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Key points
- If we act on the belief that we have no future, we will have less of the life we want once we get there.
- Although there are constant messages that the sky is falling, life has steadily gotten better for an extraordinary number of humans.
- Stoking fear may be a good motivator for some collective action problems, but it also can paralyze personal investment in life.
Messages of doom pervade our lives, and doom may find all of us. One thing I am sure of, though, is that if we act on the belief that we have no future, we will have less of the life we wanted once we get there. Having hope for the future affects how we live in the present because we invest in our lives and loves today out of belief in tomorrow.
Is the future imperiled in ways beyond what humans have dealt with before? Is the sky really falling? Maybe. On the other hand, life has steadily gotten massively better for an extraordinary number of humans in the relative blink of an eye.
Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker has made a second (or third) career of pointing out the vast evidence of progress. He also believes that intellectuals too often deny progress. Perhaps this is a natural result of having a strong focus on a need for change—a need so urgent that one must try to motivate the un-panicked. Pinker also points out that the news “capitalizes on our morbid interests” when it could just as well promote more positive stories, such as the fact that, “137,000 people escaped from extreme poverty yesterday [and] every day for the last 25 years.” And please note that one can believe in what is truly amazing progress while also believing in doing more to help those struggling with poverty or other imperiling circumstances.
It’s not crazy to worry about a dangerous future.
Further, there are vast numbers of people in the world coping with real threats for their own futures because of poverty, famine, illness, or war. Suffering exists everywhere. Accepting these facts, my focus here is on how too many people may be robbed of a fuller life because they believe too strongly in a bleak future.
Such fear about the future could mean delaying or never beginning steps toward life goals one may value. For example, putting off or foregoing looking for a mate, having children, getting more education, or seeking some desired job. Ending well usually entails having started. More darkly, morbid views of the future could easily lead to a belief that life is meaningless. It’s hard to maintain the long view while holding a short view.
I am far from the only one raising this concern. Ezra Klein wrote about how fears regarding climate change are affecting people’s plans for children. He writes, “To bring a child into this world has always been an act of hope.” He also notes that every climate scientist he knows well has children.
More data highlights how some people have stopped saving for the future because they feel the world is such a mess. (It has been for a long time.) I get that many people can hardly save when they are just trying to make it through the present, but there are others who could save and who are being talked out of doing so because it’s all—only—happening now.
Some ways I was told the sky is falling:
Being told there may not be a future is a common human experience. Here are just some of the ways I have been told I may not have a future in the past:
- Cold War annihilation: I grew up in Dayton, Ohio, home of Wright Patterson Air Force Base, which was both a small Strategic Air Command (SAC) installation and a strategic asset for other reasons. I did the duck and cover under your desk drills in first grade (a grade I repeated, by the way, so maybe I was a slow learner at this life skill). Watch that video and think about the effect on a young person. At home, we had a cellar stocked with food and many gallons of water regularly refreshed by my mother and me. Worldwide nuclear annihilation could happen now, and it could have happened back then. But it hasn’t, not yet, anyway.
- Earth wrecked: By seventh and eighth grade (circa 1969-71), we had heard repeatedly about damaged air, dirt, and water, and the catastrophes awaiting the Earth. This was often coupled with concerns about running out of ways to feed people on the ever-more-damaged planet. There were real concerns, but what was not seemingly anticipated was how much progress could be made in protecting air and water—and in producing food. This was long before any focus on global warming. In fact, in the early 1970s, the serious fear was global cooling because of particulates blocking the sun. I remember feeling more fear about these things at that time than fear of being nuked—and, at least, the latter might be over fast.
- Vietnam: Being exposed to war (or lots of news about one) affects a person’s sense of risks and a future. Vietnam had a lot of salience for me, because I was in the generation of those who first saw the realities of war on television. I also would have been a little less worried about Vietnam if I’d had a much higher draft number.
- Armageddon: If you are of a certain faith background, and you were alive in the early 1970s, you could not have failed to know about the book The Late Great Planet Earth. The author was sure it was all ending very soon. There are many theological views of the end times, and the view at the time in certain circles was that the end of all things was at hand. As an aside, the book featured massive wars around the Middle East starring Russia and China. I didn’t think it likely I’d graduate from college, much less marry or have children (actual score: 3 degrees, 40 years, and 2).
That’s just my life experience. Add to this list the large and present fear of global warming. As I have noted, Klein’s piece is centered on how this fear is leading many people he knows not to have children. Not everyone should have children, of course, but there must be some people acting on this fear now who, later, will wish they had not. In a piece at Vox, Kelsey Piper takes aim at how too many parents are allowing climate fears to scare the living daylights out of their kids. Read her piece. She’s among those who are strongly concerned about climate change, but she describes how irrational the fears over it have become. She’s sounding an alarm about what we are doing to children.
I believe climate change is real and serious. Further, I don’t believe we are doing enough, and largely because I don’t believe we are making the best choices around interim solutions. It worries me. On the other hand, the present warning and fears sound and feel exactly like the messages of doom I heard in the 1960s and ’70s. You may be noting that there is a contradiction in my points. I do believe there is something typical in all this fear that runs through human history. And yet, I also wonder if it’s now more widespread, extreme, and amplified as a factor because of how messages of fear can cascade through the echo chambers of our social media and ideologically-driven world.
Maybe climate change is going to be the end of everything. If not, maybe a nuclear war will do the job. Or it might be that one of the super volcanoes of the Earth will go off soon. And don’t forget asteroids (though some argue that humans could survive better than the dinosaurs, it still does not sound fun).
Is the sky falling? How do you want to life your life?
Humans are frequent flyers on Pan Fear airline—the airline that promises you everything except reaching your destination. Stoking fear may be a good motivator for some collective action problems, but it also can paralyze personal investment in life. At some point, to have what we hope for, we need to decide to live our life in the present as if we are going to have a future.
What do you want in life? Do you want a specific career or type of job? Do you want to travel? Do you want to marry? Do you want to have children or more children? Do you have a mission or quest you want to pursue? I cannot answer these questions for you, but I can offer this advice: It’s best to live your life as if you will have a future. Otherwise, when you get there, it might be a lot less than you’d hoped for.
Fear shrinks life if we let it.
A version of this piece was also published on the blog for The Institute for Family Studies.
