The State of Affairs

Recently I have seen an uptick in my older posts concerning climate change. These posts had been the least viewed. This increase in views is probably because of the realization that climate is really changing with unprecedented heat and storms. Perhaps this new interest in these posts should not be a surprise. People focus on immediate concerns and for most people climate change seemed to be something far off with little relevance to their lives. Now all of that is changing. More people are searching for safe places to live, although the main movement is still from colder regions in the North to the South and Southwest, which are areas that are or will be negatively affected by climate change.

I wish I could say that the current situation is a blip that will soon pass. However, my dreams have shown that weather will only get worse for several more years (see my August 2015 post titled A Dream About Edgar Cayce and Climate Change), something also now projected to be the case by scientists. Maybe by the end of the decade new technologies will bring about more stable conditions. There are many encouraging new developments that should substantially reduce greenhouse gases during the latter half of this decade. But for now, we must live with the results of past inaction with things still getting worse.

 

How bad will it get? I don’t know the answer, but for many people disaster has already struck. Some parts of the world such as Africa are seeing unprecedented drought conditions. Somalia is hard hit with thousands dying of starvation. International aid organizations are desperately seeking donations to avert a catastrophe. In the United States, we are seeing record heat in cities such as Phoenix that is resulting in deaths. So far, crops are largely surviving, although that could change very quickly. It will not take much of a further increase in temperatures to push at risk areas into a crisis with people and crops unable to endure the heat.

 

In addition to climate change, the world is now facing a war in Europe that could envelope all nations. In the United States I am seeing a division among people that I have never before witnessed in my lifetime. Instead of working together to solve this nation’s problems, groups are working against each other. The polarization may have multiple causes, but the division that even pits family members against each other is quite shocking. We are facing a seminal moment in history and many politicians nurse petty grievances and look for ways to punish their political enemies instead of solving critical problems.

 

In my earlier post titled Seeing the Future, I wrote about the limitations that we experience as humans. I pointed out the nature of our mental world as an individual creation that is based on very limited information. Even the physical world we think we know is a creation of our brains that depends on sense information that is far from comprehensive. And our mental world is based on beliefs, thoughts, and feelings that may bear little relation to reality. Even the rational, levelheaded person is unable to peer into the mind of another person and see all their thoughts; they must reach conclusions and make judgements about the person based on limited information captured by the senses.

 

Fortunately, there is an answer. Help exists in the way of communications from our subconscious mind, which is not as limited as the conscious mind. We can see the connection between ourselves and other people. At deep levels of the unconscious, the mind experiences a unity that is beyond conscious awareness, except during enlightened periods. However, through our dreams we are shown a connection with others that goes far beyond what our conscious awareness sees. We are also shown our own limitations and misconceptions about ourselves and other people. We soon realize that things we were certain were true may not be true; they are only our beliefs about what is true.

 

When I was employed by a corporation, I managed a technical group responsible for software applications. Late in my career, I moved to a new position that was more directly related to sales and customer support. One day I recall having a conversation with the person who replaced me as manager of the applications group. He said he had previously wondered why I had done certain things, which he admitted he regarded as questionable. But now that he was in my former position, he said he understood my earlier actions.

 

Education helps us understand other people, even those from foreign cultures. I am somewhat distressed by the emphasis on going to college just to get a better, higher paying job. Improving one’s occupational opportunities is important, but equally important is the enhancement of understanding of the arts, other cultures, and society. As we explore other cultures, we find that people everywhere have the same basic concerns and desires that we have. If humanity is to endure and prosper, it will not be because of technology; it will be because we have turned to the spiritual to guide our actions and recognized that at a deep level, we are all one.

 

Recently, I was talking with a neighbor about climate change. He asked me who I thought was responsible. I said we all are. As early as four decades ago, scientists and others began warning about the negative impact humans were having on the Earth. But most ignored the warnings, including the US Congress. A few voices cried out about the urgency of acting, but most thought actions were unnecessary. Al Gore warned us thirty years ago. (See https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/mtp-flashback-1993-al-gore-warned-climate-change-us-temperatures-soare-rcna40221.) 

In his second inaugural address Barack Obama highlighted the threat of climate change and the need for immediate action. That was over ten years ago. Still Congress did not act. Finally, President Biden was able to get a bill passed in Congress that supplied critically needed funding to address climate change. But we are late in addressing the problem. Innovations from this funding will not change what is currently happening. We are going to have to live with the lack of action during earlier decades. When I say all of us are responsible, I am referring to our lifestyles and choice of representatives to Congress with little vision who disavowed any real threats from climate change.

