Here are three I was pondering this morning.

1. To see something happen we believe is right may mean we find ourselves taking on the powers that be:

‘Inversions are not easy, not without cost, and never neat and clear.  But we ought not to underestimate the power of the poet.  Inversions may being in a change of language, redefined perceptual field, or [an altered]consciousness.’*

2. Yuval Noah Harari might suggest the existence of “powers that be” are something which intensified with the Agricultural Revolution.  He offers, ‘We did not domesticate wheat.  It domesticated us.’**  An agrarian lifestyle meant people had to live close to their their food; it also meant those who wanted your food could target it more easily than in a hunting-gathering lifestyle – now some people could become a lot more powerful than others.

3. Peter Diamandis writes about how digitisation is deceptive (Kodak couldn’t see what the first digital camera would lead to – at 0.1 megapixel), and then is disruptive, demonetising the future.  Writing his thoughts down, he has paid for the computer, but his operating system is Linux, his software is Google docs, and the wifi is provided by the coffee house he’s sitting in – all free.

‘Billions and billions in goods and services … are now changing hands sans cost.’^

Claudia Altucher adds to this when she encourages us to give our ideas away: ‘give them for free, or, as currency meaning your are paying it forward, with no expectations’.^^

I get the feeling from these different perspectives on life, there’s another story we find ourselves, in which we are drawn irresistibly forward, and a big part of our future is going to be free.

“Be grateful for whoever comes,
Because each has been sent
As a guide from beyond.”*^

(*From Walter Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination.  The words in brackets are more “perceived” correction of  ‘or unaltered consciousness,’ which doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of the sentence.)
(**From Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens.)
(^From Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler’s Bold.  They include 6 D’s altogether – the last two being dematerialisation and democratisation.)
(^^From Claudia Altucher’s Become an Idea Machine.)
(*^From Runi’s poem ‘The Guest House,’ quoted in Mindfulness from Mindfullbeing.)