A modern Renaissance may be approaching.

As technology increasingly takes over the work that once consumed our lives, we may find ourselves with something humanity has rarely had in abundance: time. Time to think. Time to observe. Time to create. Time to pursue beauty, pleasure, art, curiosity, and ideas simply because we can.

And perhaps a modern Renaissance would eventually give way to a modern Enlightenment.

As work and hardship occupy less of our attention, our focus may gradually return to the questions that have followed humanity for thousands of years. Questions of consciousness, reality, existence, death, meaning, and our place within something far larger than ourselves.

For now, most of us live day by day, absorbed in our own little corner of existence. We rarely stop long enough to put the whole thing into perspective—to exercise our intuition about what reality might actually be, to think critically about how we got here, or simply to refine our sense of wonder.

Why wouldn’t we?

Maybe some of these questions are uncomfortable. Maybe it is easier to imagine life as the familiar rhythm of work, weekends and vacations. Maybe thinking about death, alternate realities, consciousness, or the nature of existence takes us somewhere we would rather not go. Religion may provide answers for some. Science provides others. Yet beyond what either can currently tell us lies an enormous territory of possibility.

We will probably never have all the answers. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ask the questions.

It’s not only about what we know. It’s about what could be. Therefore, I ask.

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