 

As I stated above, I don’t know how bad things will get but past dreams indicate it will get worse, maybe even catastrophic for some areas in the United States and other parts of the world. My dream about California is certainly shocking (see post on 6/25/2021 titled Warning Dream about Seismic Activity in California). The acceleration of the melting of the glacier ice caps, heat waves, and forest fires is very worrisome. People are dying from the heat, and some have no place to go for relief. We need to work together, both in the US and in the United Nations, to address this urgent problem. This is a critical moment for humanity. If we cannot come together and focus all our combined energy and resources on the problem, many people will not survive. We need a plan on the national level about how to help people who live in areas that may suddenly become uninhabitable. How will people be fed, clothed, and housed? How will health care be provided?

 

A couple of years ago, I expressed concerns in a post about the effects of climate change on the economic environment and financial markets. At that time, there was little concern expressed in the financial news, but now I am starting to see articles expressing alarm about the financial impact of climate change. As a society we are not very proactive; thinking is very short term and great sweeps of change are often ignored or not seen at all. It isn’t until we are feeling the direct effects of threats that we are able to galvanize into action. My belief is that when the full effects of climate change are realized, panic will set in. For now, the stock market is moving higher, and analysts are making future stock predictions with no thought of the effects of climate change. That could all change in an instant because of a critical event affecting our food sources, physical health, or the sustainability of certain geographic areas. We saw how quickly Covid-19 changed everything. A new disease for which we are unprepared could appear overnight.

 

Pray for guidance and turn to your dreams for answers. They will provide help, and a single dream could help prevent a loss to you and your family. The certainty of help will strengthen your faith and help you keep a positive attitude during trying times. Even if you are not directly affected, many others are and need your help. Over the years, my dreams have saved me from serious grief. Yours can as well, but you must be willing to take the time to understand this critical aspect of your being.

 

In this country, people place great emphasis on material things. The belief in God is a at a low point; technology is the new God. But technology has not and will not solve the basic problems we face that bring about hunger, disease, and war. Human nature has not learned from history as current problems around the world show. More and better technology will be exploited for war just as past developments have been. The only hope for humanity is an understanding of and reverence for all life. A growth in awareness must occur or the destructive use of technology will end us.

 

The new movie Oppenheimer raises serious questions, but it is sad that the scientists involved in the development of the atomic bomb did not fully realize where it would lead. The situation we have today was predictable once the first bomb exploded. But they and the country’s leaders did not see the probable future that was already contained in their present. A group of scientists did try to urge the government to not use the bomb once it was developed, but I think they were being naïve. Oppenheimer apparently went into a depression when he began to see the results of the detonation over Hiroshima. I wonder what he thought was going to happen.

 

In a future post, I am going to share a few of my thoughts about AI. This is a very important topic that I believe will further test the moral fiber of humanity. Technical developments are occurring at a pace that may well be outstripping humanity’s ability to understand and control the outcomes of those developments. We are creating ever more powerful systems, tools, and weapons without an increase in our wisdom. 

It was not just Oppenheimer who had great misgivings about what he had done in developing the atomic bomb and who later opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb. John Von Neumann, the great twentieth century polymath, played an integral part in its development and use as well. Some ten years later, he wrote an article that appeared in the Fortune magazine in 1955 titled “Can We Survive Technology?”  He was considered by some colleagues to be the smartest person alive at that time, and he was very worried about technology outstripping humanity’s ability to manage and even survive it. (See https://www.thenation.com/article/society/john-von-neumann/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity.) Is humanity now at that singularity suggested by Von Neumann? 

Seeing the Future

Can we really see the Future? Or is it an undetermined unknown that does not exist until we reach that future point in time? We think we know the present, and the past is something that once occurred that we could reflect upon. But most people think the future is not yet written and does not exist. To further explore this train of thought I think it will be helpful to consider what it means to see the present.

