between these three types. To most, fear is fear. And that is why, for most people, fear is too often their master, not their servant.

Paranoia occurs when type 2 and 3 fears begin to take overtake a sane assessment of reality. At that point, obsession is never far away. The sense that one is swimming in an ocean of fear can be compelling. Clear thinking is usually in very short supply. When it disappears altogether, you have crossed the line into some form of insanity, if only for a few moments.
  28. ### Change in the relationship between the governed and government

It is popular to believe that some governments are chosen by the governed and others are not. Yet the facts contradict that view. The proof lies in all those forms of government that have been overthrown, or that just collapsed, among them some of the most despotic dictatorships of all time. The difference between a democracy electing a new head of state periodically, and the overthrow of a tyrant, is simply a matter of orderliness and timing. The first is quite orderly and fairly frequent. The latter tends to occur less often, and is usually more than a little bit messier.

The reason why these two forms are different was touched on briefly earlier (page Error: Reference source not found) with the quote from the American Declaration of Independence. It says, in essence, that people will put up with tyranny as long as they can, and then they stand up on their hind legs and say, "ENOUGH!" That's what happened in America in 1776, and it happened in France a few years later. It has happened in dozens of countries since then in a wide variety of ways. It is, and has always been, part of business as usual politically. In many cases, however, it must wait until enough people are sufficiently fed up to do whatever is required to remove the sitting government.

So the real relationship between government and the governed, when all is said and done, is a choice made by the governed, regardless of how long it takes for them to make that choice. For sooner or later they always do, or at least they always have.
  29. ### Withdraw support for all tyrants

All tyrants want you to believe that they are omnipotent. They're not.

### None of them!!

To get a clearer perspective before going on, let's take a look at a portion of the American Declaration of Independence. Pay particular attention to the _underlined_ text.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
  30. ### Withdraw support for "the tyranny of the majority"

Though this phrase was originally used by President John Adams, it has been cited repeatedly by the foremost political thinkers ever since. Perhaps the most thorough definition was written by Britain's Lord Acton.

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.

Lord Acton—The History of Freedom in Antiquity, 1877

To further understand the meaning and importance of this notion, consider a normal American presidential election in which the popular majority is not the same as the electoral college vote. Or how about an election in which, for both the popular and electoral vote, the margin of victory is 51 percent to 49 percent. In the latter case it means that very nearly half of the people who voted might just as well not have, as far as the ultimate outcome is concerned. Situations such as this are so frequent that, minor complaints notwithstanding, they are largely tolerated and even expected. In other words, we have become inured to them. The absurdity, especially its degree, is virtually invisible. But it gets even stranger.

  4. ## Technological Challenges

The twenty-first century will bring with it countless new facets to our experience of being alive as humans, but none promise to make a greater difference in our lives than technology. As we have so vividly seen in the last few decades, our ability to create, distribute, and use technology is driving many of the most significant changes the human race has seen in all of history. It is truly a wonder to behold. And I hope you like it, because there is _soooo_ much more to come.

Of course, there is another side to the wonders of technology: the extraordinary rates of change that have been featured in this book. For those who adapt well to these changes, it is indeed an exciting time to be alive. For those who find such change difficult, or intimidating, it is not a most pleasant time to be around.

Nonetheless, there is little we can do to stem the tide of technological advancement, so we'd better get on the band wagon and stay there as best we can. Ultimately, there simply isn't any practical way to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
  31. ### Nanotechnology

Among the most game-changing areas of technological innovation are those collectively called nanotechnology. These new advances make use of materials and devices that operate on the scale of one 100,000th of the diameter of a human hair. Making such things involves manipulation of individual molecules, or even single atoms.

Imagine creating actual machines that are so tiny that millions of them could literally fit on the head of a pin. These little nanobots (robots typically on the scale of a biological cell) will be used to seek out individual cancer cells and administer drugs to them one at a time, leaving healthy cells completely untouched. No more vomiting and hair loss during chemotherapy.
  32. ### Thinking machines

The idea of thinking machines has been around for quite some time. At first it was associated with the concept of robots, and later with computerized artificial intelligence (see page Error: Reference source not found). These associations were all adopted before such machines existed outside the minds of science fiction writers and visionary scientists.

Today, however, we are at the threshold of a new era in both AI and robotics. The notion of machines that actually think is virtually upon us. Even though the most convincing examples still rely on "tricks" to fool us into believing that we are dealing with an intelligent, thinking machine (even though we're not), there are other prototypes that, though not as showy, are actually much closer to real thought.
  33. ### The new commerce

Humans have engaged in trade for millennia. Thousands of years ago it was done by simple exchanges between individuals in a tribe, and occasional trips to a meeting between tribes. Later, trading journeys began to develop. Once people began to collect into villages, towns, and cities, regular trade routes were established to bring goods from distant lands. Around this time the marketplace and bazaar emerged as a good way to exchange goods. Still later, shops began to appear in cities and larger towns.

From that time forward, not much changed for many centuries. It wasn't until the 19th century, when mail order catalogs like Sears Roebuck appeared, that a new kind of trading medium came into use. Later large stores like department stores and dime stores became popular. Eventually, with the advent of cable television and credit cards, outlets like the Home Shopping Network and QVC offered yet another alternative to more traditional ways of finding and buying goods. Today, however, there is the Internet.
  34. ### Medical technology

Few aspects of human life will change more in the twenty-first century than in the field of health care and well-being. The advances in a great many related areas is reaching an almost, pardon the expression, fever pitch. In short, the improvements in health care and wellness over the coming decades will far surpass those of...well, perhaps all of human history. Not only will the length of life increase to unprecedented ages, but the quality of health will as well. Many of the most promising new technologies involved are today barely a decade old.

So let's take a look at the most visible areas of dramatic advancement now on the horizon.

#### Genetic engineering and therapies

#### Immunology

#### Nano-medicine

#### Stem cells

##### Herbal and natural therapies

#### Mind-body techniques
  35. ### Space

Space is, as Gene Roddenberry characterized it in his _Star Trek_ franchise, "the final frontier." Of course the same was said of the wild west and other distant and romantic horizons of the past. Yet the exploration of space, and eventually its colonization, are most certainly far more dramatic than anything that has been done here on Earth.

Yet there are many dauntless challenges that must be overcome before we can get much farther than we already have. Nowhere is this more true than in manned missions even within our solar system, let alone beyond it. First and foremost among these is the question of propulsion.
  36. ### Moore's Law on steroids

In 1965 Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore wrote a paper in which he observed that the number of components in integrated circuits would double every two years until at least 1975. The more frequently cited version of doubling in 18 months does not specifically refer to the number of components, but to the processing power which adds the factor of processor speed to the equation. Below is a graph of the actual results from 1971 to 2011, and shows how Moore's Law has remained incredibly constant through nearly half a century.
  37. ### Robotics

The word "robot" originated with a Czech play called _R.U.R (Rossum's Universal Robots)_ written in 1920 by Karel Capek (suggested to him by his brother Josef). It was derived from a Czech word _robota_ , which means drudgery or servitude). The robots in the play were quite human appearing, though factory made, and today would be called cyborgs or even clones.

