Dear Future

 Dear Future,

I’m writing this to you – sending these words to a possible Thereafter – not knowing if you will be, or if you will stumble upon me, or if you will ever understand my words. Now is most certainly not your time, but perhaps your time will come; perhaps things are not so bleak as they look.

It is late August 2024. I anticipate a collapse into totalitarianism over the next few years, primarily in the West, but perhaps also globally; these things are infectious. Since late March 2020, I have been trying to make sense of whether such a collapse is underway, and if yes, what chances it has of coming to pass. But the pace of events has been electrifying and I am but a humble man making my way with a family in tow, in Leeds, on a very low income. I have put my shoulder to the grindstone of various endeavours and found the veracity of both my efforts and theirs sorely wanting. 

My assessment, for what it's worth, is that we are too far gone, that our humanity has atrophied too much. Totalitarianism is the obvious consequence, given other factors such as global mass media. To the degree this slide into debauchery and mob violence was planned, it is an incompetent plan. So if it is indeed a conspiracy, it is a conspiracy of idiots crashing down on the society of idiots that spawned them. We are all variously to blame.

Something about humanity, especially in the West, gave up. One reason for this must have been the curious juxtaposition of convenience and abundant consumer goods on the one hand, and ever more squalidly busy lives on the other. Another aspect is undoubtedly the grotesque wealth disparities between the many peoples and classes of the world. Another is the rapidly accelerating breakdown in our ability to engage in healthy and productive dialogue across personal and cultural divides. Another is defensive and hubristic arrogance. Another is our ugly tendency to dehumanise. There are many other reasons.

All this fused together in the world pot to poison trust and decency, wisdom and love, in its foul brew. No one knows anything any more. Everyone has their own hot and bubbling opinion. Everyone else is controlled opposition, not to be trusted. A world without trust is ripe for catastrophe.

What has remained doggedly resistant to my own analysis is specialisation. Are societal/civic trust and specialisation mutually exclusive over the long term? I’m not sure, but suspect this cannot be answered unless money’s influence, as civilisation’s dominant measure of value, is taken properly into account. There is a simple reason for this; money cannot measure the value of trust, love, wisdom, etc. While money-value decides the vast majority of what a society does, these deeper values atrophy so slowly it is extremely hard to detect. At some point, human-cultural sensibilities become so dysfunctional, insufficient self-awareness is available to the broader public to identify the root cause of what ails them.

So, if you are reading these words, dear Future, if you are indeed dear and you are a healthier time and place than ours, please learn most deeply the importance of trust and how it grows healthiest from the good soil of love and wisdom. If you get this foundation right, I’m sure the rest falls sweetly into place.