The Future Isn't Written in Stone

'The future isn't written in stone' is one of those statements that we just seem to say on a regular basis, without ever having contemplated what the meaning is. The meaning is clear to see, I suppose, in a literal sense. Nobody is sitting around a cave carving out the various potential paths the future could take. To concider otherwise would seem almost an exercise in imagination. This is a natural enough conclusion to come to, concidering all our rational understandings of what the future means, quantum mechanics and the human races limited authority in all things clairvoyant. We can't know what the future holds, because it hasn't happened yet. We, being fallible creatures of a particular evolutionary path, do not possess the mental, or otherwise 'supernatural', processes required for looking into the future in order to then write down what will happen on a piece of stone tablet to be studied and interpretated down the generations. We take this kind of statement at face value and tell ourselves, “Well, of course the future isn't written in stone. What an absurd idea! To think that somebody has written down the events that would happen on some granite is so primitive. We've grown out of that!”

Have we? As civilized people, who have grown up in a society dominated by scientific advancements in physics, astronomy and mathematics, we are accustomed to dealing with the sheer improbabilities of being able to predict the future in an accurate and un-ambiguous way. It's completely natural for us to tell ourselves that the future wouldn't be written down in stone. But why is it that we still seem to think the future is this predictable phenomenon that we can control? We like to remind ourselves that we are rational and intelligent and that we have grown out of primitive and superstitious habits. “No no,” says the average pedestrian, “I'm not superstitious at all.” These kinds of assertions are troubled by the quite noticeable crosses which adorne the neck lines of these self proclaimed evolved simians. For all those that say they are not superstitious, they need only look in their pockets and see if they are carrying a lucky coin. They need only look at their rear view mirrors and notice the dangling rabbits foot. They need only concider the routines they perform before examinations. All these people that claim they have outgrown childlike superstitious beliefs about black cats, ladders and mirrors, need only observe their every day behaviours and concider the difference between keeping a holy saint's picture in their wallets and crossing the street when they see a black cat on the side walk. Why is it that we say the future can't be known, but yet we still feel obstinate towards paying money every week on lottery tickets, convinced that the birthdates of our loved ones will, eventually, prove to be good luck and win us millions of dollars? What a terribly selfish way of cherry picking our ideologies, not to mention the horrible way we trivialize our children's existences. Despite all the evidence against the probability of winning the lottery, millions of people can't help themselves but be drawn into asking the question, “what if?”

Most “what if” questions are often times answerable with sufficient ease. “What if I get hepititis tomorow?” Don't have sex with hookers, is one way to avoid that. “What if I get hit by a truck crossing the street?” Looking both ways before stepping off the curb is a start towards preventing a head on collision with a seventy kilometre per hour vehicule that would crush every bone in your body. “What if” questions are usually questions which are set aside without issue by a keen observance of the understandable universe we find ourselves in. We can prevent the majority of our depressing self-fulfilling death prophesies by being observant human beings. “What if I win the lottery next week?”, is a question that is more difficult to answer, however. That is because it relies, not on other acceptable forms of “what if” questions which are approacheable in a logical way, but on an assumption that the fact that we're asking the question means we have some control over it. It's almost like by way of asking, you're telling yourself, “alright, this week, I'm going to win.” This does not work. “What if I get cured of my inoperable cancer next week?” does not mean that the tumour will disipate and forever escape causing all your organs to shut down one by one while you're unable to get up to take a shit. Wish thinking is dangerous and creates ideologies that make people believe their thoughts become realities. 'Let's play pretend' is something we should have left behind us when we were at an age where we were able to come to the understanding that the sand box is not an appropriate place to jerk off.

Isn't it wierd that we can look at the phrase, “the future isn't written in stone,” and understand the facetious point it's trying to make, however, we can't seem to apply that same mentality to prophesies which actually are written in stone? Why do we place a kind of reverence for these antiquated science fiction tales while claiming ourselves to be non-superstitious? Well, I suppose this isn't hard to understand, concidering the upbringing of the majority of the people in a western 'civilized' society is that of a religious one, specifically Christian. We tell ourselves that we can't possibly predict the future on stone tablets, but we are quite alright with the accepted teachings that the extent of our morals are known to us only by some devine deity who etched his ultimate commandements on stone panels. It would seem as though this is an extremely convenient thing for us to do. We pick and choose, like religious morality, where our superstitions begin and end. We can say we no longer believe in the tooth-fairy, seven years bad luck for broken mirrors, equally arbitrary number of bad luck years for crossing under ladders, but we accept, without hesitation, the fact that we take our morals from a couple of primitive communication mediums supposedly given to us by god on the top of a mountain and handed down to a single man. And this is before concidering that god thought it would be the best idea to introduce morality into the human species one hundred thousand years after its evolutionary introduction into the world, and in a part of the world where over 90% of the population wouldn't have been able to read the supposed commandments anyway, let alone come to a rational understanding of the englightening experience such an event should have on a people.

It would be easy to conclude that even those who proclaim themselves to be not superstitious are, in a way, because they have irrational fears of spiders, dogs, cats or other benign creatures. However, this is not the case. Irrational phobias are not selective. A person who is horrified at the concept of a confrontation with a cat would be equally so for an adult lioness. The phobia does not pick and choose which sub-species of cats are alright, and it is certainly not based on colour, either. “Not all cats are bad luck,” says the superstitious dullard, “only black ones and only when they are performing very specific activities, like crossing streets and only when somebody else happens to be passing in front of them as they do it.” So not all cats are bad luck? “No. In fact, white cats are signs of good luck.” Ignoring the obvious racist implications of this ideology – black cats equal bad, white cats equal good – this is unequivocal pretentious selective superstition. “Also, we obviously don't think all ladders are bad. Only the ones that are doing their job; leaning against walls, creating situations where people may happen to meander under, are right out.”

Selective superstition and selective wish thinking are not mutually exclusive. We can't have phrases like “the future isn't written in stone” while believing that we can have our existences explained through such inadequate claims of religion. “You can't have your cake and eat it too” seems to jump to mind, before it gets trampled on by the rational part of the language center of my brain. While we can have our cakes and eat them as well, we shouldn't, however, be allowed to tell ourselves one thing while obviously believing the complete opposite. “The future isn't written in stone”, and neither are our morals. And for those pieces of fiction that we are so adamant in holding on to, which actually were written in stone, we should attempt to apply the same logic. The results will certainly be interesting to observe.