Future History
I think a lot about future historians, it’s kind of an obsession of mine. What will they say about us? How will future anthropologists analyze our concerns, our joys, fears, trends, art, and politics? Earth dwellers of the early 21st century. I’m curious as to how future textbooks will describe our existence and which details will be focused on from the the past four decades of my existence… my 40 trips around the sun. How will they pick apart our story and retell it? Peanut farmer to deranged developer? Danny Zager and Rick Evans’ predictions of 2525? Future history books assigned to future history students in whatever public education may look like, if it even exists. Our collective tears and fears fully analyzed and synthesized in a sterile classification, finely sorted out for mass consumption, adapted for all learning modalities, disabilities, and personalities… what will the official narrative be? Wonder if we’d even be able to pass the class.
The hell if I know.
I do know how it works today. One way archaeologists try to understand the lives of Scythians, Medians, Anasazi, Norse, Akan, and other past nations is searching through their garbage. The piles of the unwanted goods that were once dreamed of, lusted over, loved up and discharged from the masses of the age. Now priceless displays of antiquity.
So I return to my first question. What will future archaeologist discover about us? What will they find 4,000 years from now? How will they interpret our responses to the scarcity of our time? There is a simple answer to this. Everything about our existence will be known thanks to the internet. The decaying matter of the animal skin parchment that our Declaration of Independence was written on will someday dissolve, but the digital images of it will be stored on the cloud for an eternity. Online news articles will display the events of our time for the coming ages to read. Our edited creations on Vimeo will last throughout the millennia.
That is if the cloud and future incarnations continue to exist.
As Dewey decimal-ed card catalogs and microfiche films are replaced by gigs and teras I fret at the design of a creation that will someday facilitate the destruction of future artifacts. Gnostic Gozer on a digital war path. If the Mad Max post-apocalyptic future is truly our fate, the future descendants of Rick Grimmes, Max Rockatansky, and Aunty Entity will have nothing to unearth. Print is facing an inevitable death rattle, photography has moved digital, people “film” with DSLRs, music rarely presses, on and on. The DNA of this post is easy to dispose of, one click and it’s gone.
If the grid were to fail and the fall were to ensue our digitized refuse will leave no trace for future archaeologists to sniff out. Perhaps that is a good thing. Dark thoughts for a dark time.
Back to reality. My garbage.
I play the game... “reduce-reuse-recycle” is the family mantra I try to push on my two young children… Jack Johnson approved. As we all know and have come to expect our toys, tomatoes, and even our water is securely packaged in plastic. All this stuff gets the recycle bin as I hope to keep it out of the strata of future geological digs.
I do have one plastic item that is on its way out. An empty detergent jug. Tiny cracks are expanding on this coveted, soon-to-be-destroyed Tide container. Purchased in the foul year of our lord, nineteen hundred and eighty nine, full of the thick gelatinous chemical blend of detergent. Used up and rinsed out by my mother, then filled up daily with scalding hot water by my father for morning surf sessions. The pre-dawn jams before the moan of the school bus chugging up Liverpool drive were made possible thanks to this glorious jug. Two decades worth of waddling up the beach to the lot with hypothermic limbs owe a lifetime of gratitude to this beautiful device.
When I finally moved out of the homestead and into the world of adulthood I made sure that the Tide jug was carefully packed with other critical necessities. The label had faded a bit but the container was still glowing bright orange with life.
I continue to rely on the jug daily and now use it to dump hot water down the back of my childrens’ wetsuits like my old man did for me. Over the past 25+ years I have broken several boards, burned through countless beach towels, wetsuits, trunks, leashes, and other surf accessories, all of which ended up in a landfill. When this stupid little jug finally splits into plastic shards I’m gonna need a moment. A proper burial must be planned to honor this jug’s relevance in all the morning sessions, every trek throughout the Baja peninsula up through the Washington coastline, and my latest journeys as a beach dad.
Till then my faded old friend and I will continue with the predawn morning routine on our own as well as the summer arvo rinse with the grommets. When the great excavation happens in the year 2525 future historians will have no idea of the relevance of this cherished artifact and will more than likely write it off with the other plastic remains of our era… cast aside as irrelevant matter next to the all the other plastic shit that surrounds our remains… unless they read this post.
