Is the Future Bullshit?

[Provalone]

The future in this day in age is in itself a whole concept. The future. It is a concept that is fairly new; only within the past one hundred or so years has ‘the future’ congealed into such a functional form. There was a clear and distinct point where technology evolved from amusing tinker toys to an inevitably abstruse presence within society. The inevitability of technology laid forth a new portrait of what tomorrow would bring. From then on we have imagined the future as something wholly different in nature from today.

This new paradigm of thought gave writers and artists an entire landscape upon which to build and conceptualize the possibilities of the future in all its mystery. Today, at a point where we are living in a highly-commodified capitalist society, geared toward every whim of the mass consumer, images of tomorrow–in all their grandeur–have been sold at the price of an admission ticket. Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, I Robot, Bladerunner, Mad Max, Terminator, The Matrix, Alien, Predator, Serenity, Children of Men, you name it and it somehow delineates what the future holds for us. And it’s not just movies, advertisements and the Internet both inundate us with pictorials of what we are to expect.

Cliches. They are what most notably plague all Hollywood films, the Internet, and the spheres of mass media and advertisement. It is the perpetuated cliches (i.e. laser blasters, robot uprisings, and floating cars) of these communication highways that have saturated our culture, making us refer to them without ever realizing it. They spill out into our everyday world, becoming apart of it, becoming every bit as legitimate in value as other objects in our lives. We have fallen victim to their seemingly boundless charm. It is because of these images that we’ve been deluged with on a day-to-day basis, that we have this preconceived, subconscious notion of what the future will be like.

And the capitalist machines keeps feeding the monster. It manufactures the fastest, slimmest, sleekest, brightest, most God damned digitally enhanced commodities we can fit in our living rooms. And this is the future; it is being mass produced one cell phone at a time. So to what extent, if any, is the future even real anymore? At what point is it that the future isn’t just the false expectations we’ve been injected with and the resulting meeting of those expectations by the mass market? Some would contend that practicality and progress is what forces us forward, but how do we even know those things are real? How is it that the building of immense skyscrapers and jetpacks aren’t just meeting the demands of the consumer rather than the demands of science. (I should note, I think ‘science’ has formulated into a concept like ‘the future’ and is equally as commodified.)

Does the consumer’s demand manifest ‘the future’ or is it truly as inevitable as it puts itself off to be?

[north]

@Provalone

The future in this day in age is in itself a whole concept. The future. It is a concept that is fairly new; only within the past one hundred or so years has ‘the future’ congealed into such a functional form. There was a clear and distinct point where technology evolved from amusing tinker toys to an inevitably abstruse presence within society. The inevitability of technology laid forth a new portrait of what tomorrow would bring. From then on we have imagined the future as something wholly different in nature from today.

This new paradigm of thought gave writers and artists an entire landscape upon which to build and conceptualize the possibilities of the future in all its mystery. Today, at a point where we are living in a highly-commodified capitalist society, geared toward every whim of the mass consumer, images of tomorrow–in all their grandeur–have been sold at the price of an admission ticket. Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, I Robot, Bladerunner, Mad Max, Terminator, The Matrix, Alien, Predator, Serenity, Children of Men, you name it and it somehow delineates what the future holds for us. And it’s not just movies, advertisements and the Internet both inundate us with pictorials of what we are to expect.

Cliches. They are what most notably plague all Hollywood films, the Internet, and the spheres of mass media and advertisement. It is the perpetuated cliches (i.e. laser blasters, robot uprisings, and floating cars) of these communication highways that have saturated our culture, making us refer to them without ever realizing it. They spill out into our everyday world, becoming apart of it, becoming every bit as legitimate in value as other objects in our lives. We have fallen victim to their seemingly boundless charm. It is because of these images that we’ve been deluged with on a day-to-day basis, that we have this preconceived, subconscious notion of what the future will be like.

