Problematic Verisimilitude 19

It seems in these modern times of turmoil, we're looking to the future more and more. I really can't blame us for that . . . after all, the here and now isn't very good. The world's wealthiest nation has quite a bit of unemployment. Across the globe, death travels faster then words, as maniacs find various reasons to maim, stab, detonate, and deep fat fry people that they don't like. One of the more unpleasant presidents in current memory continues to defy the theory of Evolution by showing that no, man did not evolve.

But when we look toward the future, it seems that we don't see too many good things. Like most things, there are only so many edges to the future that we see out before us.

The other day, I was talking with some librarians, and they gave me a few interesting insights to the passage of time as of late_when the topic of the past came up, they invariably said that the past we much more free, with far less restrictions. Normally, this would be the diatribe of bitter elderly people, but they seemed to enjoy much of the contemporary day, so it couldn't have been the state of cantankerous.

They said that in the past, we were freer. When they talked about the future, they showed definite concern. Social Security is eroding away a comfortable twilight years for them (as comfortable as they can get). Jokingly, they suggested that when the time comes, they would rob a bank so they could be sent to jail . . . after all, it's free, and for the elderly women, there's not much of a chance of real violence, right?

It's sad when that actually sounds like a good idea, isn't it? I favoured an asylum myself, but I have a penchant for safety and always wanted to see just how warm a padded cell is.

They had more and more fear for the future, it seemed. With our without the Executive Presence of the Bush family and its corporate masters, there was a fear to thinking about what would come next. This fear may or may not be inherent to us all_think about it_our grandparents and great-grand parents most likely saw a world that changed before their eyes like watching a Lynch movie, backwards, dubbed, and very, very fast. We went from horseback to airborne within a few hundred years. We walked on something that wasn't earth. We invented the spork. All accomplishments nobody could truly predict or prepare for.

It makes one wonder_and slightly worries_where we are going next with all of this. Does the future truly hold a bleak atmosphere of omnipresent surveillance, soulless materialism, violence beyond reason, and microwave dinners? Will it be a better future, on the road towards peace, casting aside world hunger, destruction, and disease? Will it just be like it is now, or more of it?

We do not know. But it is safe to assume that whatever comes next, we have no real choice but to face it. To prepare for the worst, hope for the best, and carry on like nothing is happening at all.

. . . personally, I'm planning on buying a decommissioned military base in the middle of absolute nowhere, stockpile it with food, live off of wildlife and psychotropic iceberg lettuce, and solar powered generators for my PS2. But that's just me.

In the end, we cannot truly be ready for any moment thrown at us from the future. We simply must keep living. Or bugger off to an ex-nuke site . . . whichever.