Clasped Hands

In these moments of happiness, I take out the Book of the Future to look back upon this time and the next few years ahead.

What happens if there is not a superpower left to dictate world policy changes? What if many nations join together and abolish nationhood? Those with a clear vision to share with their followers will lead them into the new era, shedding old labels and adopting new ones.

I am a happy man. I have many friends, seen and unseen, known and unknown, upon whom I depend. They may use nonviolent protest, passive resistance, working within the system or other methods to change their place in the world. They may build businesses or break them down. They may give with no desire for receiving payment in kind. They may take without asking.

Happiness is understanding without thinking. Happiness is responsibility for no reason.

When one can enter a system with no other requirement than the ability to injure another person, the system perpetuates violent power. When overpopulation pushes nonviolence and violence together, which one survives? Happiness is seeing your potential and living up to it. If your potential involves overcoming nonviolence, then what's the matter with being happy?

I do not own the world. I see the world in which we live. Peace and happiness are mine, often joined like clasped hands. If I have to choose one or the other, which one survives? Do I want to be unhappily peaceful or happy without peace? The Book of the Future only tells me what will happen, not how I'll feel.

• When the new world currency emerges after 2018, what then?
• When the glaciers completely melt that feed the world's major rivers, then what?
• When fresh water and food production completely fall out of private hands, to whom do you turn for basic necessities?
• When corporations get governments to force you to pay fees for everything you do, where do you go to be free from your corporate citizens?

I love my species. I love my planet. But I don't have to love living with those who want what I have earned after I've paid my share of living with everyone else. If I drive a motorised vehicle, I expect to have to pay for operating it on public roads. But if I am alive, I don't expect to have to pay to be alive - health insurance companies in my country want citizens to pay heavy fines if they do not buy mandatory health insurance policies - I don't love corporate citizens who expect to stick their hands in my pocket for being alive. Such government legislation encourages me to live below the poverty line. It's as bad as asking corporate citizens to pay taxes for having employees, which encourages me not to hire employees.

My thoughts are incomplete right now. I have to look at the bigger picture before I can say what's really in my thoughts. Instead, in the interim I ponder democratic tax policies versus communist joint property ownership versus the bribe/fee system used by loose government associations.

Freedom is many things, including the right to private ownership. I own myself, to begin with. I own my children, as long as they'll have me, and they own me. I own at least enough belongings to shelter myself in public. After that, my private ownership freedoms encounter those of other persons/families; then, the inter-personal/familial agreement process picks up. Private land versus public land. Private education versus public education. Open source versus trademark/patent. Lending, borrowing, buying, selling, giving, receiving.

The future is full of old ideas and new. The future is today, tomorrow and yesteryear. The future is free of words and full of words. Family, religion, politics and sports will occupy us just as much tomorrow as it does today.

The future is about ownership. The future is about freedom. Individual freedom for seven billion and growing. Freedom for one species on one planet and expanding.

I value my freedom. I value my species. How important is my freedom in consideration of survival of my species? I laugh at the enormity of that question. People die every day answering that question, their lives no laughing matter.

You are my peace. You are my happiness. You are my future. You are my freedom. You are me and I am you - we own each other because we're one species, one family. If one of us or one million of us or one billion of us has to lose freedom, or even die, to save our species, which one of us will it be? We'll never know until it happens.

Peace. Happiness. Freedom. Ownership. The Book of the Future guarantees that you can't have all four of them - which one, two or three of them will you take, if someone will be willing to offer you the choice?