Futurama and the Disappointing Future

The moral case for realizing that the future might not be as different as the past.

Author’s Note: In case you haven’t seen, next month, which is the future, hopefully won’t be disappointing. For just next month, you’re going to see 11 pieces about Christmas published in 11 days up to Christmas.

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Most people assume that the future is going to be better.

That whatever we currently have in the present or recent past, the future has to be better. It will at some point improve to the point that we'll look back at who or what we used to be and see a more positive, less destructive version of today has come about. This is partly where the idea of hope comes from, the potential of living a possibly improved life. Otherwise what would be the point of living? If there's no opportunity for better, you might end up depressed and angry that you haven't made any kind of progress. You might even move backwards and that would feel worse. However, there's also the possibility that things will simply remain the same. Even if you have more technology or the ability to travel faster or more efficiently, that only matters if you have somewhere of value to actually go.

Your life could just stop and everyone else could as well. We could go to Mars or elsewhere in the universe and just make the same mistakes we made on Earth. Or have the ability to cure all sorts of diseases, only to have other diseases take their place, leaving you without any reason for optimism. You could invent a robot which can think for themselves and make its own choices. Only for that robot to be as lazy and incompetent as any regular human being. Maybe even worse because as a robot they don't necessarily care that humans have lives.

Even worse, you could discover life on other planets with technologies beyond your wildest dreams. Just to discover that they couldn't care less about you and what you want. They could see you as nothing but an annoying inconvenience that might be better off completely wiped out. So much of what we believe about these new discoveries is built around the belief that it will improve our lives and make us feel better about not only ourselves but about humanity in general. The problem is that actual humanity is very rarely that open to change. They might just find ways to use this to their advantage rather than as a way to improve themselves.

Futurama is fundamentally about coming to terms with a disappointing future. Philip J Fry, as voiced by Billy West, used to live in a world which seems to be mostly stuck where it is... the twentieth century. Things seemed to have reached their peak and nothing interesting was going to happen. Yet even as he is cryogenically frozen for a thousand years and wakes up in the year 3000, his world isn't all that different. There might be ships that can travel through space and aliens and technologies people in 1999 could only imagine, but human beings have pretty much stayed the same. They are still selfish and mean. They still want money and are willing to do what they need to get it. Not only that but aliens and robots and other things are just as selfish and mean to each other and humanity.

Because in the end, people don't really change all that much.

Still, it's worth exploring the possibility of a disappointing future by checking out Futurama when you can.

Futurama is available on Disney Plus as well as Hulu.

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