Fearful of the future? Let us count the ways

Whether its asteroids, volcanoes, artificial intelligence (AI) or climate change that keeps you up at night, a new book by Professor of Media John Potts examines how hope can coexist with angst, as he traces human's fear of the future from prehistory to the present.

What happens next has caused humans angst throughout history. In a new book, Future Fear: Fear of the Future from Prehistory to Climate Change, Professor John Potts looks at our desire to predict and control our destiny.

Humans have worried about the future ever since we formed the earliest social groups, when the greatest fear was a lack of rainfall, plants or animals to hunt.

In ancient civilisations, the many ways to forecast the future had one common feature. Whether from an oracle, astrologer, augur, diviner or seer, a prediction was usually about the near future - perhaps within days.

Later, ancient religions escalated future fears, predicting that the world itself was about to end.

The belief in impending Apocalypse and End Times in medieval Europe was initially announced for the year 1000. When it didn't happen, the date was shifted to 1033, then continually adjusted, based on interpretations of the Book of Revelation, to 1260, 1500, and then 1844. Even the English scientist and theologian Sir Isaac Newton had a go at interpreting the Bible, predicting the world would end in 2060.

Yet the fear of cosmic catastrophe pedalled by religions was ultimately baseless.

There is no doubt that fear has been the dominant prism through which to see the future. Hence the various means to predict or control the future - magic, religion, science and technology.

Is the scenario different now? The existential risk of extreme climate change, where the future is collapsing into the present, indicates that time is gnawing its way into the future all too quickly, and that fear of the future is entirely justified. There is even a new word for it - ecophobia.

Futurology was established as a discipline in 1943, and future studies continue in universities and research institutes. Part of what it does is research the existential risks which threaten humanity with extinction or the collapse of civilisations.

Today, the leading candidates for our extinction are disease, nuclear conflict, asteroid, volcano, biotechnology, artificial intelligence (AI), and climate change. The world had a glimpse of the potential destruction caused by viral contagion with the COVID-19 pandemic. Climate change scientists tell us that the future of climate catastrophe caused by global warming is already upon us.

There is also a generalised anxiety in modern societies that reflects an insecurity about economic pressures and standards of living.

The final countdown

The dominant vision of the future in medieval Europe - the Apocalypse - inspired mortal terror of an imminent, apocalyptic end. Religion extended hope (for the virtuous) of everlasting bliss, but also more fear (for the less than virtuous) of everlasting torment.

However, later European Enlightenment belief in reason and science encouraged the thinking, in the 19th century, that continuous technical innovation would generate wondrous societies in the future.

Yet future fear persisted throughout the Age of Improvement, despite the invention of technological marvels such as the car, powered aircraft, cinema and radio.

Many of the great science fiction works of the 19th and 20^th centuries - Frankenstein, The Time Machine, Metropolis, Brave New World, 1984, Blade Runner - depict dystopian rather than utopian techno-futures. They are visions of fear rather than of hope. Even 2001: A Space Odyssey, which on one level projects a positive space age image of the future, has a super-computer or AI system that kills all but one astronaut.

The very real threat of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War brought a daily sense of terror, which was almost realised during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The insanity of mutually assured destruction (MAD) as a national security and nuclear strategy prevailed until the Cold War ended, although nuclear conflict remains an existential risk.

In the 21st century, Silicon Valley proffers a vision of hope for a better tomorrow, premised on automation, AI, networked connectedness and other technological advancements. This is the latest version of technological progress, now known as disruption. But there is at least as much fear concerning an AI future as there is hope.

Hope v fear

Hope and fear, however, are symbiotic: hope in the future, often fragile and precarious, has marched alongside future fear throughout human history. But there is no doubt that fear has been the dominant prism through which to see the future. Hence the various means to predict or control the future - magic, religion, science and technology.

There have been periods when hope was ascendant, activated by belief and technological progress in the 18th and 19th centuries; but the view of the future throughout the ancient world was mainly pessimistic. The current perspective on our climate change future is predominantly fearful.

Fear of climate change disaster is well founded. Climate change science projects the specific risk of climate catastrophe unless concerted global efforts are made in the present to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

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The extreme events predicted by climate science - fires, floods, cyclones, searing heat, drought, polar melting, rising sea levels - occurred with alarming frequency around the world in the 2010s-2020s, prompting climate activists and scientists to warn that the future of climate disaster has already arrived.

Can we hope any longer? Reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the 2020s hold out some hope that the worst of the climate crisis can still be avoided by positive action in the present. Only time will tell.

John Potts is a Professor of Media and Director of the Centre for Media History at Macquarie University. Future Fear: Fear of the Future from Prehistory to Climate Change is published by Palgrave Macmillan.

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