If you could see the future of humankind, would you?

I wouldn’t really care enough to do such a thing. I like to let things be.

Back in August 2001 I would think that it would be a good thing to be able to look into the future just one month.

If we could look into the future the suicide rate would probably explode. lol
“In 2020 you will be diagnosed with a brain tumor, go blind and die in agony while slurring and drooling and twitching.” No thanks…on a personal or global level I don’t think it would do a bit of good and just cause an outrageous amount of stress, fear and anxiety.

I don’t think things would “spiral out of control”, but I think we might be mistaken in believing we could change results if we knew a particular outcome ahead of time. Depending on the situation, there’s really no way you could tell if the change you make will produce the outcome you want. There are too many unknown variables that could potentially influence results.

I don’t want to go into the future, call me selfish, lol but I’d rather go back in time. If we can go foward why can’t I use that knowledge and just go go gadget back in time and fix some parts of my own life and save some important people.

Ehhh I’m depressed with the human race enough as it is.

That’s playing God. I think there is a computer game that lets you do this..Also back to the future in reverse…a cool movie…Not as easy as you would think

I do see it and I wish I didn’t. How do you stop lemmings running over a cliff?

No way. I don’t think it’s going to be pretty.

I suspect that if we could see our future we would realize that what we see we could have seen in our past. Humanity does not seem to learn from its history.

@nofurbelowsbatgirl So would I! That would be amazing

@Arewethereyet I completely agree.

I would like to see where will we end up. I believe somewhere in the future humanity will reach a point that we have to change to become better humans. I am very hopeful for the human race and the world once we manage to figure out that we all should live in harmony not just with our selves but to live in harmony with nature. The human race is trail and error at the cost of a lot of things but we will get one day to that point and time when we will have a wonderful Utopia without capitalism, communism, religion and socialism. And to that in the future would be good. But to travel in time to see what is happening and returning back to our time, people will either call you crazy, a fruit cake or they would embrace your message of good hope as a prediction of a very optimistic future.
At this moment no one will hear you out because they will all be worried about their money and power.

@antimatter Your beliefs about the future of humanity is very optimistic, I just don’t see how any of that could truly be possible.

@Coloma Perhaps not to see your own future but the future of humans in general.

@Carinaponcho btw, welcome to fluther! And if I went back in time I wouldn’t be answering this question for a lot longer so I would have to hold up on your welcome party :(

@Carinaponcho Yes, welcome! :-)
Well, I suppose if we could see some doom and gloom event in time maaaybe we could fix things, change or forstall certain events.
Then again, we already see the writing on the wall right now and most of us are pretty lackadaisical about things like global warming, pollution, over population, dwindling natural resources.
Human nature lends itself to a lot of denial even when the facts are in our faces.

Who knows….I think the universe will take care of itself, with or without our intervention.
It’s only a matter of time until another astroid hits and the cycle starts over. Or to parrot a certain philosopher, “even the sun will die.”
Really, no matter what we do as humans, sooner or later a cosmic event will reshape earth, ready or not. ;-)

Given the actual chance (rather than as a ‘conceptual question’), I think almost everyone would choose to see the future of humankind. Curiosity is just human nature.

My first reaction to your question was “NO, because if I could see into the future and human’s had made a muddle of things, I’d be terribly depressed. I don’t think that one person could see the future and get anyone (or enough people) to believe it to affect change. Sure, the Enquirer would print it. You might even get your 15 minute of fame. But I doubt that you could make a difference, no matter how dire the future.

After thinking about it, however, I realized that there’s the possibility that it COULD be the ‘Jetzens” with humans living compatibly with the Earth. Then I’d be elated, and actively join the good fight.

Who knows, maybe race, politics and religion would have a common denominator and humans could live in peace.

Crazy. What if you went 2000 years into the future, and there were no obvious signs of the human race? Would you get to reverse and see if they migrated or became extinct?

@Carinaponcho In the past humanity faced certain extinction more than once, I don’t see any reason why we should loose hope for the human race. We survived the Ice Age, we survived the Dark Ages, the plague during the Dark Ages, we survived all the World Wars and even survived the both Bush Administrations. TO be honest I will always believe in humanity, a proverb I heard in Africa said before a seed can grow into a tree it must fist rot and die, I would say humanity is currently rotten down to the core, but one day something will happen to change us and unite us all. Perhaps it’s going to be a natural disaster or a war we don’t know. Or Facebook and social media will end than humanity will change. But in order to change we got to get rid of our current political systems, monetary systems and religious systems.

No

@antimatter I think the cause for alarm is that the biggest threat to extinction that mankind faces at present is self destruction. There IS no more migration or isolation. So far humans have faced nature and won, but if we start tampering with the foundations of life, we could unleash something that we can’t catch up with.
Imagine Hitler with Genetic Modification instead of atoms. And it doesn’t have to be done with bad intentions: the road to Hell….

Famous seers have caused problems by predicting outcomes centuries ahead of their time.
Nostradamus for example.
Throughout history leaders have been pin pointed based on his predictions.
All were seen as the anti Christ.
All are in doubt about the outcome.
What if Nostradameus were to see into the future and with his limited education etc he would not know that a movie of the end of the world was real or not, because it was beyond his understanding.