Carlson
It’s that time of year when holiday catalogues flood the mailbox.
The majority that come to our house are unrequested and immediately relegated to the recycle pile. But there is one that appears in our mailbox about this time every year from the charity “Heifer International” that I can’t discard.
For those unfamiliar with this charity, Heifer International invites those of us living in affluent countries to sponsor an animal, from egg-laying hens to water buffaloes, that will be given to people in the developing world to raise and benefit from. People can also donate clear water systems that are so desperately needed in many countries.
As sometimes happens in life, the Heifer International catalogue appeared this year at the same time that a friend shared something as far removed from hens and water buffaloes as the earth is from Jupiter. What he shared was his recent reading about future technological advances in the most developed countries, specifically the acquisition of Artificial Intelligence or AI technology.
Artificial Intelligence is not an area that I’m particularly interested in, but then my friend said something that froze my blood. He cited a futurologist who predicts that the gap between the technologically-advanced societies and the underdeveloped countries will grow so wide in the near future that humanity will split into two separate human groups, not unlike the difference in our evolutionary past between Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens.
It is not news that a gulf exists and is widening between the haves and the have-nots of the world. It is also not news that the highly-developed countries are advancing so rapidly in technology that developing countries, no matter how much they try, will never catch up.
What is news is the notion that humans in the future will live in two different worlds, two different realities, all based on the accidents of birth, and that fewer and fewer connections will exist between those two realities. The evidence that this is already happening is as near as the Heifer International catalogue.
Some people, born by chance in underdeveloped countries, have to transport water, often contaminated with bacteria, in buckets carried for miles, while those of you reading this column have, like me, turned on hot and cold water faucets this morning without giving a second thought.
Or, we can think of the difference this way. Some people will receive gifts this holiday season of “Five G” cellphones or the latest computers, while others are hoping for a chicken to raise.
Or again, some people are born, by chance, on one side of a nation’s border. Other people, again by chance, are born in Honduras or Haiti.
What I hope and pray is that the futurologist missed the place of religion in the future. All the world’s religions believe that every person has sacred meaning and value. Every human being is a creation and a representation of God in our midst. Every human being. Not some, but every.
The temptation of our present and coming world is to look at those who live in developing countries and think, “Thank God that isn’t me.” We come closer to the truth when we think, “That could be me.”
But we come closest to the truth when we think, “That is me.”
