The Way To The Future

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

It is said that the past is another country, they do things differently there.

The same can be said of the future. And both the past and the future are ultimately unknowable to us. Even the past we lived in changes in memory as we go along, and we often forget what doesn’t accord with the way we live now. Nothing crucial mind, it’s just… remember when there were little pumps for toothpaste? You pressed a button at the top, and it dispensed toothpaste? It was available for maybe five years, and sometimes now I wonder if I dreamed it, or if it was a regional thing.

But the future is more so, because we will never live in it. Not past a certain point. I mean, look, maybe I’ll be wildly lucky and live to 100. That means anything past the 2060s, or maybe the 2050s — EVEN IF I LIVE THAT LONG — will be, for me, an undiscovered country. I can dream it and think of it, but I’ll never see it.

I don’t even know if there will be anything of me — biological descendants, writing — that will survive that long.

This doesn’t matter. The future will exist, if not for us, for someone, and it is part of being human to try to make that future as good — for our conception of good — as we can make it.

The obsession with the end of the world, the destruction of all things, the absolute certainty that there will be no future, or that the future should not be, since no part of us will be in it (An increasingly common situation for people my generation and younger) is deranged and increases the chances of a bad future for everyone.

It is part and parcel of the falling apart of Western civilization, which in turn seems to be a form of survivor’s guilt inexplicable to or by any civilization before us (Though some of them did similar). It’s part that and part “Rich child guilt.” It’s like the west found itself so triumphant, so rich that it had to self efface so as not to make the rest of humanity look bad.

So instead of taking the triumph and pushing it further, we sat down and started meditating on our end and telling tales of how it would all inevitably go wrong and horrible.

We’re not the first people to do this, and what hits as “rich” and “triumphant” is much lower than you’d think it is. And for those who are going to tell me it was from losing religion, I’ll point out the ancient Israelites, a theocracy, did in fact do exactly the same thing and start meditating on the end and why they deserved it. It is where we get our entire notion of eschatology.

I think it comes from humans being descended from scavenger apes. For scavengers, by definition, if times are too good and they’re finding many kills to scavenge, the ecosystem is overloaded and there will follow a time of famine.

So every time we push through and avert the end; every time our children (or someone’s children) live better than we did, it activates the fear it’s all going to collapse and the perverse human need to see dire predictions come true.

I don’t have a prescription to avoid it. I too am human. I too am beset with fears. Most of my fears for the future center on my kids, as I suspect it’s normal. But even if there’s no one related to me past the next generation, I still care about humanity and I still fear for them.

The problem with fear is that it can be self-fulfilling. I’m still convinced a lot of the destruction and attempted destruction we see is because of the dystopian fiction and the dingy futures of seventies and eighties science fiction. Note Elon Musk is, like me, a child of Heinlein and the belief in a better future. More importantly, the fear, despair and certainty of a worse future is bad for you now, in the present. It constricts the soul, it damages the vision, it impairs the ability to work and create.

So I wish I had a magic wand and could make it go away in each and every one of you.

I can’t. I can’t even do that for myself.

All I can share with you is what I do when the dark closes in, and the way to the future is obscured, and I no longer believe there is A future: Work. Work as if the future were there, and you could make it the future you want.

You and I will never see the future. Not the long future, where things are better (if we’re very lucky.) We’ll probably never see humanity go to the stars, though if we’re lucky we might see the beginning.

But we can hold on to work even when hope fails us, and work for it, as hard and as steadily as we know how.

I find if you work through the tears and the terror, where the path is invisible beneath your feet, sometimes, through it all, you catch a glimpse of what might come after.

And it makes it all worthwhile.

Real or metaphorical, go plant a tree today that you’ll never live to see the fruit of.

Let the vision and hope of that future reach backward to nourish you.

Go.

65 thoughts on “The Way To The Future”

  1. As was said once, in a particularly ugly time loop: There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.

    Well, that and thermodynamics. And depending on your religion…

    Ah, y’all get my point.

