Where is the future?
Finding our fortunes in unexpected places
I feel I ought to warn you at the outset that this story takes some strange twists and turns. The future is of course much bigger than any of us can conceive, so inevitably we will only touch a tiniest part of that immensity.
To talk about a future at all, we have to talk about time. Without time there is no past, and no future. And time, as Einstein showed, is not constant. He proposed that time moves more slowly on the top of a mountain than at sea level. This has since been confirmed, although at rates so small that we do not need to take them into account in our daily goings-on. Identical twins separated at birth with one living in the Himalayas and the other by the sea will have had different experiences of life if they meet again 50 years later. The fact that the mountain-dweller is marginally younger than the seaside-dweller will not be a major factor in those differences. However, the principle is there. The further you move from the influence of gravity, time moves more slowly. Which means that the future is not fixed either.
The planet we live on spins on its axis and moves around the Sun. Night follows day. Spring follows winter, and moves towards summer. It has a cyclical quality. For living beings such as us humans, there is another ingredient. We are intensely aware of the experience of time because we are born, we mature and each of us will die. Whereas the cycles of the days and years go round and round, organic life has a directional nature. It has a past — and therefore, also, a future.
The physicists tell us that time is experienced more strongly when there is gravity, heat, matter. To that we can add carnality. Einstein famously did ‘thought experiments’, such as imagining what happens to a beam of light on a fast-moving train. Here is a thought experiment I’d like to explore. It takes us in the opposite direction from the condensed realms where time is most strongly felt, towards those of less physicality. Ready?
Does the colour yellow experience time? Does love experience time? Or kindness? Or compassion?
These qualities have been described by humans as far back as our historical records can take us. The Greeks personified them and referred to them as gods. We have all experienced them, or witnessed them working through others. It’s uplifting to see. Do these frequencies only experience time when they play out through something more carnal, such as a human? Or to put the question another way, would kindness exist if nobody was there to give it expression? It is my contention here that humans can change the future when we are influenced by something greater than ourselves, by something from out of time.
There are so many examples of this. Here’s one. One afternoon in October 1984 Bob Geldof (who was then the lead singer of the Boomtown Rats) came home from an unproductive day at the recording studio and turned on the TV. It showed a news report about a famine in Ethiopia. It caught his attention. He phoned a musician friend and over the next couple of days they composed a song together. They then asked more friends to record it with them, to raise funds for the relief effort. They called themselves Band Aid, and recorded ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ in a single afternoon. That experience changed Bob Geldof’s future, and opened up new futures for many others too.
I’m not sure if Bob Geldof would say he was moved by something, but others certainly thought so. He was one of those people who saw something was wrong, and had the acumen, the vision, the resources to respond. Our history books are full of stories of the medical pioneers and advocates of social change whose work facilitated the futures of others who they didn’t know and would never meet.
That’s one side of the coin. There is another side. Our history books also tell about acts of violence, brutality and cruelty, and of those who materially profit from such acts. Reading such stories makes me wonder if there is something unhinged in our species. What makes people dedicate their lives to developing instruments that can kill as many other people as possible, as quickly as possible? Each of those lives prematurely ended is the curtailment of a possible future. I don’t know what frequencies such people connect to, but I do know that they aren’t frequencies that I want to mix with. And maybe that’s the point. Maybe we humans are loose cannons, and it’s up to each of us to choose what to associate with.
There are also those who see a possibility that has always been there but has not been acted upon. One day in the late 17th century the French physicist Denis Papin watched the lid of a boiling kettle as it rattled and moved with the rising steam. He started to think about ways to work with that power. The invention of the steam engine, the industrial revolution, factories, trains — all can be traced back to his insight. He was able to explore that property of water in a way that hadn’t been done before.
There is one more ingredient I would like to add into this mix. It is curious how some futures almost seem to want to happen, and take every opportunity to come through, while others don’t really get going.
Science fiction writers spend their time building possible futures. Some of these imaginings have come into our world, and some haven’t. For example, twentieth-century science fiction novels often had huge computers, such as HAL in ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. They saw the future as centralised. But something else was nudging in the opposite direction. In 1975 Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft, to produce personal computers. After PCs there came laptops, then tablets, then mobile phones. The stronger trend was away from giant, centralised control and towards individual empowerment.
Will this trend continue? At the moment it looks like it. Given the choice between using public transport and using your own, which would you prefer? Most of us resort to public transport only when there is no alternative. Would you prefer to take your dirty washing to a public laundrette or use a washing machine at home? The trend for the last 200 years has been towards greater individual autonomy and empowerment.
Where does such a trend come from? Is it part of a larger cycle that we have not yet been able to imagine? Are there greater seasons that we can catch the way of — or miss? I suspect so.
So, where is the future? For me, it is in each of us, and which future we activate is up to each of us. It is in every moment, when we choose to do something — or decide not to. It is in small decisions and big ones. It is in what we allow to move us, and the impulses we resist.
What does your future hold? Among other things, mine is a world where every new baby is welcomed and loved, regardless of the circumstances of their arrival. They are the future of all of us.
