John Mahaffie

Being a futurist means believing in progress for human society. And it means working for that progress, even when progress seems threatened.

I look, when big things happen, for any evidence that society as a whole has learned something. No matter the circumstance, good or bad, learning means we have gained something. When we share that learning as a society, it is most powerful of all.

The 2017 solar eclipse that crossed the United States was one of those learning moments for Americans. Hundreds of millions of people shared the experience. The hour-and-a-half shared experience was not dampened by division or politics.

The eclipse may have inpsired millions of American children to go and learn more about science, about the earth, the sun, the planets. Where I watched, I was with a specialist in space policy and a Phd student in Astrophyics. We talked about whether more students will now take a course in astronomy, or even major in it in college. Was it good for science? I think and hope so.

Millions of Americans heard about it, millions took a look. The First Family viewed the eclipse from the White House’s Truman Porch. That too was part of the collective experience. Did the President look without eclipse glasses? We even learned from that minor moment of controversy.

My best guess is that American society tends to take two steps forward, then one back. And this experience may be no different. But at least there’s some movement forward. The future gained something.

Eclipse photo: Jane Galbraith Mahaffie

A university soccer player’s reprehensible fouling becomes an instant Youtube hit. Reality show villains are the topic of “did you see…” discussions the next day at workplaces all over. The actions of ball players and politicians, pop stars and actors, on and off stage or field or legislative floor, become the stuff of moral outrage. They also become the stuff of moral lessons: for adults and for children.

The video above, just one version of dozens of the incident, got 2.4 million views on YouTube.

We used to share moral lessons through stories: “the boy who cried wolf” and so on. More and more, it’s up to real and fictional characters in modern entertainment, to instruct us through their actions.

And with Youtube and other social places on the Internet, the choices of what moral lessons to share and emphasize are in the hands of crowds. Do we vote by viewing? By sharing or linking? It’s not a pastor with a parable who is teaching us through moral stories, it’s a Facebook friend or an officemate, sharing a link.

What may be the biggest change in this is the directness of the connection between people and stories: instead of a pastor, an editor, or an author intervening, what gains widest viewing is what gets the most buzz, and gets to us.

We don’t yet know what it all adds up to. Is it a good mechanism for forming and strengthening our cultural and social norms? Or does it weaken them? We may never know–it will be hard to tease out the effects with all the other changes in society. No matter what, we’d better understand what people are seeing and sharing, even if it means dipping into new media, and following the trails of buzz where they lead.

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*this title rips off the title of John Gardner’s 1978 book, On Moral Fiction, which offers a detailed argument about how and why fiction, in particular, and the arts, in general should assert morals.