Artwork & content Copyright 2009 Jean Burman
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I stumbled upon a funny article this week. Penned back in 1961 in the Weekend Magazine, it posed the curly question “Will life be worth living in 2000AD?”
(Click on the link for an uproarious belly laugh)
A further 9 years down the track… and now 48 years since the question was raised… I thought it might be fun to see how the world was thinking back then.
Along with the perplexed expression on the man’s face… and advertisements for “all manner of things” down the side… ie. “glamourous” undies, haemorrhoid ointment, dandruff treatment, bust enhancement exercises and guitar lessons (which seriously brings into question what in the heck was going on back then) I thought it was hilarious… and not altogether that far fetched!
The predictions of computers as home help, automatic doors, dried and processed food, food in tablet form and global mass communication were all pretty close to the truth in today’s reality. And whilst rocket belts and air walls are still some way off yet… the rest of it was more than plausible… especially the prediction about food-less foods and how bored we will all be because everything is so easy (granted… they were a bit wide of the mark there. People might be bored… but not because life is so easy!)
This got me thinking about the future and what might lie ahead for us all. And how no-one can answer that… because nobody knows. Not even me. Especially not me… and I’m someone who really wants to know!
But a quick glance back through history soon shows… that not only do we not know what will happen in the future… but no-one else did either. And that never stopped them!
Have you ever read the biography of a remarkable life and thought how it all seemed so easy for them? Reading on… the person’s charted and charmed life seemed plotted from the start… and all that was required of them was to follow their predestined path to it’s natural conclusion.
Somehow I doubt that it was ever that easy. For sure these people had plans. But when circumstances changed… they had to learn to roll with the punches just like the rest of us. It seems to me that we each start with the very same handicap.
We simply don’t know what the future holds.
But sometimes that ”not knowing” can stop us in our tracks.
Fear is the primary (de)motivating factor in the decision to stay put in an ordinary life. “Extraordinary” lives are lived by “ordinary” people who learn to step away from the fear of what might happen… and move on with the daily process of courageously living each day as it comes.
It took me quite some time to get my head around this concept. And clearly I am still pondering here!
But one thing’s for sure… life’s going to happen no matter what.
“But gee… times are tough… it might not work out!” So what? There are no guarantees!
And no-one can tell you with all honesty that it will be easy. They don’t know. Nor do you. But we can all learn how to roll with the punches.
Living each day “doing what we can and must” is our best (our only) option. And who knows… it might all work out for us.
So what happens in the end? Who even wants to know?
If we get off our backsides and get on with doing something meaningful and worthwhile right here… right now… don’t you think it could be a whole lot of fun to look back in a couple of years with a deep sense of accomplishment and say…
“Wow… will you look at that?”
“Who could have known?”
(But that’s just what I think)…. (((chuckles)))
{ 24 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Jean!!
One of my favourite sayings to people when they appear to be afraid or lost, is..Just shut your eyes and jump! My own personal story is one that I never expected. Although it has been horrendous at times when my spirits have been at an all time low, I also never expected to be living back here in Woolgoolga, never expected to have an exhibition in the gallery here. Never expected to join up with the people I have (both face to face and within cyberspace). Today I had 2 people jump in and help me remove my paintings from the Gallery..I did not have to ask them, they just offered and we had a ball tackling the task and have created a bond. So I see my future as still something I cannot judge nor gauge, but I am trying to look at it with eyes wide open and willing to take risks! The cafe has now offered me the space inside to hang my paintings, you just never know what will happen next do you???
No you don’t. Sometimes the things we initially thought were a Godsend turn out to be anything but. And sometimes it’s the tough times… the ones we didn’t see coming… that have the very best outcomes. Outcomes we might never have envisaged in our wildest dreams (or could ever have anticipated in our own predicted version of the future!) One thing’s for sure… life is always full of surprises! LOL
What a difference a day makes Jools. Couple the passage of time… a few willing helpers… and a new opportunity… and suddenly Bob’s your Uncle. Great news… I’m glad!
48 hrs ago Jean, I felt my world was crashing down around me..I felt like a right fool! Tonight I just feel so much better and still have hope. Hope is the one and only thing that will keep any of us going. Hope for the future can never be underestimated.
A big, big hug just for you dear friend!!!
Michelangelo said, “If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.” as posted by Bob Hague on Facebook. This backs up your theory of how the life accomplishments of a person can look so easy but NOT be. I enjoyed your magazine review from 1961. Those were my teen years. I was 14 in 1961. Seems like yesterday yet so long ago. “Thanks for the memories.”
