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
Busy doing nothin'
This time eight years ago:
Springtime pictorial
This time nine years ago:
Kitten time!
This time ten years ago:
Warsaw-Centrum to Jeziorki by train with super-wide lens
This time 11 years ago:
Loose Lips Sink Ships - part II
This time 12 years ago:
Jeziorki in the infra red
This time 13 years ago:
Some rain, at last!
Posts
2 comments:
As a project sponsor I learned that, if someone provides a point estimate, it's likely to be wrong. So I think that futurology needs to imagine ranges of outcome.
It's good to be optimistic but we also need to imagine the steps needed to get there. How will mankind overcome post-truth deception? Contain totalitarianism? Replace nativism? Address climate change? If we can see how these might happen then we begin to give ourselves permission to be optimistic.
And what about perhaps the greatest threat, soil degradation? In parts of the UK there are estimates to be thirty more harvests left in the fields. I'd like to think that nations closer to the land (which I assume Poland to be) may be at the forefront of new thinking.
One other thing that I learned: if two people estimate the same number then one has been copying. So a range of opinions is healthy too.
@WHP
Some good stuff here! I remain optimistic; I'd like to posit that the generation born around the turn of the century will be the first to be materially poorer than the preceding one, but spiritually much richer; if you think of the contrast in material well-being between the average European or American citizen in 1920 and 1970, then the same clear improvement in spiritual wealth over the next 50 years will befall mankind.
Interesting about soil degradation. Poland seems to be going in two directions - agribusiness prairies, and small family-owned farms going organic.
Post a Comment