The reference to cosmic rights occurs late in this, the final chapter of F.M. Esfandiary's _Optimism One_ (1970). I thought I'd reproduce the whole thing. -mitch TOWARD NEW IDEOLOGIES Not only is the spirit of our age changing, growing more optimistic. Our ideologies and action programs are also evolving, becoming more global, more cosmic. Social, economic, and political systems of the past are increasingly obsolete. They are less and less relevant to new conditions rapidly brought on by the loosening of authoritarianism at all levels of all societies, the death of god, the increasing strength and fluidity of the ego, the humanization and convergence of mankind, modern contraception, common markets, international economics, intrnational politics, communication satellites, nuclear energy, electronics, lasers, space travel, biologic control of life ... Never before has our condition undergone as basic and total a restructuring as it is today, and therefore never have our social institutions and ideologies been as deeply challenged and rendered irrelevant. This applies even to the most radical ideologies. We still consider radical or revolutionary any movement seeking to overthrow the social, economic, or political status quo. We fail to see that today a far more transcendent and cosmic revolution is going on all around us challenging far more basic status quos. This is so obvious that most people still do not grasp it, preferring instead to go on with all that is familiar. Even radicalism must remain familiar. Even the radical has difficulty accepting the new radicalisms. For instance the reality of individuals from earth walking on the moon is simply too overwhelming, too staggering a phenomenon for most people to cope with. It demands a complete reversal of all the concepts, all the notions, all the props and defenses with which we have lived for millennia. This is why many people were actually resentful at the first landing on the moon, protesting, ridiculing, even falling off to sleep while watching the event. It was simply _too_ radical an event for the psyche and the intellect to cope with. This is also why many people will react resentfully - yes, resentfully - when one day soon they wil be told that they can enjoy eternal life. People can cope with the old "radicalism" that seeks to overthrow a government, a religious establishment, or an economic system. This is familar radicalism. It can be coped with. But this new radicalism of our age that is altering our very situation in Time and Space - this is too emotionally threatening, too monumental to cope with. It is a revolution in an entirely New Order of Things, introducing a new set of cosmic premises. It demands a total psychological and social reorientation. In the light of our revolutionary situation in Time-Space all the radicalisms of the past are now conservative. So too are democracy, socialism, liberalism, New Left. They too were progressive movements in an Old Order of Things. What do quibblings between nations, races, ideologies now mean? They are irrelevant, insignificant. In the light of our cosmic and biologic revolutions _all_ violent uprisings are also now child's play. Those who still resort to violence for whatever cause are no longer revolutionary. They are romantics, their methods archaic, their contributions negligible. There was a time when the revolutionary gave his life to undo wrongs or generate changes. In those slow-moving times this supreme sacrifice was often the most effective way of making a dent in the granitelike status quo. Moreover the militant who was prepared to risk his life for a cause was often sure of a life after death. The leader said, "Give your life for our cause and you will go to heaven. The gods will reward you." What can the leader today promise? Give your life for what? To overthrow tyranny? To undo oppression and injustice? Is there a tyranny or an injustice greater than death? Death itself is the end of freedom, the end of progress. Today more than ever before, life - _life itself_ - has become too valuable, too full of promise and potential to squander for _any_ cause. "Give me liberty or give me death." Two hundred years ago this may have had some logic; today it is a sure sign of stupidity. If the leaders want to "fight the enemy to the last drop of blood", let _them_ do it. Don't drag in the blood of others. "Hell No, We Won't Go", is the rallying cry of today's revolutionary. He is too aware of the fantastic potentials of life - this life here and now - to want to die on some stinking battlefield of causes. In the year 2050 all the soldiers and guerrillas and fighters who are dying today for causes will have long been forgotten. They will be among the billions of nameless, faceless, forgotten people who have fought and died on this planet for thousands of years. The real revolutionary of today fights a different battle. He wants to be alive in the year 2050 and in the year 20,000 and the year 2,000,000. Is there anything more radical than this determination? Intellectuals who still romanticize guerrillas and violent revolutions are themselves far from the scene of violence. Militance may impress a girl friend, but it is no longer revolutionary. Who are the new revolutionaries of our times? They are the