The first robotic type devices (which by today's definition would not be defined as robots) appeared in literature in the fourth century BC. By 270 BC the Greek engineer Ctesibius designed pneumatic and hydraulic organs and clocks with moving figures. Another Greek, Hero of Alexandria, created numerous automated devices powered by air, steam and water pressure.

Over the next 17 centuries a variety of mechanisms were built all over the world that had robotic qualities, from birds that flew to human-like machines that did human-like things, until in 1495 Leonardo Da Vinci drew preliminary plans for a humanoid robot, though as far as we know, he never actually built it.
  38. ### Hi tech/hi touch

In his best-selling book _Megatrends_ , in 1982, John Naisbitt introduced a concept he called "hi-tech/hi-touch." His thesis was that as we introduce more and more technology into our lives, we will feel the need to balance it with more personal contact, more reaching out to touch someone. Over the next 30 years some surprising things have developed in the relationship between technology and human interaction, and it hasn't followed Naisbitt's prediction entirely. For one thing, he didn't foresee the explosive growth of social networking as it is today. Who did?

However, it has developed as it has, and we are now in a position where we must deal with it as it is, and will be, whether for good or ill. So far, it hasn't declared itself definitively one way or the other. Presumably, though, it will soon enough.

At this time Facebook alone has over a billion users, which represents one out of every seven people alive on Earth, and one out of three Internet users. And it's still growing. To call it a force to be reckoned with is the height of understatement. And then there are all the other social networking service like Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn to mention a few. But what will happen next, and what should we do about it?
  39. ### Losing our connections to "real life"

In all the discussions you have already read here, the thought may have crossed your mind that with the advancement of virtualization of almost everything, where do we make room for the real thing? If so, you are not alone. It may be difficult to be certain that such concerns are justified, but there is no doubt that they are worth contemplating.
  40. ### Technology's impact on human life

Before we delve into the question of technology's impact on human life, we must first define the very concept of technology more clearly. In today's world, and for quite some time, technology has come to mean machines of various kinds, and specifically computing devices of all types. But that definition of technology is too narrow.

Perhaps the most powerful, yet often invisible, force on Earth is that of technology on our lives. The dictionary definition discusses the application of scientific knowledge to practical purposes. But even that is too narrow. For example, one of the most important and transformative technologies of all time is language, but one could hardly call it an application of science, since it predates the existence of anything that could be called science by many millennia.

However, if you just remove science from that last definition, you have a conceptualization that is both general and precise. In other words, technology is any kind of knowledge applied to practical purposes. This would include everything from the ancient Egyptian shaduf to state-of-the-art super computers, both concrete and abstract. With that groundwork in place, we can proceed with the main question: What will the impact of technology be on human life in the twenty-first century and beyond?
  41. ### Crowd-sourcing

As we saw briefly on page 91, leveraging the abilities of thousands, or even millions of people provides an unprecedentedly powerful new kind of technology for the solution of a fabulous array of puzzles. But searching for extraterrestrial intelligence is hardly the only purpose to which this technique has been applied. There are many other examples, some of them quite amazing.

One extraordinary and valuable application of crowd-sourcing came in the form of an online computer game called _FoldIt_ , created by David Baker. It used thousands of game players to solve problems related to the most efficient ways of folding proteins. There are more ways to fold proteins than there are atoms in the universe. Obviously, finding the most efficient way is no simple chore. Yet in a matter of a few weeks they solved riddles that had been baffling microbiologists for years. The discoveries that came from this "silly" game allowed HIV/AIDS research to leapfrog ahead.

  5. ## Environmental Challenges

For over 40 years there has been an ever-increasing drum beat of alarm messages related to our earthly environment. Initially it was simply focused on fairly ordinary features like roadside litter, polluted water, and smog. But as the momentum grew it shifted in both intensity and scope to include many other areas, the majority of which few people had ever considered or even heard of. In addition, the foreground issues moved from local problems to regional and eventually to global ones. By the year 2000, we had gone from smog to ozone depletion to global warming.

Now there are all kinds of focal points, but most of the high-profile ones are in some way related to global warming and its consequences on climate and ultimately human life. The debate over whether it is actually happening has just about been settled. It isn't a mirage. There are still many discussions ongoing (and they are energetic, to say the least) as to just how bad things are and what we need to do about it.

In the next ten chapters we will explore the most important aspects of this arena, and try not only to make sense of where we are today and how we got here, but what we should expect in the decades, or even centuries, to come.
  42. ### Greenhouse gases and global warming

The dialog about greenhouse gases has been on the table for decades. Yet even today few people, outside of scientific circles, really know what all the talk is actually about. So we will start here with a very quick little refresher on that subject.

The so called greenhouse gases (GHGs) are compounds (chemicals) that are suspended in our atmosphere and that both absorb and radiate infrared light (IR). This type of light is more commonly known simply as heat. They have the effect of trapping heat in the atmosphere much the same way a greenhouse traps heat within it, hence the name that has been given to them.
  43. ### Sustaining our food chain

All living things must have nutrition to survive. Humans are certainly no exception. It has become abundantly clear that our food chain is nothing if not interconnected. This means that protecting and sustaining the food chain is critical in ensuring our own continued survival. While things are pretty good for a great many people, there are even more whose food supply is either uncertain or just plain inadequate.
  44. ### Waste disposal

One of the first challenges faced by humanity when they began to abandon their hunter-gatherer lifestyle in favor of settling into communities, was how to dispose of the waste they created. This had not been much of a problem before, since there weren't very many people in a band, and they were constantly on the move. So they just dropped things along the path, and it wasn't a problem. But once they began to live in larger numbers, and in stable situations, all that changed.

Once you get hundreds of people living in close proximity for a long period of time, you begin to find some problems. When that number rises into the thousands, the problems find you. Cities, as we know them, are simply not possible without creating waste, and some kind of waste disposal policies and procedures become inescapable. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they are particularly desirable, or even effective. In fact, mostly they are at best tolerable.
  45. ### Nuclear waste

Though we have already covered waste disposal, there is one type of waste that is so different from all others that it requires a chapter of its own: nuclear waste. It is not only toxic, but is unique compared to all other sources of waste. This is true because of its inherent dangers, and because of its persistence in our environment. To call nuclear waste lethal is the height of understatement. So is calling it persistent. Even brief direct contact with it can mean death, and its half-life (the length of time required for half of it to become inert) can run up to a hundred thousand years. The next half takes another hundred thousand, and so on. In other words, after a million years 1 percent of it is still radioactive. There are also proposed methods that can reduce half-life to only hundreds of years, but they are not in common use yet.
  46. ### Development of sustainable energy sources

Although the most popularized reason for developing and deploying non-fossil-fuel sources has long been to protect the environment, there are several other solid reasons.

First among these in today's market is cost. The price of fossil fuels is at an all-time high, and will presumably continue to rise until our supply is exhausted. By that time, no one will be able to afford it.

