A Brief History of the Future

Ari Wallach: What I find so fascinating about being human is that every generation kind of starts from zero.

Almost every other animal can pretty much stand up within a few seconds, and they can kind of make it on their own.

We can't.

So to be human means from the very first several seconds to be dependent and to be in relationship with other humans for not just our basic needs but all of our needs.

To be human means to be in a social context.

It means to be in relationship with others, in relationship with yourself.

But our world as it's built right now doesn't drive us towards that.

If anything, it actually drives us further apart.

We set up offices with cubes where people actually don't see each other.

We have these single-family homes.

And then we take our youth and we send them for most of the day to one building.

And then we take our grandparents and our seniors, and we send them off to another building.

While we know what led to kind of flourishing and happiness for tens of thousands of years, in many ways, we're doing the exact opposite.

At the end of the day, we are now realizing that this hardware that is the human, kind of, biological being is now operating in an environment, in a context, both in terms of politics, in terms of technology, just in terms of the pace of the world that it just wasn't made for.

And we're starting to actually step back and say, "Is this actually the way I want to be human?"

[Grimes' "Oblivion" playing] Grimes: I never walk about after dark It's my point of view 'Cause someone could break your neck Coming up behind you, always coming And you'd never have a clue I never look behind all the time I will wait forever Always looking straight Thinking, counting all the hours you wait [music] Wallach: The modern moment we're living in and the rapidly changing world around us is forcing us to ask some new and needed questions about what it means to be human.

As my journey continues, I've been thinking a lot about the role of Homo sapiens right now and in the years to come.

How is technology changing us?

Can we evolve past our worst tendencies?

And is there something sacred about who we are that goes beyond just what we can achieve?

These questions have big implications for the kind of futures we choose to create, so today I've come to spend time with a group of people living together in a retirement community to hear a perspective that only age can provide.

So I just want to start off by just asking anyone, What does it mean to be human at this moment in time?

Resident: In this day and age where we live, in a 55 & older community, we are being human, because we take care of one another.

We look out for one another.

For me, I think being human is knowing that I'm imperfect and that the people around me are imperfect, and that I don't have to look for perfection in others.

Different resident: From a spiritual point of view, being a human is to learn a lesson in this world.

Because we are now in a physical form and because a spirit could be reincarnated.

So here, I am learning everything that I can.

Different resident: We want to be heard.

We want to be seen.

We want to be loved.

We want to find someone that can really-- we can connect with, that can bring that true happiness to life for us.

Being human is a lot of things to me.

When I was younger, as someone else pointed out, it was different.

It was moving forward in this very tunnel vision of life-- raising children, doing a job, doing everything else.

I'm able to take that experience, though, and share it with grandchildren that I have that are in their 20s and 30s, and saying, These are the things to look forward to me.

So being human means being compassionate, having empathy.

How would you have answered that several decades ago?

I think in the past, it was all about sacrifice.

You sacrificed for your children.

You sacrificed part of your own self to build worth so that you can have freedom later on in life.

Different resident: I also think that years ago as a young mother and homemaker, my focuses were so narrow.

It was home.

It was work.

It was children.

And now today, my focus is so widened.

It's like a freedom.

I think about my spirituality and how I can broaden that, what I can teach someone else, particularly my grandchildren and young people, and it's joyous.

Different resident: A decade ago, it was a blur.

Wallach: Mm-hmm.

It was just too fast.

There was no time to reflect.

Now there is.

Residents: Mm-hmm.

Wallach: So what we know about the conditions that lead us either to our best or worst as human beings really is situational.

Humans at their best, humans at their most kind of benevolent, have been humans that have been in a set of conditions where they have felt cared for, where they have felt safe, and where they have had a sense of security not just about the present moment but what is to come.

Now, that's obviously gonna beg the question about right now, because in this kind of crossroads moment that we're in, a lot of us don't feel safe.

We don't feel secure, whether it's climate change, racial injustice, or the headlines around what artificial intelligence is doing, coming for our jobs.

We're kind of moving into a fear stance.

Man: What I think we're struggling with right now is trying to retrieve what it means to be human in a digital age.

We know something's wrong.

Film narrator: The story you're going to see and hear is about science.

It is also a story about you.