And the capitalist machines keeps feeding the monster. It manufactures the fastest, slimmest, sleekest, brightest, most God damned digitally enhanced commodities we can fit in our living rooms. And this is the future; it is being mass produced one cell phone at a time. So to what extent, if any, is the future even real anymore? At what point is it that the future isn’t just the false expectations we’ve been injected with and the resulting meeting of those expectations by the mass market? Some would contend that practicality and progress is what forces us forward, but how do we even know those things are real? How is it that the building of immense skyscrapers and jetpacks aren’t just meeting the demands of the consumer rather than the demands of science. (I should note, I think ‘science’ has formulated into a concept like ‘the future’ and is equally as commodified.)

Does the consumer’s demand manifest ‘the future’ or is it truly as inevitable as it puts itself off to be?

anything positive to say about the future ?

just to balance things out

[Provalone]

@north

@Provalone

The future in this day in age is in itself a whole concept. The future. It is a concept that is fairly new; only within the past one hundred or so years has ‘the future’ congealed into such a functional form. There was a clear and distinct point where technology evolved from amusing tinker toys to an inevitably abstruse presence within society. The inevitability of technology laid forth a new portrait of what tomorrow would bring. From then on we have imagined the future as something wholly different in nature from today.

This new paradigm of thought gave writers and artists an entire landscape upon which to build and conceptualize the possibilities of the future in all its mystery. Today, at a point where we are living in a highly-commodified capitalist society, geared toward every whim of the mass consumer, images of tomorrow–in all their grandeur–have been sold at the price of an admission ticket. Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, I Robot, Bladerunner, Mad Max, Terminator, The Matrix, Alien, Predator, Serenity, Children of Men, you name it and it somehow delineates what the future holds for us. And it’s not just movies, advertisements and the Internet both inundate us with pictorials of what we are to expect.

Cliches. They are what most notably plague all Hollywood films, the Internet, and the spheres of mass media and advertisement. It is the perpetuated cliches (i.e. laser blasters, robot uprisings, and floating cars) of these communication highways that have saturated our culture, making us refer to them without ever realizing it. They spill out into our everyday world, becoming apart of it, becoming every bit as legitimate in value as other objects in our lives. We have fallen victim to their seemingly boundless charm. It is because of these images that we’ve been deluged with on a day-to-day basis, that we have this preconceived, subconscious notion of what the future will be like.

And the capitalist machines keeps feeding the monster. It manufactures the fastest, slimmest, sleekest, brightest, most God damned digitally enhanced commodities we can fit in our living rooms. And this is the future; it is being mass produced one cell phone at a time. So to what extent, if any, is the future even real anymore? At what point is it that the future isn’t just the false expectations we’ve been injected with and the resulting meeting of those expectations by the mass market? Some would contend that practicality and progress is what forces us forward, but how do we even know those things are real? How is it that the building of immense skyscrapers and jetpacks aren’t just meeting the demands of the consumer rather than the demands of science. (I should note, I think ‘science’ has formulated into a concept like ‘the future’ and is equally as commodified.)

Does the consumer’s demand manifest ‘the future’ or is it truly as inevitable as it puts itself off to be?

anything positive to say about the future ?

just to balance things out

Not from this guy. If you have something to say, positive, negative, neutral, or beige, blurt it out; that’s why I made this thread.

[realunoriginal]

Prov,

I’m a little worn out on ‘realness’ issues, so I’ll just respond by saying that the future is empty without meaning. So I guess people need to deal with building meaningful lifes in the future if they care for it… The problem then is–how is a meaningful life built when everything seems to be built on delusions/illusions?

We could delude ourselves more, or…

Or what, I don’t know.

[Iosepusmagus]

The future is what we do today.

I don’t see any rough guesses from hollywood as dangerous to our future. It is rather a fanciful anticipation not really a destructive delusion.

I mean if people stop dreaming and inventing, then surely the future is anything but real.

[Joker]

Person 1: The future will save us all. The future is a bright better new tomorrow. The future represents progress.

Person 2: Have you ever seen the future? Have you ever expirienced the future?

Have you ever touched and felt the presence of the future to know what the future holds?

Person 1: Well…um…No.

Person 2: What is the future, then?

Person 1: ( Silent.)

[Joker]

I personally hate the conception of the future. I like past history more anyways…

[Joker]

@Provalone

The future in this day in age is in itself a whole concept. The future. It is a concept that is fairly new; only within the past one hundred or so years has ‘the future’ congealed into such a functional form. There was a clear and distinct point where technology evolved from amusing tinker toys to an inevitably abstruse presence within society. The inevitability of technology laid forth a new portrait of what tomorrow would bring. From then on we have imagined the future as something wholly different in nature from today.

