Comments on: The future is now

By: Charles Martel

Charles Martel — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 05:03:47 +0000

Mike and David, what good and insightful things you’ve written here. (David, “A Canticle for Leibowitz” remains one of my favorite books, almost 50 years after I first read it.)

Mike, I agree with you that we are at the edge of a dark age. How long and how deep, I cannot know. Just earlier today, watching an ad for the upcoming movie, “Eli,” which is about a post-apocalyptic wreck of a world, I remarked to my wife that there is an unconscious foreboding running through our society these days, one that is reflected in the spate of end-of-the-world movies that are coming out.

We know we’re at some brink, even as the New York Times rushes to reassure us that it is the anteroom to a brave new world.

My question is where will we go? Where do we make our stand? I’m very doubtful that the Marxist thugs and useful idiots now running parts of the U.S. government—ACORN, SEIU, Holder, Ayers, Obama, Pelosi, Justice Ginsburg—will refrain from trying to subvert the 2010 election. If they succeed, what then? Retreat to a remote valley in the Rockies? Get Texas to secede from the Union? Burn down Hollywood and squat in the remains? Migrate to Oz?

By: David Foster

David Foster — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 03:24:29 +0000

On the optimistic vs apocalyptic vision of the future…I’ve probably quoted this passage here before, but I’m afraid it’ very relevant:

“The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they seemed to become with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew into richness and power and beauty; for then, perhaps, it was easier for them to see that something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow. When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle’s eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn. Well, they were going to destroy it again, were they-this garden Earth, civilized and knowing, to be torn apart again that Man might hope again in wretched darkness.”

–Walter Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz

By: David Foster

David Foster — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 00:23:13 +0000

I’m pretty sure that the song “great big beautiful tomorrow” was sponsored by General Electric, as was much of the exhibit. GE today would probably not be caught dead singing anything like that, but would rather focus on painting themselves as green as possible.

By: Mike Devx

Mike Devx — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 23:43:01 +0000

Ah, an interesting question.

I am VERY optimistic about the future… but not the next forty years. And forty years is my minimum for “dark vision”.

We live in a time that is anti-science, anti-progress, anti-freedom, anti-liberty. Those cultural forces that are good are echoes from the past, and there is little going on today that is feeding those positive forces, keeping them going. That is why there is a sense that the lights are going out; that there is pessimism.

For me, this is true not only in America, but throughout the world.

What we had in America was not only incredible economic progress. That progress was tied to generations of Americans that *believed* in individual freedom and liberty, and, perhaps more importantly (!) individual RESPONSIBILITY. It was in the very marrow of their bones. Too many of us have lost it. And while there are engines of prosperity out there, they lack that intrinsic sense of the value, dignity, and worth of the individual. So I don’t see those engines producing continually.

But there will be a rebirth, eventually. There always is. Will it be relatively soon? E.g, in forty years, or will it take much longer? And where will it happen? I’d love to say it will be here, in America, and I’d love to see it happen in my lifetime. But our severest financial crises loom about twenty to forty years into our future (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc etc, and the current liberal trends are pointing towards the depths of the financial catastrophes appearing ever worse), and we’re not even close to being prepared for them.

Europe is facing financial, social and demographic catastrophes. So is Russia. Even China may not escape quite a few very difficult demographic trends.

Where are the major innovations that could change all this? It won’t be in computers. One great possibility is the harnessing – and I mean COMPLETE MASTERY – of fusion power. That would change everything. It would change everything the way the invention of agriculture changed everything; it would be larger than our mastery of electricity and electric power. Bigger than oil and gas. The battles of scarcity over energy, usable water, and food could very well disappear completely.

Our continuing investigation into genetics also has amazing transformational potential.

Both of those complete transformations will occur someday. I just have no idea when. They, and other unforeseen transformations on a scale we can hardly imagine, mean complete optimism for me, in the long run. But possibly not in my lifetime.