My Country Is Called Earth (2 page)

My vivid imagination brought forth these thoughts and others too horrible to mention. Fortunately, Edward returned at twelve o’clock to escort me to the dining hall. He assured me that I had nothing to fear. He said that this was a possible healthy future to the world I had left behind, and that I had been called to be a messenger from their time to our present. He also said that I would have to return to 1992 in two weeks. I asked him about our great problems: the destruction and pollution of the environment, overpopulation, war, injustice, unemployment, poverty, the national debt, crime, and the high cost of medical care. He told me to be patient and all my questions would be answered.

Monday, June 29, 2076

“I’m going to introduce you to Alberto. He will tell you about our medicine,” Edward announced to me after breakfast.

“Can you show me a hospital? I am anxious to see what advances medicine has made,” I asked.

Edward laughed. “We don’t have any hospitals.”

“Don’t people get sick anymore?”

“Yes, but we have discovered a hospital is a great place to catch something.”

“Do people still get cancer?”

“Cancers are not common today because our culture encourages psychic and spiritual growth, and for other reasons. I realize this will be hard for you. I know you were taught to trust your doctor more than your own body. We understand health much better than your doctors did. They were so busy treating disease that they forgot good health was natural.”

Edward stood up and said, “Let’s go over to Alberto’s house. He can explain this better than I can.”

We walked to a small home about four hundred meters from the dining hall. When I was introduced to Alberto, he shook my hand enthusiastically. He said he had hoped I would visit him.

I asked Alberto how the practice of medicine had changed. He said, “First of all, I want to tell you that what I am going to say here does not apply to congenital and terminal conditions. Now regarding normal illnesses, we healers only use our skills as a last resort. I understand that in your day the patient thought it was the responsibility of the doctor to make him well. We tell our clients their health is their own responsibility. When an individual requests our help, we first remind him of his own power. If he still feels he needs us, we will use our abilities. My healing skills are involved with plants, massage, acupuncture, and meditation; there are many other ways of healing besides those I use.”

I asked him what he says to a patient before he uses his healing gifts.

“I say: Relax, let go. Don’t fight it—flow with it. I tell him he should not allow his mind to dwell on the ailment. Instead he should pay attention to his thoughts and emotions, because they will often point to the challenge that is the cause of his difficulty.”

I said to Alberto, “Most doctors in my day only wanted to know our medical history—they did not feel that what went on in our minds was very important.”

He replied, “Today, we get to know our client personally before we prescribe anything. We understand the mind must be healed before a man can return to good health. We also know the cause of many illnesses is a failure to love one’s self. Another frequent cause of illness is stress, which can appear in many forms. Resentment, fear, guilt, and self-pity are some of them. The best preventive medicine is a belief in your own worthiness, health, and safety.

“When you are sick, you may be dealing with a mental or spiritual difficulty. In such a situation, the symptoms of the illness may be symbolic of the challenge. An illness may be unconsciously chosen by an individual in order to achieve an insight into life. An individual may employ illness as a means of meeting certain people or of participating in a mass event. These are just a few examples of the purposes of illness. I think you can see that we do not consider illness to be bad: The mind and the body use it as a tool. What I am saying, then, is that there is an inner wisdom guiding you. No one is the random victim of a disease.

“All these ideas were in circulation in your day, but today they are common knowledge. I try to keep in mind what the mystic Jane Roberts from your century said: ‘The body and the mind work so well together that one will attempt to cure the other, and will often succeed if left alone.’”

I asked, “What was done for elderly people who required constant attention?”

“Senility was an epidemic of your time, caused by a belief that man must lose his mental and physical powers in old age.”

I told Alberto I would like him to talk about congenital and terminal conditions now. I first asked him about people who needed costly medical care.

“In your time people were afraid of death, so they tried to extend their lives with surgeries and other treatments. Often those efforts just prolonged their suffering. Our people do not demand expensive medical care to add a few more months or years to their lives. We aren’t afraid of death because we believe it is a door to other realities.”

I asked, “How does your medicine explain physical and mental handicaps people are born with?”

“The circumstances are too varied to generalize. In some instances the individual accepted a mental or physical deficiency before birth in order to experience life from a particular point of view. Sometimes the condition was selected by the individual in order to force himself to focus on certain talents. We don’t use the words ‘handicap’ or ‘disability’ today because we believe each person has chosen his perspective for a reason.”

Alberto’s last words to me were: “It is true what a Mayan shaman in your time said, ‘If we make an enemy of the earth, we make an enemy of our bodies.’ Your culture thought it was at war with nature. Your doctors, therefore, used drugs and performed operations that ignored and confused the body’s healing abilities. Today we know our skills are nothing compared to the body’s own powers.

“Now that I’ve told you about our medicine, I want to leave you with something to think about: Earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are to the earth what illnesses are to the body.”

Tuesday, June 30, 2076

“How many communes are there?” I asked Edward the next morning.

“There are literally millions of communes, or villages, as I like to call them,” he said. “Today nearly everyone is associated with one. I know communes were ridiculed in your time. They were thought to inhibit freedom, to discourage creativity, and to be economic failures. Nowadays, most people cannot imagine life without their village.”

“What happened to Social Security?” I asked.

“Social Security?” Edward repeated, as if using the words to jog his memory. After a few seconds he replied, “Social Security ran out of money long ago, but no one worries about their retirement today. People feel more secure than in your day because they know their village will take care of them. Our villages are extended families.”