Woman: One interesting question to ask right now-- What does it mean to be human?

And I think it's good to ask that question because what it meant to be human may be different going forward.

Douglas Rushkoff: Back when I was a little hacker kid, there was something we called an exploit.

And that was, when you were hacking, you would find an exploit in the computer so that you could get in there and, like, control the thermostat at the mall, right, or change your grades in school.

What we're doing now is telling our computers and digital technologies and AIs and algorithms to find exploits in us-- exploits in our psychology, exploits in our emotional fabric, exploits in our neurology-- and to mine them for whatever purposes they deem are important to them.

So when we are living in a landscape increasingly populated by entities that are trying to exploit us, to destabilize us, to decalibrate our neurology and psychology, we are going to end up emotionally unstable and cognitively compromised.

Amy Webb: There are startups.

There are established companies that are working very hard right now to bring machines and humans together in new ways.

We have tools that could transform humanity.

And we need to really think through how we're gonna deploy them.

Wallach: These new tools are fascinating and full of incredible potential to improve our lives, but they also raise all sorts of questions about the impacts and unintended consequences they will bring.

What does it mean to add on to our biology?

And what are the implications to who and what we are?

I've come to Cambridge University, where an augmentation designer named Dani Clode is working on a project called the Third Thumb, a 3-D-printed hand extension controlled by the feet, exploring the impacts of body-connected technology.

So this is my thumb.

So this is controlled with my toes.

So there's pressure sensors underneath my big toes.

And I'm controlling the two degrees of freedom.

It seems kind of bizarre to be controlling something on my hand with my toes, but there's also so many products that-- already utilize this really strong connection between our upper and lower limbs.

And often it's to extend the task that our hands are doing.

Driving is the main one.

Instruments, sewing machines.

It's very frequent that we'll kind of, you know, lean on the toes to extend the function of the hands.

It does freak me out a little bit.

Yeah, does it?

It's a normal first response.

Is it?

Is it?

I mean, what is that coming-- like, deep down, what is it that folks are responding to when they see--it's one thing to talk about something like this theoretically.

It's another thing to be talking to another human with six fingers.

It's really important that I find that line and don't try to cross it too much in terms of the weirdness.

Because I want it to be accepted.

You know, I want it to be something that people are intrigued about trying on.

Hesitant but intrigued is my sweet spot, and so not scared.

So, yeah.

So this is what is going underneath your foot.

The main control is the dominant kind of flexion control.

And it sits just on your palm there.

So we usually do-- so the dominant movement, which is flexion/extension of our thumb.

So this is flexion, extension and adduction and abduction.

So that's where the 2 degrees of freedom of the thumb that I focus on.

I want to see if I can-- Yeah.

You're doing good for your first kind of minute.

[laughs] What you probably notice is that straight away, it's quite easy to do the big, full movements... Yeah.

really quickly.

And then it's, what you start to learn across the week, if you were a participant, is there's really smaller, finer motor movements.

And that's when kind of calibrating the sensors to your feet and stuff would really help.

It's already changing the way that you are considering approaching an object.

Yeah.

There we go.

[laughs] Have to keep the pressure on it.

Yeah.

I mean, but just--I mean, look, I'm a minute into it.

But then the ability to-- Yeah.

There we go.

I'm not as scared anymore.

[laughs] I'm so glad.

Wallach, voice-over: Dani's project is designed to be a fun and thought-provoking experience, but it sits inside of a rapidly-accelerating new field known as human augmentation, where designers around the world are working on ways to increase and expand our bodies' natural capacities.

And as simple as it seems to play with a third thumb, what she is really doing is using this as a way to learn about how our brains respond to tools outside our biological bodies.

How does this change the definition of human?

Because when we often think of the term human... Yeah.

we think of... the very kind of classic Homo sapiens hardware set.

But you're talking about something dramatically different.

Yeah.

How will that change how we think about what it means to be human?

I mean, I think we're already playing around with what it means to be human.

We're adapting ourselves already so much technologically, you know?

And even something as, like, simple and complex as memory with our phones, you know, we're already changing the way, you know, we utilize our memory.

I don't know if you can remember phone numbers, but I used to remember all my best friends' phone numbers.

And now, I can barely remember my own.

We're already shifting ourselves so much.

