New Age: Vision 2036

New Age: Vision 2036

22nd November 2036

I am happy, that I am living today. I just returned from my university’s 55th Convocation. Our Chancellor has left back a legacy which the world treasures even today. I am not saying that our university has become one of the most famous universities, but in fact it has become the best knowledge centre in the whole world. It has become the monument of Human spirit.

It all began in the year 2008. At start of the year we congratulated ourselves that we were born when the world was at the launch pad of the most revolutionizing technologies and innovations. But then certain events changed the course of the events to unfold.

We all pictured the future as very rosy with all the technological advances. The first event that happened was the rising inflation of our country. No one took notice of it, but it was sign of greater things to come. Then there was this great economic crisis. Lehmann brothers became bankrupt and looked like many other brothers were going to file for bankruptcy. The great corporate giants started crumbling and with them the world economy. Again we were like “okay guys cool, all this bad time will get over.” Just when we began to accept that all this “world economy” was a but a calamity conjured up by greedy entrepreneurs , came India 26/11.

Terror struck at Mumbai’s Taj and other famous places. The shocking fact was not the ease with which these monuments were destroyed, but the ease with which the terrorists took human lives. We were like do we ever want to usher a younger generation into this world after all this.

We all said “enough is enough”. Forget the future of technological advances. We had a crisis at hand and we had to something about all this. First of all this “economic recession” or “global meltdown” as the financial experts preferred to call it. Call it by whatever jargon, the ground truth was that all this was caused by excess greed of man. Imagine the Indian cricket team was reduced to 8 members by 2015 due to economic recession. What to do jobs were becoming scarce !!

Just when we were coping with this economic crisis, came the nature’s wrath. She was angry that we had misused her, or that was we attributed the crisis to. There were earthquakes, cyclones, tsunamis and new calamities which we couldn’t name but only describe. Oh yeah we used to call it “global warming”, and man it just took the wind out of us.

By 2020 we were technologically advanced but spiritually stressed. It was at this time we all were forced to look up and see what made us what we are. Instead of attributing the current state of affairs to the economic recession, natural calamities, global warming etc we realized that it was due to the “Moral recession”

Yes people, I’m talking about the recession in our value system. It was a time where we had to concentrate on our spiritual gains and not on material wants. We had to live like spirited human beings and not technology driven zombies. We all were discovering the “art of living” a healthy life

Throughout these times our university stood as the beacon of hope. Life went on as usual , unaffected by the world crisis. It was because that place never lacked values. There was no crisis, no moral recession. Students lived there in ambiences that we consider primitive, something like those old days of 1980’s. But the fact was that they weren’t living in primitive ambience but were living in healthy environs. For God’s sake they were breathing fresh air, and we in the technologically advanced environs were breathing internet signals, cellphone signals, satellite signal punctuated sometime by “fresh air conditioned air”.

Their faces were filled with energy and happiness, and we with all the money we were proud of looked like stressed zombies. Man we had to learn something from them. They had a secret that the world needed.

We understood that the world had to embrace their way of living. Our lives had to be full of spirit and healthy living than technological domination.

From 2025 onwards it was about changing the way we lived. We wanted to live healthier lives. The new mantra was “healthy living”. Now you can call it by many names like, “art of living”, “spirituality” etc. The bottomline was that everyday when I wake up I must feel happy and peaceful. We must feel good inside. We must feel happy to exist and live everyday of our lives.

Embracing a new way of life was welcome and challenging. People began cutting down their greed and artificial relations. Social virtual networks were done away with. We began to say good bye to artificial cyber relations. We learned not to say “Hi” over an email or a text sms or a voice sms. We learned to see our dear ones personally and spend quality time with them. Snail mail came back into fashion. People spent time penning down letters to their dear ones, it just shows how much you love them. People began to see that interenet, cellphones, technology was not important but the human spirit was important.

Yeah it was difficult to change to living the new way. But man it was a disaster to live like we used to live. Change was……(can some one tell me a stronger word than mandatory).

People changed, changed for good. Whenever we looked like we may fall back to our old ways of living we only had to look at…our university.

The world had become one. Not that the physical boundaries were broken, but mental inhibitions had been shed. The citizens of the globe were united in thought and human spirit.

I am really glad that I am present to see this day. Guys so if you were dreaming that from 2008 technological advances dominated the future you are mistaken. There were technological advances, but what advanced most was the human spirit !!