Yesterday, Jamie summarized a book she just finished reading ("When No Thing Works") and it has a lot of great ideas for living through an apocalypse. One I've been thinking about a lot is the idea of imagining an ideal future 150 years from now.
Imagining the future is not something I'm unfamiliar with, and thinking decades out is something I spent plenty of time doing but 150 years? I can't say I've done much thinking that far out. That scale brings into focus something that at least I don't usually consider when thinking about the future: I won't be here to see it.
The 150 year forecast is a lot more fun than the shorter term in a number of ways. The sorts of things that seem like hard problems now seem less so that far out, if they are relevant at all. The limitations of technology can essentially be ignored (consider how impossible the technology we have now would have seemed in 1876) and even the social limitations we are under are likely to be less simply through the turnover of a few generations (while we have so far to go, consider the social progress the world has experienced over the last century and a half).
One of the most powerful things about this for me is that it takes me out of the picture. I often struggle with determining if what I plan for the future is good for everyone or just good for me. Thinking about the future beyond your certain demise makes it easier to determine this because you won't be there to enjoy it.
While the extreme distance from here to there forces you to think about more abstract predictions, applying this as a filter or test to decisions you make today is surprisingly useful. When you have a clear vision of the ideal world of 2176 you can ask yourself today "which choice gets us closer to that future?". I imagine the answer is often "I don't know", but that's useful information as well.
Something we talk about often is how the surface impression of our little city is one stuck in the past. A few years back there were a number of beautiful murals painted around the city, but they all featured subjects of the past, often industries that no longer exist. There is one that is a sort of exception, and while it depicts something from the past (the work of a local author) it's a sci-fi scene based on the author's futuristic fiction. It's the only one of these murals that I find any inspiration in, and it makes me wonder what the impact might have been if all the murals were depictions of the future?
What if we started to think about this collectively, what could Beaver Dam be like in 2176 if we started to work together today to define a shared vision of what an ideal future would be? What if we used this shared vision to shape current decisions? Could the abstraction of a time beyond the end of all our lives allow us to envision a shared future that includes what is most important to all of us?
I think it could. I don't think it will be simple, but I honestly beleive that if we can carefully curate such a group and such a plan and do so in a way that everyone involved understands the goal from the perspective I'm describing, I think such a shared collective vision is possible.
I will admit, it feels impossible saying that in a time of such extreme divisiveness, but if we think about what is good regardless of whether or not we get to experience it ourselves, I think we can come up with a list that all of us can agree on.
Jason J. Gullickson, 2026