A letter from the future is like a bridge.

Postscript 2077

[What would you tell yourself if you wrote a letter from 60 years in the future?]

Tanya Tarr
Jul 30, 2017 · 7 min read

Read on July 21, 2017

Dear Tanya,

I know this might seem unlikely, but you’re going to make it through this time you’re going through. Everything seems so insanely stupid right now. But know that you and billions of others will survive and actually thrive in the future, my dear.

I want to share the larger contours of one potential future. I think by now you realize that we all live in a multiverse that is always changing. The future is actually filled with infinite possibility, so your future timeline might vary a bit from what I’m about to share. I am, however, told that much of what I’m going to tell you has a high probability of happening, if people are brave enough to do it.

You’re probably wondering about Trump. There is potential for him to leave office in the second half of the administration. I am told the reason why it happened that way — him being elected to office — had to happen because there wasn’t any other way to rapidly reset some of the broken systems in our country. So Trump was sent as a wake up call. Hillary was the first one through the ceiling, and the first ones usually get hurt. But they clear the path and lead the way, and she did something extraordinary. She REALLY set the stage — a stage that has been trying to be set for almost 100 years. The first woman President is coming, very soon. I can’t tell you which party she’s from — there’s more to that story when you get to it. Suffice it to say that both parties get rebuilt, which needed to happen.

The odd thing about Trump is his election did hasten real gender equity, just in the most unpleasant way possible. Through him, sexism became personified as visible, repulsive and fully intolerable. And after that first woman gets elected to the highest office, there will always be a woman as a Presidential or Vice Presidential candidate — for both parties. Always. It never goes back to just men, because it becomes so enormously clear that everyone needs to be included for us to move forward. When women — especially moms and grandmoms — are able to influence policy and work with good men, families of all configurations flourish. Parents or non-parents. Same goes for learning the lesson around racial and income diversity, too. The people in office will really look like the population, and the population will become more racially diverse — it already is. And people will remember that diverse perspectives make for the best and most rapid problem-solving, which we’ll need to survive in the future.

Mayors and governors continue to hold the line throughout the years. They are the unsung heroes of surviving Trump. Trump did make decisions that caused short-term damage, but again, this helped a lot of states and municipalities reset the status quo. People start to believe in institutions because they finally got jolted into participating again — talking to their local or state governments, or deciding to run for office. Mayors and governors are the fire door against the greatest damage, truly.

I know what you’re thinking — did the medicine have to be so terrible? Yes, it did. Too many people checked out and had given up. But remember that disruption is the theme of the decade. Trump was disruptive. Those tech bros were disruptive. People had to learn the lesson that disruptive is a sloppy management style. The outcome is democracy is regenerated, however unpleasant the treatment is. Think of when butterflies regenerate. It’s disgusting and messy and magical and beautiful.

That’s enough about politics. Just know good changes are coming — new ideas and new people and it will get better. You know how it goes.

You might be wondering if we colonize Mars or some other planet. We never get flying cars, by the way. We never figure out the hover tech, and rush hour traffic is bad enough along roads on the ground. Civil engineers couldn’t figure out a way to deal with traffic in three dimensions. Anyway, high-speed rail and rapid transit convoys are built and scale up to the point that people started to ditch their cars all together in most big cities. Video conferencing and virtual reality becomes truly immersive. Also, gasoline and petroleum get too expensive and eventually phased out in favor of electric cars and fuel cell technology.

But back to Mars. There are many attempts towards permanent colonization. It’s extremely expensive, and a lot of people die in the process. (They were aware of the risks.) So far, we haven’t been able to establish a permanent colony, but it’s probably going to happen soon. There’s a problem with acclimation to the lighter gravity on Mars, and it screws up our biology, even with the grav-adjusted body suits. There are also issues with microbiology and hyper clean environments. Turns out, we don’t do so well without the tiny bugs that helps us live on Earth.

But something remarkable happens that is a bit unanticipated. The Mars efforts actually speed up the development of new environmentally-sound technologies. They used to call it “closed loop engineering” or stable-state, which means its nearly 100% sustainable tech, from creation to disposal. Like the fuel cells that power rapid transit, they are made out of 100% recycled materials, and the disposal eventually turns to compost.

