8 Ways We May Be Regarded by Future Generations

How will the current generation of humans be regarded by future generations? Let us consider a full spectrum of possibilities.

They may view us as sluggish airheads

Before long parents may be able to take advantage of gene-splicing and genetic enhancements that can enhance the human mind. If such techniques are used over enough generations, we may see the evolution of a much smarter human race. Einsteins may be as common then as texting teenagers are today, and there may also be many super-Einsteins.

If this happens, future generations may look back at our generation and regard us as slow-paced dolts. They may ask themselves: how did these airheads ever manage to invent the Internet? They may also regard it as a major miracle if our generation somehow manages to avoid blowing itself up or destroying itself through technological or environmental folly.

They may view us as geniuses

Suppose, on the other hand, that there is no such great blossoming of human intelligence. Suppose that we merely see continued progress in automation and computers. It could be that the teaching of mathematics is dropped from elementary and high schools, or limited to be only a subject taught only to very enthusiastic learners who request it. This outcome is all too plausible. One can imagine parents saying, “Why are you torturing my child with algebra when Google will solve almost any math problem for you instantly for free?” The same thing could happen with computer programming courses: they could be dropped if we ever figure out how to make computers that can program better than humans.

In such a case it could be that the human brain gets a little soft and spoiled from not having to work so hard. The average human IQ might actually drop a little bit, and it could happen that some future generation regards us as the geniuses. In the year 2150 people might say, “I can't believe how brilliant people were back around 2015 – they actually had to learn geometry and trigonometry all by themselves.”

They may view us as disgusting savages

We regard the people who lived five thousand years ago with a certain level of disdain. We might refer to such people as barbarians or savages. They may have had a certain degree of civilization, we think, but they weren't really civilized.

But that's exactly how people living in the future may regard us. In the future, all people might be vegetarians who regard meat-eating with disgust. Such people might look back on us and say to themselves, “I can't believe people actually ate their fellow mammals back in those primitive days.”

Future man may also abolish war. If war is ever abolished, future generations will look back at all the wars fought in the past 100 years, and regard the humans between 1913 and 2013 as bloodthirsty savages. One can only imagine the history books of the future: “Before man became truly civilized, he engaged in the fruitless fratricide known as war.”

They may view us as zombies

In his sprawling online manifesto The Hedonistic Imperative, the philosopher and futurist David Pearce has imagined a future in which humans experience super-lives filled with super-pleasure, based on chemical and brain enhancements which dramatically improve our well-being and the richness of our emotions, as well as our capacities for appreciation. Pearce rhapsodizes here about the possibilities:

(S)he might then hear, and have the chance to play, music more exhilarating and numinously beautiful than his or her ancestors ever dreamed of; the celestial music of the spheres heard by privileged medieval mystics will be as a child's toy tin-whistle in comparison.... Erotic pleasure of an intoxicating intensity that mortal flesh has never known will thereafter be enjoyable with a whole gamut of friends and lovers.....A painter or connoisseur of the visual arts will be able to behold the secular equivalent of the beatific vision in a million different guises, each of indescribable glory....States of divine happiness orders of magnitude more beautiful than anything the contemporary mind can access will pervade the very fabric of reality in generations to come. Even the most virile of imaginations can apprehend in only the barest and formal sense the ravishing splendour that lies ahead.

Imagine if something like this comes to pass, and most humans get drastically enhanced emotional capabilities. They might know not just love but Super Love, not just joy but Super Joy. Such humans may regard our generation as a race that can barely even feel anything. They may regard us as kind of zombies, vacantly stumbling through life without any real appreciation of things.

They may view us as lucky ducks

If things go bad future generations may regard our generation as the most fortunate of all generations. There are many possible scenarios for how things might go bad: we might run very low on oil; we might suffer the effects of a nuclear holocaust; we might lose all our electricity in an electromagnetic pulse event (caused by a nuclear bomb in the high atmosphere or a very bad solar flare); we might suffer an economic collapse like the one that almost occurred around 2008.

