There are so many times when I want to post something here that is entirely someone else's. I would cite, of course, but I hold back and I find myself retroactively asking why. Why do I stop myself from sharing something because it originated from another mind than mine?
In today's world, we hold much value with the idea of ownership. This is a book of my writing. It is therefore my thoughts (or at least my thoughts about what someone else has said). It has value based upon personal connection to me or inherent value in my words or my status as a best seller. This value can take physical form via the magical substance called money. Writing is, in this sense, a physical commodity and can be sold as such. It is a lifestyle and way of being that can be profitable... But we don't see that a lot these days, do we? Writing is a gamble at best. There are thousands of writers whose voices are silent because the path is simply unavailable to them via our economic model of disparity. The next Einstein might be laboring in a sweatshop in Malaysia.
There is a slow metamorphosis occurring. This change is uprooting the idea of ownership and replacing it with seeds of universal access. For instance, I do not write for money, I write because I must. My soul calls me to purge emotions onto this page in an attempt to find peace when my heart aches most. I am lucky enough to have access to the resources to perform this ritual and find the peace that rests between my soul and a page. Not all do... and I pray that one day they might.
We all have desires that beg to be fulfilled and our predecessors developed a world where everyone could aspire to own anything they so desired to do. By marginalizing costs of production via an industrial model, many things became available to all. Do you like to write? This typewriter is for you. Do you want freedom? Here, try this car or this plane to escape with. These opportunities are too sweet for humanity to resist. Within a few skant generations, humanity wanted them all. The means for everyone to buy it all was incorporated into our now outdated economic model and it created huge amounts of waste. It has created waste to the point that our world can no longer support it. My generation will change this paradigm or die resisting this change.
This new model is one of universal access. In our baby years, it started with our music. Who remembers Napster? No one bought CDs past my generation. That infamous tool of piracy paved the road for this idea of universal access. Today's world is one where the cost to produce something has reached exponentially tiny lows. It is now to the point that basically every song I could want bypasses publishers entirely and goes straight to YouTube, every book I desire from every continent is available to me via lending in a virtual environment free of physical distance, every movie that is locked away in VHS can be recalled anywhere in the data stores of mankind's memory for free, even housing and food production are becoming markets satisfied by communities of sharing bodies.
My generation will see a world where what little marginal value that remains will virtually disappear. The next big change comes when the very first 3d printer hits the shelf. Why just one? Because a 3d printer can print another 3d printer for a friend. Since the "ink" can be found as plastic bottles, clay, cultivated cellular matter from a human host, among so many other sources depending on the printer, we will see a further revolution in the ability of the cells of mankind to create. Once these tools are available, factories creating wrenches will not exist. Hell, the first 3d printed electric car is on the road today. This technology will allow a world where imagination will spill forth onto our world with an ease never before understood.
Not just singular imagination though, the combined imagination of the whole world will begin to materialize before us in a form of primordial ooze from which a new world will evolve. An African develops a device that sucks water from the air into a container and now they spring into being across the globe in Death Valley freely and instantly. A Finnish architect creates a beautiful windmill design that upgrades efficiency and Portlandians are already too hip for it. A Canadian farmer designs an angled glass subterranean greenhouse with solar effects and the Danish begin printing it, increasing their yields in the winter and improving their quality of life. All of this and more without a cent of money being spent!
In the face of this future, how can I POSSIBLY worry about sharing something on my blog that isn't mine? For the truth becomes us. Soon, my thoughts and yours will be one and the same. They will be the thoughts of mankind as a whole. This is Fana. Fana is a Sufi word representing the annihilation of the self through knowledge. The knowledge that induces Fana is something so profound that it breaks down the individual ego into a unity consciousness capable of breaking the cycle of Samsara.
Things may look bleak right now, but I believe that everything that has happened had to happen in order for this future to arrive. Humankind is not an end, but a bridge. I must have faith. I must stand up and act towards bringing this imagined future into reality. This is the reason I write. In a world where I am berated and called a naive utopian dreamer for not walking towards my death, I can remind myself of the truth by etching this memorandum into eternity. As a blog by an unknown person, I may as well have written it on a bathroom stall for all the eyes it will see, but I do it for me. For my own peace. I pray for a day where this ability will be accessible to all who need it. I pray for you, dear reader. Fana take you.
