What I Won’t Live to See—and I’m OK With That
You may not see your grandchildren graduate college, but you won’t be around for the climate apocalypse either.
When you’re old and/or have a terminal illness— even without a DDD (definite death date) --you start looking at all the reasons to be grateful that you won’t be around that much longer. You may not see your grandchildren graduate college, but you won’t be around for the climate apocalypse either.
After all the future of the human race looks pretty bleak.
For starters, I will be happy to miss Trump and Biden going mano-a-mano again in 2024. That will be a depressing shit show.
s Longer term I won’t have to be horrified about the seas rising over New York City and Miami, the destruction of the Amazon, the elimination of more species, more floods, fires and famines, increasing poverty and obscene wealth, more guns, more violence, more homelessness, more authoritarian governments, more wars—maybe even of the nuclear variety. More, more, more of every horror imaginable.
I was worried about missing the last seasons of my favorite TV shows but Succession and Barry wrapped this season so that’s a huge relief. I will miss the end of Yellowjackets, but that show is so meandering it doesn’t really matter—it will probably become another version of Lost. The greatest shows, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul and Game of Thrones are over. Meanwhile I’m watching K-dramas which drop whole seasons on Netflix and rarely have 2 seasons.
The only show I will really miss is the second season of The Last of Us which I absolutely adored, but am seriously thinking of getting a PlayStation and doing Season 2 as a videogame. I’ve never played a videogame but who knows I might get hooked.
I was lucky enough to grow up in an idyllic time when the world was less crowded, less polluted and less violent--my family spent weekends at a pristine, uncrowded lake only 50 miles from New York City-- hitchhiking was adventurous not suicidal, you could see the Van Goghs in the museum without lining up, or visit Macchu Picchu before it had been overrun by tourists. Not that long ago Deerfield Beach, Florida -- where my parents lived in the 70s and I now live --was a sleepy little town with a gloriously uncrowded beach and easy parking. It even had a cheap diner. Now you’re lucky not to be stuck in traffic for hours getting there, parking is a competitive sport, and cheap food is but a memory.
What wasn’t idyllic about the 50s was the racism, sexism, and every other kind of ism plus stifling narrowmindedness. Which is why we needed the 60s, a lot of which was pretty idyllic as well.
I admit it. I’m expecting the worst, not a future peaceful utopian world where people of all races get along and have clean air to breathe, a place to live and enough to eat. We used to sing along with Pete Seeger about that kind of world back in the 1950s but Kumbaya is but a distant memory. And so is Pete.
I can’t think of any probable future I’ll be sad to miss. I was looking forward to flying cars but they never materialized, and all the computer technology that was promised is already here.
I do love a lot about our technological era, especially computers, cell phones, audiobooks, huge TVs, streaming series, and GPS which is the greatest invention since the wheel IMHO. I might still be lost driving around in upstate New York without it.
But it’s about to careen out of our control. The latest and greatest technology, artificial intelligence, is the tech that finally jumped the shark.
Maybe in its infinite wisdom AI will figure out a way to cure climate change, eliminate poverty, guarantee free speech and democracy and transfer my brain to the body of a sexy 25-year-old, but more likely it will just figure out a way to make more money for Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerman by enslaving the rest of us. Geoffrey Hinton, the father of AI who recently quit Google because of his reservations about it possibly being dangerous, said “…it’s as if you had 10,000 people and whenever one person learned something, everybody automatically knew it.” I’m really curious as to how AI will take over--but not enough to stick around to become one of the Borg.
I won’t be here for the day when it takes over the planet, but mark my words, it WILL. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
What will you be happy to miss out on in the future?
Erica, another great one! My feelings about the future are pretty much the same as yours. It's sad to find some comfort in the fact that the future we will not see is too awful to contemplate. Now when I read another article about the Colorado River running dry, I just think "glad I won't be around to see it." I just keep hoping I outlive Trump.
I feel exactly the same way about the future. Something I remember hearing in the 1970s was Zero Population Growth. Clearly that idea never caught on. I don't have a DDD, but another thing I won't miss if it happens tomorrow is being cautious about COVID because I'm one of those pesky people with an immune deficiency. And since I'm no techno wizard, I sure won't miss trying to master technical glitches. I also won't miss the gas-powered leaf blower and all the people Joni warned us about who are paving paradise and cutting down all the live oaks.