Exercise in Utopia
It may be that posterity, which will despise us for our blind and stupid lives, will find some road to happiness.
– Astroff, ‘Uncle Vanya’
In five hundred years things are going to be different.
Those who want to explore space will take a ship and sail across the stars. They will discover other worlds, full of wonders. They might peacefully colonise them, or establish local representative offices. Space trade will begin and intergalactic trade unions will be founded.
Those who prefer to stay here, on Earth, will do just that, and that will be fine. No one will call them retrogrades because these people will serve a useful role. They’ll keep home flourishing.
Diversity of languages won’t disappear, of course. Languages will continue to evolve and cross-pollinate. Vocabulary will expand to incorporate new technological, territorial, and cultural influences. Unless space discoveries drastically change our worldview, grammar will remain largely the same.
People will find fulfilling freedom, while accepting some necessary constraints. Economic conditions will exist in harmony with the environment. Inequalities will decrease, resolving frustration. Everyone will do what they most enjoy doing. Engineers will be engineers. Shop keepers will have shops. A perfect role for everyone.
Nation-states, if they still exist, will be defined by their culture, and not their political activities. Diversity will be celebrated by a series of international festivals. Art will integrate and transcend the darkest of human impulses, such as fear or aggression, by channelling them into creativity. No one will try to repress the innate violence of human nature. Turbulent emotional energies will be harnessed and neutralised by vivid metaphors and art.
Those who retain the competitive mind-set will take part in sporting tournaments. They will cherish the feelings or victory and defeat as powerful, primeval stirrings of their origins.
Those who live in the farthest reaches of space will love these festivals, which will charge their lives with meaning.
Nature will restore her dominions. The continents will vegetate. Animals, even formerly endangered species, will flourish. The oceans will return to their pristine conditions, before humans despoiled them.
Scientists and linguists will work together to enable people to understand what animals think and even communicate with them. This new closeness will generate bonds of empathy between the human world and the animal world. Animals will, for the first time, make sure their voices are heard in human parliaments. Laws will protect all sentient beings.
Whatever happens, there is a strong chance that the people of the future will see our age very differently from how we see it now.