Every now and then, I find myself thinking about a theme and then seeing that theme pop up in the articles that the GetPocket service in the Firefox browser suggests might be of interest. In 1972, the book The Limits to Growth was published. I read through it and found the Club of Rome and some MIT scientists and thinkers, using ideas and computer models, predicted trouble about the year 2025. The basic trouble was threats to human life and comfort and survival. The words "climate change" were not much in vogue at that time but my friend and I wondered about what the book predicted. He is a historian of science and asked what the history of the future looked like. History of the future? He meant the scorecard of predictions. In the long run, have predictions of the future been what happened?
That conversation led to our creating a course called "Futures". It was an attempt to have interested students think about the future: theirs, everybody's, whatever angle interested them. What I have been thinking about writing is that the experience of teaching showed me how wrong predictions have been.
The link at the top goes to an article in Religious News Services written by Monsignor Thomas Reese. He basically says what I would say: Don't count us out yet. Msgr. Reese makes a lovely title that encapsulates the main idea:
Think you are in the End Times? - So did 1st Century Christians
He quotes Jesus in Matthew 24:36 that nobody knows the hour or day of the end.
Humans are sensitive to possible danger and quick to deduce from the news or the temperature outside that "This is It!" This relates to my favorite movie, The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!. I recommend the story and the movie. It's bad judgment, curiosity and pride but yet, a Russian spy sub is hung up on a sandbar off Maine. The captain orders a few of his men to go ashore, "borrow" a powerful boat and let him use it to free the sub. The sailors are very, very scared. They know they are in danger.
Just as it is hard to be aging and approaching death and still not knowing when the time of life will be over, it is hard to face dangers and difficulties and still appreciate the good things all around. But try and keep on trying!