Another important reason is that the supply of fossil fuel is finite. Though there is an ongoing debate as to how long the supply will last, whether sooner or later, one day it will be gone. If we don't have totally reliable alternatives in place by then, the wheels of human activity will grind to a halt.
  47. ### Improved prediction of natural forces

There are numerous kinds of natural events that affect human life more or less directly. In the last century we have dramatically increased our ability to observe and predict their behavior. Yet we still find ourselves at the mercy of the forces of nature. In this chapter we will look at the current technology, and then at what we may expect to see in the balance of the century. Obviously, with the development of technology accelerating as it is, the farther ahead we look, the less certain our projections become. But we can at least describe the playing field and some of the important variables. Let's start out taking natural phenomena one at a time.
  48. ### Better engineering against natural calamities

Mother Nature presents us with forces that are so far beyond our individual, and often collective, ability to endure undamaged, that we must use technologies to deal effectively with them. There are several types of natural forces that pose the greatest dangers to life and property. All of them were covered in the previous chapter. These natural forces affect a variety of human structures and situations. Here are some of the most common.

The structures we build to house ourselves, our businesses, and our products are among the most important to us. Yet all are vulnerable to some natural events. Even the pyramids have been severely damaged by the weather over the centuries of their existence. Had they been constructed of more modern materials, they might still be, if not as good as new, at least closer to it.
  49. ### Better damage control methods after disasters

Until humanity is able to come up with perfect methods for prevention of natural disasters, there will be times when the best we can do is to clean up the mess afterward. Until the last few decades, there really were no recovery techniques that were very far beyond brooms and mops. Now, however, we area starting to turn the corner.

The difference in cleanup technologies used in the Exxon-Valdez (1989) and BP oil spills (2010) was far greater than most people imagine. Only 8 percent of the 11 million gallons of Exxon oil was ever recovered. Around 20 percent evaporated and the rest either contaminated local coastal areas, or drifted out to sea to affect others. By comparison, only an estimated 3 percent of the 210 million gallons spilled in the BP incident (almost 20 times as much as Exxon) were ever recovered. Around double that amount was burned and the rest remains "at large."

It would appear that we haven't learned that much about oil recovery in the 20 years since the Exxon spill. But in actuality, we have. The differences in the outcome may have had less to do with the technology of recovery than it did with the circumstances of the spills themselves.
  50. ### Endangered species

Although extinctions of whole species of creatures has been going on for eons, only recently have human beings been responsible for at least some of them. This responsibility was largely ignored until the last quarter of the twentieth century. In 1973 the United States finally passed the Endangered Species Act (ESA) which put teeth into the growing movement to protect species that were in danger of dying off altogether.

Alligators, Whooping Cranes, Bald Eagles, Peregrine Falcons, Wolves, Grizzly Bears, and California Condors are among the beneficiaries of this effort. All have been coaxed back from the edge of oblivion in the wake of the ESA.

  6. ## Economic Challenges

As with so many other aspects of human life, the economics of our world will be going through extraordinary changes during the rest of this new century and beyond. And just like the changes in the personal, social, and political spheres, economic changes will be largely driven by new and evolving technologies.

Already we have seen massive changes in the environment in which business exists. In the same way that the era of the unbridled robber barons came to an end a hundred years ago, so now their legacy is finally reaching the end of its afterlife. The belief in zero-sum economics is beginning to die of neglect, and is being replaced by other more sane and successful models.

Look, for example, at some of the biggest and most successful technology companies in recent times. They come in two basic flavors. The first is a kinder, gentler variant of the robber barons, who still see business as a kill or be killed affair. The other is a new generation of business thinkers and entrepreneurs, who are just as interested in making money, but don't see doing damage to others as a viable approach. These people want to do something wonderful and trust that if they do it well, they will make a whole bunch of money.

As examples of the first class of businesses you have Microsoft, Apple, and Oracle. Their law-of-the-jungle approach to business has allowed them to build financial and technological empires that until very recently were virtually unprecedented. But the latest crop of entrepreneurs are cut from a different bolt of cloth.

The second class of business people are following a dream that they believe will create a better world for everyone, which certainly includes themselves. This is not to say that the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs of the world don't have dreams of making the world better, too. But their dreams are centered on "what's good for me is good for the world." While the other type believes that "what's good for the world is good for me."

In this second group you have companies like Google, Amazon, and Ebay. These people all have goals that began as a dream for empowering individuals the world over, and oh yes, if we are successful, we will get richer than all get out. The likes of Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Elon Musk, and Pierre Omidyar are more focused on promoting personal empowerment of other people than they are at consolidating their own personal empires.

Now, in all fairness, it remains to be seen just how long they will be able to maintain that focus, not to mention what will happen to their companies when their personal influence is no longer the guiding force. But they are only the first generation of such business mentalities, and there seems little doubt that we, as a race of beings, will continue to get better and better at it.

In the end, the law of the jungle businesses are an endangered species even now. Their own false beliefs as to what businesses must be and do to succeed are the inborn seeds of their own destruction. They will continue to make decisions that appear logical to them, but in truth will cut short their own lifespans.

Conversely, the newer generation of businesses are far more service oriented and far less myopically focused on controlling markets. They believe that if they stay true to their own vision, they cannot fail. So far, so good.

The slow, constant, and relentless growth of the open-source movement is another outgrowth of, and driving force behind, this movement toward a new approach to commerce in particular, and business in general. If you are not familiar with open-source, you would be well advised to take yourself to school on the subject, and to stay abreast of its evolution (which is now becoming pretty dramatic). To give you a starting point, this book contains a chapter on the new face of intellectual property that is emerging in the new millennium (see page 47).

So look for more and more of this kind of philosophical approach in the decades to come, and less and less of the warlike mentality of the Gates and Jobs era. The days of the power brokers is rapidly drawing to a close. Competition is finally giving way to cooperation, which, as has been discussed earlier, is a natural and inevitable consequence of our evolution as social creatures. Now let's take a look at some of the specific areas within the larger subject of economics.
  51. ### Globalization

Of all of the many powerful and dramatic changes in the economic reality of our world that are already visible and will continue to develop in the coming years, none is more profound than the globalization of all forms of commerce. Nor is this limited to economic commerce. It is also, as we have already seen, a major factor in the political sphere of human events (see page 32) and many others.

But what is economic globalization, and what is its impact on ordinary human life in the coming century going to be? To answer these question, let's go back to the chain of events that preceded this century. The first thing we see is that for the first 99+ percent of our existence as modern humans (biologically), the closest we came to anything global was interaction with the tribes that were our nearest neighbors...assuming that there were any.

It wasn't until just a few thousand years ago that we developed the technologies to travel the great distances required to encounter people who were truly and radically different from ourselves. Even that didn't make much of a dent in our localized lifestyles until we developed the means needed to trade with these foreigners. Until the last couple of hundred years, this meant boats, ships, camel caravans and the like. That era lasted for a few thousand more years.
  52. ### Mobility

An average person can walk about 20 miles or so in a day, if they have a good enough reason and the terrain isn't too difficult. Until the last century or so, very few people could spare a couple of days away from home (one going, one coming back) to go anywhere, not without a very compelling reason.

Up until the last couple of hundred years, only the most fortunate people had even a postal system by which to communicate with others at a large distance without having to actually go there. The result was that people lived and died very close to their birthplace. During the course of their lives, they had little, if any, contact with others from places more than a few miles distant. Then things began to change.
  53. ### Developing economies

The study of the economies of individual nations is not just too large for this chapter, but too large for even a single book. In fact, at least one separate book could be written for each country on Earth. So the goal here is not to describe an entire world of national economies, but rather to look at the factors that affect the dynamics of those economies, both now and in the future, with particular focus on the trends.

