Do We Think Too Much About the Future?

Only 14 percent of Americans, if they could, would choose to live in the future: almost half would prefer the past instead. It wasn't always like this. For centuries, people did not bother to predict what would happen: rather, they lived in a world where the end was already written, often in a religious sense. Today, however, the word "future" has become almost an obsession, so much so that it seems more real than the present. The argument here is simple but unsettling: perhaps thinking too much about the future not only does not help us, but traps us in a state of anxiety and helplessness, because any honest prediction, starting from a present that seems fragile to us, gives us increasingly bleak scenarios. In the 16th century, Martin Luther was convinced that the end of the world was just around the corner and that God was speeding things up. Three centuries later, during the French Revolution, Robespierre instead spoke of "starting History" and called on everyone to build their own destiny. The modern idea of the future was formed in the midst of these extremes: a historical construct, invented between 1517 and 1793, which we take for granted today. Reinhart Koselleck, a historian, tells how this mentality was born when the Church lost control of the narrative of time, science began to ask uncomfortable questions, and technology made it possible to measure and plan. The future, once a mystical promise, has become a domain of probability, investment, and insurance. Today we are surrounded by it: from stock market algorithms to science fiction novels, from weather forecasts to political policies. But here comes the paradox: no one really knows the future, yet everyone uses it to exercise power. Carissa Véliz, a philosopher from Oxford, dismantles the myth of prediction: most predictions are "power moves disguised as descriptions," or even camouflaged commands. When an authority announces that it will rain, it often exaggerates on purpose: better to have us bring an umbrella than risk letting us get wet. And when a tech executive predicts the catastrophe of artificial intelligence, there is often a game of interests behind it. Often, predictions are simply wrong, because the data is incomplete, people are unpredictable, and coincidences change everything. But even when they are well-intentioned, predictions can do damage: think of the systems that decide bail or whether we deserve a loan, based on algorithms that "predict" our reliability. What is missing in the public discourse is that no one warns us of these "hidden prophecies" that affect our lives. Véliz suggests being wary of predictions, preparing instead of predicting, and living as much as possible in the present. Joshua Rothman, the author, adds a personal note: yes, thinking about the future can be useful, and even hoping is not wrong. But the biggest problem is not what we don't know about the future, it's what we know about the present: if we only see problems, any realistic future will seem threatening to us. Hans Rosling, a great global health statistician, said that "the world is bad but it's getting better": like a newborn in an incubator, fragile but in better condition than yesterday. We must be vigilant, of course, but not let ourselves be paralyzed by fear. If we want a less bleak future, we must also have the courage to be a little unreasonable, to hope in spite of everything. Only then will the future cease to be a trap. The future is not an oracle to be consulted, but an exercise in imagination that also requires a touch of madness. If this perspective has changed you, you can mark it on Lara Notes with I'm In: choose whether it's a spark of interest, an experience you recognize, or a belief you want to pursue. And if you feel like talking to someone about it — maybe telling the story of Robespierre, or Rosling's statistics — on Lara Notes you can tag it with Shared Offline: it will be a sign that there was something special about that conversation. This Note comes from an article in The New Yorker and saves you 3 minutes.