20 Predictions for 20 Years in the Future

  1. People will realize much more clearly the horror we’ve wreaked on this planet — and the reality that we’re making it unlivable even for our bubble-dwelling selves.
  2. Although people will more readily acknowledge the looming extinction of dolphins, whales, large carnivores, and so many other species, there will remain a general unwillingness to take the steps to really change this because of the massive sacrifice required.
  3. It’s going to be much more normal for people to talk about the end of our species, not in a religious or abstract sense, but in a scientific and practical one.
  4. The tide is going to shift away from a public acceptance of people having children and toward a critical view in which people question parents-to-be about their motivations for wanting children and their ability to raise them well. In this vein, people are going to view parents much more as selfish and destructive than as the “loving, giving” beings as whom they now are so often viewed.
  5. Public perception will shift toward seeing meat-eating and animal farming as much more of a selfish and environmentally-destructive thing.
  6. The world is going to be a much less safe place: more fears, more poverty, more desperation, poorer health care for most people, more war.
  7. There will be much more talk about the looming end of fossil fuels and what this will mean to our species.
  8. Casual world travel will be on a major decline.
  9. Humanity will experience much more physical illness resulting from human-generated environmental toxins.
  10. Quantum leaps in technology and virtual communication will coincide with a marked increase in governmental spying on citizens, loss of individual privacy, individual paranoia, and social alienation.
  11. There will be major increases in small-scale terrorism and mayhem all over the world, because it will be virtually impossible to prevent desperate, angry, hopeless people from acting out in this manner.
  12. People are going to be more open to radical types of change, including revolution and violent upheaval, in order to try to alter humanity’s destructive course — yet many of these proposed changes will be so-called “easy answers” of an extremely negative variety, e.g., racist, bigoted, xenophobic, nationalistic, civil rights-denying, genocidal.
  13. Big shifts will have happened or will be looming in international borders: more and more countries splitting up into smaller entities, and, perhaps simultaneously, other countries banding together and forming larger nations for protection.
  14. More people will become polarized into the extremes of atheism and religious fundamentalism.
  15. Major shrinkage in funding of space programs like NASA due to public realization that they offer little benefit to our species. Also, there will be less talk of humanity escaping our toxified planet and surviving elsewhere in the universe, as that will be acknowledged as science fiction of a bygone era.
  16. There will be a major decline in the economies of the United States and Europe, and mass starvations in increasing numbers of regions of the world.
  17. There will be a much greater realization of the horror of psychiatric drugs: the dependency, the withdrawal syndromes, the long-term negative effects, the false advertising, the unscientific research, the social control, and the stymieing of people’s growth processes.
  18. There will be significant depression and rage among younger people, who will have realized that they were cheated out of their futures by their parents’ and grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ generations.
  19. More and more people will be waking up to the realization that unresolved childhood trauma, largely from within families and replicated over the generations, is behind all of this disaster.
  20. And there will be more and more enlightened people, people aware of all of this that is going on, people who break from the traditions of their parents and from their parents themselves, people who work to grieve their childhood wounds, and people who live more truly as their true selves and come together in community to try to figure out how to build something new.

9 thoughts on “20 Predictions for 20 Years in the Future

  1. Wow, lots of doom and gloom here.
    I prefer to look at finding better understanding of the world and different perspectives and looking at potential upsides to complement the doom and gloom.
    For instance I am beginning to understand the natalist perspective: avoiding suffering is not the best goal.

  2. Your list completely misses the increasing domination by private corporations over the planet and humanity for their own purposes and profit. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft are already more powerful than any government. They already spy on us immensely more than any government could ever hope to do. Worse yet, a substantial amount of the population welcomes their spying and wholly accepts the hegemony’s propaganda that the spying benefits the spied upon. My prediction is that these super-corporations will increasingly proffer themselves as having the solutions to the overwhelming issues on your list and humanity will continue to turn itself over to them in the hope of fixing its pains. They will ultimately supersede governments and relegate them to roles resembling community associations and committees.

    • That certainly is the goal of the corporate cartel, and yes, it is already in place to varying degrees in various places. And yes, most people unwittingly help make it happen. Meanwhile, many others see what is going on, but are pretty much forced to continue working very hard to fund and further such agendas through taxation. It is almost impossible to survive and feed one’s family without also funding brutal, offensive wars and many other programs just as horrible. And yet I love feeling optimistic, and often do. Will anyone guess why?

