What does The Future mean to you?

When you were a child, you were most likely excited about what each day could hold. "Anything could happen!” As a young adult, maybe excitement about the future shifted to romance and work, and “Today could be the day” that you met your soulmate or got a promotion.

If you’re a full adult, what is your attitude now about the future? Maybe there have been a number of disappointments sprinkled through the last few years, and “the Future” to you seems like a task to avoid of any more of that.

Maybe your life has become a routine, and only seems to change with the sudden introduction of bad news— A parent needs help with an injury, a pet needs to be put down, your insurance rates are raised. Or maybe you’ve just been convinced over the last decade or so that the future and the unknown is something to fear.

And what of the obsession nowadays, by people of all ages, with some dystopian end to it all?

In physics, both macro physics (Newton’s first law of motion) and quantum physics, there is an enduring principle of items seeking to be at rest, or at an equilibrium. When will that ball stop rolling down the hill, or that teetering book at the edge of the desk, finally stop? When there is not a force compelling it either way. It will stop when it comes to rest; it seeks that state of equilibrium. Even economic principles fall under this, in pricing, supply & demand charts, etc.

As we humans are part of Nature and the elements, we too fall under this equilibrium law, both physically and emotionally. We seek a state of equilibrium. Even when we strive for a goal, we are seeking an equilibrium we assume (sometimes rightly, sometimes not) that exists at that new position or place.

And so, the obsession with, and almost hope for, some dystopian end to our society is for many people an imagined equilibrium. They hope for a state where everything that confuses or frightens them just stops. All the institutions and bureaucracies that confound them, all the people who challenge them and their beliefs, all the media and advertising that chips away at their confidence… For all of it to just end, just die, just disappear.

That is the equilibrium they seek.

This focus causes these individuals to not only have a very negative view of the future, but to feel a great deal of anger that things have not already been destroyed. They see a lack of annihilation as a denial of this equilibrium state they seek. And so, they wake each day in a consistent state of unrest and frustration that only the full destruction of society will (they think) quell.

But, what about you? What do you think about The Future? Do you fear it?

Fearing the future is a relatively new societal position. Past generations obviously did not have this in any kind of widespread manner. Those are the generations that built bridges and dams and the World’s Fair and museums and airplanes and rocket ships. They birthed an untold number of superior books and artworks and buildings. They were excited about the future and the untold possibilities therein.

In the current era, many people have instead been trained by portions of the media, seeking the clicks they financially depend upon, to be afraid of anything new. After all, the more you stay right here, the more you don’t change at all, the easier it is to sell to you. You need to stay the same in order for the automated selling, aka the algorithms, to work correctly. Algorithms for what you buy and what you watch. This need to keep you in the same spot has, among other things, affected car design (stays the same), movie and series production (reboots, remakes, and sequels), and spawned the use of generative AI (a blender fed everything from the past). If you behave like a normal human being, have excitement for the future and for the new things it brings, you’re an outlier for their algorithms. Your embrace of new things will most likely change you, and that will neuter their business model.

So, maybe you know now why you have a fear of the future. The off-ramp is that attitude from your childhood, where “Anything could happen today.” Because, real life still operates the same way it did when you were a kid, regardless of any algorithmic business model with which some companies have tried to smother you.

Set your sights on the unknown possibilities in The Future.

The truth is anything can happen. Every day, for the rest of your life.

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