What Is To Come?

by Keith Parsons

Have you ever wondered about the future? Yes, I realize that may be a bit of a corny question, but be honest here: Have you ever just wondered what time will bring to humanity? How will we advance? What is to come of the world? Though we try to live on a day-by-day method, it still fascinates me to hypothesize on how we will turn out. Often times I think of the following two things:

1. How will American opinion change?

It’s a pretty simple question. Look at your belief system right now. Really, just look at it and think about it. You have taken a certain opinion to an issue because you have used your personal logic and deducted what was best. Let’s look at some fundamental conservative values: tradition, strong family, strong community, and strong religious ties. Without specifics, this sounds like a reasonable list. These are people who can be part of a close community and have long-established morals, such as abstinence, faith in god, abstaining from drugs, and sticking with what has worked. Keep in mind that these are general morals.

Now let’s look at some liberal values: freedom, open expression, peace, and individual liberty. This seems reasonable to me – the liberals (and by liberals and conservatives I am not just referring to the democrats or republicans) desire that a person make his or her own decisions and that individuals should not be limited from opportunities unless they must be.

While the conservatives want community and a sort of a “community mind” and general unity, the liberals are concerned with people on a more person-by-person basis.

Each side has their share of problems. The conservatives accuse the liberals of being immoral and selfish, while the liberals accuse the conservatives of being non-adaptive and generalizing. And the frivolous battles begin, each side accusing the other of just not thinking normally.

All in all, most of us without a psychotic disorder are thinking normally. For the animal that we are. While we may realize our opponents’ viewpoints as being feasible for their lives, it isn’t for ours.

I still remain kind of childishly fascinated in our American system of government the “Democratic Republic” as you would officially call it. I know it may be rolling in the corn fields of Kansas, but hey. One definition from good old dictionary.com defines ‘democracy’ as, “The principles of social equality and respect for the individual within a community”. Sounds pretty liberal, and hey, pretty good to me. One definition of ‘republic’ states “A political order in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who are entitled to vote for officers and representatives responsible to them”. And there you have it. We elect officials who make our decisions for us. They do the thinking, and at the time elected, a majority of the voters trust them to make the right decisions. But this is inherently flawed: The individual is choosing another to make not necessarily his, but the majority rule’s opinion count. Some of you might be thinking “Life’s not fair, get over it” but why must we live as a community when the only life we life is ours? It’s something to think about, though I can’t really imagine an answer.

Looking over the past century, in a general sense, we in America (and many in the world) have been becoming more liberal. With each passing decade new standards and new opinions formed. You might wonder when we will get to YOUR page and people will start to think like you.

Who knows. This is a tough question. While right now we seem to be having a T3 comeback in conservatism (sorry I ever used that ism…some people like to be “metaismists” and it can get irritating. Oops.), time will tell that soon enough, our opinions will change. So that brings me to my point: How will American opinion change? I find it difficult to find a feasible answer, but what you have just read is what you should consider..as I said before, I find it fascinating and kind of intellectually challenging to just think of it. For America to change, the following question has to be considered.

2. How will people change?

It’s obviously hard to tell. How can anyone question such a thing and expect to have the knowledge to answer it? Well since we can’t go into the future (and, well, come back, which might be just a trifle of a requirement) we can’t be sure. We can guess and estimate until “The Larry Sander Show” stops being funny, but all in all it just does not work. This brings to the next thing to consider – we know nothing. People need to sit back and remind themselves of this: every time we form an opinion, every time a theory is drawn up, every time we complain and bitch about minor incidences we never know the whole story, and thus so little is really ever fair. Because we have such a huge world community, we have billions of people who were raised in a certain way and experienced certain things which influenced their lives.

