The Future's Past, First Half

(First half of a rough draft of a performance script, seeing Global Warming in a consciousness of Spirit, Heart and Magic)

[Introduction part 1, invoking spirit of tragedy]

Hello folks. Thank you for being here.

“We are the future's past.” Curious title. It's a magical visualization, a confusing magic-mirror riddle kind of visualization. But here it is the title of a serious discussion so will it be meaningful and appropriate for that? Well, it does give an accurate impression. The events we are living in are so confusing and full of riddles.

“We are the future's past.” Want to see it? Try visualizing my vision of it, okay? I'll say this once and won't repeat it. Are you ready?

Suddenly now the future is quite unknown to us because enormous changes are happening very quickly. But we do know this: Very soon the past will be extremely different from the present and we will be that past. And I believe: We can become a richer and more useful past than we will be now.

Did you follow that visually? Well, anyway, I feel like this life now makes my head spin. It's like we are doing fast forward time travel. Whatever this is, it's all true, and yet it's utter confusion. So it definitely teaches me something. It teaches me that I need to think carefully nowadays. I need to mentally penetrate this present in a very truthful fashion so my life will become more useful to the future.

[Introduction part 2: declaring Saturnalia]
[May involve me holding up one hand, then other, then both, or even gesturing wildly.]

Who here can hold up their hand? Please feel free to hold up your hand.

Not now! Hold up your hand when there's something you should say, some serious contribution to the discussion. I'm guessing you can't do that yet. You don't even know what I'm going to talk about. But if there is a contribution you should make at some point, please feel free to signal with your hand or some other body part.

Well, no. Don't do that. That's not going to work. I have three major points I want to make and I'll be much too busy to ever call on you like that. Instead, let's do this: I'll stop and let you have a turn three times as we go along. How's that? It will be your turn three times. And maybe we'll have a few moments for discussion before time's up. Then after that you can go to my website and buy a book.

[Introduction part 3: near term extinction]

Well, I hope you laughed but that's actually a segue, about buying merchandise from a talker. It was a segue because my first big point is going to be money. Yes, money. If we want to mentally penetrate the present, let's talk about money first. Money is a fascinating and mysterious subject, isn't it?

Now, get me straight, I am reasonably well convinced that our Divine Planet's ecosystem is perishing. At this time. That is my very sorrowful and very reluctant opinion, after I have watched this criminal catastrophe of climate change coming toward us for my whole adult life, watched it coming for more than half a century. Now the Arctic is melting and it is now my opinion that this Divine Planet's web of life, where our eyes find love so deeply, this is being loosened and dissolved by global warming. And now finally near the end, that transition is happening very fast. That is the fast forward time travel I am feeling.

Whatever humor you hear from me in this talk today is what's called “gallows humor” or “horror humor” and I believe it's healthy. When Shakespeare used it, it's comedy relief. You might not realize Shakespeare stuck big guffaws into his horror plays – yes he did – hilarious gallows humor scenes just before the terrible catastrophes in Macbeth, Hamlet and others. And no, the humor is not comforting. It's not designed to be comforting.

It turns out Shakespeare understood our minds very well. The laughing is designed to momentarily clear your terror from your mind, and whatever other hope or guilt or whatever other compelling feelings you have experienced so far. Let that go for a moment, long enough that your careful thinking will kick in and you will penetrate the ensuing catastrophe better.

Tell you what, go find the 1996 all‑star movie of Hamlet. Watch all the way to near the end where Robin Williams walks on scene, in costume with a funny walk, and does Shakespeare comedy relief for five minutes. Authentic dialog. Walks back out again. Totally hilarious. Great comedian. See how awake that makes you feel. Then they have the big sword fight where everybody dies.

On the other hand, there is a scientific opinion, part of climate science, which may be comforting to you. It seems like some of the beings in the ocean depths and many of Earth's tiny microscopic life forms will survive this transition. And someday, long from now, it seems certain that the planet will cycle back to cool again. Then we can expect that the survivors will proliferate again into a magnificent flourishing of beauty such as we do love so dearly.

