© 2024 KMUW
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Crowson: Living In The Future

Crossett Library, flickr Creative Commons

2015! Good grief it sounds like a year right out of the future! There’s just something about the way “2015” sounds that makes me think of cars that fly and people that get out of them wearing silver Spandex jump suits.    

Where is that dazzling future that my Weekly Reader predicted, back in 1962? Ok, we sort of have the “television phones” that once seemed so alluring. But no flying cars. No pills that reconstitute into full steak dinners magically. No robot house servants.

Mostly we still seem to be mired in the past. We’re still dangerously polluting our environment. We still elect politicians who shun their jobs in favor of pandering to the greedy. Ethnic and religious conflicts still abound. Courts still have to rule that education funding is inadequate. Yech!

For escapism I recently watched a movie about the future: “Mockingjay.” Brother. According to those guys, it just gets worse. There wasn’t a flying car anywhere.

So a couple of days later I sought escapism in the past. I went to see “Into the Woods.” There was much to like about that vision of olden days, but it just went on and on and on. Way too long. That’s when it dawned on me. It was realistic. The past does just go on and on and on.

All the Spandex got used up by rock bands in the 1980s. Flying cars got shot down by terrorists. The rains of climate change rusted robot servants out.

Now that we are living in the future, maybe we should resolve to live in the present moment. That’s my New Year’s wish for you in 2015.

Richard Crowson is not only a editorial commentator for KMUW. He's also a cartoonist, an artist and a banjo player.