The Future of Man: Bright or Bleak?

For almost all of recorded history, man has been fascinated with his future and all of both the wonders and horrors it might hold. From the Aztecs, who created a calendar that dated all the way to a couple of years prior to today, to the famed Nostradamus who was allegedly clairvoyant and whose prophecies have been interpreted to fit modern happenings, to modern-day apocalypse writers, man is held captivated by that which he cannot know for certain: the future. Many literary artists have published works on their idea of the future of both the human race and our planet, with very few of them having much of a positive outlook. It is generally agreed upon that some form of disaster, be it man-made or natural, will occur and the current way of life will be altered dramatically. Populations will be decimated; individuals will begin to resort to anything they have to do to survive. Emotions will be shut off or altogether ignored and people will be overall desensitized, which tells much about their psychological state of being. Emotion is necessary for someone to retain a stereotypically “right” state of mind. According to articles in several issues of Time magazine, governmental trends show that the dystopian governments in works such as Anthem by Ayn Rand are indeed a possibility, and societal trends show that the people would not hesitate to resort to horrible inhuman things to survive. “Black Friday” is a country-wide yearly sale that happens right after Thanksgiving, and during that event people trample each other over the deals they will get, and if someone is trying to get the item that someone else wants, there is no telling what the other person will do to get that item. That is during a time of overabundance! Imagine how those ...

... middle of paper ...

... can do. We can attempt to leave the world better than when it was when we came into it.

Works Cited

Benét, Stephen Vincent. "By the Waters of Babylon." Literature Texas Treasures. N.p.: n.p., n.d. 1014-26. Print.

Calabresi, Massimo, and Michael Crowley. "Homeland Insecurity." Time 13 May 2013: 22-28. Print.

The Matrix. Dir. The Wachowski Brothers. Perf. Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburn. Warner Bros., 1999. Film.

McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. New York: Vintage, 2006. Print.

Rand, Ayn. Anthem. London: Cassell, 1938. Print.

Scherer, Michael. "The Geeks Who Leak." Time 24 June 2013: 22-29. Print.

Teasdale, Sara. “There Will Come Soft Rains.” Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. 17 Dec. 2013.

Yolen, Jane. "Gray." After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia. Ed. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. New York: Hyperion, 2012. 281-82. Print.