If our species survives this awkward, deadly adolescence, what will we tell our descendants when they ask us, ‘What was the old world like?’
So many things we take for granted now will seem horrific and alien to them. Like all parents, we can’t know all the ways their sensibilities and ideals will differ from our own, but some horrors seem easy to guess: death, war, disease, addiction, mutilation, slavery. The ten thousand miseries of Moloch and the demons of chaos.
As someone who has always enjoyed teaching, I find myself guessing what they’ll be the most confused by. What parts of our history will need the most careful explanation?
Again, it’s impossible to be certain, but it strikes me as likely that one of the things they’ll be most confused by is how easily we were manipulated.
A tweak in the algorithm that serves the content on our smartphones can tip the outcome of a national election. Blatant lies by people in power are swallowed unthinkingly. Cheers for our political team are regurgitated on reflex, while the opposing team’s cheers are mocked and derided, all without a scrap of real effort spent on independent thought or original seeing–even when those cheers determine the fate of millions. We are tricked into fighting and killing each other over scraps while a handful of greedy sociopaths hoard more wealth than they could enjoy in a thousand lifetimes.
It’s impossible to be certain…but I suspect that these are the failings our descendants will puzzle over the most. It will seem to them like a storybook tale; like a bad dream. A fantastic dystopia that traded drama for realism.
Our world has too many emergencies for us to fight with each other. We need to remember, all of us, that our differences are being used to divide us, but differences alone can’t stop us from working together.
We all live together, or we all die–and then our descendants will never have a chance to ask, ‘What was the old world like?’
In Search of Secrets 