Endlessly clinging to prophesy
Nostradamus, please report to UNBC’s Canfor Theatre on Sept. 29. The 2018 edition of the TEDxUNBC Talks is asking for 10 speakers to look ahead 150 years to what the world will be like. “We’ve just marked Canada’s 150th anniversary; whether you’re in the sciences, arts, or technology sector, we want to hear your vision of the future,” organizers said.
“What lessons can we take from our history? What will our community – and world – look like 150 years from now? What should we be doing today, in order to build the best possible future?”
Anyone with the nerve to even consider taking a swing at those questions needs to start with a great deal of humility and an acknowledgement of the basics.
We’ll all be dead (with the possible exception of Keith Richards).
No one alive will have a living memory of any of us.
The chances anyone living in 2168 knowing any of our names or anything about us is miniscule.
The chances anyone in 2018 can guess with any kind of accuracy what our community – and world – will look like 150 years from now is not only miniscule, it’s irrelevant.
So just forget about that second question because the only meaningful reply is “don’t know.”
It can be fun, terrifying or depressing to guess but it is science fiction.
As for the third question, the simple answer is “do nothing.”
The research is crystal clear and supported by extensive life experience. Individuals are terrible at predicting what is the best course of action and what will make them happy down the road. The further in the future the prediction is, the more likely time will prove them wrong.
Adults switch careers, divorce spouses, buy a new house, move to new communities or back to their hometowns, sell golf clubs, motorbikes and so on, all because the first choice didn’t work out anywhere near as great as they thought it would.
More often than we’d care to admit, the second and third choices aren’t much better, either.
Retirement often looks nothing like what working people daydream it will be like to turn 65 and start collecting OAS cheques. It’s much easier to fantasize about financial freedom, being surrounded by adoring grandchildren and great health. Nobody looks ahead to their golden years and sees poverty, loneliness, the deaths of friends and family, wheelchairs and dementia.
So the notion of anyone having the power in 2018 to influence how people might live six generations from now is ludicrous fantasy. Never mind 150 years, everyone is 150 seconds away from a terminal cancer diagnosis, winning the lottery or any other life-changing event beyond their control.
For the few with the ability to shape the future of many people, they should fear their vision unleashed. In 1867, Canada’s first prime minister, John A. Macdonald, had some big ideas about making this country better. A national railway from coast to coast would help connect the land and its people. History proved him right. Residential schools to separate First Nations people from their land, their families and their culture to teach them how to be white and civilized would make Canada better. History proved him so tragically wrong.
The best things the people and leaders of today can do for our descendants in the distant future is to not think of them much at all and especially to not presume we can know what will be best for them and to not download our problems onto them.
If we, as individuals and as a species, focus on making the world better today, tomorrow might be a little bit better.
But it will still certainly be filled with new problems, new suffering and new horrors.
That’s the overarching theme of human history, writ small and large.
It’s one of the few truths that was self-evident a century and a half ago, it remains so today and will likely be the case 150 years from now.
The world is nothing like Nostradamus imagined it might be nearly 500 years ago.
Now, then and thousands of years ago, humans relentlessly sought out the prophets in their midst.
Maybe we’ll stop such fruitless nonsense by 2168.
But probably not.
The chances anyone in 2018 can guess with any kind of accuracy what our community – and world – will look like 150 years from now is not only miniscule, it’s irrelevant.