If any of these things happen, future generations may regard us as people who were living in a kind of golden age. They may look back on us and say: “Those people in the early 21^st century – they had it made in the shade. Plenty of energy, a moderate climate, electricity available to anyone, free internet downloads –no generation ever had it so good.”

They may view us as slaves

In the future automation and robots may lead man to an Age of Leisure. The four day work week? Instead it may be a three day work week or a two day work week, and quitting time may be at noon. Or instead of a single weekly Day of Rest as in the nineteenth century, there may be a single weekly Day of Work. It's possible that almost all work will be assigned to robots and machines.

If that happens, future generations may look back on our generation and think of us as corporate slaves. They will read about our work habits: working at least 40 hours a week, and often as many as sixty, as well as working fifty weeks a year, from age 22 until age 65. They may regard us with the same kind of pity that we feel thinking about the cotton picking slaves of the Old South.

They may view us as saints

In the future social mores may change. Monogamy may be regarded as an outdated relic of the past. The average citizen may have multiple spouses, or may engage in sexually promiscuous swinging behavior, cavorting with multiple sexual partners at the same time, including both human partners and robot partners. In addition, there may be a legalization of many drugs that are now prohibited.

If this happens, future generations may look back at our largely monogamous and hard working generation, and regard us as being saintly paragons of virtue. They may ask themselves: how did that generation ever keep trudging so tirelessly down the straight and narrow path?

They may view us as selfish narcissists

Another possibility is that future generations may look back on us as self-centered egomaniacs. They may look at how we let global warming get worse and worse, while we were busy engaging in environmentally destructive conspicuous consumption, largely so that we could add another “look what I bought!” Facebook update to make a fleeting impression on our social network friends. They may look back at how we spent much more time posting online pictures of ourselves than we spent worrying about how to stop environmental decay that led to the extinction of countless species. They may then regard us as the “me first, Earth last” generation.

A narcissist's favorite painting

The Two Colliding Rivers That Will Decide Our Future

For a long time when people have imagined the future, they have used the simple assumption that mankind is being propelled forward by a river of technological progress. In this way of thinking, it is like mankind is a raft that is traveling down a river, a river of technical progress. The general thinking is that we are heading towards some desirable destination downstream on this river, a destination of cool robots, longer lifespans, less work, greater entertainment, and faster and smarter robots.

There is a lot of truth to this simple way of thinking, but it leaves a lot out. What about the fact that global warming is getting worse? What about the fact that our civilization is centered around cheap oil, and needs more and more of it to keep growing, but the global production of crude oil is expected to soon peak, and then start declining? What about the fact that we will soon face shortages of several important metals? What about the fact that our soil is being depleted by over-farming? What about the fact that our fresh water aquifers are being depleted? What about the fact that the earth's population is growing ever greater than the maximum sustainable population that Earth can support?

How do we reconcile these unpleasant facts with the simple idea of man being pushed forward by the river of technological progress to ever more wonderful destinations? Can we imagine all these problems as just being unpleasant little splashes as we travel down the river of technical progress?

No, it seems better to imagine not one river that is propelling mankind, but two rivers. And the two rivers are colliding with each other, pushing in opposite directions. Mankind is caught in the middle. Our fate will depend on whichever river is stronger.

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The first river is the river of technical progress, which tends to propel man forward towards greater levels of progress and comfort. The second river is what we can call the ecology crisis river. This river is tending to push man back towards situations we had hoped we had left behind forever.

There was once a time when energy was expensive, when watering your lawn was unthinkable, when food from around the world was available only to rich people, and when only rich people could afford electricity. If the ecology crisis river is strong enough, it may push mankind back to such an era.

Mankind's fate will be determined by which of these colliding rivers is stronger. If the technical progress river is strong enough, man will be pushed on to a desirable destination of greater progress. But if the ecology crisis river is stronger, we may end up seeing a reversal of human progress.

I am reminded of the famous story of the deathbed words of Alexander the Great. Seeing that he was dying, his generals asked: which one of us shall rule over your empire?