This new paradigm of thought gave writers and artists an entire landscape upon which to build and conceptualize the possibilities of the future in all its mystery. Today, at a point where we are living in a highly-commodified capitalist society, geared toward every whim of the mass consumer, images of tomorrow–in all their grandeur–have been sold at the price of an admission ticket. Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, I Robot, Bladerunner, Mad Max, Terminator, The Matrix, Alien, Predator, Serenity, Children of Men, you name it and it somehow delineates what the future holds for us. And it’s not just movies, advertisements and the Internet both inundate us with pictorials of what we are to expect.

Cliches. They are what most notably plague all Hollywood films, the Internet, and the spheres of mass media and advertisement. It is the perpetuated cliches (i.e. laser blasters, robot uprisings, and floating cars) of these communication highways that have saturated our culture, making us refer to them without ever realizing it. They spill out into our everyday world, becoming apart of it, becoming every bit as legitimate in value as other objects in our lives. We have fallen victim to their seemingly boundless charm. It is because of these images that we’ve been deluged with on a day-to-day basis, that we have this preconceived, subconscious notion of what the future will be like.

And the capitalist machines keeps feeding the monster. It manufactures the fastest, slimmest, sleekest, brightest, most God damned digitally enhanced commodities we can fit in our living rooms. And this is the future; it is being mass produced one cell phone at a time. So to what extent, if any, is the future even real anymore? At what point is it that the future isn’t just the false expectations we’ve been injected with and the resulting meeting of those expectations by the mass market? Some would contend that practicality and progress is what forces us forward, but how do we even know those things are real? How is it that the building of immense skyscrapers and jetpacks aren’t just meeting the demands of the consumer rather than the demands of science. (I should note, I think ‘science’ has formulated into a concept like ‘the future’ and is equally as commodified.)

Does the consumer’s demand manifest ‘the future’ or is it truly as inevitable as it puts itself off to be?

Does the consumer’s demand manifest ‘the future’ or is it truly as inevitable as it puts itself off to be?

Self Fulfilling Prophecy.

A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true. Although examples of such prophecies can be found in human literature as far back as ancient Greece and ancient India, it is 20th-century sociologist Robert K. Merton who is credited with coining the expression “self-fulfilling prophecy” and formalizing its structure and consequences. In his book Social Theory and Social Structure, Merton gives as a feature of the self-fulfilling prophecy:

“ The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behaviour which makes the original false conception come ‘true’. This specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning.[1] ”

In other words, a true prophetic statement — a prophecy declared as truth when it is not — may sufficiently influence people, either through fear or logical confusion, so that their reactions ultimately fulfill the false prophecy.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy

I personally look at all of history as a self fulfilling prophecy. Most scholars have this naive absolutism believing that all which has befallen man is inevitable, I on the otherhand do not.

The conception of god, morality and the future are all similar in that they are conceptions created by the elite or the aristocracy in order to bait individuals in doing their bidding. Simple as that I’m afraid.

[Provalone]

@Joker

Self Fulfilling Prophecy.

A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true. Although examples of such prophecies can be found in human literature as far back as ancient Greece and ancient India, it is 20th-century sociologist Robert K. Merton who is credited with coining the expression “self-fulfilling prophecy” and formalizing its structure and consequences. In his book Social Theory and Social Structure, Merton gives as a feature of the self-fulfilling prophecy:

“ The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behaviour which makes the original false conception come ‘true’. This specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning.[1] ”

In other words, a true prophetic statement — a prophecy declared as truth when it is not — may sufficiently influence people, either through fear or logical confusion, so that their reactions ultimately fulfill the false prophecy.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy

I personally look at all of history as a self fulfilling prophecy. Most scholars have this naive absolutism believing that all which has befallen man is inevitable, I on the otherhand do not.

The conception of god, morality and the future are all similar in that they are conceptions created by the elite or the aristocracy in order to bait individuals in doing their bidding. Simple as that I’m afraid.