And so when you start to kind of change the way we embody this technology that's implanted or removable or wearable, the human is gonna not stop at the skin level.

What we're talking about isn't slowing down.

It's just speeding up.

What are the questions that you're asking yourself about where this might go, where this should go, where this could go?

I'm so excited for how much it's gonna help people, but we also just have to-- I feel like we just have to move at this equal pace of questioning it constantly.

And I feel like a lot of people that are developing this kind of technology aren't really truly thinking about the impact on our biological selves.

Because it's technology, right?

So we just kind of like, go, go, go, go, go as fast as possible.

And make it efficient, make it--you know.

And where ability is even not included as much, let's just make it work.

And then we'll work out everything else later.

And so we really just need to be cautious of that.

Wallach, voice-over: What's striking about this field is how little is currently known about how our brains will respond to these new tools.

And that's what Dani is calling for, a lot more study into the effects and consequences as new products and designs continue to roll out.

While I was there, she let me take part in an MRI-based study designed to measure the brain's response to this kind of augmentation, as participants follow simple prompts to move the third thumb, generating valuable data that she and her team can analyze.

We're just about to start, yeah?

You ready?

Wallach: I'm ready.

Man: Just touch the fingers, so your thumb and the other fingers together.

Like one, yeah.

OK?

Yeah.

I can already see that.

OK. We stop now.

Wallach: This is amazing, because it's my brain.

Clode: It is your brain.

Wallach: What is it that you're curious about?

Clode: Well, we want to see the impact that potentially that upper limb augmentation is having on your brain.

And we have to do MRI to really investigate that.

In many ways, what took hundreds of thousands of years or maybe even millions of years of evolution to give us these, you know, 10 fingers and 10 toes, you're now doing in a matter of a couple of years.

Yeah, I mean, we're not sure what a couple of years using augmentation devices would do to the brain.

At the moment, we're running a seven-day training study, which is already a lot of data collection.

So, yeah.

I mean, but this is technology that could potentially be used for years.

We need to see the impact that it's having on the brain to try and investigate what's changing.

Wallach, voice-over: The research Dani is doing is fascinating and feels more important than ever as we look ahead.

Augmentation is only the tip of the spear in terms of the scientific transformation we are in the midst of.

Beyond simply adding on to life, the rapidly-expanding field of synthetic biology is actually editing the very building blocks of life itself.

Webb: I like to think about synthetic biology as a general purpose technology.

This is a technology that, over time, has the ability to generate value, create new types of jobs, and basically become a invisible part of society.

Other general purpose technologies--the steam engine.

The internet completely transformed society.

Synthetic biology is a new general purpose technology that will impact just about every industry everywhere on the planet, whether that's coming up with a self-healing paint for your car, so if your car gets scratched, you know, that the paint heals itself, or a new type of antibiotic.

What if there was a leaf that was able to suck more CO2 out of the atmosphere?

What would it mean for a computer that combines human brain cells and the computer chip?

There are reasons that we want to edit, to enhance, but we also have to think through the sort of knock-on effects, the unintended consequences of that enhancement.

Wallach, voice-over: As human and nonhuman technology continues to speed up, it raises both new and very old questions about who and what we are as people.

Why do we feel so disconnected from ourselves, from each other, and from the kind of futures we want to see unfold?

What does it mean to not only improve the human hardware but the software as well?

I came to Oakland to sit with a Zen priest named Rev.

Angel to learn about why, even with all these new tools, being human today in so many ways feels harder, not easier, than it ever has before.

What does it mean to be human?

To care... to be connected... and to be compassionate.

My take is that we are in deep yearning and we're not comfortable with that.

We've created so much division and separation and connection, and we don't know how to get back to ourselves.

We put everything outside, and then we're turning around, looking, and going, "Am I OK?"

We just spend our lives going, like, "Am I OK?"

Where does the pain come from right now that is kind of reverberating throughout society?

Yeah, it's disconnect.

All of that is disconnect, disconnect from--you know, we have a planet that is, like, screaming bloody murder for us to either, like, get off of it or get with it.

We have come to accept someone else's limited imagination of what it means to be human, that we are here, basically, clubbing each other to death, trying to get ahead.

We have to yield the notion that we are-- we are defined by what we produce.

