Hey there, future humans.
Greetings from 2011. How’s, like, cold fusion and hovercraftery going?
You’re probably wondering why I’m writing. Well, I was looking at a photograph1 of one of my ancestors a few days ago, and that got me thinking about the past, or better, the future.
1This is an image created when light hits a light-sensitive surface we call “film”
You see, when I look at photographs of people from A Long Time Ago, which for me means anything before 1940, I am prone to think that the people in those photographs were simpler than I am. I’m not very good at remembering that the people from the past were not so different from me. Or at least that they, you know, thought about stuff.
And that made me want to tell you something. That something is this: even though we 21st-century folk look primitive and childlike, what with our gasoline engines and our clunky communication devices that don’t allow us to transport ourselves to whatever dimension we’d like, and even though when you look at pictures of us and think, Jesus2 they were backwards. Well even though all of this, I wanted to remind you that we, well, that we think about stuff.
2I mean, you won’t think, Jesus, because you’ll have long since dispensed with the superstitions we call religion, but you know what I mean.
I know this will be hard to imagine – that it will be hard to think of us as people with complex thoughts and emotions, because you’ll be basing your judgments on whatever shreds of evidence are still around.3
3A chip carrying the extent of human knowledge and consciousness, implanted into your brain at birth, perhaps?
I know this to be true because of how the people in my era judge our forebears. When we see a black-and-white photograph of someone’s great-great-grandparents toiling behind a plow4 in rural Iowa, we struggle to imagine that those people probably had zillions and zillions (I assume “zillions” will be an actual number, by the time you read this) of complex thoughts – about the meaning of life and their purposes on Earth and what love really is.
4In the olden days, we cultivated our food in the ground. I know, crazy, right?
It’s hard for us to imagine those old-timers considering the hard questions because we tend to equate intelligence and complex thought with technological advances. We think that, because people in 1811 didn’t have telephones, they also didn’t think about the potential futility of human existence. Or about the battle between animal instinct and evolved consciousness. Or about how the wind works.
Our mistake is forgivable, I suppose. We tend to think of knowledge as a stepwise process – that today’s knowledge was built on yesterday’s knowledge. For example, in 2011, we don’t yet know how to make an ionic displacement conducer because we haven’t even made an ionic displacement transductor.
But, future humans, knowing how to transduce displaced ions (or whatever that machine I just made up does) is a different kind of thought than what I’m talking about. I’m talking about existential thought, which is pretty well universal, or at least so it seems to me.
It is true that, here in the Dark Ages of the 21st Century, we are pretty lucky: we have more time for these deep thoughts now that we’re not constantly fighting with one another and now that we have things like grocery stores5 and refrigerators. But we tend to think that this extra time makes us superior thinkers – that no one before us could have had the complex thoughts that we do. Even though we know this isn’t true. We know people have had deep, complicated thoughts for centuries. We know this because of the works of Plato6 and Chaucer7 and Dante8 and Shakespeare9 and a whole raft of other writers you may or may not have heard of.
5We drive to these in our cars and manually select food for purchase, which we later combine to make “meals.”
6Greek guy.
7English guy.
8Italian guy.
9Another English guy.
We’re lucky those works survived. I’m not so sure anything from our time will. In fact, I can’t imagine how you will ever be able to read this; I’m guessing that you’ll no longer be using clunky machines that look like metal mouths to read words encoded by JavaScript.10 My pleas to you will probably be lost forever.
10An Internet11 programming language.
11This thing we’re all still excited about, that lets computers talk to each other.
But, in case they aren’t, remember: I know 2011 seems like a long time ago, and I know that when you look at the pictures that might survive the hundreds of years between now and then (or then and now, as the case may be), you’ll be tempted to think that we’re a pretty simple group of people.12
12This, I confess, will only be made worse by this thing called Facebook which, by the time you read this, will have either taken over the world or gone the way of the telegram.
We’re not as dumb as you will be tempted to assume.13 We think about our place in the universe, and why we might be here, and where it’s all going, and what we might be able to do about it.
In other words, we’re just as confused as you are.
Your friend,
Paul
13This, despite the questionable facial hair. Some of that is ironic, by the way.
For more from Paul…
Past work on FlipCollective.com.
To follow him on Twitter.
To befriend him on Facebook.
To send him an email.
Related Posts
I recently spent two weeks in Spain promoting the translation of my book, Can I Keep My Jersey? (Me Puedo Quedar La Camiseta?, thanks for asking.) On the trip, I shook hands, I signed copies of the book and I did interviews for newspapers and radio stations. I did all of those things, mostly, in Spanish. I speak Spanish with the same level ...
It used to be simple. You got the girl’s number, you called her, you hoped you’d get her voicemail, you waited for her to call back, you made a plan to get Italian. But now? Now, nobody uses the telephone for the “phone” part. So, unless the girl is not a girl at all – i.e. over 40 – you’re going to need to send a text message. ...
You are probably aware that there used to be a 17-year-old in Florida named Trayvon Martin and that there is no longer a 17-year-old in Florida named Trayvon Martin. You are probably also aware that many people – athletes and celebrities and politicians alike – have come out in condemnation of the circumstances surrounding Trayvon Martin’s...
When I was 18, I left my tiny Kansas hometown to play basketball at Iowa State University. During my college career, I cared so much about basketball that I was willing to put up with screaming coaches, early-morning practices, and the complete absence of any social life. I worried more than most CEOs. I slept less than most workaholics. To combat ...
Imagine this scenario, if you will: I’m standing in a room. I don’t know how I got into this room. There is another man in this room with me. The man tells me that if I stay in this room with him for the next 24 hours, if I follow his orders, if I put my absolute trust in his guidance, and if I tell him I like his haircut once every...
Comments