With these limitations, the task is not nearly as daunting. To begin with, we need to look at some of the most basic trends over the last century or two. From this standpoint, the most obvious movement has been from rural to urban living, which in turn followed from the movement of economies from agrarian to industrial. The next big trend-driving novelty was technology.
  54. ### Distribution of wealth

The foundations of this chapter were laid in the previous one: the source of income is the exchange of value. Wealth is what is left over after income is used to provide the basic needs of life. In other words, it is the accumulation of excess income.

This concept was largely unknown in the world, except in rare exceptions, until the development of farming around 10,000 years ago. Before that, it was all people could do to hunt and forage enough to keep themselves and their families alive. The notion of having enough left over to accumulate wealth was not likely.

In addition to that, what form would this accumulation take? There was no money, so wealth would have had to have been measured in terms of better tools and weapons, or maybe jewelry or some other item considered to be of great value. But in the end, carrying around such accumulations by people who were essentially nomads was more of a liability than an asset. But when farming began to catch on, all of that changed.
  55. ### Distribution of labor

Over the centuries of humanities existence on this planet, there have been relatively few occupations that people could have. The list has been limited, at various times, to soldiers, politicians, clergy, artisans, merchants, philosophers, homemakers, teachers, doctors and nurses, farmers, and little else.

A few centuries ago, there developed a small class of explorers and colonists, but it wasn't until the time of the industrial revolution that new and different kinds of occupations evolved. Philosophers began to separate from scientists, mechanics of various kinds emerged to design, build and maintain the machinery of factories.

Near the birth of the twentieth century, scientists and technicians began to be more and more specialized. It became increasingly difficult to be a "Jack of all trades, master of none," and expect to find a place in society. Then came the real boom of technology.
  56. ### New business models

A business model describes the rationale upon which an enterprise creates, delivers, and captures value, whether economic, social, cultural, or other. Although the term did not become part of the language of business until the 1970s, virtually all businesses, for as long as businesses have existed, have had business models, regardless of how informal.

Although many models have been used over time, most were pretty cold-blooded until at least the mid-twentieth century. A hundred years ago, the primary model of big business was the monopoly model used by the likes of J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and the other so-called "Robber Barons" of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. It was a very kill-or-be-killed approach in which the last man standing was the winner. Its roots can be traced to the birth of the industrial revolution, when near-slave labor, sweat shops, and child labor were just business as usual.
  57. ### Rise of telecommuting

Among the many changes technology has brought about in our society, telecommuting is one that promises to make a powerful impact given some time to develop. Certainly the notion of bringing work home from the office is nothing new. It has been a part of life for some people since business and commerce have existed. But telecommuting is not the same thing.

Telecommuting is an alternative to, not an adjunct to, ordinary working patterns. In other words, the whole purpose of telecommuting is to do the work at home (or elsewhere) that would normally be done in the usual work environment. Studies have shown that half of all workers could telecommute, at least part of the time, and four out of five would prefer to do so.

According to Global Workplace Analytics, "...if those employees who held telework-compatible jobs (50 percent of the workforce) and wanted to work at home (79 percent of the workforce) did so just half of the time, as is usually the case (for a total or around 50 million people), the economic benefit would total over $700 billion a year." That is just about the amount of money contained in the TARP fund that was used to bail out some of the largest businesses in America in the wake of the economic collapse that began in 2008. Except that this money would be _saved_ rather than _spent_.
  58. ### Alternative financing

Who has not heard the old saw, "It takes money to make money." There is another corollary to it as well: "But it doesn't have to be your money." Entrepreneurs throughout history have sought out financing for their dream projects from friends, families, lenders, investors, and philanthropists. These options tend to fall into three categories: gifts and pre-purchases, loans, and investments. Let's look at each individually.
  59. ### New views on intellectual property

Issues involving the rights of the creators and/or owners of intellectual property have always been hotly contested. When the Internet entered the mix, however, these issues went from a smoldering ember to a white hot conflagration. Never before had it be possible to copy and distribute music, video, text, and other creative forms with such ease, speed, and economy. For those in the massive entertainment industry, it was a catastrophe. The vast majority of their income was in immediate peril, and they knew it.

What followed was a virtual war on intellectual property rights infringement that was, and still is being waged by the industry against all those who are promoting or supporting the copying and distribution of allegedly protected material.

The biggest threat thus far seemed to come from a technology called peer-to-peer file sharing, most commonly represented by the bit-torrent protocol. In this scheme a server provides a matchmaking and management function to facilitate the transfer of files between individual computers participating in the network. Typically several million individual computers were connected at any given moment, worldwide, 24/7. It proved to be an exceedingly popular, effective, and efficient means for users to find and obtain copies of virtually any kind of media that could be digitized, most notably music, videos, software, and books.
  60. ### Global economic stability

The very concept of economic stability is a slippery slope. If you pick any two economists at random, and ask them to define the meaning of the term, you will most likely get two different, and often incompatible, answers. Though there are a great many dimensions to economic stability, especially at the global level, there are some basic concepts that remain fairly constant. It is these we will consider here, rather than the myriad details that are always in dispute.

#### What is stability?

There are no practical examples of absolute stability. It is really a relative term that means that change and variability are contained between an upper and lower limit. In other words, there are no wide or random swings. In terms of economics, this means that the main drivers and measures of an economy, while they do fluctuate to some degree, do not suffer from abrupt, violent, or dangerous oscillations.

  7. ## Spiritual Challenges

Since the dawn of human existence on this planet, we have virtually all wondered about some of the same things. Among the most persistent and pervasive of these are: "Where did I come from?"; "What am I doing here?"; "Am I more than just my body?"; "Where will I go when I die?" Since no concrete answers have thus far been found within the strict confines of our physical dimension, the only available answers must of necessity fall into the realm of the imaginative, or at least the intuitive. Regardless of the truth of these concepts, they are all we have to work with. Taken collectively they are usually seen to fall into the realm of either religion, spirituality, or both.

What these two approaches share in common is an apprehension that, as Shakespeare put it:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

In more direct terms, we humans are not entirely contained within the confines of our physical beings. And what is not contained within the physical realm is loosely called spiritual. A religion simply adds sacred writings, their interpretations, and certain traditions to the basic concept of spirituality.

In the last couple of centuries, since natural philosophy morphed into what is now called science, some have decided that matters of spirit are nothing more than superstition, that in their mechanical, random universe, all that really exists is physical, and conversely, what is not physical does not exist.

Still others have sought to bridge the gap between the scientific and the spiritual, among them Albert Einstein. He was most certainly a spiritual man and a scientist as well. He doggedly refused to give either of them up to the other. In fact he was quoted as saying, "I want to know how God thinks, everything else is details."

In the end, it is up to each of us to come to terms with these questions in the way that is most satisfying to us. Most people find their answers in religion of one kind or another. Most of the rest find their most satisfying answers in some form of spiritual beliefs. Only a few categorically reject all spiritual and religious ideas, and simply accept that there is nothing beyond the physical, and when you die, your individuality disappears from time.

