Richard C. Cook is a former U.S. federal government analyst, whose career included service with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Carter White House, NASA, and the U.S. Treasury Department. His articles on economics, politics, and space policy have appeared in numerous websites and print magazines. His book on monetary reform, entitled We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform, will soon be published. He is the author of Challenger Revealed: An Insider’s Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age.

All these big questions sometimes make me feel like a change is impossible, but then meeting ordinary people living this economic crisis, it is clear that the existing system is not sustainable. Witnessing the fine line between prosperity and poverty, and seeing what multi-national companies are doing to the third world, people at home, and the environment, keeps reminding me of the necessity to change this system quickly, and not spend all energy debating over whether it’s possible or not.

It is a man-made economic system after all, and trading methods have changed before to suit the times, so surely they can change again to suit our present situation. Perhaps it is the free market ideology that is a failed utopia?

 We all know we are in a globally fragile state, and historically this is when extremist forces have got to power. Trying to conserve a no longer suitable system will be detrimental to everyone and heighten existing conflicts.

There is a real need to educate and supply ideas to the public, which give hope for a better future, and inspire solutions. It is up to all of us to decide if we want it.

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These were and still are the rules of politics - play it, or do your own thing on the side, in silence.

Of course campaigning is very important in terms of raising awareness and give the public a choice as to what method, from what party, they would prefer. To give the public this choice is one of the fundamental functions in a democracy. But when this campaigning is not about finding the best method for the greatest number of people, by honestly and openly presenting a solution to the public, but about scoring political points through word-twisting, how can the public make a well informed choice? The public can’t be experts in everything and if they don’t know what they are actually choosing, how is this a democracy?

I feel ashamed for politicians when they are trying to belittle each other, and frustrated when they actively and obviously distract from their opponents’ points. Still, I understand how they have become dependent on this to stay on the political scene and achieve anything at all.

Now I’m not looking to any political party to offer “the solution” anymore. The icebergs wont hold back for the next election, and this political game is not working fast or well enough these days.

I know I’m not the only one who feels this way, and I’m sometimes scared I belong to a generation that is about to give up. That we are once and for all resigned to capitalism and egoism because we don’t think we have any real choice. While progress is increasingly measured in minutes on screen, and the feeling of freedom and meaning can be attained chemically, are we distracting ourselves from any existential crisis this development perhaps should infuse, or any real resistance it could inspire?

I’m also scared that the political power has been moved so far away from people’s everyday realities and grown so large, that most political activists will be pushed to challenge it with violence. I’m scared of how this violence is used as an excuse for the authorities to refuse listening to opposing views, making them even more desperate and violent.

Is this a time when we can’t actually change the workings of our society, or is it an era when we don’t feel as though we can? Did the “modernists”, the generation that is now disappearing, have a way to process the world that we “post-modernists” could learn something from? Further, is there perhaps a new language of resistance that is not seen through the normal political channels but on platforms not immediately apparent to most of us?

What’s our relationship to our future? Does the concept of a better future still exist?

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“It is impossible to predict when the magic moment will be reached and everyone finally realizes that the prices being paid for these companies, and the debt taken on to support the acquisitions, are unsustainable. When that happens, it won’t be pretty”.

Escalating international tension, crisis, war…

At the same time researchers at NASA and Columbia University determined that man-made greenhouse gases have brought the earth’s climate precariously close to a major “Tipping Point” that would have dangerous and far-reaching consequences for the Global Biosphere and its human inhabitants.

Similar reports are being published all over the world…

This increasing dystopian outlook of the future and the need to be rescued seems to concern the public more and more, making way for documentaries such as Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and TV series such as Tim Kring’s Heroes.

There is one problem with documentaries such as The Inconvenient Truth: they don’t offer any real solutions, and deep down we all know that to save the cheerleader is never going to be enough to save the world.

While some of the “younger generation” have become activists in the anti-globalisation movement, the vast majority has been called the MTV generation – fluent in popular culture but largely a-political. But perhaps the personal focus, the obsession with style and surface doesn’t mean that people have stopped caring, maybe it was just a shift of language, but a transformation of sorts? Does popular culture hold the key to our beliefs and attitudes, and can it even unlock people’s consciousness, if packaged seductively? If people have lost faith in politicians and traditional political filmmaking, what do they believe in?

Future For Sale will try to focus on solutions already available but at a first glance might appear as science fiction. Futurists have always had a close connection to this genre since it is a way to plant ideas into the public consciousness. But it is rare to see new films depicting a better future, currently a pessimistic view of the future seems to be more popular. Perhaps filmmakers also have to take the responsibility to be a part of this search?

Many “futurists” have changed the focus of their work, however. If futurism is a movement, then one can argue that its tone has largely changed from ideology to business. Two of the main goals set up by the European Futurists Conference Lucerne, for example, are directly related to support European businesses, and to create an understanding of the future of business, politics and society - in that order.

Does restricting the visions to a future within the monetary based economy mean that the great visionaries of our time become important tools for the big companies?

Does futurism become pointless if the monetary system is a problem in itself in order to progress? Or can we create a sustainable change within it?

