paulo coelho - fifty years from now...

[rone]

Paulo Coelho, writer of The Alchemist, wrote this article for Ecuador's El Universo.  I've translated it without permission because it's an interesting read, but mainly because i need the exercise, so please forgive any solecisms and transliterations.

The diploma will not be so important: we'll have schools of medicine, engineering, and law.  The others will disappear off the map, because the current generations are realizing that it's not much help to go to college and end up working in a field that has nothing to do with what you studied.  First and second grade will continue to exist.

Tribes will return: Marshall McLuhan, a great communications theorist, said once that the world would become a global village, in which the whole world would run more or less according to the same norms.  He did not foresee the appearance of the Internet, which allows people to organize according to their taste and affinity.  The State may continue existing, but people will create virtual nations.

The exodus will be from city to country: the great city, vestige of an era when means of communication and the availability of services were very limited, will lose its function.  The best salaries will be held by carpenters and artisans, and not sociologists or psychologists.  Services (banks, grocers, etc.) will be provided by virtual companies.

The concept of success will change: whoever best takes advantage of the day, and not whoever is wealthiest, will be more successful.

Life will be much simpler: we'll return to the things that are easy to enjoy, inexpensive or, simply, free, such as a beautiful landscape or a visit to a nearby town market.  When we're back from the market, we can then read newspapers or watch news bulletins anywhere in the world, thanks to technology.  It will help us keep in touch with our tribe, spread throughout the world.

Intuition will be considered as important as logic: the human being, after much resistance, will begin to develop his unknown potential.

The Goddess will gain ground: fifty years are not enough for the idea of the Great Mother to be placed at the same height as that of the Father, who currently dominates religious systems.  But there will be fewer prejudices in that regard, and possibly the Catholic Church will prepare to allow women to receive ordination.

Fundamentalism will be at its height: due precisely to the two forementioned points, at this point reaction will be violent.  All religions will mobilize their faithful against reform, which will cause much suffering.  But this is part of the process.  Also, and speaking of a newly tribal world, i believe that the most important tribes will be the ones formed by traditional religions.

State xenophobia will lose ground: xenophobia is the "aversion to foreign people and things."  Today, in first-world countries, there is a panic about immigrants, due to their condition as cheap labor and different culture.  In the following years, we will help increase the number of laws that will impede immigration, obstruct those with visas, etc.  But these tribes are already installed, and despite all the laws, they will end up defeating State xenophobia.

Of the three monotheistic religions, Islam will be the strongest: i don't want to get into political discussions here, but just at the beginning of the Christian Era, two currents derived from Jesus's thoughts were formed.  One said that its message depended on each person's voluntary acceptance.  The other affirmed the necessity of a hierarchy, and defended martyrdom as a way to demonstrate the importance of conversion.  The current that defended martyrdom won; all of us Catholics learned the importance of the example given by the Christians who were stoned or thrown to the lions in Roman circuses.  These days, unfortunately, the idea of martyrdom has returned through Islamic fundamentalists.  Despite the difference (sacrifice of innocents versus killing of innocents), the notion of martyrdom is stronger, and it will impose itself.

There will be more languages, and one lingua franca: whoever visits Spain in fifty years will find that in Catalonia, only Catalan will be spoken, and in the Basque Country everything will be written in Euskera.  The same will happen in all countries: regional languages will strengthen themselves as a way to maintain the tribal identity.  Nevertheless, there will be one language that will allow the tribes to communicate with each other, and, given its role in the birth of the Internet, English will be that lingua franca, even though Chinese will be the most spoken language in 2055.

I'm 58 years old, and i don't see myself making it to 108.  However, if some young person finds this article interesting, may he please cut it out and find out for himself: i won't be around to receive either boos nor applause.

Comments

[littleamerica.livejournal.com]

Fascinating that he'd pick the Internet to blame for the revival of tribalism.

I think I'd be inclined to blame increased population density.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Nothing brings people together like the Internet. Nothing breaks them more quickly into separate camps, either.

[frosch.livejournal.com]

damn straight. blaming population density strikes me as a little strange, but then I'm married to a woman I met on IRC, we take most of our vacations with another couple we met on IRC, and I've never met most of y'all in person.

But Think Of The Substance

[drieuxster.livejournal.com]

It is one thing to go off on quaint social occasions with folks whom one randomly encounters, but a part of the Tribalism that we are not yet creating through the instant encounters of the internet are the levels of commitment that will help us bond to such a level that we will work as a group to take the shared risk of bringing down an Iraqi Flying Saucer!!!

That has always been a part of the core limitation of the so called 'tribalisms' of the internet!!!!

Re: But Think Of The Substance

[(Anonymous)]

That, and you can't lift initiates to the top of the lodge using rawhide strips pierced through their chests with Unix kernel hooks.

