If we assume that this planet has another two and half billion or so years before the sun swallows it and at least another billion during which it will be habitable here, there's still a hell of a lot of future ahead of us!
But how will that future look - better than the past, worse - or the same (after all we're only human)?
Homo sapiens has only been around for around 300,000 years - not even one three-thousandth of the time still left for this planet. Literature - the written form of storytelling - has only been developing for 4,000 years. The Industrial Revolution began some 250 years ago. How much further can we evolve as a species during that billion years we have left, before we're forced to move on? Or will we kill ourselves with nuclear weapons or runaway man-made climate change within the next few hundred years?
I'm an optimist; I believe that despite setbacks, man-made or natural, we will prevail, we will evolve, we will eventually reach out beyond our planet, our solar system, and go on to colonise space.
Intelligence, wisdom and kindness will win out over barbarism and stupidity. The long march of the evolution of consciousness is destined to continue as the Universe unfolds.
This may seem unlikely right now, considering the current outbreak of barbarism and stupidity in the Kremlin, but progress is generally two steps forward one step back.
Born in England the 1950s, the biggest part of my life has generally been the experience of an upward arc of human progress - material, technological and social. From the grey postwar years into the Swinging Sixties, the colourful consumerist 1970s; the 1980s London of Mrs Thatcher's Big Bang, the end of communism, the single European market, computers and smartphones, life had been getting steadily better, more interesting, diverse and richer in experiences and horizons, especially intellectual ones. Sadly, I believe that this particular upward arc peaked sometime around 2012-2013. History is cyclical. Since then, it has turned downwards; this is clear as we review events of the past decade, beginning with the aftermath of the financial crisis (that somehow bypassed Poland), Brexit, Trump, Xi, Putin and Covid - and now Putin unrestrained - and of course climate change. Dangerous populist ideologies, stupid people tampering with national policies
How will the future look? Will tomorrow be better?
Not even our best minds are able to predict the future with any meaningful accuracy. Some of us can intuit the future better than others, but even so, this typically means getting one thing right for every two things we get wrong.
We couldn't even model the course of a pandemic. We can't see how Russia's invasion of Ukraine will end. (Hopefully with the departure of every last Russian military unit from Ukrainian soil.) But then what? Regime change in Russia? Reparations? Who will pay for the rebuilding of a shattered nation? How will Russia look after such a debacle? Right now, we haven't a clue.
But let's think about a deeper future. 2072. Fifty years on.
I'm optimistic. History is cyclical. [Another link] After the downturn, an upturn. We will progress, we will have learnt. Overcoming the challenge of man-made climate change and man-made disasters such as despotism, repression and war must be top of the human agenda.
I think the future will tend towards being less consumerist-oriented. There will be less 'stuff' in circulation. [Look at your mobile phone. It's a phone, a TV, a radio, a camera, a movie camera, a watch, a compass, a step-counter, a torch - individual bits of kit that are no longer needed.] Books will become a status symbol as consumption of reading material will happen more online; artificial intelligence will be bolstered by our own augmented intelligence. Example - access via one's mobile device to Wikipedia. A slightly simpler voice-activated interface will make it easier still.
The future will be greyer - but it will be more meaningful. Less gaily coloured plastic baubles. The look-and-feel of our future world will be more austere; showing off will be seen as infantile and egotistic. Conspicuous consumption, built-in obsolescence and 'keeping up with the Jones' are already a consigned to history, having peaked in the 1970s and '80s.
The rush to make money will be tempered by a greater respect for the fragile planet on which we live. Fewer privately owned cars, less exotic holidays. But a rush to live in temperate climes, to move away from unbearably hot zones.
My hope is that people will learn to live in comfort and no longer chase after luxury, placing greater store on learning, skills, arts and crafts, science, philosophy and extraterrestrial exploration. The life sciences will flourish; who could have believed that a vaccine could have been rolled out globally within a year of a pandemic taking hold across humanity? The next decades will see advances in medical technology moving forward at a pace similar to than in IT since the 1980s. We'll see huge advances in longevity as we start to unravel the genetic mechanisms of ageing.
I'd like to think that in the longer term future, the levels of knowledge, wisdom and insight that I have achieved in my mid-60s will be standard across most 20 year-olds, who will only stand to grow wiser and more knowledgeable as their reach their 200s.
A stable population of five billion human beings, with natural population decline kicking in by the second half of this century will be sustainable.
Five billion people, at peace with themselves, at peace with each other, not obsessed with wealth and status but with acquiring knowledge and spiritual development.
This time last year:
Blossom time in Jakubowizna
This time two years ago:
Posts
