Oracle mode (and mood): about 2050

 Everybody is a crystal-gazer these days, so why not me too? Here is what I anticipate about the world thirty years from now. Maybe some of my readers will still be around, and remember, and mentally tick off all the things that I got right.

1.    The population has stabilized everywhere except Africa, around 10 billion, but the metro cities are bursting, with some 40-50 million strong, and harsh limits have been imposed on entry and settlement by vast local support.

2.    If there hasn’t been a revolution of the French/Russian/Chinese type yet, the world is controlled by a thousand corporate CEOs and maybe fifty political honchos, all of whom personally have at least tens (some hundreds…) of billion dollars. Perhaps there are a few trillionaires already.

3.    ‘Strong’ men rule every major nation, and they are desperately trying to fend off assassination as well as all-out war with one another.

4.   If fossil fuels  and disposable plastic have not been almost totally replaced already, the air is becoming rapidly unbreatheable, and the soil, increasingly infertile.

5.   Water famines loom in most countries, and natural disasters like hurricanes, forest fires, tsunamis and earthquakes are becoming increasingly more frequent and more destructive.

6.   The world is politically so fractured along so many lines (gender, religion, caste, tribe, language, wealth) that traditional consensual democracy is on the verge of extinction.

7.    The old hugely outnumber the young in most advanced countries, and policies are having to be recast in their favour, because as an increasingly organized power with huge resources and influence, they affect politics profoundly.

8. Private transport is now a preserve of the super-elite, and increasingly self-sufficient gated communities with high levels of security have become the norm everywhere. Human driven vehicles have become a rarity.

9. China dominates Asia, having suborned all weaker nations into at least silent subservience, or impotent opposition. A Europe-America league is increasingly convinced that a modus vivendi with China is their best option.

10. Vast numbers live on the dole, addicted to the internet and other idle pleasures, probably kept on a tight leash from public misbehaviour everywhere.

11. The super-elite (the richest half million) are making grand plans for migrating to the moon, or even to nearby planets.

12. Many hundred million young people, thanks to the very new-fangled, experimental, hyper-liberal education they have received in school, are permanently unemployable.

13. Countless ageing parents are beginning to wonder whether the strict discipline insisted upon by schools and teachers in a bygone era might not have been a much better option, something that would have ensured that they did not have to bear with irresponsible, callous, self-obsessed, dependent, stupid and ignorant grown-up children.

14. AI and robots are becoming ubiquitous, and rebellious forces are organizing against them.

15. Resurgent religions are becoming an unavoidable force to contend with in every nation’s politics.

16. The traditional middle class is breeding itself out – their numbers falling rapidly everywhere.

I have only made some projections based on the current situation (as I have watched it developing over almost half a century). Many of these are likely to go wrong: I hope they will, so that my daughter’s generation might actually live in a far better world than I am here anticipating. I shall be long gone by 2050, but they will be only middle-aged,statistically fated to live on for another 30 years each on average. I hope they learn to cope well. My greatest fear is that too many of my projections are going to come true. And then there might be even nastier things that I did not anticipate…

About luck, again

I notice that it is nearly twenty years since I started scribbling (or rather, typing) these musings in my diary. I was 38 then, I am going on 58 now. My daughter was virtually a baby then, she is very much a grown woman today. Over these last two decades, I have been musing often and again over the role that luck plays in our lives. Of all things, reading Thomas Picketty’s unlikely classic Capital in the 21^st century set me thinking about how luck has affected my life so far, and how it is likely to in the days to come.

 

I, for one, believe ever more strongly with every passing year that luck (or fate, or God’s will, call it what you like) plays a crucial role in everybody’s life (some are born to über rich parents in advanced countries, some are born severely handicapped, some see their lives and/or savings destroyed by war and inflation) – and this, without giving up the firm conviction that every person ought to take some responsibility for his own life, and do his utmost to achieve certain aims he considers worthwhile. And so far as I am concerned, I can look back and see how strongly luck has affected my life, for better as well as for worse.