So life on Earth will probably continue to the distant future. And we humans are capable of extending our love in that direction. Many people are finding comfort in that scientific opinion. Perhaps you will.

And I know for sure – or at least I think I do – that life and death in this physical plane are only reflections of life that is larger. We humans know this. When we are sane and our minds are clear, we actually know this just as clearly as the other life forms on this planet know it.

There are definitely other realms of existence. Ask most any physicist. And it does seem like physical existence is a reflection or extension – or choose some other word – of our individual and universal conscious living presence in larger dimensions of existence. Both the Fox Sisters and the Buddha told us that. So do Rembrandt and the painters of the Lascaux Cave. Me, I like the way Jane Roberts says it in those old grainy videos. Also Imam Malcolm X and Reverend King. I will call that the psychic life or the soul life of Earth's ecosystem, which includes our human selves.

That psychic life of ours will undoubtedly continue, and be enriched by these experiences. In my opinion.

But let's get back to that later. That is going to be my big Point Three.

[Here begins Point One concerning money.]

Instead, the first thing I'd like to ask is this: How should you and I feel in our private hearts; how should we feel in our private hearts about the perpetrators; feel about the apparently guilty people who have perpetrated this astounding crime?

But when I ask that question, immediately I find another question. What caused global warming? Why has it happened? And I mean we should examine that question of “What Caused Global Warming?” before we get into assigning any guilt. Assigning guilt will come a little later on my agenda in Point Two. For now I want to ask “What Caused Global Warming?” and work through that to money.

Let's examine the causes of all this before we decide whether there is some guilt in you. Okay? Fair enough? If we're assigning guilt we must see how this happened, then decide if there is guilt in you. Or is there guilt in me, instead of you, or all of us? Or is there guilt in God or Goddess or their Holy Child or the President of the United States? Before we get to that, let's try to know how these circumstances transpired. And I suspect that will bring us immediately to money.

I can even offer some personal testimony on that which will be interesting. Speaking in my official capacity as a Druid. So kindly listen with your ears open when I offer some personal testimony in Modern Druid language.

And yes, I do hereby claim Druidic authority that you will herein listen while I use my Modern Druidic lore to explain an important aspect of global warming. And the object which my true life fable will address is this: “What Is Money?”

So if you will, good friends and friendly strangers, listen kindly while I tell a story. If it is told in proper terms it goes like this.

Lifelong, I had expected that we must finally answer “What Is Money?” For so many years I angrily expected that a deep hoard of Super Secret Money would be discovered deep in the roots of this astounding crime, discovered by us someday. I envisioned this fatal crime as an enormous poison tree with noxious vapors from its blossoms, growing huge with deep roots in our midst, and surely it must have a hoard of Money Super Secret hidden in it somewhere, as its soul and heart, hidden in some place that seemed unseeable.

Now finally we are near the end so this requires that I put modesty aside. I must tell you that I found that hoard. Yes, some years ago I found that hoard of deep money secrets when I was led into a magic journey where I traveled far in a small red boat and spoke with many, always asking “What Is Money?” And so at last, some years along that magic sojourn, I discovered money's secret wisdom hoard. Now I can tell you of it.

But when I'm done telling that, next thing then it will be your turn. So I will ask you what it means. I will ask you “What Do Riley's Patent Money Secrets Mean?” Understand, you are required to give your best considered answer to that question. And I'm warning. This is an official Druid warning. You better give your best thoughts on the current question when your turn comes, or else. If you don't put out serious mental effort, then you'll be cheating.

I am warning, when your turn comes in this conversational philosophy thing, this is a very serious ancient game the Ancient Druids used to play, a game with very strict social pressure enforcement. This is COMPETITIVE conversational philosophy. And you don't want to be a cheater. No chocolate Smores for cheaters. The Ancient Druids loved this more than Quidditch. So pay attention and think ahead.

We must ask “What Is Money?” And I have lived that story that I told you. I have lived a true life Druidic experience like in that story. I was led by unseen forces to a teaching job which I loved at a great museum. It was a magic wisdom journey. This is true. A great museum near our home allowed me take one of their jobs. This is true in physical reality so I've switched back to normal language.

