Futurology

None of us know the future. None of us. And past attempts at futurology have often been hilariously wrong-footed. You would think that an intelligent person would learn from this, that to be so rock-solid sure of your position can be an unwise move. If anything these days, certainty is the least solid ground from which to preach, given that the world is awash with information, partial information, misinformation and deliberate disinformation. No sirree, Bob, I’m not certain at all

Not so, Dr Gareth Dale, of Brunel University, who regularly pontificates about climate change and the coming age. As he did on last week’s The Moral Maze, an excellent discussion forum which often provides me with food for thought. The panellists and the expert witnesses they get to hear and interrogate offer food for thought and room for manoeuvre. An open-minded listener will often find their preconceptions challenged and their dogged determination to stick to a position founded on sand as directly opposing positions suddenly seem entirely reasonable.

The question was “What’s our moral responsibility to the future?” and as expected a range of opinion was aired from, ‘make the present bearable’ to ‘make unspeakable sacrifices for the good of future generations, even though they will almost certainly never thank us’. We get it right, they live happy lives, our actions go unremarked. We get it wrong, they suffer, we (the long dead) are blamed but unaccountable. It seems as if either way we can’t win.

Dr Dale was, of course, the harbinger of doom and gloom. To him, every disaster prediction is unassailable truth and the world will end in a fireball unless we cease all joy now. It could have been Greta Thunderbug herself, with the total lack of nuance, the finger of blame and the insistence that life on Earth now depends on living humans self-flagellating and doing without… everything. We had a taste of that in the format of Storm Eunice (‘EU nice?’ as some wag remarked.) and a sour taste it was. Power out for much of the weekend meant that, had we not had a coal-fired stove and an open log hearth we would have been cold as well as in the dark.

There is little romantic about candlelight when it is not by choice. I expect Dr Dale has a very nice salary, an assured pension and drives a lovely new electric car, which he charges up at work on his employers dime. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that he has a solar array and a powerwall; all things denied to those on even average incomes. I surmise all this because I have learned that those who demand sacrifice rarely offer up themselves.

Let’s do what ‘they’ do when seeking to prove a point. Let’s take a quote out of context. In one of Dr Dale’s screeds he writes: “A major chimney of pollution could be sealed off by relieving the rich of their superyachts and private jets, ending their frequent flying, and revoking their license to drill.” That’s a pretty unequivocal position. Considering he teaches Politics at Brunel University, I wonder how impartially he presents his lectures. (It need hardly be said that he utterly despises Boris Johnson.)

The amount of knowledge out there today is unprecedented. The Internet makes it accessible to all. But it is of little use if the weight and complexity of it all is too much for any individual to process. We rely on expert interpretation, but expertise rarely comes without its own prejudices, and it remains almost impossible to find a truly balanced appraisal of the facts. Whether that be in science, medicine, social studies, politics, justice… whatever, we are all held in a perpetual state of ignorance.

My approach has been to embrace that ignorance while seeking to find my own way through the mists. Trust no individual sources and beware the madness of crowds. It’s a lonely path, along which companions will accompany you just so far before you discover your own schisms. The present is a mish-mash of distorted versions of events and even the past is not a completely open book. How then, does anybody have the sheer brass neck to claim to know what comes next?

The Bright Side?

It is tempting to imagine that, after the lockdown, after the Covid-19 threat subsides, after we’ve won ‘the war’, Britain will enter a period of contemplation and industrious unity to rebuild our society in a form fit for the future. But whether your idealised future is a return to a simpler, agrarian past or a great technological surge into the robot age, it is likely that all will be disappointed. I don’t believe much will change. Oh, for sure, a small minority, already in a position to do it, will change their lifestyles entirely, but on a national scale this will be insignificant.

The naysayers will continue to say nay – it’s what they do; they just can’t help themselves. The agitators will carry on agitating – it’s all they know and now they will be invigorated by their self-told myths about how the party they hate so much deliberately tried to thin the herd. And all the tensions that already exist will continue to exist: left versus right, the west versus the rest, the educated versus the ignorant and of course the great imaginary crusade of the Labour Party… whatever it is they think they stand for now.

