We’re pretty good about predicting and using the immediate future. Without too much trouble I can tell you what will happen to me in the next hour, maybe even tomorrow or next week. I admit it gets more unpredictable after that.
Science and business have concentrated on much longer terms. It takes a while to build a corporate empire, to construct a bridge. Examinations of the past lead science to predict climate, eclipses, species survival. And to some extent that is all valuable and true. We enjoy our bridges, our economy, our control of destiny. A farmer only sows because in the future she expects to reap.
In these days of troubles, dire predictions of what is to come in futures near and far are a dime a dozen. It has always been so. Cassandra is nothing new. Early Christians continuously predicted the end of the world by next week, month, year, or decade for millennia.
But in the “long run” we don’t truly know much. Why should we be so concerned, especially since many of us will not be here? Our offspring, like our dreams, are a kind of fantasy. The future will be what it will be, like the present largely out of our control beyond today and what we can actually touch.
The main problem with horrible futures expectation, as with despair in general, is that it cripples our ability to live fully now.
HuntingtonHarborThoughts 