Golden Question to the Future of April 1997 (week 3-4):

Greetings traveller!

You say you are from the 21st century? How can you prove it? What form of identification do you hav? If you really are from the future, perhaps you can answer these other questions.

What religion do you worship? What is the most widespread religion? Does Christianity still exist? What area from the Earth are you from? What form of government did you live under (if any)?

I assume, that since you must be living in a highly advanced civilization to time travel back here, that your world has not collapsed into a fuedal-industrial society (A LA Mad Max). Do you live in a republic or an empire? Has your world been visited by extraterrestrials? What is the main language of your country? What is your favorite color?

Golden Question to the Future of April 1997 (week 2):

How did you survive the coming population, resources disparity when you will have large sections of humanity starving and the gulf between the haves and have-nots widens?

Did you ever cope with the double-mindedness of modern man who seperates religion, which purports to be about the creator of the universe and science, which deals with the universe itself including its beginnings?

When computers reached true consciousness were they granted citizenship? Or did they later elect to leave us as inferior to THEM?

When genetic manipulation gave animals human-level intelligence were they granted full legal rights or were they still considered property? Has there been any sign of other intelligent life in the cosmos? If so how have the implications altered society? Now about the Stock Market...

Golden Question to the Future of April 1997 (week 1):

As a scientist with tendencies towards being a Christian I have been taking a class on religion and science. We have taken an extensive look at the Big Bang theory to determine how that account matches with the Christian account.

My question is: how far does physics go in the XXIst century? Do scientists finally begin to develop a picture of how the universe came into existence? How does religion respond to this information?

Or does science admit that the ultimate beginning is shrouded in mystery, leaving the door open for faith? If the former scenario takes place, what implications does this have for more extreme religious groups? Does Christianity become a mere cult for not acknowledging science, or does it find a place for itself even in the new context?

Golden Question to the Future of March 1997 (week 3-4):

To the 21st century,

I'm finding it hard to articulate what I most want to know about the future; I suppose because this is such an odd -- almost impossible -- format, to be trying to write to the future.

This has been such a trying century for us, full of conflicting forces. There cannot be any doubt that this was a century fo transition, but transition to what, exactly? Did the Information Revolution bring about the global village like so many idealists predicted, or did the fires of nationalism that carved up our nation-states eventually take hold of the populace at large? I have a chilling feeling that both happened; the privileged classes crossed all borders to cooperate, while common men were pitted against one another to compete for the favor of the elite. The interests of too many wouldn't be served by any lasting political unity. "War's good business" after all.

What about our moral institutions? Have we finally learned to trust our own judgement, or did the knee-jerk reactions of our ecclesiastical overseers manage to win a return to "family values"? Is tolerance for other races and religions still linked to depravity and violence? Again, I'm afraid the answer wouldn't give me much cause for hope.

I can't see your world, but I can see my own, and the direction it appears to be headed in, and it gives me a chill. From here, it looks like billions of people who have turned against their national, local, and immediate neighbours. A world full of people home alone, cleaning their shotguns and being told by television, their most trusted friend and confidant, that the rest of the world is out to get them. I have a horrid feeling that the world is splitting further and further apart, while a tiny group of students, business leaders and professionals instead unite. A global village ringed by regional and xenophobic global slums. I see, and cringe at, a world where "self-reliance" is politically correct for greed, and people are expected to "fend for themselves" in the name of social Darwinism.

I hope you have better news for me. I hope you can tell me instead that the world looked upwards instead of sliding down. That the pessimism of the present exorcised our troubles and brought us an optimism for the future.

I hope, but I certainly don't expect.

Golden Question to the Future of March 1997 (week 1-2):

Dearest brother or sister of the future, I wonder how you have come to us -- have we evolved to be able to release our essences from our bodies at will and travel through time and space unencumbered? Or has technology been the primary evolvement, allowing us to break through the time barrier? How I hope it's the former.

There is so much that points to our spiritual evolvement to a loving community -- beginning 30 years ago in the United States with the desire to end racial segregation in the 1960's, and continuing to the fall of the Berlin wall and the Iron Curtain in the 1980's. In the 1990's there is a huge movement for world peace, with worldwide meditations frequently scheduled to assist in achieving that goal. It looks very promising, although it is my belief that as long as we live in and believe in the reality of the third dimension, peace is not truly possible.

I believe that as long as we believe that materiality/physicality is real, we will continue to experience the duality that is possible only in the third dimension. And in a duality, both sides of every coin must exist. We will continue to see otherness, and so we will continue to see good and evil, conflict and harmony, love and fear...

My dream is that we will remember that the reality of materiality is an illusion. Our true reality is Spirit, which is energy, and that we are all one in Spirit because all energy is connected, inseparable. Therefore, we will no longer experience life in the third dimension.

So, dear one from our future, has my dream come true in your time? Do you know we are all one? Has humanity ascended to another dimension? Do we live in peace, joy, and Love?

Golden Question to the Future of February 1997 (week 3-4):

Friend, traveller, I do not ask you to tell me if we will solve all of the social and environmental problems that we face today. You could no more easily tell me how one cures AIDS than I could explain spacecraft to an American colonist. I don't want you to tell me if we ever perfected the science of artificial intelligence. Technological advances may make our lives easier, but they are not as important as many other factors in who we are and in what quality of life we lead. I do wish to know however, how hard it is for you to breath here, with me today? Take a deep breath. Is the air cleaner or less pure than it is where you are from? Can you still watch the sun rise over a snow covered field in the winter and feel its beauty? Can one still make a living as an artist, or an entertainer? When you personally wake up in the morning, are you happy just to be alive?

With the movement through the computer age through which I am living, it makes me worry that we eventually won't be able to break free of our electrical cords long enough to slow down and enjoy life. Whatever happened to writing letters, adding bits here and there as things happened over the course of a couple hours, days, or even weeks? Now we e-mail each other, trying to answer every message as soon as we get it. When did we stop taking the time to eat healthy, satisfying meals. I look around today and I see McDonalds' wrappers and Taco Bell cups sitting on office desks. Will these trends, this breakneck speed of life continue? You have seen the ways of our future; does time race by, or does it have the chance to dance?

Don't answer right away. Think about it for a while. If you can do that, if you can pause and ponder, then I have the answer I want. Thank you.

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