Are so many people just delusional? Are they so frightened of death that they will grasp onto any idea, no matter how foolish, just to avoid having to deal with their own eventual and certain extinction? Or is there something deep within each of us that informs us intuitively that we are not just physically tangible bags of mostly water? It is not within the purview of this book to answer any of those questions. What we will attempt to do here is to examine some of the options, trends, and possibilities in the remainder of our century, and here and there to speculate on some of the outcomes. The rest is, as always, up to you.

All of the world's major religions are between 60 and 300 generations old. They are firmly set in their ways, and most have not changed appreciably in centuries. While there have been some attempts in the twentieth century to create spin-offs, particularly in the Christian protestant area as well as some of the eastern traditions, these are not new in any fundamental ways. Their basic view of life, the universe and everything remains unchanged.

This tenacity of religious belief systems, regardless of whether we accept any of them, tells us several things about human beings and their spiritual propensities. First and foremost is that virtually everyone has an abiding interest in whatever they perceive their spiritual nature to be. Even atheists, though they do not believe in any particular God, are not necessarily closed to the possibility that they might have a spiritual component to their nature.

We must ask ourselves what value religion has for individuals that they should hold to it, in whatever form, so steadfastly, and for so long. Though there are several answers to this question, the most universal pertains to death. Most people are deeply concerned about whether there is anything about or within them that survives death. It is their own immortality, in whatever form, that is their focus. The converse view is that when we die, that's all there is to it. We become dust in the wind. Nothing more. Religions offer to provide answers to those kinds of questions.

The other overriding question pertains to the value and purpose of human life. Questions like, "Why am I here?" and "Do I really matter?" are at the core of this line of inquiry. Again, religions offer answers to these types of questions and yearnings.

Apparently the most enduring religions must offer answers to these kinds of questions that many people find satisfying, or they would have gone the way of other religious traditions that have been canceled due to lack of interest. But is that the best criteria for judging the value and efficacy of a spiritual belief system? And if not, what is?

These are not new questions in and of themselves. But they are being asked in new ways, and some of the answers are indeed new. In the twenty-first century it seems likely that we as a species will create circumstances and forces that will have the collective effect of bringing about a more universal and tolerant state of spiritual affairs.

A poll conducted in 2005 by Newsweek and Belief Net revealed some interesting results and trends. Almost 90 percent of those polled considered themselves either spiritual, religious, or both. Over 90 percent said that becoming a better person and living a moral life was an important reasons for their religious and/or spiritual practices.

In addition, about one out of three who practice a religion also spent some time exploring religious or spiritual practices other than their own. A third of them do so often. These patterns do not vary significantly from one religion to another.

In a separate poll conducted by USA Today in 2010 72 percent of those who were under 40 at the time considered themselves "spiritual but not religious." This compares to only 33 percent for the general population.

In these figures we can see some patterns. First, that for the vast majority of people, religion and/or spirituality occupies a prominent place in their lives; that they consider being a better person and living a better life to be among their most important reasons; that younger people are over twice as likely to value their spirituality over any particular religion. This last represents a significant pattern going into the new century, and may indicate a continuing trend.

So, let us now consider various aspects of this and other spiritual issues individually.
  61. ### Physics, metaphysics and religion

One of the most interesting, and perhaps unexpected, things to emerge from the tail end of the twentieth century was the coming together of physics, metaphysics, and religion. If you missed it, don't feel too bad. An awful lot of people did. But that doesn't mean it never happened. Nor does it mean that it doesn't matter. It only means that it was not on everyone's radar screen.

The metaphysical component began to make its appearance in the 1960s, along with an increased interest in eastern religions and philosophies. Although many explored and experimented with these existing spiritual and religions traditions, in the end, most did not stay with it. They either reverted back to a belief system that was not dramatically different from what they were raised with, or they adopted one that was essentially new.
  62. ### Meeting of minds

Throughout history, and presumably before, people have had a tendency to take a rather unilateral view of their spiritual and religious beliefs. In other words, "My way is the only way." In some cases this only meant that those who believed differently did not received the benefits of those who held the "true faith." In far too many cases, however, it meant that the "infidels," or "heretics," or "heathens," had to be either converted or killed.

Many of the bloodiest wars in history have been based on such clashes of belief, not the least of which was the Crusades and today's conflicts in the Middle East. Even conflicts between various sects of the same religious tradition can erupt into violent conflict.

To those who are engaged in such struggles, it seems totally sensible, logical, even a sacred obligation, to "defend the faith" at all costs. To those outside of a particular conflict, it appears as little more than a psychotic tantrum of fools. Often the lines separating the factions are extremely clear, and no ambiguity is allowed.

In _Gulliver's Travels_ (by Jonathan Swift in 1726), a protracted war is fought over a difference in beliefs as to which end of a soft-boiled egg should be cracked open. One side claimed it should be the small end, while the other preferred the big end. Here Swift was obviously taking a satirical jab at the absurdity of wars based on religious dogma.
  63. ### The value of "primitive wisdom"

Modern science tells us that beings essentially identical to us anatomically have been walking on this planet for around 200,000 years. It is widely assumed that a person from this era, if born today, would be quite able to adapt to modern life. It is virtually inconceivable that these people did not wonder about the same spiritual questions that we do, the how and why questions listed at the beginning of this section (on page 48). It is profoundly easy to envision our ancient ancestors at night, looking up at the moon and stars and wondering what they are and how they got there. It is just as easy to envision them asking, in their own way, where they came from and the other questions previously mentioned.

And it is these very questions that give birth to all forms of mysticism, spirituality, and religion. So it is not hard to assume that even 10,000 generations ago people were already beginning to come up with their own answers to such questions. Most, of course, have been cast aside over the centuries. But those that have endured, albeit not without modification, must have had some fundamental and profound truth to them. Otherwise, they would have fallen out of favor and been cast into the ashcan of prehistory.
  64. ### Unification

Since the mid-19th Century, and especially near the end of the 20th, there has been a debate about the origins of man, and indeed the world and universe. The main parties to the conflict have been devotees of science and followers of the more fundamentalist religions, particularly those in the protestant sects of Christianity. In its most recent incarnation, the battle lines have been drawn between evolution (Darwinism), and Creationism (often called Intelligent Design), which is a strict and literal interpretation of the Bible, particularly the book of Genesis.

The evolutionists believe that science has proven without doubt that the universe was created in a Big Bang roughly 13.7 billion years ago, and the Earth 4.54 billions years ago. It further proposes that all species evolved from earlier ones based on what Darwin called the survival of the fittest, and that humans evolved from earlier forms of primates about 200,000 years ago.

The creationists claim that the universe, world, and humanity were created more or less at the same time only a few thousand years ago. During the twentieth century, there were numerous attempts to force evolution out of school biology curricula, to be replaced by Creationism. Several states adopted laws to that effect. But starting in the 1960s, these laws were challenged in court, and by the 1990s virtually all were declared unconstitutional, because they violated the doctrine of separation of church and state.
  65. ### Tradition isn't necessarily Truth

As we saw in the chapter on global stability (page 47), the desire for stability is strong in most humans. Sudden or unpredictable changes are often upsetting, and tend to cause problems, not the least of which is undermining trust in one's ability to predict the events of their lives. Most people find such things disconcerting, even terrifying. Stability is often seen as a way of preventing these unwanted disruptions to peace of mind, and tradition is one way of lending stability to life.