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  2. Consider the builders of the great cathedrals of Europe. Those took generations to get completed, long past the lifetimes of EVERYONE who laid out the plans at the beginning.

    Working toward a future you know you’ll never see is as much a part of humanity as planning for the end times. Choose well.

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  3. I’m a child of Heinlein…but also of Doc Smith before him, and Pournelle after him. And I’ve never believed in the dystopias. Worried about falling into one, yes, but never thought they were inevitable. Perhaps it’s my oversized Flight Test ego talking, but I’ve always considered myself to have a role (however small) in making history. Not just being blown around by it.

    It helps to be a bit of a romantic…to understand that there’s purpose and honor in working on the cathedral whose cornerstone was laid in your grandfather’s time…and will not be finished until your grandson’s. I think of Admiral Collingwood, walking his estate in 1800 with a pocketful of acorns, planting one whenever he saw a good site for an oak tree – because it took 200 years to grow the mainmast for a First Rate, and there was no time to lose. The path to the future is a chain, and some of us will not tolerate being the weak link.

    The future will be what we make it. Cheer up, and make it great.

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  4. Also a child of Heilein, Norton, and even a few others. Even in the dystopias, there is always a way forward. There is always triumphant, survival, and building for current and future generations. Otherwise, where is the story? Humanity, as a whole, doesn’t just curl up and wait to die. Humanity may not survive the universe, but it is going to take more than an impact asteroid to do it. It’ll take an earth busting into pieces asteroid. Even then I wouldn’t bet against humanity surviving.

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      1. Yes. I had to refresh the page to see it. Sigh. Been working great, no issues, then this wrinkle. Now it has retroed back to how done months before. Sigh x2

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  6. When things seem dark, just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Doing your little part, no matter how insignificant you might think it is, will help those around you. A tiny light in the darkness is still a light, and signifies to others that there is hope.

    I may not see humanity settle the stars, but I’m reveling in seeing all the steps Musk, and others, are making in getting us to other planetary bodies in our own solar system. Every little step counts.

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    3. The steps to the stars are small. Fifty years ago, there were (maybe) a half dozen stars that (might) have planets orbiting them. The count in Nov 2004 is more than 4300 stars with almost 5800 planets. Now we know there are places to go. The only problem is how to get there.

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      1. Mostly what we can see are Jovian-sized planets. But if we ever manage to orbit a synthetic-aperture telescope (opposite positions in Earth-distance solar orbit would be ideal) we should be able to resolve small bodies orbiting nearer stars. Or surface features of Earthlike planets of those stars. The formula…

        Resolving power in arc-seconds = 138 / telescope aperture in mm

        …says that an orbital-distance aperture (~500M kilometers) would yield a very small resolution*.😉

        *Left as an exercise for the terminally masochistic; I’m too lazy to work out any numbers.😜

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  7. Fear is a liar.

    God carried me through 15 months of unemployment when I had no savings or income and, like the child’s lunch Our Lord used to feed the 5,000, took all I had and made it enough.

    I cannot predict the future; but I know God is only, always, and continually good. And He loves us. And whether we enjoy everything we receive is immaterial. It is all good if we belong to God. Read 2 Corinthians 4:7-18. If it’s not your thing, read it for the context of my remarks. Look up the Book of Job for more context.

    I know the potential of humankind. I know the awesome dreams and the depraved nightmares. The same human race created SpaceX and Auschwitz.

    Let us reach for the stars and discard the filth and garbage. We can all work together to lift up all the people around us. We don’t need hate at the moment.

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    1. That can get awkward when you feed your opponents feet first into a woodchipper, if you haven’t actually won yet.

      Then again, it can also speed up the coming of Victory.

      (grin)

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  11. Sorry for going off-topic, but does anyone know what’s going on with Lawdog’s blog? For three or four days now, whenever I try to go there I get a page that says the account has been suspended.

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    1. According to the Texas Troublemakers, there has been a kerfuffle, and it is being handled. I expect to hear (a rant) about it on Old NFO’s “Bored Yet?” vlog tomorrow.

