Jeremiah Tolbert

The Globe and Mail recently ran an inter­est­ing arti­cle of pre­dic­tions by Douglas Coupland.  I both agree and dis­agree with what he has to say.  Here are my thoughts on a selected num­ber of his predictions.

1) It’s going to get worse

Well, okay.  If you’re call­ing your arti­cle a pessimist’s guide, then you pretty much have to lead off with some­thing like this, eh?   I’m not con­vinced there’s any evi­dence that this eco­nomic cycle is any more likely to go down­ward than it is to trend upward.  And I’m pretty pes­simistic.  It’s a broad state­ment, and thus dif­fi­cult to really react to pos­i­tively or negatively.

2) The future isn’t going to feel futuristic

The future never feels futur­is­tic because it’s the present when you’re expe­ri­enc­ing it.  It takes dis­con­nect­ing your­self from the daily grind and con­ciously think­ing about the dif­fer­ence between today and yes­ter­day to really evoke the sense of futur­is­tic.  If you mean it’s not a Gernsback future, well, we all fig­ured that out some time around 1999.  Your fly­ing car is never going to hap­pen. Time to accept that.

6) The mid­dle class is over. It’s not com­ing back

This, I agree with, as things stand now.  The mid­dle class as we knew it was built on an indus­trial econ­omy, one where sta­bil­ity was derived from repet­i­tive, lightly skilled jobs pro­duc­ing prod­ucts with a con­stant or ris­ing demand.  It’s a pre-​​globalist phe­nom­e­non, and as far as I can tell, one of the pri­mary effects of glob­al­ism has been a return to global poverty.  It seems through most of his­tory, wealth has been con­sol­i­dated in the hands of the few.  Sometimes it seems like the mid­dle class was just a blip that came along with the ride of var­i­ous forms of democ­racy, and as democ­racy begins to fal­ter as a result of trans­form­ing into de facto oli­garchies, we’ll head back to the pre-​​Enlightenment sys­tems of peas­ants, peons, an wealthy aris­to­crats.  As soon as money==speech, the mid­dle class was doomed. 

Of course, none of that means we have to like it.  When the for­mer mid­dle class finally catches on, things are going to get bloody, and I wouldn’t ven­ture a guess.  The Tea Party move­ment at that point will look like the voice of rea­son.  Might be a cou­ple of gen­er­a­tions of declin­ing stan­dards of liv­ing before they’re finally shocked out of complacency.

Or one win­ter of food shortages—that would do the trick.

9) The sub­urbs are doomed, espe­cially those E.T. , California-​​style suburbs

They’re not doomed.  They’ll just adapt and trans­form.  I expect that all those idi­otic rules against sub­ur­ban farm­ing will get struck down out of neces­sity.  The sub­urbs are the future small towns and rural areas.  You may end up with whole­sale aban­don­ment in some places, but I have a feel­ing that they’re going to trans­form them­selves into vil­lages, not become pseudo-​​ghost towns.

17) You may well burn out on the effort of being an individual

I agree that we’re headed back to com­mu­ni­ties that are more inter­con­nected.  But my gen­er­a­tion isn’t going to burn out on indi­vid­u­al­ity.  For much of us, “being our indi­vid­ual selves” is a fun­da­men­tal cor­ner­stone of our self-​​identity.  maybe we’ll raise our kids to be more community-​​minded though.  But in 10 years? Not remotely likely to me.

20) North America can eas­ily frag­ment quickly as did the Eastern Bloc in 1989

I go back and forth on this notion.  I think it will very much depend, at least in the United States, on the exec­u­tive branch at the time.  We’ve kinda been through this already, and we fought the most bloody war in our nation’s his­tory to keep frag­men­ta­tion from hap­pen­ing.    I’m going to have to say “no way” on this hap­pen­ing in 10 years in the U.S.  In Mexico, though, that’s another story.

22) Your sense of time will con­tinue to shred. Years will feel like hours

I’m just mak­ing a wild guess here, but is Douglas Copland going through a midlife crisis?

28) It will become harder to view your life as “a story”

Narrative struc­ture didn’t invent itself, you know.  We’ve been struc­tur­ing our expe­ri­ences as story since we could paint on cave walls, or even before.  The idea that our life will instead be how­ever many friends we have online, I just don’t buy it.  It sounds like some­thing Facebook would pitch to ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists, not a real futur­ist pre­dic­tion.  Yes, your social net­work will be impor­tant.  But we’ll define our sense of self by it?  Is there going to be a fun­da­men­tal alter­ation of our brain chem­istry at the same time?

32) Musical appre­ci­a­tion will shed all age barriers

This may be the most inter­est­ing pre­dic­tion I’ve read.  I think it says some­thing about the gen­er­a­tion of new modes of music—what is the next rock n’ roll?  Is it rap?  Okay, then what’s com­ing after that?  The death of a musi­cal main­stream cul­ture caused by a frag­men­ta­tion of taste means gen­er­a­tions to come will have a harder time self-​​identifying with a spe­cific genre.  They’ll like bands com­posed of indi­vid­u­als their own age, but as far as age being linked to types of music?  I can buy this totally.

34) You’re going to miss the 1990s more than you ever thought

I don’t know, I already miss them pretty badly.  Then again, I was in high school and col­lege, and who doesn’t miss those years of their lives to some extent? A time of less respon­si­bil­ity always looks good from real adulthood.

37) People will stop car­ing how they appear to others

The num­ber of tribal cat­e­gories one can belong to will become infi­nite. To use a high-​​school anal­ogy, 40 years ago you had jocks and nerds. Nowadays, there are Goths, emos, punks, metal-​​heads, geeks and so forth.

Two social group/​tribes 40 years ago?  It’s not quite 40 years ago, but let me quote to you from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off:

Oh, he’s very pop­u­lar Ed. The sportos, the motor­heads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dwee­bies, dick­heads — they all adore him. They think he’s a right­eous dude.

Are you telling me in 1970, there weren’t hip­pies or greasers?  Stoners or preps?

The num­ber of tribal cat­e­gories have always neigh-​​infinite.  It seems that we just care more now than we used to. With other forms of iden­tity, we put more weight on this one.

41) The future of pol­i­tics is the care­ful and effec­tive implant­ing into the minds of vot­ers images that can never be removed

Yeah, we all saw Inception  this sum­mer too.

45) We will accept the obvi­ous truth that we brought this upon ourselves

I thought this was sup­posed to be a pessimist’s guide?  That’s the most opti­mistic pre­dic­tion about a fun­da­men­tal change in human nature I’ve read yet!

So what do you think?  Do you agree or dis­agree with any of his 45 predictions? 

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Tags: douglas copland, futurism, My Writing, Science fiction