This post is from a previous blog a few years ago:
With this blog entry I’d like to provide you with my own lead-pipe-cinch view of what you can expect from the future.
Think about the other side of things a while, if you worry about a meteor hitting the earth, terrorists crawling out of the ocean with butcher-knives clamped in their teeth or other doomsday scenarios. My predictions are going to happen. All those others are just unlikely maybe/ maybe nots. Our track record doesn’t suggest we can be as good at predicting events as we are at, say, engineering. We’ve all been trying for a long time and our failures have been consistent.
My own predictions:
1) If you live long enough you will grow old.
2) You will die.
3) The people you care about and others around you will either die the usual way, scattered out along a timeline, or their deaths will be compressed into a shorter time span through wars, plagues and other disasters.
4) Death’s such an individual and inevitable experience it won’t matter much whether the entire planet goes with you, or you just lie down alone somewhere and do it. Cancer, a terrorist attack, plague, a giant meteor, getting whacked by a drunk driver, or just dying of old age all work out the same in the end.
The method and moment we exit the vehicle probably doesn’t have much to do with life’s purposes. I might even conjecture that frantic preoccupation with the number of times we ride this mudball around the sun distracts us from what’s important.
Life is the only route we’ve discovered to allow us to arrive at death on time.
The Bard said it best: “Cowards die a thousand times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once.”
Don’t spend too much time gazing into the abyss. I said that.
Old Jules
Today on Ask Old Jules: Watching the Dumb to Become Smart?
So Far From Heaven 