      Jim_R

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  12. I’ve gone completely off of dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction; it’s cultural gaslighting at its worst. IN MY LIFETIME we’ve eliminated smallpox and polio, tripled the world’s population without falling into global famine, avoided nuclear war, put free long-distance telephony in our frickin’ pockets, licked quite a few forms of cancer, sent people to the moon, built space stations, and let me do my Xmas shopping at home in my PJs. Let’s have some more stories about folks fighting the good fight and rolling back the darkness, even if only an inch at a time.

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    1. “licked quite a few forms of cancer”

      Including prostrate cancer. Word from the doctors is no one dies of prostrate cancer. Die with it, yes. Of it no.

      That said. Second follow up visit in Jan 2025 will put the nail in hubby’s prostrate cancer after results of first post op PSA test. The doctor is optimistically confident that the surgery got it all. Pathology on the prostrate showed 40% cancer. No, none, zip, cancer in edges or glands, looked like cancer was gathering for an attack on a valve (a common access to outside of prostrate), it hadn’t migrated into the valve. Looking like hubby is going to be within the 90% of surgery and done. Dealing with the effects of the surgery itself is going great even though not even a month from the surgery.

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      2. The Reader wishes it were true that no one dies of prostate cancer. He lost a friend (who was in his 60s) a couple of years ago. As usual, the doctors are less than truthful. And in point of fact no one likes to discuss prostate cancer unless it can be avoided. The Reader is glad your husband is doing well.

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        1. It was/is scary. We were warned that had hubby been in his early 60’s, or younger, prostrate cancer is a lot more aggressive (he’s 70s). But they (both surgeon and radiation urologists) down (obvious now) played the overall danger. One of the other options was to “wait and see” even tho hubby’s cancer was rated an 4/5 or 8/10 (depending on which scale was to be used). Didn’t recommend waiting, at all. But was an option. Surgery was chosen because the odds that the cancer had spread were small due to the results of imaging. That is what the radiation urologist recommended with a parting comment of “hope to not see you again”. Also learned that our son now has a higher chance of prostrate cancer because his dad does. He needs to start getting PSA tests done at age 40. OTOH his maternal grandfather having prostrate cancer in early 60s has no effect. It is the primary parent they look at.

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          1. If they care about the father’s history of prostate cancer but don’t care about the maternal grandfather’s history, that would suggest that the genetic marker(s), whatever it is/they are, is/are carried on the Y chromosome.

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          2. I went from “five years until you need a colonoscopy” to “five years overdue” overnight after they found a precancerous polyp in one of my parents.

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            1. I hear that one. Haven’t had precancerous polyp history. But hubby and I have been on every 5 years, since we each started, because of polyps. His went every 10 years at age 65. I went to next one in 7 years, because of lack of polyps, finally. Found ulcers and polyps in son’s colonoscopy at age 32 (done because of ongoing “issues”) but no cancer. Son doesn’t need to have another one until age 50 unless the cause comes back. What is bad with son is he has a severe dangerous reaction coming out of anesthesia. Hubby had the same problem this last surgery, just not anywhere near severe or dangerous. Don’t know what to think of the “don’t need colonoscopy after age 80” given our history of polyps. This whole “Oh. You are over 80, you are dying anyway” is BS. If someone wants to fight. They get to fight.

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              1. I’m one of those the tribe would have to drag kicking and screaming out on to the broken away ice flow for the good of the tribe.

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    2. Not to mention making many diseases manageable, if not cured. The common cold, asthma, diabetes, kidney disease, liver disease, rheumatoid and other arthritises. All can be managed so as to minimize pain and extend an involved and mobile life. We may not have cured them, but we’ve added years to lifespans, and extended the time out of the hospital/bed.

      When I was a teen, my mother was stricken with Rheumatoid Arthritis. She was in a wheelchair within ten years; even before that, she had reduced her activities to the most minimal. Almost 20 years after my first symptoms, I’m still able to engage in almost all the activities I did before (with the exception of things like running sports). Yes, I have my times when a particularly bad episode gets me down, but I can bounce back.

