Planet Earth is inhabited by a Type 0 civilization, one which gorges on fossil fuels for energy, ideologically wants to retreat to the past, and fearfully searches for threatening shadows. We are stumbling toward a Type I civilization, considering the use of solar power, wind power, and other renewable types of energy, but we are almost hopelessly held back by primitive forces in our culture, dominant forces that deny science and reject any progress that threatens their cloven empires.

An overwhelmingly moneyed force controls a conservative policy that runs the global show. It is a force that looks at the balance sheet and the here and now. The future is for the twin forces of power and profit. Progress is measured by profit and control, nothing else.

We are at crossroads in terms of science, our future and our perspective. The US spends billions on a military that stands ready to mete out destruction to enemies, which are real and sometimes imagined. We ignore investments that could help catapult us into a promising future. We disregard science or deride it. We shirk investments in education, infrastructure, technology, indeed in our own survival, ignoring the effects of climate change. For example, the 24 minute Super Bowl power failure is one symptom of non-dynamic power grid problems of a national scope. Such failures have doubled over the last five years. Experts call our current power grid network “dumb,” unable to dynamically meet increasing outages and threats from extreme weather, for example.

In effect, we spend billions subsidizing bad behavior and spend time and effort to promote  enterprises of greed rather than progress: billions in subsidies for big energy which ravages land, air and water (fracking, for example); billions for giant agribusiness, which often depletes the land; billions misappropriated for the sterility of Wall Street speculation, which perpetuates casino capitalism; billions for bloated drug companies; billions to prop up for-profit health care companies — and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We tax hard-working people but won’t tax billionaire exploiters or financial speculators with a transaction tax, for example.

From the perspective of a casino economy, a marketing culture, and money-managed leadership, it is difficult to look objectively into the future and even more difficult to judge the nature of civilizations that may be out there in the 93 billion light year realm of inflated space. In all our arrogance, it is especially difficult to believe that such civilizations might be far in advance of our own, and not just technologically.

Scientific speculation regarding a civilization’s level of technological advancement was first proposed by Soviet astronomer, Nikolai Kardashev, in 1964. He based his three designated categories, Type I, II, and III, on the amount of energy a civilization is able to utilize.

A Type I civilization uses all available resources impinging on its home planet; type II harnesses all energy of its star, and Type III, of its galaxy.

Can you imagine media forces like Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, or Wolf Blitzer providing any insight into our future? Even our freshly elected president, Barack Obama, has a politically hampered vision of our future.

Anyone who looks at least a generation beyond his nose can see that, at our current rate, the next generation will be struggling with the ravages of climate change and one catastrophe after another. Rather than putting investment money into our future, we’ll be fixing the ravages of one natural disaster after another.

At our current stage of development and at our current level of maturity, we’ll never reach a type 1 civilization, a level optimistic scientists of the past, who were not demonized by their own society, predicted it would take 100 years for us to reach.

Do you, like our compromised leaders, lack the imagination to see the scientific possibility of a better future? Do you heed the warnings of environmental scientists? Do you believe there is evidence that we have been visited by more-advanced beings from perhaps Type II or Type III civilizations?

I would bet most of your highly flawed leaders never pondered any of those questions. After all, some 50% say they believe the world is between 6,000 and 10,000 years old with a Kentucky creation museum depicting humans and dinosaurs together.

Looking forward into a hopeful future has never been harder.

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