The one thing which will not be happening – even for the briefest period – is any form of national unity. If ever such a thing happened in the past – and it’s debatable whether it ever really did – the chances of this happening now or ever again are remote. And it is mostly because despite all the open mouths and begging bowls we are actually doing pretty well.

Our personal freedoms are so great we imagine that every request, every short-term curtailment is a cruel diminishment of them. In the past people behaved with greater discipline and respect, so little formal inducement was needed; now you are free to be as obnoxious as you wish and some human rights lawyer will argue your case, no matter how harmful your intent. Compared to any time in history our lives are so rich we believe that any reduction in our riches is impoverishment.

Freedom of religion and religious expression has led us to beliefs so narrow and partisan that any dissent from our personal orthodoxy is regarded as the most acute form of oppression. Practices utterly alien to the national psyche and interest are defended so firmly that it feels like a snub to the national interest. Whatever happened to the idea of all being part of a nation and all contributing to its interests? In striving for the vibrant, multicultural vision a great many are fearful that their indigenous culture has become second-class.

Not given to futurology much, the coming years are likely to find us become even more multi-multicultural, even more economically stratified and despite all predictions of that robot world of leisure, the majority will be brown and low caste. The best we can hope for is that the mouths of the masses are stuffed full enough to quell the urges to revolt. I don’t believe the future is as bright as some wish for. Covid-19 notwithstanding, we are probably living through the best times most of us will ever see*.

(*On the bright side, what do I know; maybe we WILL be stirred to positive action?)

Futurology

What a great job it must be, predicting the future. Unlike a normal job, where you are paid by results, guessing forecasting future events carries none of the anxiety-inducing stresses of meeting performance criteria. No sleepless nights, agonising over whether the decision you have to make tomorrow will end your career. No panic attacks that you will fail to hit your targets. No worries over being judged and found wanting... at least not until you are long dead. And unlike most Olympians, the best of your work is always ahead of you..

The near future? Pah, that’s a mug’s game. No, what you need to do is first amass sufficient credibility by loudly explaining recent past events. Not too recent that the outcomes are yet to be fully known; not so long ago that people gave forgotten the basics. Ideally you should bring in an unconnected but highly topical event and conflate the two in an imaginative headline-grabbing way and promote it widely enough that the mere momentum of its ubiquity gives it a certain élan. For instance, that global islamic jihad is a by-product of climate change - that was a corker.

A flamboyant delivery always helps – perhaps effect an overtly camp persona and maybe adopt a speech tick -  or possibly describe yourself as not being constrained by the traditionally rigid scientific disciplinary boundaries but offering a pan-socio-scientific vision which exceeds the normal confines of narrowly defined fields of study. You could be, for instance, a ‘chemo-physicist specialising in neural economics with an interest in the cyber-alignment of political narrative’, or some such concoction and say yes to any offer of media exposure.

Of course, it’s a fine line you tread; Mo Ansar’s mistake (remember him?) was adopting the mantle of wise representative of a faith while that faith was busily recruiting walking ordnance and declaring death to the west. It was all too close at hand and all too gloomy, yet not gloomy enough. And he was a twat. Credibility and hope is what you want to aim for, or credibility and doom. So, for instance, you could predict that in the future the long-awaited machine revolution will truly come and then you have a choice. You can either explain how this will let humans live in undreamed of luxury and indolence, or else you can portray an image of bonded slavery to mechanical masters.

Whatever you do say, should you live long enough to be wheeled out in fifty years’ time to reflect on the outcomes, you can blame the failure of the future to do as you expected on the fact that it was your own forecast that alerted people to change that future course, or else you can bask in the glory of a lucky guess. It’s a no-lose situation. Go on, give it a try; climate, the economy, population demographics, technology... all ripe for exploitation in the futures game.

A bit thundery...

Of course, it’s getting to be a crowded market and maybe the opportunities for soothsayers are not so rosy as they once were. As Michael Gove suggested, we’re all getting a bit fed up of experts offering contradictory advice and opposing opinions. But, trust me, I’ve been around a bit and I have studied the runes and I’m pretty confident in predicting that the game of telling the future has a healthy, er, future ahead of it. Just you wait and see. That'll be five quid, thanks.