Two Thousand Years Hence
My recent post The Human Condition According to a Famous Stoic presents Roman philosopher Seneca‘s bold statement at left, but it also raises the question: Are there any people of our current era that will be the subject of conversation 2000 years from now?
Let’s start by admitting that, unless a miracle occurs, it’s extremely unlikely that there will still be organized human life here in 100 years, let alone 2000. Environmental collapse, runaway disease unleashed from the melting of permafrost, nuclear holocaust, AI, and a variety of other as-yet-unseen threats leave us with what most informed people would agree to be a poor chance of survival. But let’s set that aside and assume that humankind just keeps bumping along.
A few ideas:
The iconic religious figures like Jesus Christ, Mohammed, and the Buddha might still be topics for intellectuals of the fifth millennium CE. It’s unlikely that a new religion will take hold, as the world (outside the United States) becomes more dependent on science and less on superstition.
As much as I hate to say it, I doubt that anything that’s happened in music will make it anywhere close to another 2000 years. It pains me to think of a day when the works of people like Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin are forgotten, but that seems inevitable.
My last remark may come as a surprise: It’s possible that the name Donald Trump may be on people’s lips into the indefinite future. Two millennia after the fall of Rome, we’re still studying and analyzing what happened to what was at the time, the most empire that Earth had even seen. We write books on the subject that weigh more than a small boy, but there was no single culprit. And we’ve examined it all: Caesar, corruption, Nero, decadence, outreach into lands that are uncontrollable. The debates still continues.
It’s possible that the people studying world economics and politics in the future will wonder what caused the wealthiest and most powerful nation in Earth’s history to wither, grow cold, and die–all within just a few years. It wasn’t Bill and Hillary Clinton.
What concerns the rest of the world more? Is it Trump, or is it a system and its people that’s so twisted and broken that it enabled Trump to come to power in the first place? There is no way of knowing.
This is where we are now, and it’s not an enviable position.
From 
I had to laugh at this discussion on the video on sea-level rise and the post I just made:
This video makes the point that melting ice on our planet’s surface is causing sea-level rise
This from senior physicist Dr. Brian Cox.
As shown here, my old colleague Jigar Shah is still quite active in the field of clean energy and electric transportation.
American political scientist, author, and entrepreneur Ian Bremmer writes frequently on global political risk. He notes: American consumer sentiment drops to second lowest level since 1952 (pandemic was slightly worse).
