THE POWER OF THE PRESENT

IF YOU want to find out how people are coping with their lives, listen to the way they talk about the future. There are two widely held -- apparently conflicting -- views of the future that both betray, in their different ways, a deep disquiet about contemporary life. If we fall for either of them, they are equally capable of undermining our capacity to engage fully with the present. One view is that the future will bring about some wonderful transformation of our lives. The other is that the future will engulf us and hasten the breakdown of society. Though one seems positive and the other negative, both views are, in fact, destructive: they are manifestations of the debilitating idea that we are the victims, rather than the creators, of our own futures. The optimists tend to go for the transformational theory; the pessimists go for the breakdown theory. But what they are both saying is that life is really beyond their control.... and that's where the danger lies. For the transformationists (who are especially vulnerable to the bite of the millennium bug), faith in the future is all about their disappointment in the present. Ah, they say, wait until the 21st century: most of our problems will be solved. (We'll have a shiny new G$T, for a start.) Look at the new technology that's coming onstream...life will be so much simpler,cleaner, more efficient, more con venient. The boffins have it in hand. Cancer? Heart disease? Pollution? Traffic? Don't worry about it. You'll soon be able to buy that new margarine that gets your cholesterol down .....way of the future, mate. Next thing: anti-cancer beer. There'll be a pill for everything, we'll fix the hole in the ozone layer, cars will run on water. Just you wait and see! Transformationists say things llke this: When I finally get through this busy patch at work, I'm going to do a repair job on my marriage. In the future, I'm going to spend more time with my kids. In the future, we're going to take proper holidays.In the future. life will definitely be saner than it is at present. Next year, the year after.... look, It's almost the next century already, Things are bound to improve. The breakdown merchamts take the opposite line. Gloom and doom are their stock in trade. The machines are taking over. More and more people will be thrown out of work. Crime and violence are bound to get worse. Drugs will destroy our kids, Marriage, as an institution, Is on the rocks. The family unit will be torn apart. Values are going down the gurgler. Soon, there'll be no one left to trust. Whoa! Whether we're waiting for the future to save us or destroy us, we're doing ourselves a disservice. The truth is that we are shaping our own futures, right now, by the way we're handling the present. The role you let machines play in your life, right now, is already determining their role in your future. Some choices have been taken away from you, but there are plenty still left to make: why complain about machines replacing people at the bank or the railway station if you spend your evening and weekends hunched over a computer, or slumped speechless in front of TV? Why complain about the death of the corner store if you haven't been shopping there regularly yourself? Your shopping habits,right now, are determining the future of retailing. Your personal transport habits are determining the future of our public transport system. Society is not shaped by some hidden bureaucratic hand: it shaped by us and our behavior; by the demands we make or fail to make; by the ways we choose to spend our time and our money. When we allow ourselves to be distracted by thoughts of the future-- bright or dark -- the future becomes the enemy of the present. And the present, let's not forget, is already yesterday's future. If you think your marriage might need some running repairs, don't wait for the transforming moment. to come to you: relationships have a nasty habit of deteriorating very quickly, once they start to go. If you keep hoping to spend more time with your kids in the future, you might suddenly discover that they're not kids any more. The most productive way to think about the future is to realise th is is it. We're already in it. There's no point in anticipating some portentous other future that's going to be the maklng or the breaking of us: we're quite capable of doing either of those things, all by ourselves, right now. Hugh Mackay is an author and sociaI researcher. Email HUGH MACKAY

Please mail any comments and suggestions to: robin_knight@bigfoot.com

HAVE A LOOK AT SOME OF THE OTHER GREAT ESSAYS WE'VE FEATURED! Sex In Space, by Wilson Da Silva. Mother Shove, by Jane Fraser. Learning To Love, by Deborah Forster. Fair Dinkum(?) Aussie, byPeter Russell-Clarke. Round Table, by Alan Wood. Step Aside SNAG, enter New Man, by David Tacey A Good Clean Fight by Gretel Killeen The Great Decayed by Kaz Cooke. Glancing Blows by Jane Freeman. A Fridge Too Far by Sharon Gray. Yearning For Amish by Deborah Foster.

©Robin Knight, 1998.

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©Robin Knight, 1999.