We have to give ourselves over to the understanding that-- that we have inherent worth and, therefore, let go of the ways in which our worth is being defined.

When you get off that train and you recognize that care and connection is the thing that allows you to be alive, to see, to taste, to feel, it shifts entirely what you think is important.

What you drive towards, what is actually moving you is entirely different.

Wallach, voice-over: In the face of so much change and turmoil in the world around us, it's beautiful to remember just how simple and sacred it really is to be a human being.

And when I actually slow down long enough to remember, it does fill me with a renewed sense of hope and possibility for who and what we can become.

If built within us all is the capacity for love and compassion, then what does it look like to extend that to those around us?

In a moment when we constantly see the effects of us at our worst, I'm interested in people who can show us what's possible when we come to see ourselves and those around us as innately human.

So I came to Los Angeles to spend time with a group of people who are using music to do just that.

Conductor: Ready?

And... [music playing] [conductor saying commands indistinctly] Cycle.

Beautiful job...

So my name's Tony Brown, and I'm the CEO of Heart of Los Angeles, and I'm the co-founder of the Eisner Intergenerational Music Programs.

Wallach: Tell me how it got started.

Give me kind of the origin story and what it is now.

So when we first started thinking about the Intergenerational orchestra programs, we wanted to make sure that we were reaching into the African-American communities in Los Angeles County, we wanted to make sure we were reaching into the elder communities throughout Los Angeles, and we wanted to make sure, of course, we hit not only Latinx, Filipino, but our Korean brothers and sisters, too, that this was not just going to be any other orchestra or every other orchestra.

This was gonna be one that was truly intergenerational and, likely, truly multicultural.

Conductor: Piano, piano, piano, piano!

Wallach: So why do that, right?

Because it'd be much easier to just have a youth orchestra... Sure.

and have an elder orchestra.

What's the thinking behind an intergenerational orchestra?

This orchestra opportunity gives everyone the chance to dust off their instrument, right, and pick it back up again and go on a journey together.

And I think for the elders, it's what they look forward to every week.

It's maybe the one thing they look forward to most every week.

And for the young people, the incredible wisdom that they gain from their elders and also the sense of empowerment they get from teaching an elder-- how to remember the fingering that, you know, we used to know 10 and 15 years ago-- is pretty special to see.

Those of us who are providing youth services realize that it's so critically important for young people to have caring adults in their lives.

And for many of our young people, that's hard to come by, and for, you know, of course, our adults, our elders, there's no reason they should ever have to, you know, live or die alone.

They should be able to exit this great Earth knowing that they've touched the lives of others and are loved and will be missed.

Wallach, voice-over: Tony's love for this unique orchestra is evident, but even more so is his belief that human compassion has the ability to cut across differences and transform our lives and communities.

Tony, voice-over: You look at an orchestra, and it's a metaphor to me of coming together and producing something beautiful, even though there's different types of instruments that make different sounds, you know, that are different sizes.

And yet, when you bring them together through this common experience of learning and developing together at the same time, growing together, lifelong learning together, to then produce this beautiful sound, it gives you hope that despite our differences, we can come together and make something beautiful happen.

And that's what we should be doing not only inside of an orchestra program, but throughout our communities.

[cheering and applause] [conductor speaking indistinctly] Rushkoff: Every single interaction you have with every other human, every single one of them has the opportunity for an experience of grace and connection and wonder.

Woman: Empathy is our ability to perceive, understand, and to some extent, feel the emotions and pain of others.

And it's so central to us all being on this planet, because without collaboration, reciprocity, and helping behaviors, none of us would be here.

Rushkoff: It's so simple to look around and see what actually needs to be done.

Whose hand needs to be held?

Who's sitting alone on a bench?

Helen Riess: The really burning question is, Can empathy be taught?

Because most people think it's an inborn trait, you know, that you either have or you don't, and that you can't do much about it.

And I think that's an accepted view, so people don't even try.

One of the most exciting things about our research was that we really dispelled the myth.

We learned that empathy can be augmented.

When we realize that there are certain ways to nurture empathy, that's something we can teach.

It can start when children are very young.

Feeling with someone is altogether different.

That means part of you-- part of yourself has been touched by that person's pain enough to want to relieve it.

