The Twelfth and Final New Sermon of the Neo-Catholic Church

That Morthos Stare writes:

The trouble with any future political paradigm is that the future is neither left nor right.

I’ve spent the last eleven sermons bemoaning particular aspects of the ‘Now,’ sometimes with serious intent but more often with nothing more than silliness on the mind. This being the last of the ‘New’ Sermons I feel it is time to lay all my cards on the table, leave the room (possibly the country) and let you mull my hand over before returning to ash my cigar.

The polities/ideologies that we call Left and Right are terms that apply to an age that, whilst not over, is dying. We are looking at the last ditch effort of a paradigm that should be shot dead with extreme prejudice. Leave such fractured beliefs to the wildebeest; they, like it, are simply unable to cope with what the future will look like... [1]

So if Left and Right (and Centre) are dying paradigms what does the future hold. Quite simply, in the future there will be robots.

Oh, you want more? Well...

In the future there will be more than one form of human consciousness, and it will be available in dairies. Future patriotism will be something we apply to brand names, trademarks and celebrity peer groups. Time will be measured in relative lengths and property will extend not just to insubstantials but also to non-existents. People will vote on everything but most people will let computers do that work for them. Cats will be our walking computers and dogs will be your roving medi-systems. Cars will refuse to take you home when you are drunk and working days will be flexible without the threat of overtime. Actors will put themselves in stasis between gigs and musicians will be AI-enhanced with tracks that adapt to the mood you are in. Taxes will be both high and abolished and earning money will be seen as an odd past-time that indicates a high level of sociopathy. Murder will be committed by bi-local entities and religion will be the drug-meme your parents resent.

But, most importantly, in the future there will be robots.

This is Pope Xander Teilhard de Chardin I, MHM, signing off.

...

1 - For those of you keeping score on your Bingo cards you will be ware that we have entered the ‘Extreme Hubris(TM)’ round; whatever I say about the future is untrue for one of the following three reasons (and we recommend that once I have hit all three you yell out ‘Dreidel’ and reenact ‘No Pants Friday.’)

One - The future has not occurred and thus, consistent with Aristotle, there is no truth to statements about it. Thus anything I say is fiction, even if the fiction ends up being eerily close to what shall obtain.

Two - The ‘future’ might not obtain in that the ‘future’ might well look something akin to the ‘past’ (‘future’ here applying to whatever description I give; given enough pressure or factionalised war-mongering we might revisit feudalism or that exciting hunter-gatherer lark we had going about one million years ago rather than the exciting 1950s utopia the Jetson’s so enjoyed).

Three - The future is so open at this stage that any statement about it will be the equivalent of a fifties science fiction writer describing the world of 2006; no one really got close to the reality of our current day. Thus whilst the likelihood of viral analytic philosophy is high today a change in teaching methodology tomorrow morning might mean that that particular future will never even begin to form. This is a variant on reason one, but it has a free will theodicy thrown in for good measure... The Neo-Catholic Church might not promote the belief of Free Will (in fact, we oppose its very mention in dispatches and quarterly pornographic glossies) but we do like to make use of it from time to time, partially because it keeps the punters happy but mostly because we get paid by the word and ‘Free Will Theodicy’ is not just three additional pence, it is another pound of exposition.