The FutureSeeds Manifesto
To be Human in the 21st century
As long as we Humans have had the ability to think, we have pondered our own existence. “What is the meaning of life?” For many centuries, Humanity has explored spirituality and religion, politics, philosophy and shamanism hoping to bring light to this question. For the last hundred years, we have even tried answering this enigma through scientific research in the fields of biology and physics but the meaning of the Human existence still remains a mystery. Nonetheless, we live in very special times. I think the 21st century is different because either we can give a positive answer to the meaning of our existence, or we risk extinction or at least a major breakdown of our civilisation and the biosphere (read the Factsheet).
We are creating a world in which we, the creators, could soon become irrelevant.
Artificial Intelligence has the power to make the human mind irrelevant.
Virtual Reality has the power to make the human body irrelevant.
Liberal capitalism, following its race for profit, has the power to make human life irrelevant.
Can we come up with a more profound narrative for the meaning and purpose of Human Life? What is it that makes a Human different from a robot, a product or a number? In other words, what is the value of Human life?
It is my belief that these questions will soon become central. By avoiding to open the conversation, we could all grow up or grow old in a world that presents such disconnect with our natural state that we might end up forgetting the value and depth of the human experience, and discard the whole concept of “reality” by lack of a convincing answer. We need to integrate our metaphysical experience of life – mind and matter – with our social experience of life – individual and community – into a coherent model that gives meaning to our existence on Earth as a species. Technology needs to meet spirituality, community and ecology, and that research must be lead by the discovery (or maybe even the design) of the purpose of human life.
FutureSeeds is a container in which I present open proposals supported by speakers who I have chosen for their specialized knowledge on one aspect pertaining to the Human being. Each episode lasts between 15 and 60mins and is accompanied by a description of the author and a brief article about their work. These are all topics I feel passionate about and I hope you will enjoy listening to these speakers as much as I did.
With passion, determination, and love,
Cyprien