“Now I understand,” Said the Last Man.”

“The average working week was now twenty hours … but those twenty hours were no sinecure. There was little work left of a routine, mechanical nature. Men’s minds were too valuable to waste on tasks that a few thousand transistors, some photoelectric cells, and a cubic meter of printed circuits could perform. There were factories that ran for weeks without being visited by a single human being. Men were needed for trouble-shooting, for making decisions, for planning new enterprises. The robots did the rest. The existence of so much leisure would have created tremendous problems a century before.

Education had overcome most of these, for a well-stocked mind is safe from boredom. The general standard of culture was at a level which would have once seemed fantastic. There was no evidence that the intelligence of the human race had improved, but for the first time everyone was given the fullest opportunity of using what brain he had…People could indulge in such whims, because they had both the time and the money. The abolition of armed forces had at once doubled the world’s effective wealthy, and increased production had done the rest. As a result, it was difficult to compare the standard of living of twenty-first century man with that of any of his predecessors. Everything was so cheap that the necessities of life were provided free, provided as a public service by the community, as the roads, water, street lighting, and drainage had once been.

A man could travel anywhere he pleased, eat whatever food he fancied without handing over any money. He had earned the right to do this by being a productive member of the community.There were, of course, some drones, but the number of people sufficiently strong-willed to indulge in a life of complete idleness is much smaller than is generally supposed. Supporting such parasites was considerably less of a burden than providing for the armies of ticket collectors, shop assistants, bank clerks, stockbrokers, and so forth, whose main function, when one took the global point of view, was to transfer items from one ledger to another.” Arthur Clarke, Childhood’s End, 1956

I read Clarke’s book years ago in the 1970s and was enamored with the above paragraphs from the story. What would that world be like? Who would I be within this world? Today, in the midst of this Great Pause, the story comes to mind again. In Clarke’s story Aliens arrive as Overlords to insure the safety and wellbeing of Earth and protect it from human arrogance and stupidity and male dominance. They realized man was destroying Earth at an ever accelerating pace. Rather than bringing war and destruction and conquering Earth and mankind, they bring three ultimatums: 1)No more war; 2) no more divisions between nations; and
3) no more poverty. Otherwise, humans had freedom to create and contribute to the greater good.

Today we have Coronavirus, an alien virus, something invisible to the eye, and yet very potent in its message. It has paused us, sent us into our homes, created distance, closed down all the places where we go to purchase, celebrate, find pleasure, get schooled, and produce goods. It has recognized ordinary people as being the extraordinary ones. It has celebrated the many first responders who recognize the true nature of humanity to serve and be in cadence with each other. Coronavirus has revealed and helped us remember clear skies, sparkling waters, and mountain tops. It has slowed us down enough, locked in our homes, to enable our humanity to remember that we love and care for each other, we are one. It has sparked ingenuity and opened our minds to wondering why we put up with the growing insanity of our existing cultures of war, power, and destruction. It has destroyed our understanding for what we thought mattered. Money and power are suddenly not the heroes they were yesterday.

And yes, it has caused death and pain, sadness and despair. It has ripped our familiar habits and attitudes out from under us, or in some cases revealed the ugliness of them through a rather careless population of people who consider themselves more important than any one else on earth. It has shown a light on how supremacy and individualization are damaging to us all, including them. It has given us new life as Mothers give birth, bringing new potential, new love into the world while also creating one of the most powerful and incipient ways to die. Everyday we hear counts of hospitals overflowing with the sick and dying, of having to die alone, separated from loved ones. And yet we sing, we find ways to be together in our separateness. We meet our neighbors, send love and song from our windows, use our streets and sidewalks with chalk to convey what’s in our hearts and minds. We use our technology to find ways to be one world together while sheltering at home alone. Our very young offer their talents, their unspoiled open heartedness, to create offerings of help and love. They stand beside us, all of us together, in intergenerational understanding and compassion.

Clarke’s Overlords came to stay and they had ways, benign, but still all controlling to ensure we followed their three demands for peace and world unity, without poverty. As we begin to open our doors and step into a new world, post the Great Pause, what will our habits be? Will we deny this warning offered by Coronavirus and try, hopelessly, and frantically to return to our old ways, the ways we know don’t serve us well, but seem safer than walking into the unknown. Will we dare leave our adolescent behaviors and attitudes and grow into maturing as humans, celebrating a new understanding of our humanity and the special roles we have as stewards of Earth for all creatures great and small?

Here we are today, more than 8 billion people, standing on Earth with the power to continue to destroy and wantonly ignore warnings of decay of body, mind and soul. Will we rise to this moment and create higher order cultures, choices, and stewardship? We stand in the liminality of an unfamiliar threshold. We have the opportunity to step through this threshold — a right of passage — into the potential and possibility of a full realization of our humanity.

We are not alone in accepting this challenge. Since time began, someone somewhere has been standing up for world peace and unity. All forms of research offer the benefits of peace over war. We have been learning Nature’s wondrous understanding of systems within systems and self-organizing talents. Nature calls us forth and more and more individuals are listening. Someone, somewhere is continuously learning about a world that could be and sharing their views through all known media. We create and iterate our way forward through ever increasing networks and projects. We hope. We pray. We try. We celebrate and mourn. History is being re-written by people researching the past and finding stories that bring more meaning and dimension to life, that were incomplete in thier first tellings. We are recognizing the wisdom and learning of our indigenous cultures and recognizing women and minorities and the contributions they have made toward a better world that have been until recently buried in a very limited view of history. We are bringing a new contextuality into our understandings. We are learning to listen and see differently. Magically, at this time, hidden factors are making themselves come alive providing us a new understanding and coherence about how to move forward into a different future and create a more benign and thriving future. We have many forefathers and foremothers holding the space for renewal. Coronavirus provides the space to weigh and consider… to open ourselves to very different choices. The future invites, holds open unlimited potential.

I think of a few MG Taylor axioms: “The future is rational only in hindsight”. “You can’t get THERE from HERE, but you can get HERE from THERE.” “You fail until you succeed.” “Nothing fails like success.” “Creativity is the elimination of options.””The future by design, not default.”

Coronavirus has created the pause for us to look backwards and forwards and decide who we want to be when we grow up. It has provided an opportunity to explore what the rationality of our existing habits are compared to what they could be if we choose to create a different world, one much more fit for universal thrivability and happiness. How do we bring a little bit of a new world, a new way of being, to our existing world every day? What choices will we make each day as individuals to experiment and grow our abilities to create a healthier planet and home? What are our individual designs for creating anew, rather than being yanked backwards into a world where finally there is only the one man standing with his pitiful understanding of his failure?

We have choices today because of Cornovirus revealing things we could not see or measure before. It has raised our thinking to “what ifs”, given us permission to think about the futures we want, what we choose to be in elationship with, cooperating as one.

Can we do this for ourselves without Overlords? Can we learn to trust each other and re-create Earth as work of art? Perhaps… if from the future, not the past…and together within relationships of relationships, then yes.

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Notes: 1) The title, “Now I understand …” is from the book, Childhood’s End. 2) MG Taylor Axioms link