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  13. I don’t fear for the future of Darlin’ Daughter. We gave her a good start in life, she is making here way on her own nicely, and her mom and I have ensured that she has skills to handle adversity in whatever form it comes (I concentrated on the more kinetic ways).

    Any event that is survivable, and she stands a good chance of working her way through it.

    I’ve done what I can, no use in worrying about it. Just standing by to provide backup while I’m still here.

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    1. Same with son. He’s pretty laid back. But he steps up push comes to shove. Just wish he’d find a partner to work with. Mostly so we can enjoy the spoil the grandchildren and hand them back years. 😉Selfish that way. Oh well. Always the great nieces and nephew, and cousins children and grandchildren.

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  14. However frustrated I am, however irritated I am, however many ways and times the brain weasels keep me awake and unable to rest, I recall that we are blessed in knowing that we don’t know what tomorrow will bring, not truly.

    (And for someone that over-analyzes everything, this is a good thing.)

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    1. Yep. Heinlein said it best, in his “Notebooks of Lazarus Long”:

      “A fake fortuneteller can be tolerated. But an authentic soothsayer should be shot on sight. Cassandra did not get half the kicking around she deserved.”

      His first(?) published story, “Lifeline”, addressed the same thing.

      Liked by 2 people

  15. A timely reminder. This past Sunday was the Sunday of HOPE. Real HOPE, not the fake kind that says, I hope you pass the test, even tho you didn’t study. No Hope.

    True HOPE is an infinity. One of the big four (Love, Joy, Peace and Hope). True HOPE does not promise it will be easy. It doesn’t even promise success, but what it offers is the possibility of success.

    I remind myself frequently, “If you don’t ask, the answer is always No.”. God invites me on an adventure. Adventures are messy. Particularly with authors who specialize in tossing characters into fiery trials, or deep water. I never know what awaits around the corner, just that God has a wicked sense of humor.

    May your life be filled with true HOPE this advent season. Also (Love, Joy and Peace).

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  16. O/T and not your column but –

    This is the (Oz) Macquarie Dictionary’s new word of the year –

    https://www-macquariedictionary-com-au.ezproxy.ecu.edu.au/word-of-the-year/word-of-the-year-2024/

    “Committee Winner

    ENSHITTIFICATION

    noun Colloquial the gradual deterioration of a service or product brought about by a reduction in the quality of service provided, especially of an online platform, and as a consequence of profit-seeking.

    ‘A very basic Anglo-Saxon term wrapped in affixes which elevate it to being almost formal; almost respectable. This word captures what many of us feel is happening to the world and to so many aspects of our lives at the moment.’

    – THE COMMITTEE” “

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        1. There are days, and today is one of them, when I really wish that Trump would be just HALF the dictator these loons claim he is.

          Because they have no actual idea what that would be like, and they have neither the literacy nor the imagination needed to guess how far he is from it.

          Liked by 1 person

    1. I intend to be even more lucky. Having observed the US Bicentennial, I intend to see the US Tricentennial. Celebrant or vengeance-monkey, either way.

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    2. Depends on health.

      Mom is doing great at age 90.

      SIL’s mother is doing great at 94, health wise. Her sight is a problem.

      Mom knows people who are pushing 100 and are very active going to regional and national conferences (Eastern Star, and other philanthropic women groups associated with Shrine/Masons), whatever they are officially called. Heck she isn’t even the oldest one attending their annual HS reunions. Down to half a dozen for classes ’48 – ’53, but still come, still active.

      They say (degrees of “they”) that the first person who will live to 150 has been born. Won’t be me. But fully expect to be pushing up against 100. Otherwise my response is going to be “Well dang …” 🤷😉

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      1. My parents are doing fine. Great aunt who grew up and lived in the US was still administering her own 23 and me at 116. No, I never contacted her.
        People are funny. Recently someone was raging that anyone who claims to be past 100 is either lying or doesn’t have a recorded DOB. This is bs. Not only does older son corroborate people are living past 100 more or less routinely at this point, BUT in the case of great aunt, she couldn’t be younger. Her dad died when she was probably a few months old. (Only place she can have come from. And dad is pretty sure who her mom was. Eh. 100 year old gossip relayed by his mom.) So, you know….

