Science fiction/horror writer John Shirley asks fellow speculative writers about the future. Results are interesting.
Update: I decided to do my best and answer the questions. Gawd I’m long-winded.
1) In the past you’ve written science-fictionally about the social future. What’s changed in your estimate of the social future since then? Do you have a sharper picture of where we’re going, socially?
I think I have a sharper picture than, say, four years ago. Back then, I believed that there was some kind of hope for extracting our society from the clutches of profit-motive. I don’t have anything against profit-motive, except that there are plenty of important things it can’t deliver, due to the way markets work. Now, I’m a lot more cynical. And I was pretty freakin’ cynical before.
2) The world seems dangerously chaotic; the spread of nuclear technology, unmonitored fissionable materials, WMDs and so forth, might be an argument for a powerful centralized global government. On the one hand this has fascist overtones, or it risks something dictatorial; on the other hand one could argue it’s the only way to prevent significant loss of life. Can one defend greater governmental control for the future, in this increasingly overpopulated world?
That depends on what’s meant by ‘governmental control.’ In cases such as the US invading Iraq, no, that can’t make anything safer. The fascist overtones aren’t the problem, the blowback is. It just doesn’t work.
I think we’re at a place in world history where the consequences of open war are far greater than the ‘loss’ of making peace. For everybody but the US, of course. And ironically, the fact that the US is in this position is why the equation works that way. As long as US leadership doesn’t actively want to make war, it works. When you get someone in there who simply wants to invade Iraq to control petro and currency markets, however, then the whole thing falls apart and no one else has a vested interest in doing what’s right.
The problem is, thus, not with the specific structure of control, but with those who lead. The US *could* lead the world, as per the neoconservative vision minus the imperial desire, but we’re frail and feeble. We always end up wanting more.
So your question is actually spiritual in nature.
3) What do you think people in the future will regard as being the greatest overall mistakes made during our time?
For varying values of ‘our time:’ The Iraq war will be a much more huge mistake than Vietnam, from the perspective of future history. It might be the spark that starts the fire, and what’s *really* creepy is that this election might be the flint that strikes the spark. Not just in terms of who the president is and how he acts, but how the rest of the world sees how we as a society handle people like Bush.
In larger scope, the biggest mistakes involve the obvious environmental issues. However: What the Futurians will complain about won’t be that we let it all happen, but rather that we had all the science and technology we needed to change it, but *didn’t use it.* They’ll be disgusted that we knew the whole story from the beginning, but ultimately didn’t believe it. They’ll mourn our lack of initiative, and then they’ll journey back to their underground bunkers where they’ll hibernate in suspended animation for the 3 months of unbearably hot summer.
In an even larger (or perhaps simply more universal) scope: The greatest overall mistakes have to do with the lack of evolution of our consciousness. Time and again, we’ve chosen willful ignorance, despite the constant repetitive messages of the saints and bodhisattvas. This perspective assumes that the Futurians will have made that leap.
4) Are we in danger, serious danger, environmentally? Why or why not? If we are, what are the social consequences?
Of course we are. The social consequences range from miserable overpopulation to miserable extinction. After we’re gone, the cockroaches will breathe a sigh of relief and say, “Sheesh! Glad *they* finally left!”
5) What’s the most significant current social trend? It’s hard to say for sure, of course, but off the top of your head…
The ubiquitous technosphere. I was on the bus yesterday, and EVERYONE was talking on their cellphone. That’s like 23 people on the bus, all talking at full voice, into telephones. It was surreal, but it’s increasingly where we’re headed. We used to just use the atmosphere as a communication medium; now we use refined minerals, as well, in wide ubiquity.
Another is the rise of religious fundamentalism. People are desperate for certainty, and God’s salesmen are willing to provide just that. This ties in to that last bit on #3. There’s an instinctive human desire to belong, and this instinct isn’t served very well in a globalized, technologically-oriented world. The real challenge that faces us is to balance our in-built needs of belonging, companionship, and fear of alienation, with the way our culture (global and local) tears us away from belonging and companionship, and towards alienation. The rise of fundamentalism is a spiritual and mental-health issue the same way drug addiction is.
6 ) Will there always be war? Is it becoming like Haldeman’s ‘The Forever War’? What are the trends in war?
Emmanuel Goldstein said it best: There will always be war. As long as there is a need to belong, as long as there is a need to prop up industrialized economies, and as long as someone’s making money by being in control, there will be war. Politicians can scare the populace into giving up their power, can lead the scared populace to war, can make them believe that dying for lies is valor, can dismiss dissent as unpatriotic. All fueled by the instinctive need to belong.
So to answer your question: As long as humans need to belong, and as long as that need can be manipulated, there will be fodder for war. And as long as there is fodder for war, there will be the threat of war. And as long as there is the threat of war, wars will be fought.
Wars that are coming will be ‘sold’ to the public. They’ll be market researched, and might actually not be fought if the market pollsters say they won’t fly. For all I know, this has already happened.
7) To sort of top off a previous question: Is a real world government possible and could it be a good thing, on balance?
It’s possible, in the same way the UN is possible. The UN, in order to exist, can’t actually do much of anything forceful, in and of itself. It can feed starving children and monitor elections and that kind of thing, but it can’t rattle sabres. And that’s good.
I think we have a world government, but it’s not actually a government. Go to the next G8 meeting to see what I mean. This sort of thing is the trend for the future. While war profiteers make money off wars, for the most part, that sort of instability is very very bad for business. Economic treaties will create future governing collectives, like the WTO and G8 infrastructures. I think Neal Stephenson’s onto something with his idea of an economic treaty that governs the exchange of economic power between independent social affinity structures, rather than nation states. It removes the extraneous nationalism that is so ripe for abuse by powermongers.
8) Will the gap between the haves and the have-nots widen even more dramatically? If it does, what’ll happen?
In the near term, yes. I think we’re at a point, however, where it could go either way in the near-medium term. We’re very, very close to working the kinks out of global wealth-building rather than global disparity-building. The next 10-15 years will spell it out. Basically, the future depends on how well this newest round of American imperialism goes. We stand a chance of economic parity in the medium and long term, as long as there isn’t some army threatening to occupy at the slightest provocation.
9) What question should I have asked you?
How can we transform the tribalism inherent in religious fundamentalism into a greater spiritual awareness? How can we take the need to belong and reconfigure it to a ‘belongingness’ with all humanity?
