How optimistic are you? Do you believe that this world is going to be a better place in 100 years? And more importantly, do you believe human nature will change? Do you believe that someday people will not, to paraphrase the song, "hold up signs that say hurrah for OUR side"???? I sure hope so. I'm an optimist!
always in motion is the future. yes i think less than a thousand years from now several interesting improvements will happen. diversity will remain the nature of reality. people will continue to be both gullable and motivated to express themselves creatively. severaly things that most people don't particularly look forward to will force an end to some of the more common sources of harmfulness. the end of cheep energy will profoundly effect how people live, thought there will still be enough to go arround to run a small refrigerator and personal computer. the automobile as we know it will go the way of the dodo. whether that means more public transportation, battery powered two wheelers, or just a hell of a lot of walking and MUCH shorter commute distances will depend on what's important to people. all of which will likely improve the experiential qualities of neighborhoods and villages though. governments will either encourage people to experiment with ways of life we haven't even immagined yet, or in at least some cases simple cease to be for all practical purposes functional. reguardless of idiology. i wouldn't worry about expecting "human nature" to chainge. other then being creative and gullable at the same time, there ain't any. but people will become more awaire of thoughtfullness and consideration being in their own direct personal interests. possibly out of raw basic neccessities of survival. there isn't going to be some bell sound and all this happen at once though. all of the proccessess invoulved are realatively gradual. but the are also, many of them, inexorable, and in at least some cases, already under way. =^^= .../\...
i like the future, it is my home. i have always 'lived there' and always will. in a hundred years there may or may not be an america. it may or may not make a damd bit of difference whether or not there is. but core values CAN chainge, without a possibly mythical so called human nature having a damd thing to do with it, as, if such a thing even exists, it equaly does not now. well i've already said this in my previous post. fritz says no. no WHAT? (no better, no worse, no chainge, no what? or just no, not optomistic?) better and worse are somewhat subjective concepts, but i think more gratifying, less frightning, cleaner air, fish returning to rivers once again cleaner then they've been in a while, i think i'd call those things better if they happen. a hundred years is long enough for some things to chainge signifigantly, without being long enough for a lot of others to have to. in a hundred years we will not be driving gasoline powered automobiles. this is a good thing, or at least as close as anything comes to being a certain one. what we'll be doing instead, whether we'll be riding battery powered mini-trains, driving coal fired automobiles, or walking our poor tired leggs off, THAT remains to be seen. =^^= .../\...
100 years may be too short a time frame to make deffinitive assesmsents on human evolution or societial evolution. It all depends upon the rate of change. If we level off on change then we will stagnate and begin to trend downward. If, however, there is a steady rate of increase or if there is an expotential increase toward a "singularity" in human history then all bets are off. We may solve the problems as they arise. We may be the problem that needs to be solved by a higher being...even if it is a being that we create...eg, artificial intelligence. What if we create a machine that decides it is god simply because in the original programming we defined "god" as a higher intelligence...I am a higher intelligence therefore I am god....cool stuff. I love this kind of speculation.
I won't be here in 100 years, and more than likely my son won't either. Regardless, I am more of a realist than an optimist or pessimistic: I see things as they are, then work through the problem. But I believe that in 100 years, this planet will be in the midst of a crisis.
the world we live in now is dead. i see no future for it. weather things will be better or not in the future is up for debate. i'd like to beleive we will tear down this world we have created ourselves, and start anew, but just seeing the masses looking more like cattle then people, i don't see that happening. more then likely, a nuclear war will happen. maybe some people will survive. maybe they could rebuild man-kind, and remember what went wrong in the first place.
....rebuild mankind? This is definitly a society that will continue to evolve. Yes the fear of overpopulation may eventually become a concern, but for the most part, I see it this way- There are more cures for disease, more science than we know what to do with, more ways of innovation that the mass majority doesn't even know about it. If we can all try to make it a little better, then it WILL be a little better! And in 100 years, who knows what will be here. When I was born there was very little technology compared to today. Think about the change in electronics; cell phones with cameras, video cameras, and music videos! They are available as thin as credit cards, in any color, and with basically a computer, the internet, a phone, a camera, ect....You get the picture right? Thats only one thing that of course everyone can relate to. Imagine in 100 years from now! Maybe one day when everyone can get their heads out of their asses and smell the damn roses then maybe we will all have a chance to actually live to be 100! It is the little things in life that make life worth living. Yes, the future holds many great surprises, but lets try to live life in the now, and enjoy it while we can! Thats the way of an optimist! Max Moore once defined optimism as, the fuel of hero’s, the enemy of despair, and the creator of the future. With optimism as a basis anyone can be a superman in today's crazy world! Go out and make a differnce by smiling! Thats my spheil on that!