Vernita’s quote from Michelangelo hits it on the head: more important than what the world has accomplished in a given amount of time is what we ourselves can accomplish. The computer has become such an intrinsic part of my life that it’s hard to recall my life B.C. We take forward leaps of technology for granted now, like the fact I can have a conversation with a friend in Europe and we can see each other thanks to the miracle of webcams and Skype. In a very short time even that’s become completely normal. So ultimately it’s how we can utilize progress in the pursuit of our own individual endeavors, and hopefully those endeavors can be meaningful in the larger picture of the world around us. Meanwhile, the astonishing thing is how fast everything is happening. Gosh, talking movies came along only ten years before I was born. And the first man to fly an airplane died when I was 9.
It is amazing what we have done and seen! When ever I hear of anyone who has passed “the ton” (100 yrs of age!) I immediately consider the things these people have witnessed through those hundred years..what they have seen and just how different the world is now. I remember when I was 5 (in kindergarten), listening to the “wireless” as Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. I remember looking up at the moon after that, with a totally different perspective! I remember watching the ABC colour test pattern on our new whizz bang TV set (it was a TV, radio and a record player in one…very flash!). We sat around the “idol” and just could not believe our eyes!!
Hi Vernita
How is Bob? I haven’t heard from him in the longest time.
I guess it’s a symptom of how lost we might really be that we need to know into the future how things will turn out! (grin) What I had meant to say was not so much that someone’s accomplishments might have come easy to them… but rather that our prior knowledge of their story (having read the book) lures us into thinking that it must have been! Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Truth be known… they were probably as lost as the rest of us in the living of it! LOL
Yes John… and reading what they thought it might be like in the year 2000 back in 1961 really underlines the fact that we are progressing (regressing?) at such a rate!
I wonder though how it will all end… are we becoming too complacent and way too big for our boots? The errors along the way such as DDT and cigarettes… amalgam fillings and nuclear testing in the Pacific… asbestos… compact fluorescent light bulbs and global pollution (I refuse to call it climate change) etc. to name but a few… now swept under the carpet… proves that humankind is more than willing and capable of running headlong into the future without first considering the impact or the consequences.
We now have microwaves bombarding every square centimetre of the earth’s atmosphere. There is no-where… not even on the remotest island nor atop the highest mountain that we might escape it’s reach. None of it has been proven safe… in fact the indications are to the contrary. But does that stop us? Nah… she’ll be right mate! LOL
Technology is wonderful… but when it has greed at the helm and consequences as a last resort… I reckon we are hell bound into trouble with a capital T.
It’s all relative isn’t it Jools? The thin end of the wedge maybe? (grin) First there was TV now there isn’t a place on earth that some form of technology hasn’t touched. How clever are we? (((chuckles)))
It certainly is kind of hard to compare my Grandmother’s life to mine. I often used to wonder what she made of her very first flight in a jet aircraft… this woman who not all that long before (as a young woman) had travelled by steamer, locomotive and then horse drawn buckboard over several weeks to follow her husband into a wilderness he was hell bent on pioneering. It all now seems so surreal. Just under a century on… there is virtually no-where left to pioneer (except perhaps into space)… but I hear Richard Branson now has the rights to that! LOL
Im wondering Jean..just how many people would be able to cope with life as it was back in our forebears time? I know that many times I have lived without electricity (living in a tent whilst picking grapes down in Mildura for 6 weeks), Jillarooing out past Bourke for 8mths with only a generator for power, living in banana shacks (shacks used for pickers) around this region for mths at a time. We had many barb-b-q’s!!!
I don’t know how we’d get on these days without our home comforts. On a slightly different tangent… (and I’m not sure how many Jane Austen followers we have here)… but I have been watching the BBC Lost in Austen series on Sunday nights. The heroine Amanda Price everyday 21st century girl swaps places inadvertently with her 17th century counterpart Lizzie Bennett from Pride and Prejudice. It’s hilarious as she sets about cleaning her teeth with a bit of willow stick rough salt and chalk… and does without lighting and television… hairdryers and staighteners (although her hair does stay remarkably straight (and modern) throughout! LOL It’s a really unusual production and highly entertaining and although it’s meant to be a total fiction… it really does make you realise how very different our existence now is.
Well I certainly don’t know how helpful these modern day computers are! I can’t get mine to fold the laundry and when I request it to help in the kitchen it just falls apart when the scrambled eggs slosh around the hard drive!
