Books, and the future

[qcontinuum]

OOC: Crossposted from theatrical_muse, today.

Prompt 227: A friend asks you to recommend a book: which book would you choose and why?

That would really depend on the friend, now wouldn't it? I'm not exactly going to recommend one of those Cardassian twenty-seven book epics about a life of service to the state to Jean-Luc, for example.

Actually, I wouldn't recommend one of those to anyone. I can read an entire book in a nanosecond, and I still resent the loss of those 27 nanoseconds I spent reading one of those things.

You know what book I'm inordinately fond of, that I would recommend to anyone who wants to understand what it is I like about humans? Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis. Normally I have very little interest in Lewis, since most of his work is an elaborate fantasy about how humans get to live forever and the cosmic entities responsible for the universe's creation actually personally care for human beings and would even willingly die for one. Okay, I've been in a situation where I more-or-less willingly offered up my life for a bunch of humans, and I'm a cosmic entity, but I'm not responsible for the universe's creation (I've made a planet or two, but if I were responsible for the entire universe, it would be a *much* more entertaining place), and besides, I was a mere human myself at the time. The idea that something vast enough to encompass the creation of the universe would actually personally concern itself with individual humans is... well, it's quaint, and amusing, the way it's amusing when small children think the entire universe revolves around their lives.

But in any case. Voyage of the Dawn Treader manages to overcome this problem because it's not *about* the fantasy of immortality and benevolent gods. It's about the need humans have -- as personified by a talking mouse in the story, but hey -- to explore to the edges of what they can survive and beyond, their need to push themselves to learn everything there is to know. That need resonates powerfully with me, since I was created in order to learn everything there is to know (and then I learned it, and life has sucked ever since.)



Prompt 210: If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about any one thing you wished ~ concerning yourself, your life, the future, or anything else ~ what would you want to know?

Nothing.

There are things I could find out about my future, if I wanted to. I don't want to know. If there's no excitement, no possibility of surprise in my future whatsoever, then I'll be bored out of my mind, and when you're eternal, self-preservation demands you avoid boredom as much as possible.

Prompt 191: Where do you see yourself in twenty years?

I try very hard not to, actually. I mean, on a guess, twenty years from now I'll be more or less doing exactly what I'm doing now, because I live on the timescale of the Q and twenty years is not a whole lot of time. But I don't actually want to seriously think about what I'll be doing in the future, because I might actually figure it out and that would ruin the suspense.

Take one moment at a time, that's generally my motto.

Prompt 226: Name three things that you're looking forward to in the near future and why.

No.

I don't look forward to things. I have hopes, fantasies, dreams, same as the next guy (well, not literally dreams, since I don't sleep, but I'm using it metaphorically.) But there is nothing I am certain will happen except for the dark inevitabilities of entropy. So there is nothing to look "forward" to, nothing that is certain in the future except death and destruction and the end of everything. Since that's really quite depressing, when I think of the future I think of the things I would *like* to have happen, and the things I might do to *make* those things happen, but there is nothing I want to think about that I am certain enough of it happening to be worth looking forward to as opposed to hoping for.

Now, if you wanted to know three things I *hope* for or three things I'm trying to achieve, that'd be different, but that's not what you asked, so there.

Comments

I avoid fortune telling for the same reason I avoid gambling

[hohaiyee.livejournal.com]

I believe it's bad luck. Gamble too much, and you use up your good luck on something useless like money you didn't earn, as opposed to surviving or avoiding a car crash. Know the future, or rather, learn about a possible future, and you will end up limiting yourself. I rather agree with the view of Rem from Trigun, that the ticket to the future is always blank.