Whatever, the point is that the future's big and scary and I'm woefully unequipped to deal with it. This entry will be split into two parts. Part the first will be me getting depressive about the future (yes, again). Part the second will be me trying to do some serious philosophical engagement with the idea of the future, including Gary's favourite question, that of determinism. I'm hard pressed to decide which will be a worse read, but I hope some of you will take the time to give them a once-over.
*^*PART THE FIRST*^*
-in which we discover the true extent of the horror that the future can cause, by learning a few lessons from the past-
Well, if you've read my previous stuff you know how I'm feeling about the immediate future and the biggest event contained therein, but what of the fabled five-year plan? What will I have done over next ten years, the next twenty?
Well, unfortunately I've never operated like that. I don't set myself deadlines for anything in life (which probably explains my last-minute all-nighters before uni work is due in). I know it's common for people, especially of my age, to set out their "five year plan", hoping to find the perfect balance of work, travel or other life goals and career (as distinct from work in that work is just for money whilst a career is what you actually want to do with your life). I highlight travel as that seems to feature in most five-year plans nowadays, I'm not sure where it figures in my "plans" (for want of a better word) for the future, but we'll come to that.
Deadlines I don't set, but targets are another matter entirely. At the age of around seven, I decided I wanted to go to University. Didn't care which one, didn't care what for. Just that that was where I was going. From then on I was looking with maybe half of one eye at career paths which would suit a graduate. The other eye was of course looking at the pies in the sky, and my those pies could fly: I was going to be a professional footballer, I was going to be Prime Minister, I was going to be a professional musician.
During my final two or three years at school, I decided that teaching was going to be my thing and initially went for an Early Years course at college. Going for the younger end of the system because working with the older kids freaked me out a little, and that was mostly because of how badly I treated most of my teachers. I didn't want to have to work with little shits like me, basically.
That lasted about three months, tops. And I only made it that far because I was in the college football team and didn't want to leave that behind. Our team was like the reserves for Derby Uni's team, which has links to Derby County FC, from whence I could wrangle a move to my beloved Wednesday: still had my eyes on the pies, see? When the team twice moved the time and place of training without telling me, I took the hint that I wasn't wanted and about three weeks later, after a couple of run-ins with my placement supervisor and a heap of missed deadlines I quit the course, vowing to return stronger and more powerful than ever before - on a sports course.
You see already how the plan has changed. That's the other thing: these targets, only some of them are set in stone, others are essentially whittled from marshmallow. Just on a side note: As I recall, the BTEC Diploma in Early Years counted for quite a bit less than any other Diploma offered by the people at BTEC but I can honestly say that the 2-3 months I spent doing that course, it was harder than degree level RS and that is saying something.
Anyway, then came the Sports Science course, which I loved, and the people on the Sports Science course, most of whom I hated. This was a big shame because the ladies on Early Years were mostly awesome, and I'd lost touch with them all. This failure to hold a relationship through transition is the thing that worries me most about the future. I only got back in touch with one lass from the first course (via facebook, which hardly counts anyway) this year and that was only because of a picture of the two of us back in our Primary School days. I've a feeling that a random add of the other peeps from that time (six years ago now, scary) would not be appreciated. If they remember me at all, it's as "that guy who quit after two months, had a huge crush on Mel, bit of a loner, played Status Quo, Bob Marley and the Zutons on his Walkman so loud we could all hear it".
Breezed through Sports Science with only minor mental scarring and one or two good memories. Did manage to keep hold of a friend after leaving, which was good. During this time the ambition was: do anything at uni, absolutely anything that will get you to PGCE so you can become a college lecturer.
So, from Sport to RS, all the while the ambition was lecturing, either at college or, latterly, at a uni. Until the fateful day - I don't know when it was, save that it was some time in third year - that I suddenly did a massive U-turn. My original goal had been to go to uni, and that mission was accomplished, what happened next stopped mattering to me, right when it should be mattering most. My eyes turned to the skies again and I've been dreaming ever since.
I've remarked a fair few times that life could have been so radically different had I been accepted for Criminology at Leeds Met. Peering into the alternate universe where I did go there, I see a me who doesn't know the awesome people I do now and I pity him, though he probably pities me because his friends are the best thing in his life too and I don't know them.
