# The Future as Dystopian



## William Howard 2 (Oct 19, 2017)

"One of the most important visionaries of what the new science might entail was the English philosopher Sir Francis Bacon.(1561-1626) Francis Bacon spent his later years pursuing a literary career and developing a philosophy of science which was to prove an inspiration for many who would follow him. For Bacon the relationship between science and spirituality was clear-- science would serve the Christian faith. Through science, man would be restored to the state of grace which he had enjoyed in the Garden of Eden before the Fall, to the "sovereignty and power."...which he had hid in his first state of creation. According to Bacon, not only science would restore man to his rightfull dominion over the Earth, it would also create the perfect moral Christian society. Bacon outlined this vision in his treatise, The New Atlantis (1627) In this he describes an idealised land where all people live in harmony without crime or promiscuity., "free from all pollution and foulness." Citizens of this "New Atlantis have access to all manner of technologies, including flying machines, submarines, and a huge range of medicines fro healing the sick, and prolonging life. These wonders are made possible through the work of a group of 36 "fathers" who form the core of a scientific institute cum monastic colony known as Solomon's House. It was this fictional institution that inspired the founders of the Royal Society in 1660, an organization that continues to play an important role in the scientific community to this day."

From _Science and Spirituality : Complimentary or Contradictory_, Katy Redmond

For a Renaissance Man, the image of the future was clear - it was to be a Earthly paradise, played out in the language of both science and religion. Contrasted against the modern vision of the future - a hellish landscape of a post-apocalyptic world with a humanity struggling to meet even it's most basic needs of food and water, the difference is a lateral heaven and hell. What happened?

Though centuries apart, the poem of Vladimir Kirillov's "The Iron Messiah", written at the beginning of the 1900s, both exemplifies and shows a continued thread toward this Renaissance thinking. He writes

"There he is the savior, the lord of the earth,
The master of titanic forces-
In the roar of countless steel machines,
In the radiance of electric suns." 

Here we see Bacon's program of science and religion carried out in full. The return of the Saviour is not some embodied heavenly being, but industry and mechanization itself creating this earthly paradise made by earthly hands. Was this program successful? Did we achieve our goals, or did we become "the slaves to the masters that the slaves created?"

Is it any wonder why some people have opted out of society? Of work? Of school? What is work, but to contribute to the spiral down toward some catastrophic end, the plummet of some proverbial cliff? We are no longer working toward a paradise, but a preparation of the future. "Progress" is now not game of steady improvement, but of survival.


----------



## Venatus (Oct 22, 2017)

you really hit the nail on the head here.


----------