I couldn’t agree with you more. For all we know, the future is just the result of a fashionable “progressive” ideology that sociologically snowballed into cold, hard fact. It’s so hard for us to conceptualize outside of the current realm of concepts; perspective and orientation makes us have subconscious biases that are fairly inescapable. All we can do is recognize this and make new concepts that are in themselves aware of this.

Honestly, we simply speculate that the computer was an inevitable technology. A simple skewing of luck could have made it become the trendy fad it was predicted to be by certain individuals of that time. Hell, all of technology could have ended up that way. In all likelihood, we could just as easily revert back into the hunter-gatherer societies from whence we came. Hunting deer in the ruined streets of Manhattan. Building shelters underneath the remains of the Eiffel Tower. I embrace its coming.

The problem is, such predictions I just made are in themselves self-fulfilling. Thus, is there a way of escaping self-fulfilling prophecies?

[realunoriginal]

@Provalone

Thus, is there a way of escaping self-fulfilling prophecies?

No.

[Provalone]

@realunoriginal

@Provalone

Thus, is there a way of escaping self-fulfilling prophecies?

No.

Exactly, because we have obsessively toiled to precede pretty much everything we do with some statement or doctrine. This is a lot like the justification Joker was talking about in another thread. So let’s think of individuals in society whom justify their actions the least; whom simply engage in actions with little to no regard to its consequences and perceived portrayal: criminals. They are a people who have no future, such a concept is nonexistent in their mental repertoires.

Thus it is our very insight, our very capability of accurately imagining future phenomena that practically forces us to predict, prophesy, and place bets. Wherever, it seems, that there are holes or empty spots in our hierarchical order of the world, that void must be immediately filled with something. When empirical perception isn’t at hand, reason fills it. When reason does not suffice, imagination fills the spot. And when imagination is utterly lacking, we just copy off of someone else’s paper, so to speak, and use whatever they’ve filled that spot with. The latter seems the most popular these days.

[realunoriginal]

@Provalone

Thus it is our very insight, our very capability of accurately imagining future phenomena that practically forces us to predict, prophesy, and place bets. Wherever, it seems, that there are holes or empty spots in our hierarchical order of the world, that void must be immediately filled with something. When empirical perception isn’t at hand, reason fills it. When reason does not suffice, imagination fills the spot. And when imagination is utterly lacking, we just copy off of someone else’s paper, so to speak, and use whatever they’ve filled that spot with. The latter seems the most popular these days.

Well said! =D>

[Joker]

@Provalone

@Joker

Self Fulfilling Prophecy.

A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true. Although examples of such prophecies can be found in human literature as far back as ancient Greece and ancient India, it is 20th-century sociologist Robert K. Merton who is credited with coining the expression “self-fulfilling prophecy” and formalizing its structure and consequences. In his book Social Theory and Social Structure, Merton gives as a feature of the self-fulfilling prophecy:

“ The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behaviour which makes the original false conception come ‘true’. This specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning.[1] ”

In other words, a true prophetic statement — a prophecy declared as truth when it is not — may sufficiently influence people, either through fear or logical confusion, so that their reactions ultimately fulfill the false prophecy.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy

I personally look at all of history as a self fulfilling prophecy. Most scholars have this naive absolutism believing that all which has befallen man is inevitable, I on the otherhand do not.

The conception of god, morality and the future are all similar in that they are conceptions created by the elite or the aristocracy in order to bait individuals in doing their bidding. Simple as that I’m afraid.

I couldn’t agree with you more. For all we know, the future is just the result of a fashionable “progressive” ideology that sociologically snowballed into cold, hard fact. It’s so hard for us to conceptualize outside of the current realm of concepts; perspective and orientation makes us have subconscious biases that are fairly inescapable. All we can do is recognize this and make new concepts that are in themselves aware of this.

Honestly, we simply speculate that the computer was an inevitable technology. A simple skewing of luck could have made it become the trendy fad it was predicted to be by certain individuals of that time. Hell, all of technology could have ended up that way. In all likelihood, we could just as easily revert back into the hunter-gatherer societies from whence we came. Hunting deer in the ruined streets of Manhattan. Building shelters underneath the remains of the Eiffel Tower. I embrace its coming.

