The Future is Back Again

Well the old year has come to an end and the new one begins in a flurry of tennis tournaments and involuntary days off.  As I look back over the past year it occurs to me that I should really watch where I'm going.  So rather than indulge in pointless retrospectives of the litany of failures, disasters and acts of simple stupidity let us instead look forward to the tangled mess of unrealistic expectations, irrelevant dreams and unfulfilled hopes that will make up 2013.

Predicting the future isn't that difficult really.  Once I had performed the necessary rituals, sacrificed the requisite animals and got out of rehab after indulging in the appropriate mind expanding narcotics I was ready to go.  In truth I needn't have gone to all that effort.  The truth about the immediate future is that it tends to be pretty much like the present only more so.  People say that history repeats itself but so does the future which is not surprising when one considers that they are pretty much the same thing viewed from different perspectives.

Everything remains pretty much the same year after year until after a decade or so you suddenly look back and realise that the world bears very little resemblance to the one we were living in just a scant ten years ago.  Even so we only realise this if we make a conscious effort to notice it.

Of course there are occasions when change is rapid and dramatic.  The easiest way to identify these occasions is from the shockingly high body count.  Setting aside such gruesome revolutions in the affairs of men some basic themes can be identified.  In Australia there will be an election and a politician will win it.  This is as it should be.  Having a general public deeply interested in politics is usually an indication that something is going terribly wrong.  General apathy is normally a sign that things are going well.

Around the world people with a deep interest in politics will attempt to changes things for the better.  For all our sakes let's hope they fail.  Other people will seek power, influence and control over their fellow humans.  Even the most successful of them will achieve less than they think.  Of all the things to strive for power is the least attainable and the most likely to encounter opposition.  Most people with power gained it as a side effect of something else they were doing.  Which is not to say they don't enjoy it.

Fragmentation of power is one of our strongest guarantees of, if not freedom then at least a bearable existence.  Even those who desire nothing but power will find it impossible to wield without at least the tacit consent of the ruled.  When that consent is withdrawn all hell tends to break loose.  The clever powerful never let it get that far.  The stupid powerful learn just before they're dragged out of their hidey hole and killed that they didn't actually have as much power as they thought.  Ultimately you can only herd people in more or less the direction they're prepared to go.

So what does the future actually contain?  Simple; dust and bones.