Insights · January 3rd, 2011
This is a guest blog by Brenda Cooper.
As long as I’ve been alive, humanity has obsessed over its demise – at its own hands. In second grade, stern teachers sent me crawling under desks to avoid nuclear war (talk about a culture of fear – today has nothing on the sixties). Now we are convinced that climate change will do us all in. Both, by the way, remain real threats. It’s important to guard against evil. Think of that as the yang of futuring, whether done over the dinner table, around the water cooler, or from the dais. But I think we’re missing the yin: we’re failing to notice the good all around us.
Back in the crawling under desks part of my life, people who lived in other countries were unreachable to me, and had I wanted to talk to one, it would have cost a lot of money. Today, I have a phone that’s also a camera and a link to a world of information and entertainment – and to people all over the globe. There’s a good chance I can avoid or find a cure for most diseases that could directly affect me. We’re finally developing a real space industry (sorry – I’m a geek – but whatever it is you love, there is almost undoubtedly progress).
Take the climate change problem. It feels intractable. Old entrenched industries are fighting tooth and nail to hang on to things we KNOW are bad for us (remember the tobacco industry). But people all over the world are working on it. American car companies are coming out with good electric cars, China is building green cities, and here at home, in the city where I work, we have a green building program and a green business program. For all that it feels too slow (may be too slow), we’re changing fast on this one as a society. When I drive from here to Oregon, I go through a forest of futuristic new white windmills. I think in almost every pain point where technology changes make a difference (travel, carbon, medicine, communication) we’re changing faster than ever before, and our intent is good. We are a capable species.
Yet I hear more fear of the future than excitement, more worry about what we’re doing than celebration of it. We could do with a little balance. I am not suggesting we relax our vigilance about climate change or terrorism or even nuclear war. But we could pay attention to the good as well. I hope we all work on that for 2011.