The problem is, such predictions I just made are in themselves self-fulfilling. Thus, is there a way of escaping self-fulfilling prophecies?

I couldn’t agree with you more. For all we know, the future is just the result of a fashionable “progressive” ideology that sociologically snowballed into cold, hard fact.

That is basically what I believe in a nut shell. ( Excellent analogy.)

It’s so hard for us to conceptualize outside of the current realm of concepts; perspective and orientation makes us have subconscious biases that are fairly inescapable. All we can do is recognize this and make new concepts that are in themselves aware of this.

Honestly, we simply speculate that the computer was an inevitable technology. A simple skewing of luck could have made it become the trendy fad it was predicted to be by certain individuals of that time. Hell, all of technology could have ended up that way. In all likelihood, we could just as easily revert back into the hunter-gatherer societies from whence we came. Hunting deer in the ruined streets of Manhattan. Building shelters underneath the remains of the Eiffel Tower. I embrace its coming.

Agreed. Many people forget that evolution has no single narrow defined direction and that it doesn’t exist as such.

Evolution is random and relative in that it goes in all directions not to mention in evolution it is possible to go back at the very point one started from like your analogy of reverting back to hunting or gathering in the ruins of Manhattan city.

To this day such a issue has not been resolved in modern academics.

The problem is, such predictions I just made are in themselves self-fulfilling. Thus, is there a way of escaping self-fulfilling prophecies?

No there isn’t and this is the hubris of sapience.

[Joker]

@Provalone

@realunoriginal

@Provalone

Thus, is there a way of escaping self-fulfilling prophecies?

No.

Exactly, because we have obsessively toiled to precede pretty much everything we do with some statement or doctrine. This is a lot like the justification Joker was talking about in another thread. So let’s think of individuals in society whom justify their actions the least; whom simply engage in actions with little to no regard to its consequences and perceived portrayal: criminals. They are a people who have no future, such a concept is nonexistent in their mental repertoires.

Thus it is our very insight, our very capability of accurately imagining future phenomena that practically forces us to predict, prophesy, and place bets. Wherever, it seems, that there are holes or empty spots in our hierarchical order of the world, that void must be immediately filled with something. When empirical perception isn’t at hand, reason fills it. When reason does not suffice, imagination fills the spot. And when imagination is utterly lacking, we just copy off of someone else’s paper, so to speak, and use whatever they’ve filled that spot with. The latter seems the most popular these days.

Excellent post Provalone I couldn’t agree more.

[Joker]

Provalone if you remember in another thread I said god isn’t dead in that in it’s death or absence in the west it merely resurrected itself in metamorphosis as big government but if we take a more careful look at big government it’s religion is the future.

Essentially today’s religion is one of the future and economists have become the new priesthood in enchanting us all with mythologies or superstitions of futurism.

[north]

@Provalone

The future in this day in age is in itself a whole concept. The future. It is a concept that is fairly new; only within the past one hundred or so years has ‘the future’ congealed into such a functional form. There was a clear and distinct point where technology evolved from amusing tinker toys to an inevitably abstruse presence within society. The inevitability of technology laid forth a new portrait of what tomorrow would bring. From then on we have imagined the future as something wholly different in nature from today.

This new paradigm of thought gave writers and artists an entire landscape upon which to build and conceptualize the possibilities of the future in all its mystery. Today, at a point where we are living in a highly-commodified capitalist society, geared toward every whim of the mass consumer, images of tomorrow–in all their grandeur–have been sold at the price of an admission ticket. Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, I Robot, Bladerunner, Mad Max, Terminator, The Matrix, Alien, Predator, Serenity, Children of Men, you name it and it somehow delineates what the future holds for us. And it’s not just movies, advertisements and the Internet both inundate us with pictorials of what we are to expect.

Cliches. They are what most notably plague all Hollywood films, the Internet, and the spheres of mass media and advertisement. It is the perpetuated cliches (i.e. laser blasters, robot uprisings, and floating cars) of these communication highways that have saturated our culture, making us refer to them without ever realizing it. They spill out into our everyday world, becoming apart of it, becoming every bit as legitimate in value as other objects in our lives. We have fallen victim to their seemingly boundless charm. It is because of these images that we’ve been deluged with on a day-to-day basis, that we have this preconceived, subconscious notion of what the future will be like.

