I recently saw an interview with Elon Musk, where he described the philosophy behind why he does what he does. It is encapsulated within the story of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by the English writer, Douglas Adams.
Originally, this was a radio drama, broadcast in 1978. It was an instant success, and a large cult following began to grow. By the 1980s, a TV series was broadcast and a series of books was published. In the 2000s, a motion picture was filmed and explored a different angle to the original story.
The story starts with the Earth being destroyed to create an intergalactic highway. The heroes, Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect, flee the planet and go on an adventure where they meet old acquaintances, fly across the galaxy in a stolen space craft and have a meal at the end of the World.
They meet the designer of the Norwegian fjords, learn about a super computer which was designed to answer the great question of life and find out the answer is 42.
But there is a grave problem with this answer. They don’t know what the question is. So the Earth was created as a super-super computer to provide the question. But it was blow up, minutes before it had fully run its program.
The same day I watched this Elon Musk video, I stumbled upon an interview with Matthieu Pageau. He is an author and symbolist, and the brother of the Orthodox icon carver, Jonathan Pageau. He discussed this same problem. We may think we know the answer, like the Universe in Elon’s case, but we don’t know what the question is. Matthieu defines it, the Great Riddle.
So, another way of framing this conundrum, if the answer is the Universe, what is the question?
Matthieu suggests we’ve collectively forgotten this riddle. His metaphysical method is to unpick meaning within the symbolic world and uncover the question. He is internalising the search.
Elon, on the other hand, is externalising it by heading to the stars. He believes that if we can expand the extent of human consciousness into an interplanetary species or even an interstellar one, we may be able to collectively remember, discover or even comprehend what the Question is.
The search for both of them is the same. They are purposefully moving into the frontiers of science, culture, theology and what it means to be human.
Anglo-Futurism is not The Answer to reveal the question, but I think it can be a tool to help us to discover this Great Riddle.
Matthieu talks about how we need to go back before we can go forward. We need to collect the things forgotten and then progress ahead. This is the underlying philosophy of Anglo-Futurism, where we look back, bring forward wisdom and then craft a brighter future, and possibly help to discover the ‘Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything’, aka the Great Riddle.
[I’ll put links to both videos in the comments section.]
I wholeheartedly agree with the statement that we must go back to the past and reeducate ourselves on problems solved and questions asked. Fortunately for humanity there is in the UK a remarkable paper trail to go back to for research. Unfortunately, for our future selves going back to today to analyze, we will be met with far too much data, some relevant and some wholly inaccurate, we will be drowning in data, while parched for insights.
The UK's biggest problem is moralization. Believing in itself. We lost the search for the riddle and that was our downfall.