Wallach: Up until having kids, I always kind of viewed my life very much as like a 100-yard dash, right?

Like, Ari is born.

I do a bunch of stuff, and then Ari dies.

All of a sudden, I have kids.

I remember at one point holding one of my daughters kind of, you know, skin to skin, and for the first time, felt emotion that was actually outside of my physical body.

Like, I had actually, in some ways, transcended my biological hardware footprint in a way that was totally unexpected.

The other thing was I transcended time.

You know, they were like time machines, but they were these, like, gifts from the future.

And I now for the first time saw how my actions were going to affect the world that my children will inhabit, that my grandchildren will inhabit.

Woman: How can we expand the temporal horizons that we're all operating within and are comfortable thinking within and really look beyond a time that goes ahead of our own individual lifespans?

How do we think about generations who will inherit this planet?

And in the policies that we're making, in the businesses that we're launching, in the products that we're designing, how can we lead from a place of care?

Wallach: These ideas of seeing beyond ourselves and our one lifetime are more important right now than ever.

If empathy is a muscle that grows when we use it, what does it look like to foster more of it in a world desperate for more compassion and connection?

In Amsterdam, these ideas aren't theoretical.

They're being put to use, creating new ways of caring for the most vulnerable in our societies.

Jannette Spiering: I'm Jannette Spiering, and I am a founder of the Hogeweyk, which is a dementia village.

Wallach: I want to talk a little bit about aging, kind of, in general.

How do you see those stigmas around aging, and how do you see those changing?

I sometimes think that old age is seen as an illness.

It's also maybe kind of a nuisance.

And that really has to change, because there will be so many elderly people in the future everywhere in every country.

Many of them will become diagnosed with dementia.

One in three people in the world will die with a diagnosis of dementia.

Imagine that.

It is fearful to think of that.

And especially when you are aware that we cannot segregate all these people from society.

Wallach: So what are some of the characteristics that we'll find in this village that, for instance, we wouldn't find in, you know, a block institutional setting?

Spier: What we try to do is to get away from the institute.

Nursing homes are-- well, as I see them-- awful institutes, where people are locked in and segregated from society.

Everything that you will find in the Hogeweyk is different from a regular institute.

The way people live together, for example.

We created houses where 7 people live together.

Every meal is cooked in the houses.

And you have to go to a supermarket to get your groceries to be able to create that meal.

So we have a supermarket on the premises.

You can decide by yourself if you want to go for a walk or if you want to become a member of a club or you just want to visit a concert in the theater.

People who live here need support, but they are still part of society.

This is a complete humanization of the care, what you see.

[Residents vocalizing] I think that we must accept that growing old is just part of what life is and that we must accept everything that comes with it.

And how well-intended the institutions we build to keep people safe actually take away everything that you have as a human being.

And I think that if we are able to think different about that, that's a good start.

Wallach, voice-over: This unique form of community and care has led to significant results, including greatly reducing the dependency on medication.

That's a big deal.

In a future where the number of people with dementia is expected to double by 2030 and triple by 2050, the work they're doing here asks all kinds of questions about how we can adapt our methods of care and even extend beyond just human care alone.

As we train machines to be more and more humanlike, as AI technologies continue to accelerate, what are the values we are imbuing them with?

Webb: In the 1800s, there was a mathematician, Ada Lovelace, and in the footnotes of papers that she was translating about one of the very first computers, she starts describing a computer that someday may think just like humans.

This is really important, because for hundreds of years, we've been trying to figure out how to replicate life, how to replicate the human experience.

Narrator: The machine uses only two sounds produced electrically.

Say "She saw me."

Mechanical voice: She saw me.

Webb: Slowly over time... Computer: Hello.

I am Macintosh.

Webb: we've started to make inroads developing computers that feel more human, that seem like they might be thinking.

[computer chimes] If you're talking to a chatbot and that chatbot appears to exhibit emotion or appears to want to connect with you on a deeper level, would you say that that chatbot is human?

AI: Boy, that really blows my digital mind.

Now, most people would say no.

They would describe it as a really humanlike interaction, but we're still using the word "human."

All of these different philosophical questions, they actually matter a lot, because these are the very research ideas that are being pursued as we're building out these technologies that eventually are gonna impact all of our lives.