I find it sad that when opinions differ we can hate which such vehemence and think (and act on) such disgusting thoughts. Everyone does it. It’s called slander, name calling, mudslinging, whatever you’d like. Our primal human nature, as an animal species, includes dominance. We have to have control over something or we are nothing at all. A useless entity, trash to be taken out. But as it happens, the domination makes others think of you as the opposite equivalent – a very useful entity (to a certain cause) that is trash and does need to be taken out. We just get stuck in this loop of power which, when you really think about it, traps us and leads us to take action as if we were “devolving”, becoming the caveman that we are at heart. As we grow and work ourselves up, we must gain positions of power to excel and crush those who haven’t come into the game as fast as we have. We do it for money, and we do it for dominance. It gives people a sense of meaning and worth on a whole new level. It’s a natural opium. But just looking on it, we embarrass ourselves so much and yet claim that general “progress” is being made. Though it is in certain aspects, we are still the same power seekers and its not going to stop unless natural evolution takes a left off of “Era Y lane” onto “Era Z lane”. But at the moment, we are unstoppable in our quest. Some know it, and some are so sightless of it they just turn from bad to worse. It’s unfortunate.

When I try to make a decision, I try to remember to try to consider all the facts. I have to filter them out by taking away the adjectives. I think it was Atticus Finch who suggested something like this. Hey, he’s supposedly a smart guy, so why not? I enjoyed reading To Kill a Mockingbird mostly because of this character. Why? He, in my opinion, is an example of a man who has “gotten it down” more than anyone else. He never yells, is patient, tries to remain neutral, and is very considerate of the facts. You could even call him a “mutant” if you wanted to!

When Juan Ahlyf (sorry, I’m being a bastard, I know) from Fox News is debating with a liberal on abortion, he is mostly saying (or shouting, with Fox News) something along the lines of “ABORTION IS MURDER SO IT IS EXCEEDINGLY OBVIOUS IT SHOULD BE BANNED!”, while the liberal defender might be saying that the fetus, though in all simplicity a human, is not a sentient being. One side is using supposed “obvious knowledge” and the other is using “smart knowledge”. These two techniques are at odds so much it can be nauseating. It’s pretty a common conservative/liberal battle and a common “non-government” reality, which can cause so much unnecessary pressure.

My hope is that humanity can, at least, eventually do the following things:

A) Remember not to have hardcore ideals without a few grains of salt and a milkshake. Many times people get so amazed by what they here they turn into “Instant Jihad” brand coffee, and revert to primitive slander to seduce others to join in the “correct” opinion. It happens to everybody, but it shouldn’t.

B) Stop trusting ignorance and start searching the whole spectrum. Basically this means that we should look at the whole story. Plain and simple. It might sound painfully obvious, but it doesn’t happen enough.

C) Show respect to each other and don’t try to take away credibility. As I said before, if we hope to speed up what should be evolution, we have to learn to back off and not become vicious in our “Pursuit of Happiness”.

D) Explain an individual thought or ideal without being pushy. Again it kind of relates to the last one. It is tiring and simply irritating to have a persons thoughts expressed in a way which would interfere with (or, in a reasonable sense, annoy) that persons life. If you want to say something then give them the option of hearing it. E) Consider new ideas. A big problem which has, I would assume, always been one, would be humanities tendency to have a closed mind. Sure, many opinions change as time does, but the fundamentals usually take a while to give up. It’s not surprising that it is hard for us to let go of ideals which have created stability. But the ideal that creates something better should be considered.

Would you rather support day-by-day pragmatism (Sorry, had to use it) alone, or with a little company from his next door neighbor, idealism? Ideas can make things better for everybody. Sure, they might be scary or nearly impossible to actually implement immediately, but it isn’t worth blowing them off. They are here because they might, just might actually create a better society.

By now you might be thinking, “Will this boring article ever end?” I understand. Well, you didn’t have to read it, but I think you might have been compelled to finish a thought before you got to the next one, so you read all of this. I recognize that a lot of this stuff is as painfully obvious as OJ is guilty, but I’ll say it again (well, again and again and again) that this is stuff we really take for granted. But when you ask yourself, “What is to come?” you can’t help but touch on it. And that is defiantly a good thing.

Written by Keith Parsons

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July 11, 2003 (It’s my birthday. Happiness!!!)