The Next Copernican Revolution (Book Two) - Backcasting From the Future - Introduction
The Illogical Next Step...Coming from the Future
Please note: All content in Book Two, unless specified otherwise, was penned in 2016 thinking it was going to be part two of a three-part book. As life often does, things took an unpredictable turn, and I found myself accumulating more life experiences, rather than publishing this work. Upon reflection, this unplanned delay aligns quite well with the non-linear, time-twisting approach I envisioned all along in crafting this anthology, reminiscent of the style found in Cloud Atlas. However, the time has come to unveil this book to the world, as its relevance has only become more pressing over the past eight years.
This amalgamated work in Book Two has not previously seen the light of day in its final form, whether in digital or hard copy. It remains untouched by final editing, rewrites or updated references to the current times. Consider it a snapshot frozen in time, offering insights not only into the state of the world back then but also into my own personal perspective, or worldview, if you will.
Over time, my convictions have only deepened, and my position has remained steadfast. To echo the sentiment of Jacque Fresco from the Venus Project, who, at the age of 94, succinctly declared: this shit socio-economic paradigm has got to go.
My writing is dedicated to exploring how we can conceive and manifest a profoundly viable new paradigm. So fasten your seatbelts and prepare to embark on this journey with me.
Troy
2016
Introduction - The Illogical Next Step...Coming from the Future
The logical and chronological next step after presenting a history of humanity and our social systems in part [book] one would be to show where we are at present, and then where we can go from here. I purposefully will not be doing so in this book for several reasons.
First, I don’t wish to keep doing what we’ve always done, expecting different results. In other words, I won’t be reeling off facts and figures and statistics about how dire our collective situation is for humanity now, as Al Gore did with his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”1 in 2006. His truths are even more true now, eleven years on. But what has changed for the better? Have we made any real progress in that time, at least in terms of climate change? I would unequivocally say no. Our atmosphere keeps heating up and our world leaders continually fail to do anything substantial about it. In other areas as well, things seem to have gotten worse. We have experienced the global Great Recession of 2008 since that time. We have witnessed the Fukushima meltdown and the Deep Water Gulf of Mexico oil spill since then. We have witnessed the resurgence of terrorism and a new energy play with Hydraulic Fracturing (or fracking) since then. We have seen income inequality reach all time highs. We have watched, with hope and fear, the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street Movement since that time. Perhaps the most shocking story is that America elected Donald Trump as president. So I will therefore not be rehashing all the issues that the global protests have brought to our awareness. I am assuming that people reading this book already get the problems with our environment, with globalization, with inequality, and all the other typical problems associated with capitalism and globalization, and probably have some good ideas as to what the causes are. But yet hear we are, nothing has changed. So as discussed in chapter 2 of part [book] one, facts don’t always matter that much and maybe our visions of how things could be, but aren’t, don’t go far enough. So I feel a different approach is needed, one which might bring about new understandings. That’s one reason I will be going directly from the past to the future in part [book] two.
This brings me to another reason I don’t wish to go directly from the past to the present to the future—the fact that indeed some new understandings have come about since
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