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A future as different from our present as the present is different from the past

Every December, during the usual holiday parties, people talk about what to expect in the next year and, as a consequence, in the future. What is going to happen in the future? I don’t know, but I am sure the future is going to be as different from our present as our present is different from the past.

The more I read and study the past, the more I feel I am taking a trip to an imaginary place where I feel almost lost and I understand almost nothing of what is going on. I know history and I know several of the ancient languages, and that’s enough to understand how different the lives and thoughts of people were in ancient times.

I am always amazed, for example, by the fact that in those ancient times (namely, Greco-Roman times) there was no zero. That’s known. It is also known that the one was not thought to be a number, because numbers can only exist if there is more than one thing to be counted.

Regarding numbers, it seldom mentioned that numbers had gender. All odd numbers were masculine and all even numbers were feminine. In addition, in several ancient languages letters and number were exchangeable, thus creating complicated calculations to determine the meaning of a word according to the numeric value of that word.

People also believed celestial bodies created music with their movements. With some training, anyone could hear that music, they said. And reading and writing were two different skills. He (at that time, it was almost always a man) who knew how to read perhaps didn’t know how to write, and vice versa.

Children education was the task of slaves (“paidagogoi”, in Greek) and children were not given names, but numbers. Octavius (“Eight”), the first Roman emperor and better known as August, is a good example. Another example is the Greek physician Sextus (“Sixth”) Empiricus. And Tertius (“Third”) wrote one of the letters (Romans) later incorporated into the Christian scriptures.

There are many other differences. In those days, time was thought to be circular and chronological time was different from existential time. Gods were thought to have limited powers and they would all eventually die. Women were treated as property, not as human beings, and old ideas and religions were more important and respected than new ideas and religions.

Two millennia later, it is almost impossible to understand how, from that past, we arrived to a present with zero, numbers with no gender and separated from words, teachers in charge of education, children with names, respect for woman and other minorities, linear time, and gods dethroned by science. It is also a time when anything “new” is thought to be “better.”

Then, it is not illogical to assume our future will not include any of the elements we know consider as absolutely necessary for our daily life. I am also sure we won’t need to wait another two thousand years to see such deep and amazing changes.

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