And there's the crux of the matter: so much of who I am, of who we all are, rests on split-second decisions. On my first day at Trinity, the TRS inductees were made to wait around for induction near the forensic psychology newbies. I was this close to switching into the other group and trying to blag my way in, hoping switching course would be easy. How odd, that an alternate me is wandering the same halls as me, never knowing the great times I've had a stone's throw from where he is.
So, that's how the "plan" for my life has gone. Throughout most of it, the over-arching plan has been to have that TV-stereotypical ideal life complete with wife and two-point-four kids, a mortgage and a job to pay off the mortgage, maybe a spot of keeping up with the Jones' if the Jones' happen to be arseholes, if not then an amiable neighbour-to-neighbour freindship. I never painted the details of this picture, though. I was happy to go with the flow and hope that these things fall together.
Where am I now? Well, it depends what mood I'm in and what I've been doing. A couple of months ago I watched Hot Fuzz and decided I wanted to be a policeman officer, then last week I watched Lilo and Stitch and thought that I might move to Hawaii and take it easy. Sometimes I think about opening a little second-hand book shop somewhere at the seaside and a lot of the time I'm thinking that a second degree would be ace, but in truth that is mostly born of a futile desire to reset the clock on this degree and go back and right some wrongs.
As for the general life stuff, I made myself one promise when I started uni: this would be the start of my life's adventure, the first step towards the two-point-four kids and the mortgage. I said I'd walk the whole wide world to find love. And what do you know, it was in the very first place I looked and suddenly that dream-wife had a face, but I've said enough about that before. Obviously I want to travel, I think everyone does, even if they never get round to it, but I'm wary of doing too much too soon, what will I do when I retire if I've already seen the world as a young man?
Also, I'd like to write. Anything really, even keeping this blog going would be a pleasure, but novels, philosophical books and poetry are my preferred area, not that I've any skill in them."When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer"
Even the best plans need financial backing, of course, and that brings me on to work. I can't go back into a normal job, even if I wanted to. First off, the drudgery of the 9-5 routine is just not something I could ever motivate myself for, save to provide for my family, but since I have no financially dependant family, I feel like I can shoot for the moon. And second, there are no "normal" jobs about. My brother has taken 18 months to get into a temporary position and I would not have got that far. As soon as employers see a degree on my CV, I'll be over-qualified.
So, to conclude, no prospect of work, no career plans, no immediate life goals and now that dream-wife has a face, she has become unattainable. So that's why the future's scary for me personally, now for why it should be considered scary in a more philosophical sense.
*^*PART THE SECOND*^*
-in which we examine the future as a concept in a vain attempt to understand and thereby gain control of it-
I'm not going to get overly scientific about time and space. My limited knowledge of the science would be unhelpful. This might make it harder for me to engage properly, but I'll do my best. Happily, I do know a few theories which I'll try to introduce along the way.
The by-now legendary five-year plan shows some expectation that we can influence the future in any way we want. An optimistic view, to be sure. Should you choose to believe that the future is not already written, imagining ourselves in the driving seat of our own destiny is still perhaps even a little arrogant.
Every action we take has myriad untold consequences, even relatively simple goals can be derailed by a miscalculation or someone unkown factor. Now, we can take the time to learn everything about everything that could possibly affect our plans before we make them but - since the nuanced nature of the universe is such that everything that might affect our plans is essentially everything, the position, motion and phase space of every atom, every electron and the possible actions and reactions of any other persons - we would never get anyhting done. However, the possibility of knowing everything we need to is there, and it is this that leads me to believe that we have agency, we are not determined. True, I have said it is arrogant to believe we are in control, but I can't believe that someone with all the relevant knowledge could not cause events to take on a new direction. The possibility of control is there, even if control is not practically attainable.
We are limited to being free willed agents in a determinist universe where order and regularity reign, we have the freedom to choose, but not to control.
If we are to believe the multiverse theory (and to an extent I do), then the freedom to choose is given even less meaning because for every choice we make, there is existent in a parallel universe, another "me" who made another choice. Every choice made by any human person has no effect on the overall universe, just upon what we experience after the choice is made. Choices effect other choices and they effect people we have never heard of and at the same time they do nothing at all.
You can not drive your destiny. The most you can do is occasionally brush the steering wheel.
I've not got round to finishing this. I've been trying to get some more serious thought done but it's taken near of a week to write this and it's time I gave up. It sucks, I know and I apologise. This is probably another one that's not going on Facebook, to be honest.
Like the future, the end of this piece is unwritten. My unfinished symphony, though only unfinished because I've given up.
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