[littleamerica.livejournal.com]

I think the Internet is just a catalyst, though, and not a cause. Maybe he's not making that distinction; maybe it doesn't matter.

I think I'm more concerned by the resurgence of tribal behavior associated with old tribes than with tribal behavior associated with newer, seemingly voluntary tribes: racial identity yes, furries no.

To respond to your distinction above, I think I'd argue that the Internet doesn't establish the camps; it just makes it easier to radicalize a existing camp.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Wholly agreed. Humanity burns with the fire of tribalism, and the Internet is aerosolized gasoline.

[ikkyu2.livejournal.com]

You misspelled "tribadism."

[opadit.livejournal.com]

The diploma will not be so important

I disagree. I think it's a lot harder for young people to get a job in a lot of fields, even stupid secretarial jobs, without some kind of certificate or associate's degree. Lord knows I'd be making more if I had my paralegal certificate. While someone our age may have a decade, or even two, of Internet experience and programming jobs, people in their 20s increasingly need to show that they've taken some courses or have a bachelor's.

Or maybe what I'm talking about is a U.S. thing.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Well, he is speaking of 50 years down the road. I disagree with him that the diploma's importance will significantly fade, but i think he has a point about people getting one in one field and then working in another field.

[opadit.livejournal.com]

working in another field

Yes, I agree. My general feeling is that about half my pals are working in their degree fields, and the other half aren't. It also seems to me as if we're the last generation of people who can get jobs in programming, systems administration, systems architecture, general office IT guru jobs, that kind of thing, without a degree or certification (other than the Microsoft deals). For instance, my new pal Matt works for SAP, makes a skillion dollars doing work that the sysadmins depend on, and never completed his B.A. or B.S.

Interesting essay. Thanks for posting.

[2wanda.livejournal.com]

The thing that this country lacks are good vocational schools. Germany has a much better system where students can opt to get vocational training and either get a BA degree after, or not at all, depending on their goals. In this country, people get a BA degree, and more often than not still not get a decent job. It's a huge problem, and believe me when I say that 99% of the graduating students from UCSC are scared to death about trying to find a job that they can support themselves with after they graduate. The worse this problem gets, the more apparent it will be that we need to offer students more options. Because sadly, and I hate to say this as someone who is about to graduate with her first BA, in many cases the BA degree isn't worth the paper it is printed on.

So I think that Coelho is probably right on track with his prediction. I'd be surprised otherwise.

[frosch.livejournal.com]

it's not that the vocational schools are so bad, it's that our educational culture is biased so heavily against them. The general attitude is that you're not ready to go to vo-tech until you've graduated from high school, whereas the crucial insight the Germans have reached is that there ain't no point in four years of college-prep English Lit if you're going to be wielding an oxyacetylene torch for the rest of your life.

[mrbalihai.livejournal.com]

whoever visits Spain in fifty years will find that in Catalonia, only Catalan will be spoken

Complete bullshit (or donkeyshit, seeing as it's Catalunya we're talking about). There's far too much economic interaction with the rest of Spain and Europe to allow Catalan to take over completely, and almost all popular entertainment continues to be in Castilian Spanish. Same goes for Euskera taking over Basque Country. Not gonna happen.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I think that his idea is possible, maybe even somewhat likely, but there's no way it happens within 50 years.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking he's wrong about the great cities disappearing; the move out to suburbs and the country is the result of cheap transport. If transportation gets more expensive, we'll see big dirty megalopolises grow ever huger, as in the developing world. You still have to get food and materials into the city somehow, but at least consumption and many kinds of industry become centralized.

[(Anonymous)]

keep in mind that the price of gasoline in Venezuela these days is roughly what it was around here in, say, 1967.

[paracelsvs.livejournal.com]

Time for ARCOLOGIES!

[rbradakis.livejournal.com]

Love that guy.

I think he's generally on track, and probably specifically wrong in a couple instances.

What? Point out which are the right and wrong concepts? What makes you think I'm willing to make a prediction?

this and that

[venividi.livejournal.com]

The decline of the diploma has been on going for some time.

Tribes can't "return", they've never gone away.

McLuhan did forsee, not the internet precisely, but the use of world wide electronic communication, as part of his justification for the global village assumption.

The exodus from city to country in the US is reversing and people are returning to the city. In China, the move is strongly towards the city. Elsewhere varies based on a lot of complex factors.

We have never paid artisans well, and I doubt we'll start now, or in the next fifty years.

The desire for the 'simpler' life repeats itself periodicly. "Walden" after all, was a plea for the 'simpler' life.

Alas, fundamentalism favors xenophobia.

I will not predict Islam as strongest. Fundamentalism also favors schisms and "new" religions.

I think Chinese is already the most spoken language. If not, it will be a lot sooner than '55.