The Writer found this blog piece in Amor Mundi, a publication of the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. What do those of you who write futuristic stories think of this?
“With the 500th birthday of Thomas More’s Utopia in sight, Terry Eagleton considers what it means to dream of a perfect world: “To portray the future in the language of the present may well be to betray it. A truly radical change would defeat the categories we currently have to hand. If we can speak of the future at all, it follows that we are still tied to some extent to the present. This is one reason why Marx, who began his career in contention with the middle-class utopianists, steadfastly refused to engage in future-talk. The most a revolutionary could do was to describe the conditions under which a different sort of future might be possible. To stipulate exactly what it might look like was to try to programme freedom. If Marx was a prophet, it was not because he sought to foresee the future. Prophets–Old Testament ones, at least–aren’t clairvoyants. Rather than gaze into the future, they warn you that unless you feed the hungry and welcome the immigrant, there isn’t going to be one. Or if there is, it will be deeply unpleasant. The real soothsayers are those hired by the big corporations to peer into the entrails of the system and assure their masters that their profits are safe for another 30 years. We live in a world that seeks to extend its sovereignty even over what doesn’t yet exist…”
Read more at www.hannaharendtcenter.org
Okay, yeah, I’ve been yapping about my little corner of the world for ten years now. Folks are starting to listen. What’s that about studying history so we don’t repeat it? All I want is to warn others: I made a mistake in 1981 and sold the next 34 years of my life. “You can check out anytime you want, but you can never, ever leave.” –Don Henley, “Hotel California.” Music and writing are nonviolent ways to change the world. Yes, people are leaving, busting out, breaking the chains the hold them. We are coming. We’re growing in numbers. Many are pissed off. We’ll come with shofars, we’ll play very loud music and those locked doors will tumble down. Libertad!
“To portray the future in the language of the present may well be to betray it.”
The only way to betray the future is to undermine its potential. Language and thinking are inextricably
linked. No beginning or end. Change thinking, change language. Change language, change thinking….
“A truly radical change would defeat the categories we currently have to hand. ”
Not necessarily. We need to get better at preserving what should be preserved and transforming what
needs to be transformed.
” If we can speak of the future at all, it follows that we are still tied to some extent to the present. ”
No it doesn’t. If we engage our imaginations and open our minds to the unknown, we can invent what
hasn’t been invented. We do it all the time.
“The most a revolutionary could do was to describe the conditions under which a different sort of future might be possible. ”
I do not agree that that is the most a revolutionary can do—but even if it was, What’s wrong with that?
“To stipulate exactly what it might look like was to try to program freedom.”
Futurists don’t stipulate exactly what it might look like. We engage in foresight, anticipatory thinking,
envisioning, imagining, inventing, creating and “what if” scenario planning. The problems of today are
largely a result of the solutions of yesterday. Designing with the desired future in mind, and asking
ourselves “and then what?, and then what? and then what?” saves time and money and saves us from
the unintended consequences of our actions that undermine our ability to thrive over time.
” If Marx was a prophet, it was not because he sought to foresee the future.”
Marx was not a prophet.
“Prophets–Old Testament ones, at least–aren’t clairvoyants. Rather than gaze into the future, they warn you that unless you feed the hungry and welcome the immigrant, there isn’t going to be one. Or if there is, it will be deeply unpleasant.”
Agreed.
“We live in a world that seeks to extend its sovereignty even over what doesn’t yet exist.”
I actually wish that were the case. Are we not responsible for our effect on future generations’ ability to thrive over time? Is it not our ethical obligation to leave this place better than we found it? We are all responsible for the difference we make. This applies across time and space
“Perhaps it is impossible to draw a line between being too agnostic about the future and being too
assured about it. ”
One cannot be assured about the future. One can only create favorable conditions to increase the
possibility that humans and other life will flourish on Earth indefinitely–
“For Benjamin, seeking to portray the future is a kind of fetishism. Instead, we are driven backwards into this unexplored territory with our eyes fixed steadily on the injustice and exploitation of the past. ”
What good can come from that? What would be the point?
” In any case, the energies we invest in envisaging a better world might consume the energies we need to create it.”
Envisaging a better world is one way to be intentional about creating the future we want. “If you don’t
know where you are going, any road will take you there.” Chinese Proverb.
If you don’t where “there” is, how will you know if you are headed in the right direction?
Love this blog excerpt. Sci-fi and futurist writers often write about the future with the aim of getting readers to start thinking creatively about how to change the behaviors and systems that exist in our present time, although there’s some division between writers who write utopian sci-fi vs. post-apocalyptic.
Last year I attended a talk in Seattle led by Cory Doctorow and Neal Stephenson, who introduced Project Hieroglyph and discussed the positive ramifications of utopian sci-fi on scientific curiosity and technological breakthroughs. They mentioned that negative portrayals of the future in popular sci-fi (such as The Hunger Games, to name one) had the potential to cultivate fatalist attitudes and a sense of learned helplessness in readers, paralyzing them from moving forward into a better future.
On the other end of the spectrum, in an interview with TED.com, Neil Gaiman talks about science fiction taking a close look at one aspect of current society and then showing us what may happen in the future if we continue to behave the way we do today. He believes that science fiction is never actually about the future, but it is about NOW. That even utopian futures will never be perfect, because people are broken, and what gives us hope is that people usually try to fix things and learn from our mistakes (the Berlin Wall coming down, for example).
Links:
http://hieroglyph.asu.edu/
http://ideas.ted.com/we-ask-5-people-creating-the-future-so-what-will-it-be-like/