So off they went into the Wilderness, where they expected nothing was, yet. They figured it was worth the risk to life and limb, the terrible UNCERTAINTY, and giving up the coziness of living in a thriving society for just a chance to CREATE THE WORLD OF THEIR DREAMS. Enormous gamble. Enormous reward.

Enormous are the stakes that get us fired up enough to pack it up and haul our asses “out of bed at night”, en masse. Yet, it seems that many times in history those stakes have been available. And every time, the “bookie” people think of in their hearts and heads as they lay it down and play their hand… is God. Atheists have never done it.

I’ve considered our present situation, as a planet of people and as Californians – we are both at the end of a line, the inheritors of something our ancient forebears won for us when they gambled on the future and headed West. We are, yet again, atop a great height of Achievement. We’ve invented lots of really cool shit. We have many elaborate systems for taking care of almost everything. We have many rules and procedures to keep it all running as it should. There are many people who have invested everything in the Current System of Things, and who would fight and die before they saw it change. But there are certainly many people among us who believe in the merits of a Clean Slate Beginning.

The problem is, there isn’t really a “vast, uncharted SomePlace” out there anymore for us to dream about. There’s no more West. Or is there?

"One Direction of Travel"

Where do we go from here? The West..
is fully occupied. "Civility"
is out of space. And the Idealists
are crying out for Natives to convert.
Nor do the Anarchists
have any wilderness
to shed their clothes and all their common sense.

It feels a bit like Europe! Now...
that we have reached a Coast of sorts,
and face (like the Atlantic, once)
a vast, impenetrable void, again,
what can we do but contemplate
the cities we have built and left,
as if it were our fate?

If the Web is the New West, the latest Final Frontier, the direction of our Utopian Dreams in 2005, there should be some recognizable signs.

Is our society divided on the question of whether to go and what to do there? Is the Establishment both interested in exploitation but afraid of what may be brought back? Is there just a thin fringe of society who really understand what’s needed for the trip? Is there uncertainty among the masses about the questions who’s in control, who’s in charge or who’s in the know? Is there a Spiritual rubric available to inspire would-be colonists and to help recruit missionaries?

Makes ya wonder, don’t it.

2HP