begin to tend downward? we've BEEN tending downward (if you mean experiential qualities of existence). stagnation would be an improvement! but that just depends on what we were to 'stagnate' on. really though, the treat of 'stagnation' is one of the few threats that really are mostly mythological. what we know in a hundred years is no one will be driving a gasolene powered automobile. best case we'll be riding batterie powered mini-trams, worst case driving coal fired cars (there's 200 years worth of coal left but only about 40 years worth of petrolium), most probable case, doing a whole heck of a lot of walking. which won't be the end of the world either. and yes i do call taht optomistic, even without the population implosion that, colapse of monetary economics, or several of the other real possibilities that also exist. windmills and solar cells will be producing a much greater percentage of our energy, which will of course be more expensive and less abundant, but that certainly won't mean an end to tecnological development, just a motivation to move in MUCH more energy efficient directions. innovation in human powered tools will be highly motivated, as much and even more then it was before energy became cheap and abundant. same goes for public transportation. demand is already once again increasing, though per capita meetin of that demand is still continuing to lag behind as population continues to spiral upward and the automobile is still something of a god. but for how long? things can almost only improve as awairness shifts back away from enslavement to illusions of freedom that gratify nothing other then keeping little green pieces of paper in circulation. that this is likely as evidenced by how despirately and adimantly forces of corporocratic status quo fight to keep people from becomming awair how completely we've been and are being had. something that like all things, nothing ever stays any one way for ever, nor for that matter is ever entirely any one way at any time. we may not have seen the worst of it yet, but better, much better, will be here, even in as little as a hundred years, and better even then that in about 3 or 4 hundred. anyone who'se under 30 now will live to see MUCH better times, if they live to see them at all. those of us who saw the 60s and even 50s, well we may not have enough years left to see much of it ourselves, but even for us there are some things we might see chainge for the better in what remains of our own lifetimes as well. =^^= .../\...
If you listen to the nightly news you will here that we are in a new crisis about three or four times a week.
the crysis of population being out of balance with environment may have already resolved itself by then. if not, within 200 or 300 it almost certainly will have. when it does, whatever comes AFTER THAT, is what i AM "optomistic" about. VERY optomistic to the point of envious. even if that means some of what we now take for granted no longer being there or even possible. and particuly BECAUSE certain some of it won't be. (among which being the gas powered private automobile. that much is a certainty. monetery economics being replaced by creative tecnological skill is also a real possibilty, along with a number of others that i find interesting, even if equaly uncertain) =^^= .../\...
btw fwiw(for what it's worth), i'm not AFRAID of the oil running out; i'm LOOKING FORWARD to it. i'm optomistic BECAUSE it eventualy will. i just wish i could live long enough to actualy see it happen with my own eyes. =^^= .../\...
well judging by the times i'm living in i'd say if things keep going the way they are things are going to fuck up big style. if terrorists don't civilization, those in society will. this whole "chav" culture in the uk shows that humans really can be bare faced heartless 2 faced stubborn bastards. the human race may eventually rip itself apart, care is running out.
there will come a time when wars are no longer fought. this may come even before we are no longer messing up the air and earth. this will come about not because we will have all become saints. if it depended on that, as many have pointed out, then indeed it might never happen. but rather it will happen because we will have learned certain basic lessons about priorities and probabilities, whatever it takes for nature to beat them through our thick heads. there are unfortunate, even alarming current trends. people will eventualy get tired of them. if we aren't already. these are not the only trends there are. just the ones vested intrests seem willing to let us be awair of. diversity is nature and things chainge in diverse ways. tyrannies in the name of supposed freedom have arrisen, they are however, no more eternal then ancient rome, which even in the best of its own times, was constantly falling, and at any rate well deserved to be consigned to a long and nearly forgotten past. so i am very optomistic that even the worst of what we are seeing today, and however much worse it might get if it does, will also go the way of all things. there are questions as to the survivability of the human species in the kind of world it, i.e. WE, are creating for ourselves. these remain to have certainty of resolution. yet there are still, and will always be, 'optomistic' things to look forward to, even if the only reason were diversity being the nature of existence. and we DO know the oil WILL run out, and there is a 2 out of three pobabilty that what will come of that will be more good then bad. even if a lot of people do go hungry and starve. the colapse of trying to make everything have to begin and end with little green pieces of paper would of course be and or bring about some very good things, but this is one of those less then certain likelyhoods. where as the demise of cheep oil, and eventualy other combustable fuels, is an almost complete certainty. =^^= .../\...