In human history “the survival of the fittest” has been a matter of competing over available resources. In modern times this competition has been structured into a regulated global economic system, an attempt to create a more “civilized” world. Today our economy still reflects this competition.

With modern technology we have the ability to produce in abundance. According to both Amnesty International and the UN we are already producing more food than is needed to feed the world. We also have the scientific knowledge to maintain this level of production using new methods and materials that wouldn’t damage the eco-system or rely on depleting resources. Still, millions of people are starving and we keep over-exploiting un-renewables such as oil, gas and coal at a much faster rate than the planet can sustain. Somehow, this unequal distribution of goods and unsustainable management of scarce resources, constitutes a “thriving economy”.

Our system is dependent on constant growth, which has led to over-production and dwindling resources. At the same time we need to waste the surplus in order to sustain value, to balance supply and demand in order to keep our economy – not our environment - “healthy”.

People are beginning to ask the question whether our basic model of “competition” and perpetual growth is still valid and necessary. What was once “modern” suddenly doesn’t seem so “civilized” anymore.

Through the intelligent application of new technologies we have a possibility to re-structure our economic system more equitably, in alignment with what the planet can actually supply. It has become a matter of choice; collaboration or competition. We could choose to feed everyone. It could be a seismic cultural shift.

But instead it is argued that our culture and our technological advancements are motivated by the economic competition. There is a big fear that we would not have the incentive to work and invent if we didn’t have the need to earn money. But the competition for profit also creates the incentive for crime and corruption and there are many people already working for no profit, usually people who passionately love their jobs or can afford to do what they want. Have we become dependent on someone else motivating us to get out of bed?

What would happen to a culture where everyone actually had a free choice over how to live their lives?

When I was a child I had one wish above all. It was always on top of any wish list, attached to every wish-bone or shooting star: peace on earth between humans, animals and nature. It left me with a burning mission; to make it happen. I collected all my pocket money to ‘buy’ tiny pieces of rain forest to protect it from the big companies who wanted to exploit it. Later I understood that these companies would always have more money and therefore more power than me, that my 50p a week meant nothing in the grand scheme of things.

I started to doubt my ability to change the world and more and more started to live with the same dystopian view of the future that surrounded me in and out of Scotland. To save the world is something you wish for when you are five, not something you work towards a whole lifetime. But then I met someone who had.

Filming my last short film Ottica Zero, I met Jacque Fresco, a 92-year old futurist, architect, inventor and socio-engineer.

Jacque has devoted his entire life to making the world a better place - without putting himself above anyone else or compromising his ideas for commercial interests, personal fame or status. He is a role model I would have loved to have as a child and an inspiration I am glad to have found now.

His ideas also address the two issues that have concerned me the most over the last few years: the first is the ongoing consequences of capitalism, affecting gender politics, world wide inequality, the aspirations and fears of everyday people, to the extreme detriment of our environment; the second is the issue of fundamentalism in a global society. How can we allow tolerance of all religions and value systems without a “clash of civilizations”?

What Jacque presents is a way to address these questions, not providing an ultimate solution in my opinion since I don’t think we can ever conceive of perfection, but a very interesting one that is making far more sense than how we manage our societies today. Jacque’s and his partner Roxanne Meadow’s Venus Project in particular, provides a fantastic metaphor for our collective power, and is a timeless reminder of our potential to change. Jacque has been daring to not only dream about improving the world, but actively inventing solutions to do so - his entire life. He is an uncompromising futurist-idealist of the kind we rarely find within our post-modern skepticism.

He questions why, even when we do have the resources to feed everyone, the technology to create clean energy, and the ability to supply everyone with creative, free and comfortable lives, we choose not to, a question I think we all could do with asking.

Jacque’s view of the future is neither dystopian nor utopian; he calls it a “a practical scientific solution, an unsentimental and non-judgmental collection of facts.”

“It is not enough to point out the short comings of the present day world without offering positive and attainable alternatives.” Jacque Fresco

I believe that Jacque’s ideas now more than ever tap into our desire to create a “fairer,” post-consumer world, where we are beginning to understand that our individual actions have an impact on other people, even if they live far away from us, and that we actually will have to change the way we live to preserve our planet.

Even though economists recognize the influence of money lobbyists on the political system, and are aware that “the market” cannot in itself take action against global warming and pollution, there is no prevalent search for alternatives or debate about the fundamental workings of our monetary-based economy. The public debate is between the left and right of the same model; how much a government should intervene into “free trade”, a debate that many of my generation have stopped participating in, rejecting it as false democracy.

With the possibilities of modern technology at hand and the wisdom from civilizations that have risen and fallen before our own, is this really the best we can do? Why is there no real debate about alternative ways of managing our resources, where are the ideas for a new economic system?

I think it is time to focus on what solutions we have available since we are already despondently aware of the problems - and that is what Future for Sale is all about, and what I hope we will be discussing in this blog.

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Who are we to say an economic transformation will never happen in our lifetime? Many things now commonplace were just as inconceivable 50 or 100 years ago. What ordinary person then could have conceived of “software” or the Internet? And who would have thought green issues would become mainstream one day?

In times of crisis there is both the threat of destruction and the possibility for rapid change, it is ultimately up to us what way it will go.

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