The sci-fi mystique of 2020

“It is the year 2020 and the first annual conference of sentient artificial persons is about to begin. One of the first agenda points is a resolution demanding that humans stop using the derogatory term “robot,” which comes from the Slavic word for “work” and gives the connotation that we should be the servants of humans forever…”

Wait a minute. That won’t work anymore. Sci-fi writers always have to push their stories ahead a couple of decades to give themselves enough room for imagination.

As a kid, I was confused about why George Orwell thought the year 1984 had a dire, futuristic feel to it. For me, it was just the mostly boring year I had our near neighbor as a second grade teacher, so that when my mom called me in sick so that i could go sledding in the first fresh snow of the winter, I got caught.

Photo by Arie Farnam

For my generation, 2020 was the year that sounded futuristic, cool and a bit scary. 2019 and all the other years since 2000 just looked weird written down and we had a hard time saying them at first. We were used to saying, “Nineteen ninety something.” So we naturally tried to say “Twenty” but then we had to say “Twenty O one” and “twenty O two,” so it just didn’t work.

But “twenty twenty” works nicely and it was safely remote enough that we could freely imagine a futuristic world, either utopian or dystopian. We were really expecting flying cars, robot soldiers and at least basic food replicators by now. Touch screen tablets actually turned out to be way cooler than our sci-fi could imagine and drones are a bit more boring than we pictured.

However, our sci-fi failed utterly to predict social and cultural changes. To be fair, sci-fi pretty much by definition has to go to extremes. Either the culture will be hopelessly jaded and cruel or we will somehow banish racism, ableism and bigotry of all sorts along with the common cold. Naturally, neither of those situations has fully materialized.

Sure, today’s culture is jaded and unhealthy in ways that we couldn’t have dreamed in the 1980s or 90s. The effects on general mentality and interactions that social media, nonstop video games and blanket advertising have had are way more depressingly banal than sci-fi authors of the past would have envisioned.

But I recently got a kick out of explaining to an ESL student studying professional English usage that the pronoun “his” is now simply considered wrong—rather than “politically incorrect”—in the sentence, “I’m the kind of employee who always stays late when his boss asks,” given that the student is female.

The ability to choose any music, video, book or magazine in a second and surround yourself with ad-free, thoughtful and wonderfully diverse voices (if you so choose) is also pretty amazing. The ability to buy almost everything online and rarely have to go to any store except the local mom-and-pop store on the corner is downright awesome.

Knowing that the casual homophobia my kids are exposed to in elementary school will be countered with a much more open-minded online world once they are a few years older gives me a little peace, while the continuation of deeply engrained racism and ableism in almost all social spaces fills me with despair.

Other than the touch-screen devices, the thing that is probably the truest to the science fiction and fantasy of my youth is the global disaster of climate change looming, while political and cultural leaders enact the modern equivalent of “the folly of Rohan”. Tolkien would only have been perplexed about how our Gandalf turned out to be a teenage girl with pigtails.

While it looks like life in 2020 is going to be just as mundane as it is every year while we’re living it, this coming year is the year we once envisioned as dramatic and decisive. And although it is just one more year in a series of numbered years, we could take that up. We could choose to make our resolutions less about losing weight or saving money and more about the kind of world we want to make real through our actions.

In 2020 Americans will participate in the election of another president, very likely the last president to have a real chance of averting catastrophic climate change. Vast numbers of people in Asia, Africa and South America are gaining a middle-class lifestyle, and through global interpersonal communication, we have more opportunity than ever before to expand our concept of “us.”

And yet many of us are struggling with personal lives that already feel survivalist, where every day is on the edge. My. hope for the new year is to find a clear path through the storm, a sense of direction.

May 2020 be a year to remember for much needed change.

Give a damn about something... anything

Last year was a doozy and our prayers for next year are uncommonly humble. Never before has that sentiment ricocheted around the on-line and offline worlds as it does now.

I have never been much for New Year's resolutions, partly because the New Year isn't a great  breaking point for me, but also because my self discipline is strong when it's there and nonexistent when it's not. Trying to manufacture it with a calendar marker isn't much help. 

Cutting out sweets when I just received my favorite goodies over the holidays--and have been virtuously not devouring them all at once--is decidedly unappealing. The weather makes anything more than my indoor workout unrealistic. And everything else I should be doing, I am already working on. 

But this year there is one thing I have to make a resolution on. I must resolve to care.

I am known for my passionate opinions and passionate work. And having been born under the sun sign of Aries, my passions are near the surface. But there is a downside to that too.. Too hot a fire burns out quickly. 

This past year, my personal life as well as global political and publishing trends have conspired to strip me of much of what I thought made life worth living. The things I cared passionately about have been trampled into the mud by stampeding events. Family crises resulting in escalating stress with no hopeful end in sight derailed my writing career, which was hobbled by the miserable publishing climate as it was, and I'm not even going to start on politics, since you've heard it all before. 

Mostly the things that I still have from last year are the humblest things--a home, some chickens, a duck, two cats, a garden, some members of my family. I am immensely grateful for them. But the thing that has been most dramatically taken away has been my passion. 

I know from watching other people sink into dullness that passion is the key element in life force. The passion of hopes and dreams is lovely. The passion of love and commitment in a relationship is precious. But even the passion of anger or revenge has it's virtues. I don't care much anymore what passions you may have, but I know that having some passion is essential.

All year we heard that this is NOT the time to talk about climate change--after a natural disaster that cost many lives--or about guns in America--after a tragic mass shooting--or it isn't the time to silently kneel for lives lost in your community--during a public and symbolic moment. The core message is that we must curb our passion, stifle the fire because cool heads will make better decisions.

But do they?

I see a first grader playing with trash right outside school and all the adults walking by, picking up kids, going about their business. And the older kids too. I stop and pick up the trash, making a stern note to myself to wash my hands. The older kids stare at me. Why do I care? It isn't my trash--or is it?--they must be thinking. 

I care. In the past I have really and truly cared about picking up the trash in my community. This year I have to choose to care, but I still care.

I disagree with people about a lot of passionate issues. Someone wants to agitate for a political candidate that isn't my cup of tea, though I don't think the candidate is evil. Or they simply care more about gun violence than climate change and I think the priorities should be reversed, if we had to ultimately choose. Or they insist that STAR voting is superior to any other type of voting reform. Others are vehemently trying to build a voice for their marginalized nation or refugee group. 

And you know what? I want to hug every one of those people and say, "You go, human! More power to ya. Have courage and strength. Don't give up."

Because when you get right down to it, these people give a damn and that is far more important than what precisely they give a damn about. 

I invite you to make this resolution with me, if you're struggling. Don't force yourself into a virtuous change of routine that will fizzle out in a couple of weeks. Just resolve to care about something specific. Choose something local and concrete, like your family or your place or your local school. Or choose an issue. But choose something beyond your own person to care about. 

Yes, it's risky. You may well lose that thing or your cause may be lost. That hurts and you may have to choose again.

But what you gain is purpose. If not exactly hope, then at least you gain a temporary antidote to despair. Despair and it's close cousin indifference are the worst destroyers of our world. 

Therefore, I invite you, even if your passion is something I may disagree with. Give a damn this year. Choose and follow your passion. This is how we ensure that we will have a future.