The Future Human

Future archeologists will scrape petrified chewing gum from the undersides of plastic tabletops, and brush dust from the labels of soda cans.  They will analyze, record, and categorize soil samples from the ancient plains of suburbia. They will struggle to find empirical examples of specific human actions that led to an increase in human happiness; with the hope that there may be some discernable behavioral pattern evident in the analysis.

Future historians will read electronic media records, personal correspondences, and financial records, looking for evidence of consistent biological and praxeological drivers.  They will mine hard-drives and discover Facebook, reproduce the code, and develop simulations and algorithms in order to predict what happened to produce such a program; and what happened after such a system as so-called “social media” was introduced to the world?  The future writers will look at portraits and landscapes and selfies and infographics, in order to get an intimate feel for what it must have felt like to be alive at our time.  They will look at our art, our cinema, our news media, and our music; and they will look at our violence, materialism, and ignorance.  They will see our abuse, our cowardice, and our self-pity.  They will see our confusion, our trauma—and our ironic intelligence—and they will all be baffled.

The future human will shudder to think how we can wake up every morning and not just weep out of pure hopelessness.  They will marvel at our ignorance; but they will probably excuse it partially due to the fact that we must numb ourselves to survive the rampant aggression and oppression and depression thrust upon the individual.  They will correlate our vices with the limits of our oppression, and these correlations will be hotly debated in future philosophical discussions.  The future human will wonder how we managed to lace our over-sized shoes, given the level of logical contradictions apparent in the evidence of our culture.  They will read Shakespeare, Aristotle, Socrates, Rand, Nietzsche, Twain and Molyneux; they will read textbooks, The Huffington Post and The Bible—and they will be baffled.

They will ask, “How the hell did they manage to live so long, while pumping all these toxic substances into their bodies?”  “Why did they develop these obviously inefficient systems of ‘social engineering?’” “How did the market survive massive, seemingly random, self-inflicted fluctuations in population, supply, and demand?” “How did they function under such high levels of stress, and continue to innovate?” “Did the average human learn to read only so they could read labels and basic instructions?” In their minds, our intelligence and resilience will be matched only by our self-destruction and stupidity.

The future human will analyze arguments using logic and reason (in true Vulcan fashion) to determine their value.  They will not consider status, or wealth, or success, or charisma, or power; that is, outside of the respective effects these things have on our paradigm.  Linguists and sociologists will bicker over the definitions of jargon such as “love,” “race,” “religion,” “cult,” “government,” and “family.”

The words of the early 20th century Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes, strike me as appropriate in introducing this discussion:

 “...our test of truth is a reference to either a present or an imagined future majority in favor of our view.”  

(emphasis is mine)

      I have my qualms with Holmes' ideas, but a full analysis of my objections is beyond the scope of this essay—better at this point to focus on our agreement.  Though I do not think that the ultimate test of truth lies in our imagination, I do think it is a useful exercise to ponder what a future human would think of our society.

It is my ultimate ambition to adopt the perspective of an imagined superior future majority.  That is not to claim my imagined future is accurate, or even rational, based on the trajectory of human society.  Rather, envisioning a superior future majority is a way to visualize an ideal society, and work backwards logically to contribute to the outcome of this ideal future society—or at the very least, progress toward that ideal.  

 This method of visualizing the outcome before and during the development of a strategy for improvement has been consistently successful in many areas of personal self-improvement. Athletes, for instance, benefit immensely from a consistent regimen of mental rehearsal: a detailed visualization of success.  Musicians, and other performing artists report similar benefits.  Though visualization is not, of course, sufficient to produce the ultimate results (the athlete still must do the grueling physical labor), the practice of visualizing the goal with immaculate clarity is a powerful tool for developing strategy and providing motivation.

The Future Human is an attempt to reverse-engineer solutions to world problems, from the ideal of a potential future humanity. This blog will explore modern political philosophy, as well as examine current events for their future historical significance.