When I was in Elementary School, one of the happiest times in the school year was choosing which paperback books to buy from Scholastic.

One of my favorite books was The Forgotten Door by Alexander Key (2nd printing 1965). I read it over and over as a boy.

This science fiction book shaped my ideas about what an ideal civilization should be like.

In The Forgotten Door, a boy falls through a forgotten door between his world and ours. The “forgotten door” is an interstellar portal between worlds.

His planet is very much like Earth. Long ago, his ancestors had used the portal to move life between the worlds. For example, there are deer on both worlds.

On his planet, people lived simple “non-industrial” lives. They limited the use of technology to essential needs such as health care. They lived peacefully.

I especially remember that, when the boy fell through the door, his neighborhood was standing among deer under dark night skies watching meteors.

I raised my family in a house with over an acre of land in a rural area near Rochester, New York, Sometimes when I came home after dark, my headlights showed a group of about half a dozen deer grazing on the grass or nibbling on leaves.

I thought back to the ideal world described in The Forgotten Door and realized that my desire to live under dark skies among friendly deer had come true.

As for limiting the use of technology so we live in peace close to nature in a simple non-industrial world, I am hoping that this aspect of an ideal civilization will still come true.

Technology is good if it is used to feed, clothe and heal people. But technology is bad if it replaces being among our neighbors under dark skies, living among friendly deer.

THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

What roles do you think technology should play in an ideal civilization? How? How not? Why? Why not?

Who should decide what roles technology should play in an ideal civilization? Each individual? Businesses? Governments? Communities of Wisdom? The United Nations?

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For related ideas, please read my blogs “Tech Made for Humans, Not Humans Made for Tech”, “Building Houses on Rock: Mission Impossible?”, “Civilizations and Governments: Securing Shalom” and “Bronko: A Knock on the Door”.