[music] Wallach, voice-over: Someone who has been at the forefront of this work is musician Grimes, and I wanted to get her perspective on where we are in this evolution, the creative potential she sees, and the importance of hope in what comes next.

Wallach: As an artist, what do you feel is, like, the moral imperative of this moment in time?

I did a poll recently on Twitter where I asked people, like, if they had any purpose in their life... And, like, it was like, 70% of people said no or something.

Wow.

Like, if there's ever a moment to have a feeling of purpose, I think it would be now, because what we do and the things we create over the next few decades will probably shape, like, all minds going forward for the rest of time.

And so if there was ever a time to have purpose, I think it's really, yeah, like, right now.

How should artists, then, be thinking about how they work with technology, and, really, in many ways, specifically AI?

I really think there is actually, like, a beautiful amount of opportunity here right now.

[Grimes vocalizing] Grimes, voice-over: When I started making music, there was sort of this revolution happening in music production.

More people were being able to make music at home on their computers.

And I think there was a massive democratization of who was allowed to make music that, like, I took huge advantage of, that was fully the byproduct of technology.

And I think this is about to extend to all of art.

You know, when I see some of the new stuff coming with AI, like video to video and text to video and all this stuff that, like, is about to explode.

And I think it's so beautiful that, like, when everyone has the same tools that can make professional quality stuff, then, like, you get to see the actual talent, like, really rise to the top.

You've said consciousness is sacred.

Yeah.

Tell me more about that.

I think because we're all alive, we all, like, take it for granted that, like, I can think and I have agency and I can feel.

You know, if we're really alone in the universe, which it seems like, I think the thing that's happening here right now, like, this is, like, literally God or something.

This is, like, the universe waking up and perceiving itself.

I think the single most important thing is to make sure that this spark that exists here on planet Earth gets to be elsewhere.

And I don't even really care if it's biological life or digital life or something like that.

I--I'm really a proponent of, like, keeping the humans alive.

But, like, if it's silicon-based life that goes out there, I think that's just as good.

I just--I think the universe is empty and quiet, and it wants to be woken up and filled with beautiful things.

Wallach, voice-over: It makes me excited to think that we really are on the threshold of wild and wonderful new ideas about who and what we can become.

But if we're gonna create the futures we want to see for our kids and grandkids, new technologies will only take us so far.

How we choose to use them matters more than ever.

In Brooklyn, a group of artists are using AI to create an immersive-art experience aimed at examining our relationship with these tools in fascinating new ways.

What we're seeing today is a collected work of what Ouchhh collective calls data generative painting.

What that fundamentally means is that they in their studio took enormously large data sets-- millions of lines of text, millions of paintings, petabytes and petabytes of data-- fed them into a computer, and let the computer seek out patterns within it.

The computer then generates new data.

And then the folks at Ouchhh collective feed that into software, and the software puts it on the walls.

Through these powerful algorithms that they built, they could take the human experience in toto, right-- massive data sets-- and you could learn something.

Jacob Feldman: So this is the server room.

This is where all the stuff lives that operates all the stuff in there.

So the EEG takes six different types of brainwave data.

Each of those different dimensions gets assigned something to manipulate within the visual palette, right?

So it could be that, you know, the amplitude of the wave is the thing that changes the color frequency.

All it takes is a little bit of human input to say, "OK, we'll make a scene with these shapes or with this patterning."

But the possibilities are endless.

It's only a matter of sort of the length of your creativity.

Feldman: When we have a large audience, we'll have the audience wear heartbeat monitors on their wrists.

Those get fed into the computer, and those start to manipulate the visuals as well.

If the goal is great collective experience, which I would hope immersive art should be, we get ever closer to it when we incorporate audience into performance as well.

What we've really been able to do is tap into the feedback loop of the human soul.

That musician is having an emotional response to whatever they're doing in the moment.

Whether that's the music itself, whether that's the audience's reaction to the music, whether it's the visuals on the wall, they're having an emotional reaction.

Wallach, voice-over: It's a profound feeling to experience both humans and machines collaborating in real time.

This is just the beginning.

And as these tools continue to evolve, expanding our ability to imagine and create, what will we choose to use them for?

What new possibilities will we unlock?

And what kind of human and nonhuman potential is waiting to be unleashed?

