interview

WIE: As we enter the twenty-first century, there are few who would disagree that the world in which we live appears to be in crisis. Indeed, with widespread environmental destruction, a rapidly accelerating species extinction rate, a population explosion, and a number of other disturbing trends, many leading futurists, scientists, and visionaries, yourself included, warn of potentially catastrophic changes ahead that threaten the very survival of life as we know it. In order to face this impending crisis, you have spoken about the need for a revolution in our society—a scientific and technological revolution, and most important of all, a spiritual revolution. Could you speak about the transformations you envision and explain why you feel confident that they will help us navigate the challenges ahead?

JOE FIRMAGE: I think that the work of so many wonderful people in the world—you in your own way, and me in mine, and everybody else who is involved in a community of action—is providing a catalyzing function that is very important. I'm certain that scientific and spiritual enlightenment can save the world. But the questions of how and when have no simple answers. However, there are increasing millions of people who are finding their own answers, and I remain optimistic that we will cross the critical threshold in time to evolve our course toward sustainability and toward happiness.

My confidence is also bolstered by the tools that are available now that have never been available in history. A device that fits in a twelve-year-old's hand that speaks and understands spoken words and that connects to the sum total of recorded human knowledge will soon be a reality. That can catalyze a startlingly profound and rapid transformation in an individual. That process is underway right now, and it's one of the brighter sides of technology. It's one of the major contributions that the technological endeavor will make to the enlightenment of the people.

So I'm optimistic because this transformation can happen more rapidly than has ever before been possible in the history of humanity. I think that there are good grounds to believe that these tools not just can be, but will be, deployed in this way and, in the process, will mark an inflection point in the trajectory of society.

Another reason why I express the optimism that I do is that I'm close enough to some of these new innovations, in terms of my study. There are a lot of people who just don't take the time to thoroughly study and investigate. For example, I'm far more optimistic than most environmentalists that we are close to an energy revolution—an energy revolution that does not depend upon solar energy, that does not depend upon wind, that does not depend upon waves or other types of gross macro methods. I think that we are very close to transformations in technologies for propulsion and for architecture that may transform the infrastructure of society, shrinking our footprint on the earth and allowing us to step very lightly on the land, yet without dispensing with the qualities of life afforded by modern society. If I were not convinced that those kinds of breakthroughs were possible, I would be much more pessimistic than I am.

But I do not see a solution to our problems without a combination of technological transformation and consciousness transformation happening. It must happen together. If the technological transformation happens without the consciousness transformation, we will become like the "Borg" on Star Trek. If the consciousness transformation happens without the technological transformation, we're out of luck. What are we going to do? Are we all going to return to the forests? I mean, that's not really a practical solution. What do we do? Stop driving cars? Stop creating enough energy to power our homes? Once we're all willing, once we all want to see a different kind of society, how do you feed people? What's the system that does it? How do we lift a billion human beings in China out of poverty without exacerbating the consumptive pressure on the planet?

So to me, the importance of both of these cannot be overstated. And I see the opportunity for both to happen. If these two transformative processes can be woven together in the right way, we can build a third-millennium society that you would want to live in, one that would make you and every other member a happy person. But it's going to take a hell of a lot of work from a lot of people to make that happen.

WIE: While technology is no doubt going to have a greater and greater role in our lives as we move forward into the future, there are many who have issued strong cautions about the dangers of the Internet and the information revolution. For example, Michael Lerner, in his new book Spirit Matters, warns of "a new global consumer society obsessed with avoiding commitments and entanglements and focused on individual pleasure. . . . Detached from everything that roots us to place and time, we can then endlessly surf the web, isolated tourists in a world of virtual experiences. Our emancipation from the weight of the past creates an unbearable lightness in the present: we become tourists to our own inner beings and tourists to others, never staying long enough to risk getting involved." As a believer in the power of information technology to help see us through our current crisis, what do you think about Lerner's concerns?

JF: I wouldn't be as harsh as he is, but I would be as concerned about some of the dangers, especially with respect to the potential for the Internet to dramatically aid the scaling of the economy. The friction that the Internet removes from supply and demand is amazing to behold; it makes it so much easier to transact business from one side of the globe to the other. There are now a couple of companies that have sprouted up that allow tribesmen in the jungle to sell trinkets to people on Madison Avenue through the Internet! Now one group of people says, "Amazing business opportunity." I said, "Holy shit. What are we doing?"

WIE: You're saying that the Internet may increase the world's rate of consumption?

JF: It allows consumerism to scale up fast. I have a very deep concern that the Internet allows us to scale up commerce in an abrupt sort of way, and therefore, we are scaling up an economic machine which we already know in its present condition is unsustainable.

So that's the dimension where I have equal concern. Where I would disagree with Lerner is that I think that the experience afforded through information communications, while it will have its negative side, is, on balance, a great aid to both society and the individual. The opportunity to convey experiences and share them in the new medium is a profoundly good thing for human beings on the whole. I view it as a successor to paper, a successor to books, a successor to telephones. And the reason why it's so cool is that it's a successor to all of them. It combines the best qualities of paper, phones, televisions, and computers and puts them into one device.

Of course, it will be used for ill. It will be, and that drives home the point that we need to make sure that we find ways to get rid of the ill in society through non-draconian but nonetheless systemic means. It raises the kinds of issues that Ken Wilber and others write about so comprehensively, which is the need for a reappraisal of the basic ethics of ordinary human relationships. You have to find a way to remove the motivations for people to do ill things with powerful technology. Because in an era when the price of a weapon of mass destruction drops to a middle-class income, when you are able to buy a vial that knocks out a city for $25,000, the whole question of security changes. You become dependent for planetary survival on the ethics of the individual and not on a global police force. And the same thing is true with information technology in a different sense. It's an incredibly powerful tool for people to magnify whatever it is they want to say. If we have a billion people who are really pissed off and want to hurt each other, information technology will be a very serious weapon.

WIE: You are the founder of the International Space Sciences Organization, a science and theological research institute established to conduct cutting-edge science research as well as to explore the relationship between science and spirituality. What do you believe the future holds for science and spirituality, and how can they help us to save the world?

JF: I believe that most religious systems lack a deeply rooted appreciation for the knowledge that we have gained from science. And I think that religious traditions as a whole are certainly going to be far less effective if they, as society evolves forward, attempt to hang on to the past, to dogmatic notions and moral codes that are frankly irrational and unfounded in any sort of reasoning or logical process. If religions fail to appreciate what we have learned about reality, they will fall by the wayside.

At the same time, one of the qualities of religion that science has not presented well is a sense of the integral nature of the cosmos and the universe. And when one sees the universe through the lens of science without that sense of integration, it becomes somewhat cold and lifeless. Even life becomes somewhat cold and lifeless.

One of the things that I think is happening now is that the qualities of the religious experience that are positive and not destructive to human beings are being recognized and seen elsewhere—other than in religion. They're being seen in science itself. Science is not fundamentally about equations and abstract diagrams and such. It's about truth. It's a truth-finding process. It's a truth-finding methodology. So what if you took an integral spiritual perspective and infused it with a sense of deep respect for the truth-finding process of science? If you brought these together, then you would have both the practice of integral spirituality and the strengthening of it by intellectual development.