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      2. my mom is 93, the most grumpy judgemental old woman around,

        I just dont want to be like that ever!
        now if I can still be puttering in the shop and going to get a coffee with my sweetie at that age, GREAT!

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  18. Maybe the folks in Sydney should take this as a message that bad things will happen to them if they keep marching in the streets chanting “gas the Jews”

    https://nypost.com/2024/12/03/world-news/locals-stunned-as-water-mysteriously-turns-red-near-sydney-harbor/

    Seems rather biblical, and the ones that follow will hurt even more.

    Humiliating and then crushing the antisemites like the ones in Sydney is certainly incentive enough to fight the darkness that the leftists and Jihadists wish to bring about. To quote Churchill, “We shall never surrender”.

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  19. I get plagued every year about this time with seasonal affective disorder. It helps to remember that despair is a sin. You fellow odds cheer me up quite a bit when I remember to visit.

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  20. “…meditating on our end and telling tales of how it would all inevitably go wrong and horrible.”

    Yes, that is what Science Fiction has been doing for a long time. Telling us all how it’s all going to end in destruction, and it’ll be our fault. Since about 2010 there’s been nothing else being published, having grown from the occasional cautionary tale in the 1960s.

    15 years is a long time to be getting a steady diet of gloom and doom. Really, there was nothing else of sufficient “Quality!!!!” to deserve being published?

    I chose to write instead of read around 2012-14-ish. Robot girlfriends and giant tanks, fighting alien monsters and evil men. My motivation was selfish, I wanted something to read. I didn’t care if it wasn’t of sufficient “Quality!!!” to be taken up and published, it was good enough for me. Certainly there were few indeed writing sci-fi romance adventure where the world didn’t end and the guy gets the girl/alien/robot/what have you. I figured that’s just how publishing was. Stupid, but predictable.

    However, since then an interesting thing has happened. Elon bought Twitler, and it was revealed that there was an entire government apparatus dedicated to stifling dissent. A -huge- and -secret- apparatus. Recently Joe Rogan did a podcast with Marc Andreesen, where it was revealed that the same thing exists in banking. People are being shunned by all financial institutions for having certain political opinions. Secretly, by government order.

    Not to mention that since the election RFK Jr. (who I had previously written off as a fruitcake) has PRODUCED RECEIPTS for his claims that the huge increase in autism in the USA may have been caused by certain vaccines starting in 1989. (Not the high-functioning, but the non-verbal, head-banging kind.) He’s apparently gotten his hands on a whole conference that was held on the subject, featuring all the big players in Big Pharma. He says they spent Day 2 talking about ways to hide what had happened. But there’s a transcript, so there you go.

    Given all that and more, does anybody think it is an accident that there’s been nothing to read but hellish dystopian futures for 30 years? That it’s an accident the Hugo always goes to some grimdark bullsh1t that nobody remembers the next year? We all went to considerable trouble and even spent money during Sad Puppies to PROVE it was not an accident.

    It is an arrangement. They do it on purpose.

    But now, thanks to #TheDonald winning, and thanks also to the Swamp trying to k1ll him a couple times, we’re getting receipts. Once Elon’s Department of Chainsaws gets ripping into the vast petrified forests of the Swamp, it will not surprise me to find that there is a whole network of government departments dedicated to controlling what sort of fiction gets published in books, magazines, and made into TV and movies. Nor will it surprise me to hear that it’s been going for 30 years or more.

    It will not surprise me to hear that Amazon has a whole department dedicated to following secret government guidelines on what gets promoted and what gets shadowbanned. This is an idea I’d find too tinfoil-hat to even say out loud, except that since Twitler became X, we -know- that’s what they are doing. We even know the names of the big bosses doing it.