 

I have been lucky that

 

1.      I have lived so long. In India, it’s hardly something that can be taken for granted!

2.      I have been reasonably healthy and whole for so long: so many people become handicapped, ill or decrepit pretty early in life.

3.      I have had my parents around, fit and active for so long (so many people lose one or both in their youth, or have to carry them as helpless burdens).

4.      I have never had to do disgusting things (like crime, flattery, servility or some essentially mindless, pointless job) for a living, and I have on the whole greatly enjoyed what brought me and my family our daily bread.

5.      My daughter was born healthy and whole, I have been able to give her a good upbringing, all things considered (and absolutely delighted in it) and now she is an active, self-supporting adult.

6.      She still loves and respects me in very apparent ways, and even listens to me most of the time!

7.      A lot of people have tried to hurt me, and many have cheated me, financially, socially and emotionally, but no one ever managed to do really serious damage.

8.      I have been able to indulge my hobbies – reading, writing, watching movies, counselling people, sleeping a great deal, relishing good food, living in quiet, clean and safe surroundings, walking, swimming, travelling for pleasure – for so many years.

9.      I can still quickly strike a good rapport with youngsters in large numbers.

10.  The pandemic did not seriously hurt me!

 

… and I can easily add several items to that list without having to think too much. That was just to show that I am not a habitual whiner; indeed, many honest readers will admit that I attribute an uncommonly great deal to good luck for the way my life has worked out, instead of taking credit for everything I have ‘achieved’. Therefore, when I list some ways in which bad luck has troubled me, no one should decide that I am wallowing in self-pity.

I think I have been a victim of bad luck in the sense that

1.      Despite my parents being more than normally good people, I had a very lonely and insecure childhood, the scars of which still trouble my dreams, and, I think, have made me more permanently stressed and melancholy than I might have been.

2.      If my father had made better practical decisions when he had the choice – and he had far more than I ever did – my life could have turned out to be very different, though I am not saying necessarily better.

3.      If my immediate boss and the super-boss at the newspaper had not almost simultaneously resigned and left just when I was beginning to grow wings, I might have been a heavyweight senior journalist hobnobbing with VVIPs and pontificating on TV and syndicated columns in return for vast paychecks today: again, I’m not saying that would have been ‘better’.

4.      If all those hundreds of old boys and girls who once gushed over me had kept in touch and spread the word around, I would have been a celebrity today. I was just not destined for that sort of thing.

5.      If I had figured out much earlier that that schoolmaster’s job was simply wasting my life, I’d have been a much richer man today.

6.      So too if inflation had not remained consistently high and interest rates had not fallen so much over the last decade and more – things entirely beyond a single ordinary man’s control, and therefore attributable only to bad luck.

7.      So too that I live in a country where there is virtually no social security for ageing self-employed persons like me (though they number in the hundreds of millions), and that I fall in the same income tax bracket as the richest tycoons, who earn thousands of times as much as I do!

 

There have been one or two other things besides, which I do not wish to bring up on a public platform. Or maybe I will, when I am too old to care.

Enough of cribbing. I have always liked to look ahead. So here’s a list of things I wonder about when I imagine  how luck might affect me in the years to come.

1.      Will I be fit and active for quite some time yet?

2.      Will I live long enough to be a grandfather, and be one half as good as my grandfather was?

3.      Will I find one or two good friends in my declining years?

4.      Will I be able to live out my old age in at least modest security and comfort?

5.      Will my passing be quick and easy?

6.      Will I be remembered by some, or forgotten almost instantly?

 

I really do think that no matter what I choose to do from here onwards, it is chiefly luck that is going to decide those answers for me.

P.S.: It is always a pleasure to see some old posts coming back into the most-read list: A most frightening prospect (how the issue has dated and faded from public memory, just as I had sardonically predicted!), A girl who admired her teacher (nothing has changed in all these years) and What sort of person am I? Do look up some of the comments on those posts too: they make interesting reading.

(something's the matter with the line spacing. Readers, please excuse)

Another story

For those who have been asking for more: have you read Satyajit Ray's Septopaser khide? Otherwise, listen to me reading it out here.