You have to admire the fierce ambition of the 50’s and 60’s though! There were no limits to what we, (MEN, HA!) could do and achieve. In some sense it’s sad that we have lost much of that drive to accomplish. And in another sense, I see the world as taking a deep breath of relief that that fervor has subsided some. The world can only take so much before collapsing in on itself. Technology has advanced at rocket speed but it is good to stop and reflect where it is all going. I think our world, (at least here in the American schools) there is a feeling of complacency…but I’m not convinced that is entirely a bad thing. I’m sure another wave of innovative energy will motivate our progression once again but it would be refreshing to first consider the environmental and societal consequences of such compulsions.
Ah Jean! You are good for my mind! You make me laugh and ponder at the same time. You are a genius with words and brush! I for one am grateful for the technology that enables me to tap into your thought process all the way across the globe!
Jean, when I was sixteen and my brother was twenty we spent the summer together in a shack in the woods. No “facilities,” no plumbing (hence no running water save a stream right by the house), no electricity. We kept bottled milk cold by leaving it in the stream, cooked with a portable kerosene stove and a wood fire, and read at night by oil lamp. It was one of the best times of my life.
hahaha… thanks Mary!
You know… try as I might I haven’t been able to crack an egg with my computer yet either… and I have the very same issues as you with regard to doing the laundry. It’s funny that for all the technological advances over the years… very few have really (truly) revolutionised those traditional bastions of female industry and enterprise… the kitchen and laundry. The gender bias is screaming. Sure… our appliances now light up and talk back to us… but I’m sure we already have plenty of people in our lives who can do that for us without our appliances closing ranks on us as well! (((LOL)))
Yes Mary agree with you there about the 60s. That drive and enthusiasm which reached right through to the 70s and 80s was awe inspiring. By the 90s people’s sensibilities had grown used to it… and a dull kind of complacency had begun to set in. I do worry for the present generation that (as a generalised group) they seem so comparatively uninspired and apathetic. An air of disinterested expectation has crept surreptitiously into modern western society and appears to have extinguished those brave maverick moves of the (men) of the 60s. Back then anything was possible if you had a modicum of energy. Nowdays you need an MBA or some other academic qualification to apply for a menial job. It’s totally nuts.
I do think that the economic downturn has come at an opportune time (although I fear I shall ultimately regret these words) but mindless development and barrelling progress was reaching such a pace. Perhaps now (as a spinoff) we might see a more considered approach to progress. Let’s hope so.
(Thanks by the way for your lovely comments. They are ambrosia for the soul… and heavens knows in these harsh and unforgiving times we can all use a little ambrosia!)
That sounds like magic John! What a wonderful experience for you and your brother… so many memories made there… so much learned about yourselves and each other. Kids these days could do very well to have one such “grounded” experience come along to enlighten them and send them (better prepared) out into the world. I wonder if the current apathy and discontent in young generations might be in some part a symptom of having lost touch with the “real” things in life.
My family’s humble little beach house provided years of fun experiences for my family. Even before there WAS a house! We had an outhouse and bush shower over the creek bank that Dad had built out of saplings from the bush and old corrugated iron. I swear that outhouse had the best views around… albeit the snakes and spiders thought so too! Back then before the house was built and the electricity connected we had carbide lights which used to bubble and pop. Life was pretty simple and good. Years later I took my own children there. They still talk about the sense of realness they got from staying there. I think it’s pretty important to stay in touch with what’s real.
You know Jean..that ambrosia can be tasted again. All it takes is to find a way, to not give up. Yes…the world is changing because it has to. I do not actually see that is such bad thing. What we are getting is a slap in the face and a wake up call. However you look at it (global warming versus financial crisis) we are learning another way. I honestly believe that by looking at the past and how that past influenced the future..we CAN do it! Its a matter of looking at the past and deciding what works and what does not. Its a matter of being totally honest with yourself and then having the guts to change the way you think.
Jools… I entirely agree. That’s what I had in mind when I was drawing the cartoon. Look to the future (with optimism)
Learn from the past (with humility)
but live here and now… because it’s all we’ve got. Que sera sera.
Incidentally the original drawing for this was done around the middle of last year. I unearthed it the other day unpainted… and decided to rework it into a new style. It’s amazing to compare the two. They really are quite different. The need for a rework goes some way to confirm in my mind that creative concepts only come into reality in their own good time. There was a reason why I didn’t paint it back then. It seemed to be waiting somehow for me to catch up. (If that makes any sense at all!) LOL
Nah…makes perfect sense to me!!