There are still efforts to explore space but it’s slow going. Interest is turning back to Earth-bound endeavor. We’ve figure out how to better manage population growth and there is concern about what humans would do if we spread to other planets. But the overall outcome is what we needed — the expensive efforts of space exploration are worth it because the emerging tech helps rapidly fix Earthbound infrastructure decay (and creates millions of good jobs, too).

You might be wondering about future wars. In the last 30 years, war and violence has declined almost to the point of zero. At one of the global summits, 20 world leaders came up with a plan to reinvest heavily in global humanitarian aid. (I’m sure you won’t be shocked when you see this happen — 10 of those leaders are women. Three are non-binary and the last seven are enlightened men.) These powerful and rich countries decide to fully fund a 10 year plan to help war-torn parts of the world. It’s sort of like UN Peace Corps, but it’s not connected to one government. They get bright people (young and old), train them and then send them to a different part of the world. It’s a combination of medical help and training on birth control, agricultural aid, education and very respectful cultural exchange. Of course, as the program takes off, the wars and violence recede. Imagine that?

What’s it like back home? In the United States, there is a deep revival of culture and working with hands. This goes well beyond just selling things on Etsy. Some people utterly reject modern life and start going back to learning homesteading techniques. But they don’t go out into the wilderness (which, thankfully we will still have. The National and State Parks are a real treasure.) These people — mostly young people, but some of us elders, too — start to reclaim deserted cities and abandoned subdivisions. A bunch of people out of Detroit, Asheville, Boulder, Portland (Oregon and Maine), Austin and Pittsburgh start to share radical homesteading ideas online.

A lot of them spend time serving in the UN Peace Corps and learn field-based civil engineering and subsistence farming. They decide to come back and teach others to reclaim crumbling places in Michigan, Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, central California, West Virginia and Texas. The group starts multiple training institutes — a lot of it online — and a real movement is born. It’s not political at all. It has decentralized leadership. It’s actually spiritual in nature. Some people call them the Technoshaman because they have a conviction and fervor for regrowing things. They consider themselves stewards of community and the earth. They cleverly fuse modern tech with ancient principles of living balanced lives - off the grid and on their own terms. They are boldly spiritual, and music and art is a big part of their philosophy. They’re really cool, and very kind. You actually write a fictional book that inspires a lot of them, so you’re their intellectual godmother. You always credit Octavia Butler, Neil Gaiman and Ray Bradbury for those stories. You extend their creative DNA, and it makes the jump into reality.

So, my dear heart, do not fear the future. It’s a good life you live, and a busy one. When you look back, you will understand what your elders meant when they talked about living through World War II, Nixon and Reagan. You will know because you lived through 9/11 and Trump.

It feels like the world might literally come apart at the seams, but somehow it never fully gets to that point, no matter how close we skate to the edge.

Fear is a horrible emotion to wade through, but on the other side is victory. I promise you, a massive breakthrough that helps everyone heal and come back together is going to happen very soon. It’s a breakthrough that doesn’t involve famine, illness or war, and that’s an improvement over our previous history as human beings. Be encouraged.

Remember that all things are possible when you protect your ability to love and to dream. Keep exercising your imagination muscles and your heart! You are always more powerful than the enemy, and the real and ancient enemy is fear. To quote RuPaul, remember who you are, and let the world have it! Make all your ancestors proud and pave a safe way for the future babies. They’re all counting on us, mama, to lead the way home.

With love,

Tanya

Written July 21, 2077


Author’s note: THIS IS A WORK OF SPECULATIVE FICTION. IN CASE THAT ISN’T CLEAR.

Tanya posts her short stories every Sunday at 9am Central Time.

Thanks for Recommending this if you found it enjoyable!

Tanya contributes to Women@Forbes, FairyGodBoss and curates Negotiate This. She’s writing a manual and curriculum to teach collaborative negotiation and other types of adaptive leadership techniques. She’s writing fiction these days because we need more creative oddball endeavors right now, not less. Dream big.

Tanya Tarr

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I write about negotiation, leadership and equal pay around the world.

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