150 Years From Now
I am in the process of reading several books which have been nominated for the pending Hugo award. One of the books takes place about 150 years from now.
My grandmother was born in 1890. The civil war ended in 1865 so she was born roughly 25 years after the civil war. She heard lots of family stories about it growing up. When I was a young boy she imparted some of these family memories to me. This spans roughly 150 years. One hundred and fifty years really isn't all that long. Technology wasn't as advanced back then, but they experienced most of the same emotions, fears, and hopes that we do in 2010. I can easily imagine living 150 years ago; but trying to imagine what it is going to be like 150 years in the future is much harder.
It is easy to be negative and pessimistic about it. Our greed and consumption of fossil fuels will have made the climate much worse. The gap between rich and poor may be even larger than today, etc. But I see this negative only approach as kind of a cop out.
We have the technology now to communicate. But we don't. I detest the right wing racists, so I do not listen to them. I'm certain they feel the same about me. Will the world still be using so many different languages? If we all used one language we could have the possibility of a better understanding of each others problems. Will we learn to listen?
More and more bacterial diseases no longer can be treated successfully with antibiotics. Will researchers be able to solve this? How about obesity, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes? Will malaria and tuberculosis still be such a scourge? What about agriculture – will monoculture cause rampant famine, or will mankind be able to come up with real and long lasting solutions to hunger? Will extreme poverty still be such a feature of the lives of a large part of mankind?
As the earth warms and sea levels rise, how is mankind going to deal with so the many millions of people who will now no longer have homes? As America transitions from a white Anglo-Saxon culture to one that is primarily Hispanic how will the country change? Will Christianity continue its decline to where we become basically a secular society? What effect will this have? Will America continue to decline financially to where 150 years from now it is a poor has-been country like Iran, Greece, or Italy?
At the moment I just can't seem to come up with a good (and positive) picture of how things are going to be lots better 150 years from now than they are now.
I hope I'm wrong. But for the sake of the planet, maybe mankind needs to go ahead and hurry with its own destruction. Nature can write off homo sapiens as a failure and try over again.
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