You see, there is a great history museum near our home where I worked for years doing public education. A money free volunteer job. It was one day per week for four years, wearing a historical costume – an old timey business suit – and teaching our museum visitors by means of chat. Your chat would be centered in some particular subject matter and the particular subject matter they assigned me to felt surprising: commerce and money.

I am an anti-money anarchist and the management of an established institution slotted me to teach the history of commerce and money.

You see, it was an emergency. These four years were soon after the monstrous worldwide financial collapse. You remember that. There was a worldwide financial collapse in 2008 that has somehow faded into the background. But now this was the depths of the Great Recession and this famous institution of understanding history did not have a specialist in commerce and money. Until me.

You see, I am a software engineer, a semi-professional artist and a semi-retired business software engineer. An old anti-money anarchist walks in with thirty-five years experience in business consulting and asks for a public education job application. They give it to him.

They definitely needed to fill that slot because it was just after the astonishing financial collapse and members of the public have been led to expect some freaking education when they go in there. All the advertising even says they specialize in concentrated education. And since they didn't have any up‑to‑date curriculum in this vitally important subject, I was even required to develop one. That is to say, I must do research and present my results to the customers.

So you can see, it felt like intervention by some unnamed civic deity. By some means it had suddenly become an anarchist Druid's civic duty to diligently seek the Unseeable Hoard of Money Secret. In this remarkable position it felt like the secret must be very close, if only it could happen that my eyes pointed at it.

And the museum exhibit where they set me to work did feel a lot like a magic boat for traveling time and space. It felt like a real life Tardis if you will. My museum exhibit, that I inhabited one day per week, was an old timey bank building, very small and square, perfectly real in its substance, the exterior painted a curious old Roman Pompeii shade of pastel red, containing a perfect display of authentic documents and furniture. I loved it.

It was built in the early “young republic” period of America where there was a fad for making things seem Roman. With no sense of irony either.

It was a little building, built very cubical, built back in the day from solid stone and iron– to withstand attacks by bank robbers possibly equipped with kegs of gunpowder – transported to our museum's main street from its own Main Street one hundred eighty years ago in a nearby town.

So curious visitors are attracted to that great institution from the whole human world. And those who arrive and wish to penetrate money's mysteries are obviously quite attracted – often with considerable surprise – to my amazing time traveling cubical pink bank building with a big flashy gold sign above its antique pillared porch. So they would climb up the steps beneath its big gold sign, step in the big iron doors, and then they were suddenly pounced upon by the Druid lurking in it.

I'm sure you are not surprised that I started asking lots of visitors about my riddle. I asked many of them, and I tried to lure their best thinking out, on the question “What Is Money?” In the dark days of the Great Recession. And it turns out a lot of people are anti-money anarchists.

It evolved very nicely. I would provide my best thinking from all the previous chats – and from a few fine books which the discussion was leading me to – to stimulate their contribution. And I was unfailingly courteous to them, and kind to their children.

So that was the true life magic wisdom hunt which I traveled on for four years. An official civic duty volunteer public research service. A museum job chatting people up to careful thought about my favorite question.

And here's what I discovered: Money can be explained with evolution science. Money can be explained clearly with evolution science.

Money is a way of thinking and acting that arises from our natural instincts. (Therefore the unreasoning compulsions we feel so irresistibly around it.) We have our instincts from our ancient ancestors who lived a natural way of life. They lived a natural life for a long time, so long that they evolved to do it well in many different ways. The instincts which they developed and elaborated worked well in that way of life. But now some of our instincts are giving rise to this malignancy called money. That is because some of our instincts are working very badly in civilization.

To sum that up, I'm saying money comes out of natural human instincts that are not working right in civilized life. So surprising. Big discovery. So unexpected. I would even say it's maybe common sense now that we have enough evolution science. Please anybody who actually felt surprised by that, hold up your hand! In fact, I bet many of you have strongly suspected it ever since you heard from Jane Goodall about her scientific study results.

