Sunday night I dreamt I was stuck in an airport waiting for a severely delayed flight, with English actor Gemma Arterton and actor/writer/producer and gamer-geek extraordinaire Wil Wheaton. Gemma and Wil were returning to their respective U.K. and L.A. homes after a Supercon (no idea which one). I was returning home from a trip (no idea where I went or why I went there). They were interested in me, so they popped over to have a chat. Dream logic, people, it does not have to make sense.
After I recovered from my “holy shit, you’re Gemma Arterton and Wil Wheaton, and you’re talking to me” reaction, we discussed the current U.S. and U.K. political environments. We three agreed: both sides of the Pond are utterly fucked.
Despite the dream's dire vibe, I woke up feeling unusually optimistic about the future. Which is fucking weird, considering the state of things right now. I would love to believe no one saw this mess coming, but LOADS of people saw this coming. We just chose to disregard their warnings.
I read the novels Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1984; I was 14. Huxley and Orwell’s futures feature oppressive authoritarian forces that anesthetize and dehumanize people, making the population easier to control. Aldous Huxley published Brave New World in 1932, as fascist powers began reasserting themselves in England and Europe. George Orwell published Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949, just after the Allies defeated the Axis powers in a devastating war that engulfed most of our planet. Events in Europe, Asia, and two world wars almost certainly informed Huxley and Orwell’s work. How could they not?
From Huxley and Orwell, I moved onto Margaret Atwood, Philip K. Dick, and William Gibson. Holy fuck, do these three forecast some seriously bleak shit.
In Dick’s future, monopolistic corporations and authoritarian governments marginalize the “common man.”
Atwood foretells of oppressive, patriarchal governments that socially dominate women and destroy our planet.
Gibson predicts a world where powerful multinational corporations reap the benefits of society’s technological progress while leaving ordinary folk to suffer progress’ messy externalities. Governments are non-entities.
ANY OF THIS SOUND FAMILIAR?
We Americans rejoice in our superiority over other countries, while we ignore the authoritarian forces that work, deliberately and with “glorious purpose,” to undermine the institutions that protect us and our democracy. Through deregulation and corporate consolidation, families like Koch and Mercer concentrate their wealth and influence. This wealth funds their extraordinary campaign donations, paying Congress to redraw districts, change voting laws and nominate increasingly more “right-thinking” federal judges.
There are plenty of reasons to despair; why am I optimistic?
1. Science Fiction. If the human mind can imagine it, then humans can accomplish it, given sufficient will, resources, and technology. Hell, wearable computers, videophones, and self-driving cars— all of which now exist— use to be science fiction! We have already imagined a world without scarcity, poverty or homelessness, where all beings are equal (Star Trek). I believe humans will build such a world. It is merely a matter of time.
2. Human history. Specifically, the human evolutionary timeline. Check this out:
- The earliest mammal appeared on Earth approximately 160 million years ago.
- Primates appeared 85 million years ago, 75 million years after the first mammal.
- Another 60 million years passed before Hominids appeared at 15 million years.
- 12.2 million more years passed before our human (Homo genus) progenitors showed up at 2.8 million years.
- Modern Homo Sapiens didn’t emerge until about 200,000 years ago, after 2 million more years of evolution.
- Recorded human history only began about 5,500 years ago. Yes, folks, it took us 194,000 more years to develop writing!
Fast forward approximately 4,000 years or so...
- The Industrial Revolution, the late 1700s to the late 1800s.
- First car – 1886 (a Benz Patent-Motorwagen).
- First flight – 1903.
- Penicillin - 1928.
- First computer - 1936.
- Nuclear fission - 1938.
- First orbital flight - 1957.
- The Moon Walk - 1969.
- The World Wide Web - 1989.
- The Human Genome fully mapped - 2004.
- And just this week astronomers detected gravitational waves from merging neutron stars (seriously, how cool is this!?).
"All puppies and rainbows? That remains to be seen. Based on historical evidence, this puppy panel is unconvinced."
We have accomplished many great things in such a short time! Relative to the total span of the human evolutionary timeline, we Homo Sapiens are very, very young. We are still growing— at a painfully slow pace, perhaps— but growing. Perhaps increasing my “soma” dosage has me seeing nothing but puppies and rainbows, but I’m hopeful we’ll survive long enough to outgrow all our fuckwhittery.