    So maybe, Ghod forbid, at some point there will once more be some fun stories on how it is all going to go right, and turn out awesome, and the guy gets the girl. Wouldn’t that be a breath of freakin’ fresh air?

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    1. I don’t know what sources you’ve been using for your reading, but there’s been a whole lot of decent-to-great non-dystopian F&SF published over the past 30 years, much of it by people who post here. The closest thing to dystopian fiction I’ve read in that time is/was the Black Tide Rising series, and even it is upbeat overall. But if you consider “Bad Things Happen”, as in Caliphate, Lucifer’s Hammer or the aforementioned BTR series, to be by definition “dystopian”, I’ll just have to disagree.

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      2. It is true that there are a few authors, and by a few I mean you can nearly count them on your fingers, that have swum against the Grimdark mainstream successfully in the last 30 years. Increasingly few as one approaches 2010, and since then maybe five or six max if you go to a bookstore.

        I’ve read everything you mentioned when it came out, loved it, and wanted more. Great examples of what we can’t get anymore in sufficient quantity, if at all.

        Ringo, Correia, Butcher and Sarah Hoyt are not enough to keep my SF pipeline filled. I want a whole freakin’ bookstore full of everything I want to read, the way it used to be back in the mists of time, aka the 1980s/90s when I would read three or four paperbacks a week, plus the full output of Marvel and a lot of DC.

        Or like it is now when you turn to manga. Japan isn’t suffering under this cloud. That’s how you can tell its an arrangement. If it was ‘natural,’ manga and anime would all be grimdark Woke crap too.

        Go watch Dan-Da-Dan on Crunchy Roll or Netflix. It’s -hilarious- and NOBODY in Western comics/animation/publishing/movies is doing anything like it. We used to, and now we don’t.

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        2. Not counting those you mentioned, going through my Calibre library for SF from just the past 30 years or so: Birmingham, Brock, Mackey Chandler, Cherryh, Curtis, Drake, Gannon, Gear, both Grants, Koontz, Kratman, Lizzi, McCollum, Modesitt, Niven, Schlichter, Stith, Weber, both Willises, and Zahn all write good, non-doom-and-gloom stories (well, maybe Birmingham, Kratman and Schlichter are on the edge, but even those usually don’t end in dystopia).

          Just sayin’…😉

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            1. Sorry, but I did start off with “Not counting those you mentioned”. Those were “Ringo, Correia, Butcher and Sarah Hoyt”. Of course you’re included! I buy everything you write, except the Shakespeare series (not my cuppa).

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        3. Don’t forget Michael Z. Williamson!

          Might I also add Lois Bujold, although she seems to have stopped writing in 2016. ‘Tis a pity; she wrote a lot of good books.

          Ryk Spoor has a wide variety of series and stories, all good to great. I’d think even the left-wing loonies should like ‘Princess Holy Aura’ — 30-year-old Steve Russ volunteers to be transformed into a Magical Girl to save the world from eldritch abominations. Then again, he/she actually does save the world, so maybe they’d hate it after all.

          Wen Spencer’s Elfhome series is amazing. An alternate Earth with elves, dragons and magic. Also frost-breathing wargs, basketball-sized steel spinner spiders, giant reptilians similar to Tyrannosaurus, and walking carnivorous black willow trees. A chunk of Pittsburgh hops back and forth between the worlds every month. Spells are magical circuits, analogous to electronic circuits. When they mix computers and magic…

          Eric Flint’s 1632 universe has gotten huge, with multiple authors, and most of the stories are good.

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          1. “Eric Flint’s 1632 universe has gotten huge, with multiple authors, and most of the stories are good.”

            I’d say all the stories I’ve read are good. Just some are a lot better.

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          2. I can see it now — mobs of Leftroids waving protest signs:

            ELDRITCH ABOMINATIONS ARE PEOPLE TOO

            …then they get eaten by a shoggoth. A happy ending!

            For the shoggoth, at least. :-D

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