One-hit wonder that makes you wonder
People of a certain age will be familiar with the 1969 Zager & Evans hit “In the Year 2525.” It was their only hit but it resonated because of its theme of “passive acquiescence and overdependence on technologies” and “boundless exploitation of earth,” according to Wikipedia. Sound familiar?
Looking at the lyrics now, it talks of things that will supposedly happen thousands of years in the future but that we know are actually happening now, in 2024. We don’t have to wait until 6565 to pick our sons and daughters “from the bottom of a long glass tube,” as couples with infertility issues are all too glad to hear, I’m sure.
What I always found most compelling about the song was its hint of hope at the end, in 10,000 C.E., when a better world might still exist somewhere on the time-space continuum: “So very far away, maybe it’s only yesterday.” That thought made me scratch my head, even at the age of 10, when I first heard this song. It felt like a bit of possible relief in what otherwise seemed to be a hopeless progression toward an unpleasant end, whether at the hand of God (as the song suggests) or otherwise.
Not the first era of bleakness, but could it be the last?
Is there anyone who really thinks we actually have another 8,000 years to get things right before “man’s reign is through?” Or does it feel like we’re plummeting uncontrollably toward a much more imminent end?
Now, there’s no question that there have been other points in relatively recent history when it must have seemed like the end was nigh, such as the 14th century, when the Black Death wiped out huge swathes of the population. Renowned historian Barbara Tuchman wrote of that era as being “a violet, tormented, bewildered, suffering and disintegrating age, a time, as many thought, of Satan triumphant…”
James Westfall Thompson spoke of the post World War One period as a time of “economic chaos, social unrest, high prices, … depraved morals, … luxury, debauchery, social and religious hysteria…” His list is actually a lot longer than that but you get the idea. Voltaire said, “History never repeats itself [but] man always does.” So we’ve navigated through some turbulent times before but does the frenetic pace of new technology, such as AI, make this time different?
Will who we are now take us to the year 10,000 C.E. or do all the terrible things predicted in the Zager & Evans song mean that humankind’s days on earth are already numbered? How long before the God they sing of “tears it down and starts again?”
For some, maybe not soon enough.