  3. Caro Dr. Daniel,

    Nos tópicos descritos, a triste realidade que anuncia a ruína do nosso planeta.

    A perca de valores fundamentais da CONVIVÊNCIA em comunidade entre os homens é, em minha opinião, o aspecto que interferiu diretamente sobre todo este desastre.

    O desenvolvimento tecnológico desencadeou a competitividade em níveis descontrolados o que, interferiu para que o individualismo tomasse proporção de valor sobre a unidade humana.

    Nesta dimensão futurista e desastrosa, há duas forças se contrapondo e atuando para instalar o desequilíbrio: o sucesso individualizado que exaltou o PODER e, a perplexidade do sentimento de SOLIDARIEDADE de menor resistência que, sufocado, irá extirpar através da UNIÃO das pessoas com as mesmas convicções.

    Nas formas negativas, o individualismo, trouxe o isolamento, o distanciamento, a desconfiança no outro o que, desabrochou sentimentos vazios e, perigosos. O ser humano, não reconhece através de si mesmo, seus valores e intelecto. Dependerá sempre do comparativo de experiências passadas para se desenvolver e se aprimorar.

    Na forma positiva, no que acredito, mesmo com a divisão da cultura, seja esta social ou religiosa, a barreira esta se rompendo. A globalização, aponta a fortaleza da união humana na direção do DESENVOLVIMENTO mais seguro e equilibrado.

    Particularmente e de efeito, sinto isso crescendo em mim, uma força de reação para mudar conceitos desta era do INDIVIDUALISMO.

    Graças à minha particular descoberta que, acreditando que o problema era de ordem comportamental por um defeito familiar, consegui discernir que, diante da tragédia a interferência de medicações criadas para “dar a falsa” sensação de “equilíbrio mental” foi o desfecho de um quadro cronico irreversível que aniquilou uma família inteira.

    A prática e utilização de medicações de controle trazendo esta “falsa” condição de “tratamento” e, destruindo pessoas, como condiciona no item “17”, é minha LUTA DIRETA !

    Cada um de nós, fechados em nossas decepções e desequilíbrios por inteiração destas forças destrutivas que rondaram a era do INDIVIDUALISMO, ou, engolirá nossas convicções, nos levando para a ruína total ou, a busca e luta do instinto de sobrevivência, e como reação, nos dará a resposta dos “ERROS” desta era.

    O tempo destoante que evidencia a tragédia no mundo, também anuncia a mudança.

    Dr. Daniel, descobrir na linha de seu pensamento, a preocupação catastrófica sobre o desastre direto destes efeitos no humano, é pontual e, resume a força de reação que rompe as barreiras da sociedade, cultura e distância.

    Na expressão: O BEM SEMPRE VENCE, o intelecto lógico desabrocha naturalmente e, instintivamente no qual e, finalmente, apesar do grave resultado que a ERA DO INDIVIDUALISMO deixou como herança para o mundo, a ERA DA SOLIDARIEDADE ainda, que muito tímida, começa a ganhar força.

    A UNIÃO será nosso novo PODER DE ENFRENTAMENTO.

    Obrigada pelo valoroso espaço Dr. Daniel.

    Congratulations,

  4. Dear Daniel,

    did you ever hear about the ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment’ by M. Horkheimer and T.W. Adorno from the Frankfurt School (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic_of_Enlightenment)? I would really suggest you to read their philosophy/ critical theory, cause it could lift your philosophical urge for questions of mankind and the future to an other level. And you should definetly try to read Karl Marx ‘Capital’ aswell (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital,_Volume_I). It could enrich your ‘criticism by interpretation’ with some ‘criticism by depiction’.

    Kind regards,

    Fabian

  5. As a young person in America who works with college students I can say that #18 is already happening. Not a pleasant process, but very much needed for us to collectively wake up.

  6. We all must do what we can. I am doing my best. Think Globally, Act Locally. You made some great movies, which helped me think and care for my son.

    It’s early stage nonprofit, but I will dedicate myself to Hope Family Village for the rest of my life.

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