Another attractive aspect to tradition is that it involves repetition, which has the side effect of enhancing learning. This was particularly important prior to the availability of printed books and the ability to read them. Before that time, which involves all but a few hundred of the first 200,000 years of human existence, oral tradition was the primary way of passing knowledge and wisdom from one generation to the next. In this context, tradition was virtually a survival issue.

Also, those who took their traditions most seriously tended to be better survivors, as did their children. Consequently, the desire for and facility with tradition is deeply embedded in our human character, and has been for millennia.
  66. ### Focus on sameness

It seems to be intrinsic to our nature as humans to want to categorize things, to group them together by their common characteristics. This tendency, of course, extends into our view of ourselves and each other. We use common qualities to determine who or what is in a given class, and the differences to tell one class from another.

The problem comes up when we get so involved in the differences that we begin to overlook the samenesses. In few places is this more evident than in our views of members of other groups, both individually and collectively. And nowhere is it more prevalent, or unfortunate, than in groups whose common denominator is a religious one. Like the Lilliputians in Gulliver's Travels, who fought a war over which end of a soft boiled egg should be opened, we have on too many occasions become far too myopic in matters of religion to see that regardless of what our differences may be, we always have much more in common. The toll in lives, property, and lost opportunities because of such prejudice throughout history is literally incalculable.

Yet we are still doing it, not just in one of two small areas, but scattered throughout the world. And the incredible thing is that if we just stepped back for a moment, and looked at the overwhelming samenesses between even the most disparate groups, we could no longer harbor those frightened, hateful, and violent feelings any longer. Sadly, those who most need to do so, simply don't.
  67. ### Follow love, not fear

In the earlier chapter _Living Fearlessly_ , we explored the nature of fear and our relationship to it. There are few areas of our lives where poor choices that lead to fear are more debilitating or dangerous than in matters of religion or spirituality. The results of religious wars alone prove this conclusively.

You have already read about the nature of fear, and how to reduce it in your life by examining your beliefs and changing those that are not serving you. In this chapter we will look at beliefs that possess three characteristics: they pertain to matters of religion or spirituality, they encourage or demand that we expect bad things to happen, and that they are, if not totally false, at least of questionable validity.
  68. ### Everyone's partly right, no one is completely right

Virtually everyone on Earth has their stories about how things work--where we come from, why we're here, where we're going, etc. Most are based, to some extent at least, on some kind of religious or spiritual tradition or practice. Most also have some elements that are not part of any particular dogma, but which individuals are drawn to, and attempt to integrate with their more formalized beliefs. Most people take their own stories very, very seriously.

The thing about these stories is that they cannot all be true all the time. There is just too much conflict and too many contradictions between them. Even within what appears to be a single religion, there are differences between individuals. And when it comes to views that have obvious and dramatic differences, like Fundamentalist Muslims and Jews, or conservative Christians and those with a New Age spiritual bent, the differences seem insurmountable. But are they? Isn't there some way to bridge these seemingly unbridgeable gaps? Well, perhaps there is hope. The following may offer at least one starting point.

With so many contrasting stories, does it seem possible that they can all be completely true? Doesn't it seem more likely that at most, one of them could be completely true, while the others are not? And what are the odds that of all the thousands, maybe millions, or when you look at it under a microscope, even billions of variations, that one of them should prove to be utterly and completely true? The odds of winning the Power Ball top prize five times running are better than that.
  69. ### How can we know when it's getting better?

As it is with so many other things, keeping track of our progress in terms of our religious and philosophical lives is not a simple matter. Unlike economics, where we have stock market indices, GDP, and countless other numerical gauges, we don't have any similar measures of the state of our spirituality.

Some would tell you that it is tied to "family values," or "moral decay," or church attendance, but these are utterly unsuitable. First, accurate numbers are all but impossible to find. Secondly, what one group sees as the key indicator, others scoff at as meaningless. Other ways must be found to assess our progress. First among these is determining what progress really is.

As has been proposed earlier, the one thing that virtually all religions, philosophies, and spiritual practices have in common is a desire to find a sense of connection to a larger wholeness. Regardless of whether this larger reality is called God, or Allah, or Krishna, All That Is, Cosmic Consciousness, or any other name of your choice, nearly everyone has something that they seek to feel connected to.

So it seems like this is a very good place to start developing a way of grasping our progress toward some ideal state of being, individually and collectively. The next question is how do we measure, or at least take some kind of momentary reading of this?
  70. ### Our common ground

All religious and spiritual perspectives have one thing in common: a sense of a mysterious connection with the wholeness of the universe. Regardless of the names and dogmas and icons, there is an underlying desire to make sense out of this mysterious feeling of connection, and to learn to live there more and more. Why? Because it feels so very good.

Each culture, religion, spiritual tradition, and philosophy has their own way of visualizing and expressing these common desires and feelings, but when all is said and done, those that produce the sought-after experience are successful, and those that don't, simply fail. The successes endure.

As Albert Einstein put it in 1927,

"Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in point of fact, religious."

  8. ## Educational Challenges

Ever since human beings have walked upon the Earth, they have found ways in which to pass on their knowledge, skills, methods, values and traditions to succeeding generations. It is in this way that we humans have survived and prospered in our little corner of the universe. Few people have ever had to start life without some knowledge already made available to them by those who came before.

In general, this passing on of information is called education. The word itself derives from the Latin **ēdūcere** **, which translates as** **to lead forth, to elevate** **, presumably to lead out of ignorance or into enlightenment. The metaphorical symbol of light as learning, understanding, and ideation is so ingrained in human consciousness, that it is still used in cartoons as a lightbulb coming on in a character's mind when he sees a solution or grasps an idea.**

**Today, however, the needs of individuals, even whole societies, are almost unimaginably different from those of our progenetors of hundreds of generations ago, or even a dozen generations ago. Then, all there was to learn was a relatively small collection of "tricks of the trade" as pertained to hunting, gathering, weapon making, and other day-to-day survival skills. Any person of average intelligence could absorb enough in their first decade or so of life to get by. Only specialists, like trackers or shamans or herbalists, needed to know more.**

**Today, even the most unskilled members of a modern society must master thousands, or even millions of times as much just to keep from being overwhelmed by the demands of contemporary life. Those who aspire to more, to lives of greater comfort, or power, or contribution, must learn and understand countless millions of times more than their forebearers of only a few centuries ago.**

**Clearly the days of the one-room schoolhouse are as far in our past as chain mail or wooden wheels. Both our needs and the means to satisfy them are dramatically more complex than ever before. What this all boils down to is that any approach to education that is primarily based on the philosophies, concepts, methods, and techniques of the past is utterly doomed to failure from the outset. It is time for us to reinvent education as a concept, as a process, as an institution, and to develop new and more appropriate methods that are even more effective than those that have brought us this far in our history. In the following chapters we will look at various aspects of this challenge, and some of the solutions that may serve us well in the twenty-first century and beyond.**

**To begin with, we'll take a look at some mileposts in the history of our attitudes about the purposes of education. Then we can begin to develop some new insights about the needs of education in the new millennium.**
  71. ### A new look at the purpose of education

**Before we take on defining a new view of the purpose of education, we should look at the path that brought us here. Following are statements regarding the purpose of education as seen by some of those who have made curriculum development their career. Each has enjoyed great prestige in their own era. Here's what they had to say about the purpose of education in the twentieth century.**

John Dewey, "Individual Psychology and Education," The Philosopher 1934

"The purpose of education has always been to everyone, in essence, the same—to give the young the things they need in order to develop in an orderly, sequential way into members of society. This was the purpose of the education given to a little aboriginal in the Australian bush before the coming of the white man. It was the purpose of the education of youth in the golden age of Athens. It is the purpose of education today, whether this education goes on in a one-room school in the mountains of Tennessee or in the most advanced, progressive school in a radical community. But to develop into a member of society in the Australian bush had nothing in common with developing into a member of society in ancient Greece, and still less with what is needed today. Any education is, in its forms and methods, an outgrowth of the needs of the society in which it exists."

