A disturbing 1995 prediction by Carl Sagan accurately describes America today
This article was first published on Big Think in January 2017. It was updated in January 2023.
Astronomer Carl Sagan was a great science communicator, widely known for cowriting and hosting the original Cosmos television series. Also a prolific writer, Sagan in 1995 published the book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, which touches on a variety of topics, from spirituality to debunking alien abductions, but ultimately serves as a passionate argument for science and the scientific method.
One quote from the book describes a future America that is eerily similar to how the nation is today. While Sagan generally projected optimism, the quote describes a rather dystopian society, with much division, confusion, mistrust of authority, and a growing gap between the haves and have-nots.
Here’s what the inimitable Carl Sagan wrote:
“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”
Notably, in the chapter that includes the quote, Carl Sagan discussed a few American cultural phenomena of the time, like the TV show Beavis and Butthead and the movie Dumb and Dumber. He uses these as examples of the “dumbing down” of America. One can only wonder how he would update his take on America’s future if he was alive today.
You can read the selection from Carl Sagan’s book and the rest of the chapter here.
Here’s Carl Sagan talking about the future of humanity in Cosmos (1980):