Thought provoking as usual Jean! This cartoon, though conceived so long ago is perfect as you have finished it. There is a season for all things.
Seems to me that the economic downturn has brought lots of people to their senses. As Spring arrives, I’m hearing that sales of garden seeds is booming in the stores as people more and more are planning to grow their own foods. Recent outbreaks of foods poisoning so many people and pets are making us more aware that many people have become lazy and greedy, abandoning necessary safety standards. “Back to the Future” is such a perfect title.
Another thing I have been noticing is the return of Knitting as a popular passtime. More and more of the people I know are now working on new sweaters, scarves, etc. and quilting is almost an epidemic! It’s exciting to me to see the old ways returning. The desire to create something original seems to be waking up in so many people.
Change will always be with us–I still don’t have an I-pod, but no doubt one day I will. I’ve been amazed over and over at changes I have seen in my lifetime–I can’t remember when I last heard someone suggest that a topic be looked up in an encyclopedia!!! This computer age is amazing and I wouldn’t have it any other way, but I believe that people will still have the urge to dig their hands into the soil and bake their own bread no matter what new innovations are available. What was old will become new again–over and over again.
I really really hope so Anita.
It is very sad to see standards dropping so far and so fast. I am shocked to hear about the food poisoning… there are simply no excuses when it comes to food safety. I can see why people want to grown their own… but practically… I can’t see it happening on too wide a scale unless something major happens to the world food supply (which I sincerely hope it doesn’t!)
People seem to have lost the will (and the skills) to grow their own or make their own. We’ve all been too busy trying to make ends meet out there in the marketplace… instead of staying close and nurturing the skills that got us kicked off in the first place.
We’ve outsourced pretty much everything to China (especially in this country). I hate to think what’s going to happen if and when we can no longer afford to buy their products. Another aussie icon (Bonds underwear) went off shore recently. The CEO walked away with a gazzillion dollars and the employees all walked off with a pink slip and a kick in the pants.
The world situation is of course ridiculous. But I guess we can insulate ourselves in some way by not playing the game if we can at all help it. We need to get back to basics and clean up our act… but it’s going to have to happen from the top end down. Changes made at the grassroots can make a difference… but not soon enough.
I hope something constructive comes out of the G20 and that it’s not just another feel good back slap. It’s serious times. We need serious solutions. Hey hasn’t someone said that before? LOL
Thanks for stopping by Anita… always good to see you!
The up and coming generations are who I am concerned about. I make a point of teaching Claire many things about nature and creatures that need us to help them, but that also helps other creatures in turn. I also try to instill the actions of returning to the earth what we have taken (composting!!!). I think there is much to be said about the ways and methods of other old cultures (not just ours), to be intune with the natural and ‘real’ things around us such as native Australians and native Americans lived by for such a long time. So many of our “fast fixes” are only puffs of smoke that will disappear into thin air and not amount to anything sustainable. I tried to raise my eldest the same way, but she has been swept up into the world of “fast and furious”…advertising!!! But..hopefully, somewhere in the back of her mind, she will remember. I think she will.
I’m sure she will Jools. The early rivers of guidance run deep. I guess it is every parent’s greatest hope that their children will remember something of what has been bestowed. It doesn’t always follow… but if we’re really really lucky.. some of it does actually seem to stick!
Wow..that is so weird Jean! Talk about technology being the dividing line…gosh, just imagine if we had laws like that here! I used to be an avid letter writer (had penpals all over the world, Canada, England, Japan, Germany). Nowadays, I reach for the button to turn the computer on..end of story! It is a wonderful tool thats for sure, but whenever I get a “real live” letter in the mail, I get very excited and read it over and over and over! The only time I ‘write’ anything manually now, is to sign my name when I purchase something with a plastic card or I am writing out my shopping list.
Sounds like your girl is head down and bum up..its so good to see and hear about passion within the younger ranks!
Yes… she’s more than a little bit busy right now (grin)
Aren’t hand written letters just great? I think we will regret their loss as one of the best most informative and genuine forms of communication in human history. The hand written letter was the gold standard for every successful job application once upon a time. In these days of computer generated templates for CVs and Resume’s… no wonder employers find it so hard to sort out the right person for the job. Handwriting says more about a person than any other factor in a person’s presentation… and is now a sadly overlooked art form. I wonder if this will be one of the virtues (described above in Anita’s post) that will eventually in time return to us. Somehow I doubt it. We are now altogether too lazy. LOL