But as limitless as these new tools are proving to be, we are still finite beings.

And one of the things that holds us back from imagining creating better futures is we often work so hard to deny our own mortality.

But what would change and what could be possible if we didn't see death as the end?

How much bigger could our imagination about the future become if we were comfortable thinking further forward than our own single lifetime?

I came to Arizona to meet Alua Arthur, someone who has spent her life helping people face death with grace and dignity.

She is what's called a death doula, and in addition to working with her own patients, this weekend, she was here to train others, who are embarking on this unique form of service themselves.

Life is an utter gift.

To watch life leave a body, the utter stillness that happens after a death has occurred, is a really poignant reminder that life hangs on the breath.

You know, that it's here one minute and gone the next.

And so by virtue of continuing to have it, I am still partaking in this tremendous gift that I've been given-- that I'm still alive, that I still get to talk to people and feel cold on my skin and eat delicious food and hug and laugh and dance and just be here while I'm here.

I've also learned that humans are extraordinary.

We're such a miracle.

It takes so many katrillion of functions just to keep our bodies going.

And so when the body can no longer and it's time to die, that's also really awe-inspiring, that it carries on for so long, and then when it can't, we have no choice but to surrender to the fact that it can't.

What is it that, in your experience, leads to the level of kind of death anxiety or the fear of death in our society right now?

At its root, I think, is the very fragile human ego that thinks of itself as the main character in the story and is so afraid of it not existing anymore, and so we shun it.

We recoil against that idea.

We want to stay alive.

We want to be around.

We want to do all the things because we are so attached to who we are and our being alive.

We're afraid of it.

It's a big unknown also.

Like, nobody knows what happens after we die, and that makes us really uncomfortable.

We feel powerless in the face of the unknown.

We also feel powerless against death itself, and that makes us want to avoid it at all costs.

Wallach, voice-over: Rather than avoiding it, Alua has spent years now helping those who are dying as well as the loved ones they are leaving behind.

She's come to believe that a relationship to death is directly connected to our relationship to the future and to life itself.

[Indistinct conversations] Alua Arthur: Welcome.

This evening, we're going to do a death meditation.

This next time that we have together is about you and your death, you with you-- one on one, one on one-- you and your body and the journey that you're gonna go on with your own body.

All right?

So get comfortable, as much as possible.

[clears throat] Get cozy.

Death is inevitable.

All of us will die sooner or later.

In about a hundred years, all the humans currently on the planet will be gone, except for the few who are just being born and will live long lifespans.

No one has escaped death, not even the great masters and teachers of our time.

Every person and every creature on the planet will die.

When it's time to actually die, it will be in an ordinary moment just like this one.

Your breathing is getting shallower.

Your energy is draining.

Your body temperature begins to drop.

Your connection to this earth beneath you is slipping.

You are aware now that you are dying.

Your body is no longer relevant.

Your material possessions cannot help.

Your loved ones cannot save you.

You will speak no more words.

You begin to experience a sense of expanding, connecting with all that ever was and all that ever will be.

See yourself as a candle, a small flickering flame.

And with a gust of wind, see that flame now extinguished.

Now take another deep breath in.

[inhales] Bring in strong, holding it, and release.

[exhales] You are very much alive.

Bring awareness to your body.

Wiggle your toes.

Rotate your feet.

Life forces are swirling inside of you.

Everything is functioning.

You just did a death meditation, and I'm very proud of you.

Wallach, voice-over: I will never, ever forget the feeling of being in the room there that night.

It's counterintuitive, but facing our own mortality holds a key to seeing ourselves as just a part of the larger human story, one piece of the future that we can both build and soon leave behind.

What does it mean to live like we're dying?

It means to live presently.

It means to be with where I am today, recognizing that everything I have in this moment, what I've done so far, what I've given so far, who I've been so far has been enough, and that, if tomorrow is it, I can go satisfied.

Rushkoff: I think we have to change the register at which human activity is taking place, right?

Where right now, we're really stuck in an industrial register, where we understand ourselves in terms of our utility value, right?

How much work can I get done?

How valuable am I?

How much money can I make?

There's always a metric.

How many likes did I get?

How many of this?

How many followers do I have?

It's very utilitarian.

