Future World - Que Sera, Sera
The Future World Pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York presented a rosey image of life in the not too distant future for the average person. The predictions hit some things fairly close and missed the boat on others.
A main contention of those experts was there would be so much leisure time that finding ways to fill it would be almost a burden. They thought new ways to create recreational activities would boom and vacations would be longer and more widely available.
They said in the future automation would perform
repetitive tasks, wages would increase substantially due to higher worker productivity, and the work day would shorten to less than the routine eight hours and the work week would also become the work three or four day week.
Today there is a lot more recreation for some. Supreme Court Justices fly off to New Zealand and go on cruises to the South Pacific routinely. The commercial Cruise Industry is clogging harbors in all the tropical islands with immense floating hotels. There is such a demand from crowds of workers who can afford these trips and other jaunts to Europe, Japan, Antartica, and our own Western vacation spots that reservations a year in advance are now mandatory at many locations. Air travel this summer for people getting away was at a record level. And this cornucopia of leisure extended to visitors from abroad journeying to our vacation attractions as well as to those other international spots. Theme Parks have long lines every wher, and RVs tow 4-wheelers to every possible off-road escape.
The work week and daily hours have not gotten the benefit of those hopeful projections. Stress levels for families and single working people are at an all time high. Wages have not kept up with the cost of housing, food, medical care, and other basic expenses. Signs of these stressor are evident in the increased homeless and drug addicted segments of society. Fatalities and injuries from an explosion of gun ownership and abuse are out of control. Deleterious effects on the environment from abuse of natural resources by an ever enlarging population world wide are added stressor with immediate and long term consequences.
Mass movements of populations from countries suffering economic collapse and dictatorial or incompetent governments is impacting our stability. These shifts in populations from the less advantaged to the more advantaged democracies has heightened friction between races, between the immigrant populations, and the “native” inhabitants, like us, meaning between whites of European origin and those of darker skin. The closer they are to the equator the harder it is for those farther north to accept the new immigrants.
One area that Future World missed completely was the projection that wealth and well being would become more egalitarian. The conception that the benefits of modern technology would extend throughout society from those at the bottom of the income ladder to all levels above. This is the biggest failure of those futurists. The gap between the most affluent, the thousands of meg-billionaires, the 1%, and the ultra-affluent above that extreme has grown to the point that the stress it imposes on the stability of our society is a smoldering fuse. The incontrovertible evidence for this is the bizarre acceptance by nearly half the citizenry of a completely incompetent charlatan as their potential leader. /When coiupled with the drastic rise in violent hate groups and religious zealotry it is an indication that these hoodwinked masses have lost faith that democracy can provide for basic needs and srotect them. It echoes Germany in he 1920s and Hitler. That they willingly accept a future of autocracy, of the Constitution replace by the evil whims of a dictator whose guiding light is a bible called Project 2025, should be an emergency warning flashing red on every cell phone in every pocket everywhere.
As to relying on a World’s Fair exhibit as an indicator of prosperity and satisfaction with conditions, there has not been a Fair in the U.S. since 1984. We have been living on top of a volcano for 40 years. Depending on how things go this November 5th, we may see our own Vesuvius bury us under the ashes of our Repbilic.
Personally, with Harris and Wals, I am hopeful of another 40 or more years of bumbling along, if not tranquility, for those of you still around by then.
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The most perfectly pristine landscape on our planet before 1953 was the summit of Mt. Everest.
In our time, opulent tourists have made it a frozen, polluted landfill.
>>> Next up >>>
The Sea of Tranquility is a large crater on the Moon. Soon, no thanks to Elon Musk, “Tranquility” will begin its descent into the
“First Lunar Land Fill.”
“Que sera, sera…”