This is the space to be in.
Your greatness is needed here more than ever.
Dear Entrepreneur,
You are talented, driven and hungry to make a difference.
If so, please read further.
There are three forces that will save the world before they can kill it.
- Trade
- Tech
- Time
We as humanity are progressively getting the first two right. And increasingly more and more resources are being deployed there. So the hope is that we will master them before these very acts enslave us.
The world is learning to trade without boundaries, albeit with its own set of issues, but making strides nevertheless. It stops them from going to war. The value creation and individual freedom it brings will prove immeasurably important in the times that are coming.
For long, we have tried (excessively) to tame the resources on our blue dot. More tech and initiatives like Blue Origin/SpaceX hopefully shall be able to tame the other rocks so we get to keep our lovely home as we shift the stress of resource-extraction elsewhere.
It is my thinking on the third that has propelled me to write to you. I call it the missing third vector — time. I do not talk about the time that sun will burn out or the earth will go poof or the universe will collapse. I am cognizant our time here is only but a fraction of evolutionary second amidst a gazillion other worlds and in that fraction on the little space we stand, we must strive to continue putting our best foot forward. It is in that spirit, I talk about the time we need for us to change our relationship with reality. Our physics teacher would ask us to find the ‘third’ force that would balance the two forces in the problem. I have finally cracked it! It is not just the third force that balances the other two, without this, other solutions begin to look like a temporary fix. For, anything we do, we will figure out a way to destroy that as well if we do not address the fundamentals. To illustrate —close your eyes and imagine your favorite futuristic sci-fi series. Mine is Expanse and in the multi-generational time-frame it looks at, while we mine the asteroids, have interplanetary peacekeeping bodies, new cultural norms (eg parenting) — the only thing that doesn’t change is our capacity to be so potently mean to each other.
And any of hope of changing that hinges on 1) Turning into another species; 2) Course correction in our relationship with our world/reality/simulation
While the first one is a natural selection over time or tech, you being you, will go for the second option as you have for the first two acts.
So how do we course correct?
Mental Upgrade.
Worded like that it’s a plot of yet another evil in sci-fi film involving a govt agency.
But, Meditation/Mindfulness/Awareness are nothing but a form of mind control and mental upgrade.
The observer is what creates the reality (double split experiment). So why do we not observe the heck out of our own reality at every level to ensure the right creation? It is not new, but it is a path-breaking tool. A lot of people do it without even realizing they do it. Unfortunately, a lot of people who should direly do it, don’t! How can we leave something like this to chance and as a byproduct of lifelong learning! A lot of apps, literature and a wave of resurgence has rightly kicked in, in response to the times that we live.
The need of the hour is to make it systematic. To win the race with time, the solution is to relay all our forces behind this as we have on our other existential challenges. We sit at the tipping point of timely intervention. (Any data science team will inform you on how this ‘space’ is already hot for investment and so on). As this famous quote (attributed to Dalai Lama) goes, if all eight-year-olds learn some form of meditation today, there will be no war in the next generation. The regions, countries and eventually the world will stabilize. It can only mean one thing — more prosperity, value creation and well-being. A quick google search will bring up many of the scientific (peer-reviewed replicable) research on the concluded benefits of the practice at an individual and regional level at scale.
A sign that we are lucky to be living in good times is that physical problems are beginning to fade away to bring forth the mental ones. More people die in the world of suicide than all acts of human violence combined, including terrorism. Unfortunately, it is just a start. As we enter the Anthropocene era of pervasive autonomous and decentralized technologies, it will become ever more important to upgrade ourselves mentally than physically.
Meditation is a river that gives. It certainly has to me and those I know directly. In measures that are hard to put in language as we know.
My sincere hope with folded hands and utmost humility is that you will put your might behind this cause, for it will take another kind of Buddha to change the course this time!
Regards,
Shiti
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