And the capitalist machines keeps feeding the monster. It manufactures the fastest, slimmest, sleekest, brightest, most God damned digitally enhanced commodities we can fit in our living rooms. And this is the future; it is being mass produced one cell phone at a time. So to what extent, if any, is the future even real anymore? At what point is it that the future isn’t just the false expectations we’ve been injected with and the resulting meeting of those expectations by the mass market? Some would contend that practicality and progress is what forces us forward, but how do we even know those things are real? How is it that the building of immense skyscrapers and jetpacks aren’t just meeting the demands of the consumer rather than the demands of science. (I should note, I think ‘science’ has formulated into a concept like ‘the future’ and is equally as commodified.)

Does the consumer’s demand manifest ‘the future’ or is it truly as inevitable as it puts itself off to be?

the future is purely in the hands of the consumer

and inventors

[Echo]

The future isn’t bullshit; the media is, however. Effecting us is questionable, as we can’t see into the future but merely predict its outcome. Y2K or atomic warfare or meteors or even, dare I say it, educated people might interfere with our technological imaginings.

I really can’t say what might happen. We’ll probably carry on at the pace we have while destroying the natural environment and our bodies or what’s modernly referred to as “progressing” until we finally become extinct.

[Pk_Sage]

@Joker

Provalone if you remember in another thread I said god isn’t dead in that in it’s death or absence in the west it merely resurrected itself in metamorphosis as big government but if we take a more careful look at big government it’s religion is the future.

Essentially today’s religion is one of the future and economists have become the new priesthood in enchanting us all with mythologies or superstitions of futurism.

ya, often snaped at in a similar sense as the common christian parent does there child to when the child questions the religion i’ve noticed.

[Provalone]

@Joker

Provalone if you remember in another thread I said god isn’t dead in that in it’s death or absence in the west it merely resurrected itself in metamorphosis as big government but if we take a more careful look at big government it’s religion is the future.

Essentially today’s religion is one of the future and economists have become the new priesthood in enchanting us all with mythologies or superstitions of futurism.

Precisely. Even older religions like Christianity are becoming more and more prophetic. Almost all Christian nut cases out there believe in rapture and its inevitable coming. The culture we live in is fucking obsessed with it. Look at all the disaster shows dedicated to December 21, 2012 and decoding Nostradamus. Of course, catastrophic events like 9/11 didn’t help matters in terms of stimulating such a wave of anxiety. Nonetheless, the future is constructed, not revealed. And to that extent, it isn’t just constructed by our actions, but our words and thoughts as well. It baffles me, we honestly think the world revolves around us.

[Provalone]

@Echo

The future isn’t bullshit; the media is, however. Effecting us is questionable, as we can’t see into the future but merely predict its outcome. Y2K or atomic warfare or meteors or even, dare I say it, educated people might interfere with our technological imaginings.

But isn’t the media reflective of certain things in our culture? Honestly, the word “future” is an actual concept. As such, it represents something. What it has represented throughout the ages, as with almost all concepts, has changed. What I assert is that what it, “the future”, has changed to today is a concept that represents ideals that are generated to sell fake and fabricated commodities. Plastic goods and services for plastic principals.

Sure, these ideals begin as innocent affirmations of the imagination (i.e. writers, artists, etc.), but culture recycles such creations into itself, pumping out other creations. That’s fine up until we get to the technological point where we are able to manufacture these ideas into tangible, commodified goods. At that point, we begin buying reality. All concepts that were once firmly planted to a universal reality are let loose.

The media plays a role simply by being one of the mechanisms involved in the cultural recycling of ideas. Through it, we can see and analyze culture and its ideas as it is. It is through the analysis of the current state of these ideas that arbitrates the future. That isn’t to say, however, that there is one future. There are many futures, from dystopias to utopias. Like flavors of ice cream, we are picking flavors of our futures.

I really can’t say what might happen. We’ll probably carry on at the pace we have while destroying the natural environment and our bodies or what’s modernly referred to as “progressing” until we finally become extinct.

Agreed.