 

Do we really see the present? Are we aware of the world around us, both the physical and mental environment? First, consider the physical environment. We think we see the world as it is. Our vision shows us a multitude of objects with a broad spectrum of colors. Wide agreement exists among humans about these objects and the details of their structure and appearance. However, people exist who have a different view of the physical world from the one the majority of us see. But they are considered exceptions with a physical abnormality. In addition to conditions such as color blindness, there is a condition called synesthesia in which wiring in the brain appears to be crossed: sights may appear as sounds and colors as taste. The stimulation of one sense crosses over to another sense, and sometimes both senses are triggered.

 

Ignoring these exceptions, what about most humans? Do we see the world as it exists? Let’s examine the process of seeing. Light emitted or reflected from objects in the form of electromagnetic radiation impinges on the retina of our eyes. Photoreceptors in the retina generate electrical signals that are sent to the brain via the optic nerve for processing by the visual center. The brain generates, based on these signals and other sense information, what we call a visual image. The image or what we “see” is a construct of the brain. The colors we see are a result of three types of receptors in the retina that are sensitive to red, green, and blue light. The light or electromagnetic radiation we see consists of energy at specific wavelengths. The electromagnetic radiation doesn’t have color. The R, G, B sensors in the retina find the proportion of red, green, and blue wavelengths received and the brain constructs the image based on that information.

 

The visual spectrum that the photoreceptors in the retina are sensitive to is only a tiny part of the entire electromagnetic spectrum that includes high energy gamma radiation, x-rays, ultraviolet waves, the visible spectrum, the infrared, and radio waves. A quick Google search (e.g., see https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Electromagnetic-Spectrum.svg) retrieves several sites with images showing the wavelength and frequencies of the electromagnetic waves for each part of the spectrum. Every day we are bombarded with radio waves, tv signals. Infrared radiation, visible light, and ultraviolet (UV) rays from the sun. We see only a fraction of the energy that surrounds us, and which supplies information about our world. If the person who is unnecessarily out in the hot sun in the summer during midday could see the UV, they might schedule their activities differently.

 

Among the mammals, humans’ vision is quite good with a large range of color perception (theoretically millions, see https://www.aao.org/eye-health/tips-prevention/how-humans-see-in-color). As a comparison, dogs have two color receptors instead of three. They are missing the red and see primarily in the blue and yellow. And no, bulls cannot see red either. To dogs and bulls, red would just appear as a dark or gray shading. But some animals can see better than humans do. Bullfrogs and salmon can “see” in the infrared, and bees and butterflies “see” in the ultraviolet. Butterflies and mantis shrimp have more color receptors than humans and are believed to have the broadest visual range. Our visual resolution is decent, but hawks and eagles have a far superior ability to see details at a great distance. (For references see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_vision, https://askabiologist.asu.edu/colors-animals-see, and https://www.colormatters.com/color-matters-for-kids/how-animals-see-color.)

 

What about the other senses? We know from experience that many animals such as dogs can hear better than we can (especially higher frequencies, see https://ncraoa.com/dogs-hearing-range/), and dogs experience a different world through their heightened sense of smell as well as hearing. If you are in bear country, do not leave food out or in your car. Bears can smell food miles away (https://hikingandfishing.com/bears-sense-of-smell/). Some animals have night vision far superior to a human’s vision. The retina has rods and cones for photo receptors. The cones manage daylight vison and colors, and the rods are more sensitive to light levels and give us our vision in the dark. Familiar animals such as cats have a much greater density of rods giving them superior night vision (https://excitedcats.com/cat-vision-vs-human-vision/).

 

At this point you may wonder why I am presenting this information when the title of my post is Seeing the Future. My purpose is to make clear the limitations in our ability to see the physical world as it exists. Our brains construct a picture based on data from the photoreceptors in our eyes. What the brain constructs is limited by the information these receptors can capture. We do not see the world; we see the brain’s interpretation of the world based on what our physical sensors can capture. It has been good enough for humans to survive and prosper, but we have had to turn to technology to supplement what our eyes cannot show us. When you leave your house and look upon the world around you, you are only perceiving a limited version of that world. You are seeing the brain’s interpretation of reality. What actually exists is electromagnetic radiation with certain wavelengths transmitted or reflected from objects.

