Why Future Shock Hasn’t Happened
We’ve Cultivated Future Resilience
We have been preparing for our world turning upside-down ever since surviving our first Ice Age. Massive weather changes did not extinguish our ancestors but instead forced them to improvise and move to different biomes. We changed our clothes, modified our hunting techniques, and reorganized our societies. Such is our brain’s capacity for adaptation.
In 1970, the futurist Alvin Tofler predicted that massive social upheaval in the latter half of the twentieth century would cause future shock, but so far, that hasn’t happened. Whether it’s from the ascendancy of feminism or the transition from farm labor to desk labor, our psych wards were supposed to be overflowing with trauma victims who couldn’t cope with such changes. Fortunately, our DNA is imprinted with the protective coating of previous, survived traumas. Every time that our ancestors’ tribes were invaded and wiped, the survivors had to code-switch or die in the transition. Those who couldn’t did not pass on their genes.
The rhythm of history appears to be the layered cycling of short, medium, and long-term shocks, whether from tribal wipeouts to climate change, with long periods of stability in between. But, even during stability, we still ideate about the End Times enough to prepare ourselves for annihilation. If you’re a religious person, these thoughts might involve Rapture or Armageddon. If you’re a secular techie, they might involve the Singularity. Is it possible, then, that we’re already ready for such cataclysmic change? Will we wind up bypassing future shock and end up future bored?
Next in sequence: Why does every generation think the next one is doomed?