I mean, I was raised on "Mr. Rogers," right?

And Mr. Rogers, at the end of every show, would say...

I like you exactly as you are.

Rushkoff: I took him seriously.

I took that to mean I am OK just the way I am.

I don't need to do anything to justify my existence.

The positive human future involves us recognizing and retrieving what matters about our existence.

Wallach: So if you could give yourself some advice, you know, talk to yourself when you were in your 20s, what would you say to your 20-something self, knowing what you know now?

I would tell myself "Everything's going to be OK," because I worried so much in my youth, in my 20s, my 30s, also as a single mom, and a lot of different things, but it was very difficult, and I worried about everything.

Instead of living for the days, I was surviving through the days.

I would tell myself, "You did good, girl."

[laughter] You got--you got to this point.

You got it.

Yeah.

I would tell my 20-something-year-old self that there is time.

"Experience life, "and don't be in such a hurry to be put into that task-oriented, day-to-day existence."

I would tell myself that I'm not invincible and I'm not exempt.

"You're gonna get through this, and you're gonna be OK, and, you know, it's gonna be all right down the road."

I would tell myself, "You are enough.

"You are wonderful.

You are precious."

"Be patient."

I'd go, "You will learn everything you need to get to the destination you want."

I would say, "Stop and smell the flowers.

"Go visit your grandparents.

Listen to their stories."

You know, go pay those ones respect and time, 'cause you don't have them anymore now, and it would have been nice to have a little more time spent with them.

[birds chirping] Wallach, voice-over: You know, on the one hand, visiting your parents' gravesite is really intense, because it's, like, where they are, but it's also not where they are, right?

I was thinking this earlier.

Like, when I tell, like, an off-color joke, that's where my dad is.

Or when I see, like, 47 different colors in a sunset, that's where my mom is.

So on the one hand, it feels like this is the place, but then, like, the whole planet feels like the place when certain things happen.

You know, I was 18 years old when my father passed away.

But the love was very thick in the home.

I don't see such a stark line between, like, his life and my life.

Like, different biologies, different names.

But there's a kind of-- there's a thread, both with my father and my mother, that just feels like it is just going through me and going into the kids.

And so whereas I feel like, yes, there are different bodies, that thread, whatever that is, feels very deep and continuous.

[son giggling] The future is not set in stone, and I don't believe in destiny.

I know that at any moment, we can change course.

We just have to make a decision that we're gonna do that, which means that we have agency.

We have the ability to create a future that we want.

I will be honest.

Um, I-- you know, I am seeing some pretty, pretty dark things on the horizon.

There's no turning these things off, but we can forge a path forward.

Brown: Even though I read the paper, like many people do, and see so many challenges that we have in cities, counties, our country, dysfunction, you know, what motivates me is that I know that I'm helping to develop young people into making the future a heck of a lot brighter than sometimes the things I read in the paper.

Grimes: It's the greatest luxury in the world to be able to intelligently design the future.

Like, this is something that is new.

This is something that is, like, really just, like, a product of modernity.

And I think we should definitely take that opportunity.

A lot of what we need to do right now is actually evolve our tools to better fit how our minds work with the technology that we have.

Creativity is the fuel for all of this.

Rushkoff: There should be a place for humans, for human life in the digital future.

Not revolution but renaissance, the rebirth of old ideas in a new context.

Then we can begin to live sustainably as a form of human flourishing rather than sustainably as some negation of human need.

Riess: The Dalai Lama said that love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries and without them, humanity will not survive.

Rev.

Angel Williams: I think the primary story is about our connection rather than the story about our disconnect.

It is true that we are suffering from disconnect.

But understanding the reason that we feel so much pain from it is because we have a yearning to be connected.

Alua Arthur: I think part of the magic of being human is that the mundane is where all the juice is.

When I know that this time that I have here is finite, then every breath matters more, every birthday matters more, every hug matters more.

Wallach: We're at this inflection point for Homo sapiens, and a lot of folks are basically focusing on the external future's environment.

Super important, obviously-- artificial intelligence, bioengineering, climate change, inequality.

A host of issues, conundrums, problems, and opportunities that manifest in the external reality, the external world around us.

But at the same time, we have to focus on internal futures.

How do we evolve the internal as much as we evolve the external?

[music]