 

If we only see a limited subjective version of the physical world, what about our awareness and understanding of other humans: family members, friends, coworkers? Do we “see” the mental world: our thoughts, emotions, and social interactions correctly? Or maybe I should ask what the limitations are in this area. Now we are dealing with the world of thoughts: our thoughts and the thoughts of everyone else who makes up our world. Every day we make judgements about ourselves and those we meet. Based on our beliefs, beliefs they espouse, comments they make, how they dress, the friends they have, their occupation, politics, all lead us to form our opinions about them. Of course, we are limited by what we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch; the physical senses supply the information that our thoughts use to reach their conclusions. And we do not know other people’s thoughts—only what they tell us. But is that the whole story, the entire picture? For the physical picture of the world, we clearly are limited by our senses, which are enhanced to some degree by technology. Is our mental world also limited in any way other than our lack of ability to know another person’s thoughts?

 

Here we must differentiate between two major aspects of mind: the conscious and unconscious (often referred to as the subconscious, although they are not identical). Our daily conscious activity is based on the information from the senses that feeds into the conscious mind. The subconscious mind is the great reservoir of power that makes our physical movements seamless and manages automatic functions such as blood flow, cell reproduction, digestion, and breathing. But it does much more than that. Paranormal research has made it clear that communications can occur between individuals beyond the normal senses. Many still doubt the psychic, but at this point I believe the evidence is overwhelming that it exists. I do not want to debate this here. I have gone into this in detail in my dream books, with dreams my own primary source of communication on a psychic level.

 

The subconscious is the receiver and generator of communications on a vast level that for the most part is not perceived by the conscious mind. These communications can be seen in dreams and during meditation or other altered states. Our dreams filter most of what inundates us and focus on what is important for us to know in the conscious state to help our lives.

 

You can think of the subconscious as being bombarded with an uncountable number of signals (the form is unknown). The subconscious filters out all but information that may be of interest or benefit to us. What is related in dreams is strongly influenced by our conscious motives, ideas, and interests.

 

Unfortunately, the vast amount of helpful information supplied nightly in our dreams is ignored by almost all people. Most are unaware of the nature and purpose of their dreams and make no effort to remember them. As a physical analogy, it would be like shutting off one, or more, of our senses and pretending it doesn’t exist. Our dreams show us a present that greatly expands on the present we see and know from our conscious awareness, which only shows us a a physical world limited by our senses and a mental world that is probably much more distorted and limited than the physical because of a lack of direct contact with other people’s minds and our own subconscious mind.

 

Earlier I commented on seeing colors and specific human limitations. The objects we see appear to us to be solid. However, science has shown that they are anything but solid. They are formed of molecules and atoms with a great amount of space between them. But our vision cannot show us that level of detail. To us most objects appear solid. If we want to see what objects are made of, we must turn to technology to extend our visual perception.

 

Hypersensitive individuals exist who claim to see auras or color patterns around other people. They may see layered energy bodies enshrouding the person. Sometimes psychic healers claim to perceive physical health issues from the appearance of grays or dark colors in the person’s aura. In New Age literature various energy bodies are described, which appear to owe their origin to Hinduism and other Eastern religions. Most scientists refute those psychics’ claims, but since even a normal image is a construct of the brain, I question how they can say a psychic is not seeing what they claim. However, they might argue that the construct is totally within the individual and is not because of any emanations from the person whose aura they claim to see. I do not believe that this is the case as my own psychic feelings have shown.

 

Clearly, we do not see things in any complete sense, even if you reject psychic perception. We build our personal world based on imperfect feelings of the world we inhabit. Both the physical world we see and the mental world we inhabit are created by our brains and conscious minds. Certainly, there is considerable agreement among people about the nature of the physical world because we all have the same kind of sense apparatus. There is much less agreement in our mental worlds, partially because of the exclusion of the subconscious mind as a source of enlightenment and the fact that our mental worlds are personal, individually created.

 

If you want to see the future, then begin to really see the present. Pay attention to your surroundings and the details in your life. Wake up to the body language and moods of those around you; they are conveying nonverbal messages that may be more important than what they say. Examine your own feelings and try to understand what generated them. Become aware of yourself: your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs.

 

Begin to record and study your dreams. Learn the language of your subconscious and you will find an entirely new level of perception and understanding. The world you see will be greatly enhanced and you will wonder why you didn’t see that world before. You will begin to see the future and discover it is contained within the present. You will understand that you create the future. In a real sense it already exists, and if you want to change it, you must begin with the present. Your future is not unknown; it just may be unknown to you. Your mental world is completely your creation and is unique to you. You can continue to live in the one you created or create a new one that removes barriers and opens new channels and opportunities.

x

x