A Few Rules for Predicting the Future: An Essay

To study history is to study humanity. And to try to foretell the future without studying history is like trying to learn to read without bothering to learn the alphabet.

There’s no single answer that will solve all our future problems. There’s no magic bullet. Instead there are thousands of answers—at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be.

So why try to predict the future at all if it's so difficult, so nearly impossible? Because making predictions is one way to give warning when we see ourselves drifting in dangerous directions. Because prediction is a useful way of pointing out safer, wiser courses. Because, most of all, our tomorrow is the child of our today. Through thought and deed, we exert a great deal of influence over this child, even though we can't control it absolutely. Best to think about it, though. Best to try to shape it into something good. Best to do that for any child.

The past, for example, is filled with repeating cycles of strength and weakness, wisdom and stupidity, empire and ashes. To study history is to study humanity. And to try to foretell the future without studying history is like trying to learn to read without bothering to learn the alphabet.

[P]redicting the future accurately is so difficult. Some of the most mistaken predictions I’ve seen are of the straight-line variety–that’s the kind that ignores the inevitability of unintended consequences, ignores our often less-than-logical reactions to them, and says simply, “In the future, we will have more and more of whatever’s holding our attention right now.” If we’re in a period of prosperity, then in the future, prosperity it will be. If we’re in a period of recession, we’re doomed to even greater distress. Of course, predicting an impossible state of permanent prosperity may well be an act of fear and superstitious hope rather than an act of unimaginative, straight-line thinking. And predicting doom in difficult times may have more to with the sorrow and depression of the moment than with any real insight into future possibilities. Superstition, depression and fear play major roles in our efforts at prediction.

[P]redicting doom in difficult times may have more to with the sorrow and depression of the moment than with any real insight into future possibilities. Superstition, depression and fear play major roles in our efforts at prediction.

Wishful thinking is no more help in predicting the future than fear, superstitions or depression.

Some of the most mistaken predictions I've seen are of the straight-line variety--that's the kind that ignores the inevitability of unintended consequences, ignores our often less-than-logical reactions to them, and says simply, 'In the future, we will have more and more of whatever's holding our attention right now.

I mean there's no single answer that will solve all of our future problems. There's no magic bullet. Instead there are thousands of answers--at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be.

It’s easy enough to spot this horror when it happens elsewhere in the world or elsewhere in time. But if we are to spot it here at home, to spot it before it can grow and do its worst, we must pay more attention to history.

I didn’t make up the problems,” I pointed out. “All I did was look around at the problems we’re neglecting now and give them about 30 years to grow into full-fledged disasters.” “Okay,” the young man challenged. “So what’s the answer?

I wanted to understand the lies that people have to tell themselves when they either quietly or joyfully watch their neighbors ruined, spirited away, killed. Different versions of this horror have happened again and again in history. They're still happening in places like Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor, wherever one group of people permits its leaders to convince them that for their own protection, for the safety of their families and the security of their country, they must get their enemies, those alien others who until now were their neighbors.

to try to foretell the future without studying history is like trying to learn to read without bothering to learn the alphabet