Wendell Berry on Climate Change: To Save the Future, Live in the Present
I. [2013]
So far as I am concerned, the future has no narrative. The future does not exist until it has become the past. To a very limited extent, prediction has worked. The sun, so far, has set and risen as we have expected it to do. And the world, I suppose, will predictably end, but all of its predicted deadlines, so far, have been wrong.
The End of Something—history, the novel, Christianity, the human race, the world—has long been an irresistible subject. Many of the things predicted to end have so far continued, evidently to the embarrassment of none of the predictors. The future has been equally, and relatedly, an irresistible subject. How can so many people of certified intelligence have written so many pages on a subject about which nobody knows anything? Perhaps we need a book— in case we don’t already have one—on the end of the future.
None of us knows the future. Fairly predictably, we are going to be surprised by it. That is why “Take…no thought for the morrow…” is such excellent advice. Taking thought for the morrow is, fairly predictably, a waste of time.
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