But this has value because I am officially verifying that your suspicion was true. You can definitely believe it now because you have received the treasure from a magic journey in a boat. Or else you have received the results of a bona fide, crowd sourced, publicly supported, scientific research project. Field work among primates. Take your pick.

You will not be surprised at this either: Everybody I talked with, from across the world, knew money is a fantasy. That doesn't come up often in ordinary conversation but most everybody knows it's true.

Money is some kind of fantasy where you feel very strong non-rational emotions, and you feel strong compulsions to do things that usually don't work out well. And most everybody everywhere does all that pretty much the same, except possibly a few remaining savages who have managed to entirely evade civilization. Nowadays we understand this is obviously an evolved instinct – a way of thinking and acting – that is not working properly in current conditions.

And of course, being unaware of money's true nature, we always have a strong urge to keep hoping and assuming that it will make sense someday, so then we can make it work right. And so many of us have felt utterly surprised that thieves somehow stole it all, for we feel like money is real stuff and we instinctively imagine all of it as much too large to haul away. Even while we also know it's fantasy.

Of course, since money is inherently crazy, lots of people are quite delusionally money crazy. And since we don't don't teach this in school younger humans are often totally naive to this. So I will say it this way: Every intelligent, sane, and thoughtful adult in the civilized world knows that money is a compelling fantasy which you cannot logically explain.

Well, except for you and me of course. We believe it can be explained quite logically with evolution science.

So finally, let's recap before we move on. Money arises from certain instincts that us civilized people mix together into a poisonous brew. Those particular instincts – those particular ones along with all the rest – were useful and therefore probably wholesome in our natural way of life before civilization.

So if I'm right and this is true, and if I have now decided that it is time to assign blame, then I would like to blame civilization for doing climate change. But I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to logically blame civilization for something.

You might decide that civilization is metaphorically like a big straw man that you might burn down, but I don't see how to logically blame it for something.

I know there was a custom among the ancient Mesopotamians where you would blame your local god when your city did something that went disastrously wrong. I guess we could consider doing that, blaming our gods for climate change.

I also want to quickly list which instincts they are that are going horribly wrong. I'm going to list them. Maybe you will agree or disagree or maybe add to the list.

So, I think these are the roots of money: One: Our instinct for hoarding the necessities of life to save our family and ourselves; the instinct for survival hoarding. Two: Our instinct for hunting which, as you know, includes the instinct for theft. Three: Our art instinct, our instinct to love and create artificial things that are ingenious and exquisite; our art instinct. And four: Our instinct to be sexually attractive.

[Pointing around the audience, as if about to ask for hands.]

Maybe you would like to add some more.

But no! It's not your turn yet. It's not! Your turn will be for Assigning Blame and that's not quite in order yet!

What is in order now? Well, those of you who have followed the logic of this essay – those of you who have not casually discarded the outline diagram that I have distributed – well, the outline was a kind of verbal handout that I told you verbally at the start – you'll remember that right now I am supposed to connect money with global warming. I am supposed to lead from money to global warming in some way that seems logically convincing. I promised I would do that.

So how does this sound:

“Evil human beings have raped Our Holy Mother Earth in a mad erotic fantasy that they are making lots and lots of good beautiful money.”

I think that is logical because it's true.

And furthermore, as you know, this goes back two or three hundred years. Remember the Industrial Revolution? You've heard of it? Many analysts blame the Industrial Revolution for climate change. By some historical coincidence, just about the time someone invented the coal burning steam engine, the United States of America was invented too. Ever since, the owners of the civilized world have been treating our Divine Planet as a sewer.

The U.S.A. First society in the world were people write money numbers in the multi-billions. Every day, if you are an American looking at news, you see numbers in the multi-billions with a money sign attached to them. And what are most of those news stories reporting on? Most of those money numbers in the multi-billions that you seen in daily news are attached to war. If you are here in the U.S.A.

And I say talk of guilt and blame is now in order. So it's your turn to talk. Actually, please change the subject too if there's something else you ought to say.

After that we will explore some personal aspects of the crime for Point Two.

[Now is the first discussion with the audience; it's main suggested subject: assigning blame.]
[Here ends the first half.]