Alexander supposedly answered: whichever one of you is strongest.

Four Basic Theories of the Future

There are many different opinions about the likely future of mankind, some optimistic and some pessimistic. Let us classify these views into four different theories. Each theory will be represented as a simple line graph, which will make it easy to understand the main assumption behind the theory.

The Straight-line Theory of Progress

Perhaps the simplest theory about the future is what can be called the straight-line theory of progress. This is the theory that technological and scientific advances are producing a fairly steady rate of progress for mankind. The theory can be represented by the following line graph.



The numbers on the left of the graph represent some level of progress such as knowledge, power, or standards of living. This straight-line theory of progress has been held by many millions of people throughout the past 150 years or earlier (although belief in it took a hit during the dark years of World War I and World War II). The basic idea is that progress in medicine, electronics, education, and other areas is proceeding at a nice, steady clip, leading to a gradually improving human lot.

The Theory of Accelerating Progress

Fairly recently there has come into prominence a theory of the future that is even more optimistic than the straight-line theory of progress. This is the theory of Accelerating Progress. A prominent advocate of such a theory is Ray Kurzweil, who has said that there is a Law of Accelerating Returns, which causes technological growth to occur at an exponential rate. The Theory of Accelerating Progress can be illustrated by the following line graph. Again, the numbers on the left of the graph represent some level of progress such as knowledge, power, or standards of living.

The Theory of Overshoot and Collapse

Despite the optimism of the Theory of Accelerating Progress, there are many reasons for being pessimistic about the future. One of the main concerns of ecological observers is that man's activities are causing a host of ecological problems such as global warming, deforestation, soil depletion, clean water depletion, and ocean acidification. Many are worried that man may be on track for an ecological phenomenon called overshoot and collapse.

Overshoot and collapse is what is observed when a population of living organisms increases in number, until it greatly exceeds what is known as the carrying capacity of the environment – the maximum population that can be supported for an indefinite period. At some point after this, the population can then plummet. An example occurred on St Matthew's Island in Alaska, where 29 reindeer were introduced in 1944, to an island that could support perhaps 1000 reindeer indefinitely. The reindeer population increased to about 6000 by 1963, which was a tremendous overshoot beyond the carrying capacity. At that point there was a dramatic “die-off.” Almost all the reindeer died, and there were only about 42 left by the next summer.

The Overshoot and Collapse theory is that something like this may happen to the human population. It has been estimated that the carrying capacity of our planet is only about 2 billion people, meaning that is the highest population the Earth could support for an indefinite time period such as thousands of years. We have now greatly exceeded that carrying capacity. The result may be global warming, deforestation, a sharp decline in fresh water, a very dangerous depletion in soil fertility, famine, and various other ecological curses that one day cause man's population to plummet.

Here is a graph illustrating the Overshoot and Collapse theory. The numbers are rather arbitrary, but the shape of the curve illustrates the basic idea. The numbers on the left of the graph represent some level of progress such as knowledge, power, population, or standards of living.

The Theory of Collapse and Rebirth

Historians know that the collapse of civilizations is very common. But they also know that when one civilization collapses, it is very common for some new civilization to arise from its ashes. When one civilization collapses, it may leave behind seeds of thought and learning and science that are replanted by some later civilization. One of the great examples is the civilization of Renaissance Italy, which came into being to a large extent from the learning and literature left behind by the ancient Greeks and Romans.

So even if we gloomily imagine some future collapse of human living standards or population, or both, we are entitled to suppose that after that occurs some successor civilization may carry human progress to even higher levels than they were at before the collapse. We can develop such an assumption into a theory of Collapse and Rebirth. This is the theory that our civilization will undergo a collapse, but will later be succeeded by another civilization that scales even greater heights. Here is a graphical depiction of such a theory.



This theory is a kind of marriage of pessimism and optimism. We can flesh out this theory by imagining that after our civilization has paid for its follies, some successor civilization will learn the lessons taught by our mistakes, and will forge forward in a sustainable fashion, avoiding our mistakes.