It’s the fall when I get hooked on at least one new television series. This year, I am on the couch for Flash Forward on ABC. It's premise is that the entire population of the world blacks out at exactly the same time for two minutes and seventeen seconds. Everybody just falls over unconscious. For some people, like those reading in chairs or sleeping, it is merely inconvenient. But for those driving or on an airplane, it is a disaster and a calamity, so the show starts with horrifying scenes of destruction, but that was only the first episode. The plot however turns on fact that everyone, while blacked out, has a vision of their lives at the same moment on April 19, 2010, about six months hence. Everyone sees themselves in the exact same future moment.
How is this even possible? Well, a very diverse team of extraordinarily attractive FBI agents are on the case and are making rapid progress. It appears that somehow it has something to do with, yes, you guessed it, “quantum physics”, the alternate rulebook for the Universe in which all things are possible.
The thumping, clumping and sighing sounds you are now hearing is the sound of the nation’s physics teachers throwing a book at the TV screen and going outside to gaze into the starry sky and wonder if they have wasted their lives.
The premise of Flash Forward is that humanity knows its future, but in the same manner that it knows its present and its past. Everybody knows only 2 minutes and 17 seconds of a day a few months hence, and only what is perceptible from their own peculiar and individual vantage point. No one even knows the context of the actions they see themselves doing. So there is one level of mystery about what individuals' visions actually mean.
Another perplexing question is whether what is foreseen in a person’s flash forward is, in fact, necessarily going to come true. Were the visions a warning of a possible future which can be avoided? Or were they a vision of a fated destiny? Lots of people want their vision of the future to come true, but many others do not. And one character saw nothing, which makes him think that he will die before April 19th.
Is it possible to know the future? Our practical experience tells us that it is not. We are regularly blindsided by events that seemingly come out of nowhere. It sometimes seems that very wise people can predict the future; it is their knowledge of the past and present, though, that lets them guess well. They can predict who will the football game because they know the weaknesses and strengths of each team, but if that were certain knowledge, there would be no fun betting on pro football.
But to think that someone could know the future, or that millions could see into the future, presumes that the future exists already. Somewhere it exists as a plan or as the next chapter. As though it were next week's episode of a TV series, all finished and ready to be broadcast. You could call it God’s Will or Providence or Fate, there it would be, a finished product and unchangeable, the next reel of the movie. The only surprise is finding out what role we are actually playing.
Liberal religion, for the most part, has rejected this view of the future. The old word for it was "predestination", the belief that God has a plan and has chosen who will be saved from before the beginning of time. One of the reasons why our forebears at the First Unitarian Church of Worcester sought a new church was to hear "liberal preaching" and by that, they meant preaching against predestination. They said it sapped moral energy. Why bother with anything if the future is already written.
For liberal religion, the thing about the future is that it has not happened yet. Therefore, it is not possible to know the future, and there are no secret means to discern it. It is being created now, and our actions will have some effect. Human beings have power and are therefore, accountable.
This stuff matters.
You see, every claim of an predictable future, or that the future can known in advance, is a claim for power in the present. If the ultimate future of humankind is written in the book of Revelation, then it follows that power should go to those who know how to read that book of the Bible. If the ultimate future of humankind is known through the Marxist Leninist science of dialectical materialism, then those who have mastered that way of thinking are best fit to rule. Knowledge is power, and secret knowledge over the future is a claim to unlimited power.
On Flash Forward, it appears that some group of people, yet undiscovered, have found a way to use the magic black box of “quantum physics” to reveal the future to all of humanity. Why? I don't yet know, but I don't think that its to salvage their 401K's. They want power.
In the end, I predict that this whole business about the mass blackout and flash forward is just the incident to kick off the story, the "mcguffin" in the parlance of crime writers. By the end of the season, the story will be about a contest between the forces of good, as represented by our very good-looking FBI agents, and the forces of evil, who want to rule the world.
Our practical experience teaches us that we do not in control our future. Does that mean that someone or something else is? Or does it mean that no one is, because even we though are not all-powerful, we are free?
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