h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've just read a book by William Shatner about Star Trek and the prospects of us realising some of its technological ideas in the near to distant future. A fun book to read … but thinking about real reality, scientific and technological progress alone won't solve the crisis we're in. Star Trek itself is also about more than technology, there's a big scoop of political and social idealism mixed in. Captain Kirk and Spock live in a time when humans and many aliens have actually solved the pressing problems and now live in societies that actually work. Will that ever happen on Earth and for real? To achieve that, these are some of the problems we need not just to tackle, but to solve.

1. Material and social deprivation and inequality. We are well into the Twenty-First Century and still in most of the world most people live in misery. In Africa, many people are poor, lacking in educational and occupational opportunities. We have squalor and pollution. Even in the prosperous world, we have many people living with the malaise of doing jobs they don't find meaningful, and not having money for important things like vital medical treatment. Work should be a matter of inspiration, not desperation. When people are forced or coerced to do work they don't really want to do, then it is slavery, just as when people are forced or coerced to have sex they don't really want to have, it's rape. We need to re-think our whole economic system – we need to reconsider the assumptions we're working with. Instead of seeing how entities like companies or even countries can gain as much wealth as possible, we need to look at the resources of Planet Earth, at basic human needs, and how we can most economically satisfy them (and without causing other unintended problems). We need to work for a world where everyone has enough and also is satisfied with that.

2. Political incompetence, deception and corruption. I don't know if there's a single ruler or political party in Africa (or maybe even the world) that is not corrupt. At the top, people are making fortunes, out of all kinds of collusion … companies are given carte blanche to exploit, they just need to pay the right people. Africa right now is being stripped of its natural resources, and polluted like you won't believe. And some people are making billions out of this. The money does not at all 'trickle down' to the regular folks, it ends up in the pockets of a small elite. Politics really should be about helping out the typical average folks; the leaders should be no more than their representatives. But this goes along with the previous point. Political leaders, just to get where they are, need to have gained wealth and power, and this alone by the time they reach the top, makes them 'different creatures' from the lowlies who got them there. And almost all of the time, a rich and powerful person cannot fully understand what it's like at the bottom. Even if they rose from humble beginnings … because they will still tend to think that anyone could do the same. They don't have experience of the permanent door-shut-in-your-face effect which marks life for the poor and powerless.

3. Harmony. Harmony between humans, and between humans and animals/plants/nature. Still in the world it's a case of divide and rule. People are not seeing all their fellow people as being the same as themselves; they're divided into friends and enemies. Friends are like us; enemies are who our leaders tell us are enemies. Common people of one country wage war on common people of another country, because their leaders tell them they're enemies. Actually the common people of both countries are very much more alike to each other than they are to their respective leaders; the truth is the leaders are the true enemies. And humans are still at war with the natural world also; we destroy so much of the wilderness, the very same womb that we ourselves were born from. We don't see animals as being living beings with the same right to exist as ourselves. We don't see them as our kin – which they are. We don't realize that the ecology of Planet Earth is a very intricate whole that is vital for sustaining the life of everything on it. We estrange ourselves from our fellow living beings – and ultimately from Life itself. Life is a unitary phenomenon of which we're just a small part. We now serve and worship death, not life. This can have only one end result.

4. Human folly and ignorance. Despite what 'science' knows today, the average person is still shockingly unaware of what is really going on in the world. And scientific knowledge alone won't cut it. The average person needs some kind of guiding philosophy. Not necessarily very complicated. But it needs to give the average person some idea of what 'humanity' knows right now, and perhaps more importantly, what it does not know. The average person needs to know just how much faith to put in science (not extremely much, but a good deal all the same). The average person needs to know how much faith to put in leaders and powerful people and organizations (very little). The average person needs to know much of human psychology and how it is abused by 'leaders' in order to gain, dupe and manipulate followers. I'd say the average person does need some kind of religion. By religion I mean a kind of positivity and optimism that can withstand a lot of negativity, that arms the average person against cynicism and fatalism. It's the hope of everything actually being part of something good and grand. It's a defense against feelings of hopelessness and pointlessness. This must be a religion, a matter of faith, since it's not something that can be proved. But I also think that religion mustn't go too far. We must admit that we have no clue as to what the 'truth' behind our existence and that of the Universe might be. So I'm against religious fundamentalism, the idea that one religion has all the answers and is completely beyond doubt. Religion needs to be able to admit and incorporate doubt. An element that needs to be included is the recognition of the positive value of uncertainty. If we're too certain, we stop learning – we can indeed not learn that we're wrong if we think we can't possibly be wrong, and that is precisely when we ARE wrong. Also the kind of religion I have in mind should not clash with science. Science provides us with amazing knowledge of the nature of the universe we're in. But there are some questions that it probably can never answer, and indeed, that it would be wrong for us to expect it to answer. Science can't tell us 'why' anything exists or 'why' there are laws of physics or 'why' these laws are the way they are, or other ultimate questions of existence. No matter how many scientific laws and principles we come up with, there will still be more questions questioning the grounds of those. And science can't tell us what is good or bad/evil, right or wrong – you can't derive an 'ought' from an 'is' – but also, you shouldn't need to. 'Is' is a matter of finding the facts, which science can do; 'ought' is a matter of judgement, evaluation and constructing systems of principles or ideals, which is what moral philosophy does. The one can inform the other, but they're two different domains. And religion can unite the two. Religion is also necessary to unite the two conflicting aspects of existence, namely objectivity and subjectivity. Objectivity is the mere existence of everything that exists; subjectivity is the existence of a single mind that can probe outward from itself to become aware of everything that exists – its own self as well as the outside world. Every individual mind is a reflection of the entire universe – transformed into a completely unique known, lived and experienced reality. Science can handle objectivity but not subjectivity. And yet, the two are aspects of one and the same reality. A 'leap of faith' can take us beyond the myriads of subjective experiences of reality and postulate a 'real' reality behind it all, and can recognize how the subjective experience of reality is a vital aspect of the objective existence of that which is real.

5. The end result that the world needs is the full empowerment of every individual. And for that we will have to learn how to work together. We will have to realize that we can indeed work together and that our wellbeings all tie together. We need for people to understand first of all how powerful they actually are – and that power comes from the human mind. The mind that understands itself and is disciplined and that actively works to expand its own power and recognizes all the opportunities it has for growth becomes powerful indeed. We also need to be responsible. Like Spiderman's Uncle says. Once we have the power, we need to learn to use it as well as possible. We need to know that we can influence each other, but that must leave us with the sense of responsibility, knowing we can do either good or bad, and committing ourselves to doing good rather than bad. True power is not the power to do bad – that is illusory power – but the power to do good. We have a principle that ensures that – it is called love. Love means reaching out, embracing others, and considering them as being as important as oneself. It also means considering one's own self as being extremely important – without this self-love (not selFISH love) there can't be true love of others. Love is indeed the most powerful principle that exists. And it is real, it is a true kind of 'thing', once again not something science can see and point out and study, but it is there all the same. Without love there is no meaning, there is no happiness, but with love, there is meaning and happiness even in situations that may seem dismal. Love is something that can be taught, that can be nurtured, that can be exercised and made to grow. In the end, this is what we need. Right now we worship power, but it is false power. If we forget about power and start worshiping love, only then shall we discover true power. This power is for the individual but also for the group, it is something that can vitalize entire societies, and indeed all of humanity, all of life on this planet. This in the end must become our one and only goal, and everything else will come along with it.

These goals can't be achieved with science and technology. We need to progress towards them in the sphere of culture and philosophy. We need to introduce them to mass consciousness and then find ways to refine them and make them workable. I've some ideas about how that can be done …