geneticists, bilogists, physicists, cryonologists, biotechnologists, nuclear scientists, cosmologists, astrophysicists, radio astronomers, cosmonauts, social scientists, youth corps volunteers, internationalists, humanists, science-fiction writers, normative thinkers, inventors ... They and others are revolutionizing the human condition in a fundamental way. Their achievements and goals go far beyond the most radical ideologies of the Old Order. A totally new set of premises and goals are now emerging. We are no longer striving only to bring food to the hungry around the planet, or increasing our food products to keep up with rising population. We want to process synthetic nourishment easily available to everyone on this planet. We want to do away with the primitive dependence on agriculture. We want to do away with the very dependence on food. We are no longer content with simply building shelters for the homeless, better houses, towns, and cities. We are on the way to eliminating the very concept of fixed shelters, homes, towns. We do not want to remain rooted or spacebound but space-free. We can no longer settle for better family life, more compatible marriages, more enlightened parent-child relations. We are on our way to dispensing with the very institution of family. We will settle for nothing less than the total elimination of neuroses, insecurities, and competitiveness which such inherently exclusivist systems such as family, clan, group, nation invariably engender. In time we want to dispense with the primitive act of procreation itself. We want to regenerate life outside the body and, in time, life unconfined to any bodies at all. We no longer only strive for better schools, more teachers, better textbooks. Schools, colleges, and textbooks are becoming anachronisms. We need more and more communications satellites, lasers, and magnetic tapes to transmit knowledge and information to every individual anywhere on the planet. Literacy itself is no longer a prerequisite for social progress. What will literacy mean in a world where instantaneous global communication has replaced the written word? We are no longer content to simply refine the capitalist and socialist sytems. We recognize existing trends towards increasing automation, cashless economies, international economics, etc. But we will not settle for anything short of the complete elimination of money and labor. We are no longer content to simply strive for increasing democracy or government by the proletariat. All this is now too modest. We want instant universal participation that will do away with the very institution of government. We are no longer content with simply diverting the course of rivers, reclaiming seas and deserts, creating islands, producing rain, harnessing solar energy. All this is now increasingly commonplace. We want to make alterations in the universe. We want to reclaim more planets, create new moons, nudge old ones to more suitable orbits, harness the life-bestowing energies of more giant suns. We are no longer content with only developing better communication systems, more satellites, centralized computers, phone-visions, lasers. We recognize technology as a great evolutionary step, but want to go _beyond_ technology. We want to learn to communicate telepsychically. We are striving for the post-technological age of extrasensory perception and communication. We are no longer content simply striving for social, economic, and political equality. What do these rights mean so long as people are _born_ biologically unequal? So long as some are born strong others weak, some healthy others sickly, some beautiful others ungainly, some tall others short, some brilliant others dumb - in other words so long as we do not have biological equality - all social equalities mean very little. We will settle for nothing less than this basic biological inequality which is at the very root of all human inequalities. We can never again be even content with civil rights, human rights, the right to self-determination. These rights by themselves are also no longer enough. We now want cosmic rights. We want the freedom to roam the universe. We want nothing less than the right to determine our own evolution. We want the right to live forever - to succeed with our revolution against death itself. So long as we have not overthrown the tyranny of death, _all_ mankind belongs to the Third World, _all_ mankind is proletarian. All this as I have already stressed is part of the emerging ideologies of our times. Today some of it may read like science fiction, tomorrow it will all be reality. Plans such as I have outlined above and will develop in forthcoming books are sometimes called Futurist. But this is a misleading designation. Futurism evokes a sense of elusiveness as though the breakthroughs were always in the future, forever beyond reach. But the future is not beyond reach. The future has arrived. It is here around us. The Old World is still with us, but so too is the Future World. The Future is _now_. As revolutionaries in a rapidly expanding world we concede nothing, accept no despair, believe in no ultimate mysteries, abide by no absolute truths, adhere to no eternal values, to no ultimate goals, consider no human problems irreversible, nothing unattainable - not even dimensions beyond Time and Space.