Edward began speaking of 1992 in the present tense. “In your day millions of people starve to death every year. Billions of people are unemployed or underemployed and billions live in poverty. There is no starvation, unemployment, or poverty in 2076 because we share the wealth of the earth, because we allow people to support themselves, and because villages take care of their own people and neighboring villages take care of each other. Nations cooperate internationally after natural disasters so that no one has to lack any necessity.

“Our villages come in so many varieties that it would take a book to describe them all. There are urban villages and rural villages. The members of some villages share common ethnic or cultural backgrounds. In other villages the members may be united by similar philosophical, religious, or spiritual beliefs. And there are urban villages whose members belong to the same trade or profession. In terms of size, villages have from two to a thousand or more members.

“My point is, if an individual in 2076 feels his village is stifling him, he can move to another one or start his own. I can show you a directory of the villages registered in California—there are more than one hundred thousand official villages in this state alone, and who knows how many unofficial ones.”

I asked, “How does the world of 2076 govern itself?”

“We have adopted this principle: That government is best which governs least. In 2076 the powers of the three branches of government are kept to the minimum necessary for the protection of rights and the performance of the small number of government services, and decisions are made at the lowest level possible.

“Our objective is to one day run the world according to the principles of anarchism. Anarchism is a political theory that says society should be organized through cooperative and voluntary associations. Thoreau was expressing a basic anarchist principle when he wrote: ‘That government is best which governs not at all.’”

I said, “Do you know what the word anarchy means in the twentieth century? It means a state of chaos or an absence of order. When the government in a nation ceases to function effectively, we say that nation has fallen into anarchy.”

Edward answered, “Your definition is based upon the belief that if society does away with laws, police, and prisons, everyone will act with the savageness and self-interest you think you see in nature. There lies the heart of the difference between our cultures: Your culture believes men and nature are inherently evil. That idea comes from your Judeo-Christian religions, which have placed God outside the world. We see a different truth, because our God is on the earth. We believe anarchy can work in a world where men love themselves and others. We hope to see Emerson’s prophecy fulfilled in the next century: ‘The day will come when no badge or uniform or star will be worn.’”

I changed the subject. On my first day Edward told me the population of the earth had declined to six billion, after having reached as high as seven billion. He said their goal was to reduce the population of the earth to five billion.

“How was the population problem solved?” I asked.

“Nearly every individual has no more than two children and many have less.”

I asked him, “How were you able to convince people to limit the size of their families?”

“We did not succeed until the present leaders of the Catholic Church died, and younger men and women took their places. These new people were flexible enough to see that the rules against birth control did not make sense in a crowded world. In time, they came to actively support family planning.”

His words reminded me of Russia and China. I said, “In my youth, Russia was part of the Soviet Union. It was trapped in the Communist ideology until all the old leaders died and a younger man, Mikhail Gorbachev, came to power. Gorbachev recognized the need for change, and he opened the door to democracy. I am curious about China. Did China find leaders willing to bow to the inevitable? In 1992 the nation is held in a steel grip by men who refuse to see the writing on the wall.”

Edward said, “I cannot give you any names, but I can say this: When the men who had been in the Party since the Communist takeover in 1949 died, younger men and women came to power who had the courage and the foresight to begin radical reform. Fortunately, the transition was less painful than in Russia.”

I asked, “What are your opinions of communism and capitalism?”

He said, “True communism, which is simply community ownership of property, is a good idea. It was given a black eye by Communism. The Soviet and Chinese style of Communism denied the dignity of the individual and built repressive and bureaucratic state machines. And capitalism, because it is based on greed, can never result in any lasting good. Good can never come from selfishness.”

I could see by the fire in his eyes that my question had touched a topic he felt strongly about. He continued: “I said capitalism is based on greed because its basic principle is ‘every man for himself.’ A system of economics that rewards greed eventually creates great inequality. I read of a study done by the UN in your day that concluded that the richest twenty percent of mankind control more than eighty percent of the world’s wealth.

“Your economics has given society an artificial and harmful measure of value: money. If an activity ‘makes money,’ it is good, according to capitalism, even if the activity concentrates wealth into the hands of a few, violates nature, or deprives future generations of their right to inherit a healthy planet. What tremendous crimes men have committed in their pursuit of wealth!

“A tree stump is your symbol of progress: An area of tropical forest the size of a football field is bulldozed, logged, or burned each second. In the process dozens of species of plants and animals are wiped out every day.

“In your economics, people are merely numbers. When the boss decides an employee no longer fits into the long-term plan, he tells the employee to clean out his desk and leave his key. Farmers are paid not to farm while millions of people go hungry because there is no profit in feeding the poor.

“In our society the opportunity for a life with dignity is as important as freedom of speech or religion. At the First Gandhi village no one who’s willing to work goes hungry or without shelter unless everyone does. Your unemployment and poverty are due to waste, hoarding, and a maldistribution of income. You throw away enough to feed, clothe, and house millions. Your corporate farms could support millions of people on the land while still producing as much as they do now. And you have men making millions of dollars a year while other men are trying to raise families on minimum wages. There is no hope for your society as long as you cling to capitalism.”

I next asked Edward about crime. I said, “In my time, the cities are plagued by shootings, muggings, vandalism, and burglaries, especially by young men and boys. What can the future teach us about this problem?”

He answered, “Your culture is part of the reason for your high crime rate. Capitalism teaches you to worship material things, and it encourages antisocial behavior by its emphasis on personal gain without regard for the consequences to others. And just as in the 1920s when the drug alcohol was banned, by making laws against the use of certain drugs, your society literally creates crime, provides criminal syndicates with the opportunity to make big profits, and is indirectly involved in the violence associated with drugs.