  72. ### What are the new roles of learners and teachers?

Virtually since the beginning of human time, teachers have taught, and students have learned. That is the very definition of the words. The role of the "professor," one who professes knowledge or skill, has remained essentially unchanged for centuries. From the discourses of the ancient Greeks to the lectures of today's university faculty, this method of imparting knowledge has earned its place in our traditions and institutions. But is that all there is?

This approach lends itself to the one-to-many format of the classroom, but not to the one-to-one relationships needed to teach each student individually, according to their needs and preferences. Clearly changes have to be made to support this new approach. But what? Shall we abandon the centuries-old forms in favor of new and untested ones?

For some things, this cattle-call style is still remarkably effective and efficient. But there has to be room for new styles and roles. Both the needs of the learners, and the technological tools at their disposal demand it.

The overarching role of the teacher has always been to impart knowledge in the most efficient and effective manner possible to as many students as possible. Nowadays, however, that role must be redefined.

In today's world, and especially in the future, the teacher's role must be more like that of the coach: one who is there to guide, enlighten, and motivate the student, not simply to serve up a diet of standard fare for mass consumption.
  73. ### Who shall learn what?

If the needs and preferences of the individual are to be the guide for education in the new millennium, then the question, "Who shall learn what?" becomes paramount. But there is an even more basic question that must be answered first which pertains to who each of us is and who _knows_ who that is. An attempt was made to answer that question in Chapter 1: _Integrity and authenticity_. In simplest terms, it is you who are the final authority on who you are. Therefore you are also the authority on what you need to learn to most fully embody your authentic self.

This most certainly doesn't mean that you can't use some advice, counsel, and guidance along the way, especially when you are young. But ultimately it is you and you alone who must make the decisions, do the learning, and live with the consequences. Other people have but one role to play in that, which is to help you find and make the best decisions possible, and then to make the most of them.
  74. ### Who shall teach what?

The question of what makes a good teacher has been around as long as there have been students and teachers. To date, no answer has arisen that satisfies everyone. In other words, it isn't as simple as it seems. For one thing, there probably isn't a single one-size-fits-all answer. Circumstances have a profound effect on what is required to be a good teacher. The type of student, the educational environment, the subject matter, the application to which the learning will be applied, all of these and more affect the nature of the ideal teacher. Clearly there can be no singular definition of a good teacher. And when it comes to _great_ teachers, it becomes even more demanding.

The best way to define the qualities of the ideal teacher seem clearly to be tied to the nature of the teaching situation with all its various attributes. What makes a good teacher good is that they are well suited to the entire situation. What makes a great teacher great is that they are ideally suited to the entire situation.

Some teachers are one-trick ponies, that is they are very good in a certain limited set of situations, but as soon as these situations change, their quality begins to drop off precipitously. Even great teachers may not be great in all situations, but may have a much more spacious range in which their excellence remains stable. The real goal, however, is fairly simple, if only in concept: match the teacher to the situation
  75. ### The balance of personal and virtual teaching

There have always been two basic types of learning: direct and indirect. The first occurs when a teacher interacts directly with the student whether by lecture, demonstration, or other means. The second does not involve direct teacher interaction, but rather relies on indirect, non-personal methods, such as books, videos, or other media. Both types of learning have been around for a very long time. Often they are blended together, usually in ways where one style supports the other.

In today's world, and to an even greater extent in the future, the means by which both styles are accomplished are, and will be, much richer and more varied than ever before. Personal instruction no longer requires physical proximity, but can be conducted over great distances by means of both live and recorded video. The technology even exists (though it is not yet in common use) through which a teacher can interact physically with their students over arbitrary distances. For example, using remote control to manipulate demonstrations, give feedback, or in other ways do many of the kinds of things that teachers have traditionally done in person.
  76. ### Discovering better ways to convey knowledge

There are two forces operating together that will change the ways in which knowledge is conveyed: the evolution of technology and the evolution of the need to know. The first is a function of technical innovation and adoption. The second is a byproduct of our personal and social development as individuals and as societies. Both of these key components will determine what the most desirable methods of information sharing will be. The balance of this chapter is devoted to exploring those components and the methods that they spawn.

Since the ultimate measure of the value of education is its effectiveness in serving the needs and desires of learners, let's look at that component first. As we have seen in previous chapters, one of the main evolutionary forces at work in the new millennium is the shift in focus from collective value to individual value. We are heading into an era when education is increasingly focused on what is of greatest service to the individual, rather than what serves society best.
  77. ### The technology of distance learning

The closest thing to distance learning that our predecessors could have experienced was either written correspondence, some form of written record, or an oral message from a distant teacher. All other learning was done more or less face-to-face. The only thing that really qualified as distance learning first occurred in 1728 when Caleb Phillips advertised his correspondence course in short hand in the Boston Gazette. It wasn't until 1856, over a century later, when correspondence courses in languages were offered in Europe.

This changed little until well into the twentieth century. With the advent of motion pictures, phonograph recording, radio and especially television, it became possible for the spoken word and even moving pictures to convey information over long distances and time. This was about as good as it got until very late in that century, when computers and the Internet emerged. Even then, the first steps toward real education at a distance were not terribly impressive, and anything but ubiquitous.

By the end of the first decade of the new century, however, things began to change quite dramatically. By then it was possible to not only learn the lessons typical of grammar school and high school, but to earn a college degree online. Beyond the standard coursework that had always been the exclusive province of traditional educational institutions, new technologies offered opportunities that had never before existed.
  78. ### Education versus socialization

Until the rise of home schooling in the last few decades, few people ever considered that schools performed another important function beyond the strict confines of academic education: that of socialization. Yet this function is a meaningful aspect of traditional educational settings.

Nowadays, with new forms of school-less educational opportunities, the socialization facet of conventional education is again thrust into the spotlight. Even in the unlikely event that it is at some point determined that schools are no longer needed for educational purposes, either they or some other means will still be needed by which children learn how to interact with one another, individually and in groups.

