The Future: Deal With It

So there you are: Sitting on your couch watching someone’s fifteen minutes of fame run out on national television thinking about your friend Dave and the phone rings.

“Oh my (slandered deity’s name)!” You say into the phone. “Dave! I totally knew you it was you before I picked up!”

“That’s because you have caller ID, you idiot,” Dave responds, his wit as quick as ever.

“No, I mean before you called,” you clarify.

And then it adds up: the phone call, the dream about the homeless man, your last rock/paper/scissors match with your nephew… you’re freakin’ psychic!!!

You begin reading books written by people who have absolutely no scientific credibility so that you can improve your newfound skills. You spend the evenings trying to bend silverware with your mind. You now wear white robes to work and refer to yourself in the third person. Instead of on television, you now watch the news in a bowl of water- tomorrow’s news.

You get your own television show for a season and a half, write three books that get progressively worse reviews, lose all of your family to a drinking problem, and are eventually burned at the stake as a heretic.

I believe that people have fleeting moments of deep understanding and revelations. However, I disagree that it’s something that can be improved. Many people think that these moments can be exercised and practiced so that they can save people from collapsing bridges, tsunamis, and Roland Emmerich movies.

I believe it’s impossible. We will lose people to Roland Emmerich’s movies for centuries to come. All we can do is pray.

I was watching a flock of birds the other evening. It was massive. It was dinnertime at the canal. I watched the way they shifted and obeyed with precision even a robotic Stephen Hawking couldn’t replicate.

In that moment I realized that at one time we probably could all read each other. We probably did know what our friends were about to do or think. Unfortunately, we’re so far removed from the natural world at this point in our history that we’ve lost that sense. In the next few thousand years we’ll probably lose more.

Being inside too much as a kid is the new theory as to why so many of us have such bad eyesight. It’s all becoming clear. Soon we’ll all just be sickly, pale, obese worms that pulsate from our computers to beds and bathrooms in our bleak, grey tunnels. None of us will even remember how to make noises with our mouths to communicate. Need for our sense of smell and hearing will be gone, but we’ll still have two tiny eyes with which to see our screens. We’ll live to an average thirty-two years and die of an intestinal blockage. Meanwhile, the human race will be so emotionally and consciously neutered that no one will notice that all of the other animals built spaceships and colonized Venus two thousand years ago.

Enjoy 2010... while you still have fingers.