Doing the dog paddle to the future

When I was walking back from getting coffee for myself and my wife I found myself thinking about how we are getting so close to the year 2020 and how much I have seen happen in my world from when I was a kid in the 1960′s.

I have seen president’s assassinated, watched as man landed on the moon for the first time (on my 13th birthday to boot). I have seen students killed at Kent State as they protested for a better world and watched as the War Measures Act was enacted in Canada as a response to the FLQ uprising.

Then as I neared home carrying coffee I realized something. @020 is just around the corner and our world, our society hasn’t gotten any better. In fact it could be argued that it has gotten worse.

There is no Star Trek future beckoning us and chances are it never will be but instead driven into copyright and patent hell if our current technological mess is any indication. Any of the moral and social mores that may have guided a possible future reflective of Star Trek have left the building.

Where we shout words of encouragement to the warriors of the Arab Spring we look to our own changers of society and pummel them with derision. The middle-class backbone of the country has been smashed apart as corporations brag about how they pay lower taxes than the poor, and governments line up to give them even more breaks.

Our bright future is has become nothing but a tarnished figment of our hopes and dreams. Where once we dreamed of equality and believed the impossible was indeed possible we now live in a world of homelessness and watch as our dreams are foreclosed on.

Our global fisheries are at a never seen before breaking but yet we still find excuses to hunt whales and eat shark fin soup. Water has become a commodity that is controlled by cartels looking to extract their pound of flesh from the very substance of life. Food is genetically manipulated by companies that make it illegal for us to even own our own seeds.

When I was a kid in the 60′s I looked to the future of 2020 and believed that it would be a beautiful and different world. Now as an adult looking to 2020 as a fast approaching freight train I see nothing but desperation lying behind the eyes of people who are scared about what the morning will bring let alone 2020.

The future is coming fast and the dystopian future once relegated to the pages of science fiction has now become a tangible fact. The straw is getting heavy, the people in the trenches are beyond tired, and our society becomes even more fragmented.

So instead of reaching a bright future of incredible social wealth and knowledge we are all just doing the dog paddle hoping that we don’t end up drowning.

note: the title came from my wife when we talked about this.