Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the web, recently spoke at a conference to celebrate thirty-years of the Internet as we know it today.
Tim, to his credit, says he has no regrets about the invention, he just wishes humanity would use it wisely and stop using it to spread hate and commit crimes.
Was it a suprise to us that giving such a high grade of technology to everyone so quickly would result in humanity misusing this wonderful gift?
Of course not.
Are we surprised that millions of people with unbridled freedom to do whatever they want was to be unexpected?
Like everything else, our bad and reckless behavior will eventually lead to new restriction of freedoms thorough rules and regulations. It’s why we have stop lights, and stringent FAA rules so that planes don’t crash into each other.
Man, among his many skills, will always regulate through common decree once our behavior poses a threat.
Moving beyond this reality, I’d like to circle back around to the point of why it is we exploit, rather than explore when we have new tools like the Internet to help us?
We have become stupid, more stupid than we were a generation ago.
We might think we are progressive, woke, or somehow more enlightened than previous generations, but I don’t see the evidence.
I see plenty of evidence that shows we are less civil, less patient, less loving, less loyal and less wise than ever before.
The worst of human nature reflects something that has been lost. The thing that has been lost is our religious ideals of the hunger of truth discernment and our desire to gain wisdom, and it is our connection with the spiritual aspects of reality we have lost interest in, the invisible things that tie us together as souls of human progress, it is these things that we no longer seem interested in that have slowed intellectual development.
What we forget that, in the morass, is the reality that man is naturally belligerent; we came from the forests, the caves, the hilltops.
Our natural state is beastly, evil, selfish. It is only because we have morality – and an ethical compass – that we have been able to rise above our more negative, brutal impulses and tendencies.
And it wasn’t that long ago, in geological terms, that we were completely debased in most of our behavior towards one snother.
All races have enslaved each other at some time in the past. The truth is we are all actually very privileged to live in this time, and in this age, and if one is really lucky, this country.
Many forget so recently a time when disease and poverty ravaged the world.
It was not that long ago we all, en masse, were migrants from somewhere else, save for a few who managed to be born into, or accomplished, wealth through good fortune and perhaps even hard work.
My point is that mankind still has much to learn. Berners-Lee has only known growing up in a world with law and order, and incredible technology that helps us forget how – excuse the term but it is appropriate – shitty it was for most of humanity for the past few hundred thousand years.
Handing someone a smart phone, giving them all of the luxury of the modern world, does not make him wise if his nature is still debased.
The real question is when do we actually mature as an intelligent species up and stop acting like children?!
Socialism, as a form of government isn’t the answer. Unbridled greed, unearned wealth, and liberty without license are also not reflective of an advanced society, either.
People need to to work, and privileges need to be earned. But it doesn’t have to come through the strong arm of government regulation; it should come organically from within, instilled by the family, promoted and nurtured by the community, encouraged and rewarded by the society, a society that values service to one another as truly worthy of enlightened individuals, and of our own individual choosing to be this way, inspired by a desire to be perfect, even as ‘He is perfect,’ the Father of all creation.
I believe mankind is about to learn, through this revelation (TUB), or other revelations, that man is not alone in the cosmos, and we will probably learn soon enough that other advanced worlds do worship Deity.
It is possible the next few generations of people will start to realize the Urantia Book is an authentic revelation, and that we are on a spiritual path – with specific goals to achieve – as we move towards that future age of light and life, as the Father intended.
We are an experimental world, so anything can happen.
Berners-Lee reminds me of the very stark fact that despite earthly wisdom, if there is not spiritual wisdom in operation throughout mankind, we are really more animal and less spiritual. It is this aspect of humanity that has to change if we are to rid ourselves of the beast within.
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