We appear to be gradually entering a dystopia like the ones I read
about in novels by guys like William Gibson back when I was a
teenager. I recall in one of those books a character mentioning
that horses had died out - obviously a detail to drive home
that this world, despite having takeout food in white cardboard
containers and coffee and a lot of things that feel like our world
had also gone wrong in some fundamental ways including serious
environmental damage.
Somewhere out there in our not so distant future lies the
extinction of a species that people identify with and really care
about, maybe horses or tigers, or the bald eagles that we pulled
back from the brink of extinction.
Philip K. Dick's novel 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep' is set
in a bleak future in which we've thoroughly irradiated and trashed
the ecological systems of the Earth. Many people have ditched that
Earth for colonies on other worlds to escape the wreckage and the
characters of the novel are trapped in the kipple-infested world
trying to make sense of life there or at least distract themselves
from how awful it is in the nuclear dustbowl that our planet has
become. Escapism in the form of a new religion (Mercerism) and
acquiring rare pets (since so many species are extinct or nearly
so) take the place of having something real to look forward to.
People still play the stupid games of status symbols and showing
one another up.
I feel like we may be slipping gradually into that future
sometimes, one tiptoe step into the water at a time. Frogs may not
boil in a pot without realizing it but we appear as a species to be
proving that particular myth 'confirmed' for us instead.
