OCTAVIA BUTLER'S FOUR RULES FOR PREDICTING THE FUTURE
READ ABOUT OCTAVIA BUTLER IN “SCI-FI, SLAVERY, AND SEEDS OF THE FUTURE'“
Learn From the Past: “The past is filled with repeating cycles of strength and weakness, wisdom and stupidity, empire and ashes. To study history is to study humanity. And to try to foretell the future without studying history is like trying to learn to read without bothering to learn the alphabet.”
2. Respect the Law of Consequences: “I don’t believe we can do anything at all without side effects, also known as unintended consequences. Those consequences may be beneficial or harmful. They may be too slight to matter or they may be worth the risk because the potential benefits are great, but the consequences are always there."
3. Be Aware of Your Perspective: “Some of the most mistaken predictions I’ve seen are of the straight-line variety — that’s the kind that ignores the inevitability of unintended consequences, ignores our often less-than-logical reactions to them, and says simply, ‘In the future, we will have more and more of whatever’s holding our attention right now.’ If we’re in a period of prosperity, then in the future, prosperity it will be. If we’re in a period of recession, we’re doomed to even greater distress. . . . Superstition, depression and fear play major roles in our efforts at prediction.”
4. Count On the Surprises: “During the Cold War days of the sixties, seventies and eighties, no one would have dared to predict a peaceful resolution in the nineties. I remembered air-raid drills when I was in elementary school, how we knelt, heads down against corridor walls with our bare hands supposedly protecting our bare necks, hoping that if nuclear war ever happened, Los Angeles would be spared. But the threat of nuclear war is gone, at least for the present, because to our surprise our main rival, the Soviet Union, dissolved itself. No matter how hard we try to foresee the future, there are always these surprises. The only safe prediction is that there always will be.”