Those who have large families, or who are close to numerous children in their immediate neighborhood, have some opportunities readily available. These, however, almost always lack diversity, and are not likely to be an adequate substitute for the socialization traditionally provided by schools.
  79. ### Lifelong education

Whether consciously and intentional or not, virtually every human who has survived past infancy has been on a lifelong quest to learn. We are learning creatures. The only variables are how focused we are on it and how good we are at it. The rest is details. There is, however, a wide range of variability among people as to the reality of learning in their lives, both in terms of formal education and more _ad hoc_ learning later in life.

In the remaining decades of this new century, and presumably beyond, the very nature of learning will undergo vast changes. At some point it seems all but certain that we will be able to bypass much of what is now seen as education by simply adding basic information to our virtual database from technological sources. Yes, this means incorporating knowledge that is stored electronically or otherwise into our normal biological capacities.

  80. ### Specialization versus Generalization

The chief reason usually given for seeking a college education is that it is supposed to ensure that you get a better job. There is no point in debating the truth of that assertion at this point (although there are many these days who might want to do so energetically). It does, however, ignore another reason that, in the context of one's entire life, may be even more compelling This not-quite-hidden factor is not a matter of popular discussion, though it almost certainly should be.

This largely ignored facet of education is about having a breadth of knowledge and comprehension of life, the universe, and everything, and the ability to think clearly enough to turn that understanding into some form of wisdom. So a question arises as to which is the more important value of education: the knowledge and skill to make a good living, or the understanding and wisdom to make that living worthwhile? The best answer, obviously, is both.

  9. ## Challenges of Health and Wellness

It is often said that no matter what else you may lack in your life, if you have your health, you are still doing alright. After all, if you are in pain, or severely handicapped, or even dying, your options and even your life are limited accordingly. So clearly well-being is a major facet of the lives of every one of us.

The chapters that follow delve into some of the most important aspects of this area of human life, both now and into the future. Though orthodox medical sources are cited from time to time, no doctors or health care professionals were directly involved in the writing of this material, and so it should not be construed or used as a substitute for professional care and advice.

That having been said, what follows will hopefully give you cause to think, or even explore, in directions that may not have occurred to you before, which may in turn lead you to the discovery of insights, resources, or simply ideas that have benefit to you personally as you embark on your journey into the new century.
  81. ### Well-being is not just about physical health

For a long time, physical health was generally considered to be the primary, or even sole criteria upon which to base one's sense of well-being. In recent decades, however, a more so-called "holistic" approach has been on the ascendancy. Nowadays it is considered to be a part of most facets of orthodox medical practice. It has also raised many questions as to where to draw the line between that which is entirely physical, and that which is not.

What it comes down to is that while being well is certainly about physical health, it is also about happiness, fulfillment, and joyful living. In fact, there is an ever-increasing body of evidence that points to the notion that even physical illness often has its roots in psycho-emotional dysfunction.
  82. ### "Holistic" is not just a buzz word

At least since the time of René Descartes in the early 17th Century, science has been leaning farther and farther toward "reductionism" as its method of choice. This is an approach that involves breaking things down into smaller and smaller parts in order to understand them. Only in the last quarter of the twentieth century and beyond has there been a movement toward an holistic approach, which is based on the premise that the best way to understand something is to consider it as a whole, not as an assemblage of parts. Few sciences have been better examples of this than medicine.

Medical traditionalists at first resisted the holistic approach, but over time it has continued to gain traction. Though it is far from universal in the early part of this century, it has nonetheless attained respectability and the confidence of practitioners and recipients alike.

In the decades to come, expect this trend to not only continue, but to follow the lead of so many other things and accelerate. Why? Because it simply works better. What it comes down to is one simple principle: the human being is not just a physical creature, but is rather an incredibly complex system composed of thoughts, emotions, experiences, consciousness, and even spirit, but certainly not just a physical body. What's more, these various components do not operate individually and in isolation. Rather they are in a perpetual state of interaction at a highly intimate level, and in fact, none of them can operate without the others. They are, in words of one syllable, a set.
  83. ### Prevention is cheaper

Every school child has heard Ben Franklin's famous adage, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." In some cases, "A gram of prevention is worth a ton of cure," might be more appropriate. For instance, if what is being prevented is a fatal disease.

The other famous adage that pertains to prevention is slightly different: "A stitch in time saves nine." This one is not about preventing something from happening altogether, but rather it focuses on the advantages of catching it early when containing it is much easier. Let's call that damage control.

Both of these approaches are, however, preventive in nature. One prevents something undesirable from happening in the first place, and the other prevents it from escalating from the level of an inconvenience all the way to a catastrophe. And each has its place in our lives. Clearly, however, the first is more advantageous. Usually.

In terms of well-being, prevention means that you don't get sick, whereas damage control keeps existing illness from getting out of hand. Both can save your life, and both have their place in the course of human events.
  84. ### There's more than one way

What are now considered modern "miracle drugs" were often being used centuries before science as we think of it discovered them. Penicillin is the most famous of these. It was documented in Europe at least 400 years ago by apothecaries, but may have been used as far back as ancient Greece, along with other types of molds. Its cultivation and use can also be traced as far East as Sri Lanka in the second century BCE.
  85. ### Controlling costs

The cost of healthcare, at least traditional western-style healthcare, was a hot topic even before the launch of the twenty-first century. Nowhere is this more evident than in the United States, and it's no accident. The per capita spending on healthcare in the US is number one in the world, and about two and a half times as much as in Western Europe. At the same time, the rate of health outcomes ranks between those of Slovenia and Costa Rica (which are twenty-ninth and fiftieth in per capita healthcare spending). Clearly something is amiss. The big questions are what is the cause of this imbalance, and what can be done about it?

One of the underlying causes of this disparity between cost and quality is the prevailing attitude that more is better; you can't have too much money, and you can't get too much healthcare. According to Elliot Fisher, the Director of Population Health at the Dartmouth Institute, the number of office visits by patients is 70% higher in some large medical centers than in others, but the outcomes of treatment no better. Keep in mind that more visits means more specialist consultations, more tests, too. So the costs climb without returning any real value to anyone (except through their bank accounts).
  86. ### Who pays?

The days of giving the doctor a dozen eggs on his way out the door are in the distant past now. Between the massive educational requirements and the astonishing array of technologies of modern medicine, expense is inevitable. At least it is for now, though it may change sooner than people think.

All of which begs the question of who is going to foot the bill? And a hefty bill it is at nearly three trillion dollars a year in the U.S. and rising. Soon the average cost per person will be over ten thousand dollars a year. That's an astounding twenty-seven dollars a day per person, just to stay healthier longer.
  87. ### Making peace

There has long been a tendency toward territoriality. Isn't cooperation more sensible? This chapter explores some of the benefits and means by which various disciplines can cooperate where they used to compete.
  88. ### Living versus longevity

Most people look at long life as their ultimate goal. If pinned down, they will add the additional qualifier of quality of life. Most of us don't want to live the last years of our lives in agony or other kind of suffering. But is that the best criteria? Probably for many, but not for all. Some people look for the quality of their days more than their number.
  89. ### How will we know when it's better?

In the simplest possible terms, we know we are doing better when life feels better in the living of it feels better than it used to.

Thank you for reading this sampler. When you are finished reading all you intend to read, please take a few minutes to answer a few questions (mostly multiple choice) about your experience of reading this material. To take the survey,  click here.

To acquire the remaining available modules in this series, and other related work, click here.
