Part II:

"Lo, I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the things of the past shall not be remembered or come to mind.

"Instead there shall always be rejoicing and happiness in what I create; for I create Jerusalem to be a joy and its people to be a delight; I will rejoice in Jerusalem and exult in my people."

--Isaiah 65:17, 18

In the West, of course, the Future had been the receding goal line towards which humanity had been running since the dawn of modernity. The race had begun since before the beginning of modernity, indeed, since the Future was only the secularized Millennium. It was the Third Kingdom prophesied by Joachim of Fiore in the twelfth century, the era of a thousand years when the Saints rule everywhere under the sun. It is a time when all social and international problems are solved, when prosperity is assured and continuous, when success follows success with no end in sight.

The surprising thing for the West was that it actually caught up with the Future. It lived in that glorious epoch for over two centuries. Its every dream came true. Serious war was abolished, epidemic disease wiped out, hunger banished everywhere. Racial and religious prejudices were forgotten in a truly ecumenical polity. Permanent colonies were established on other worlds, the whole surface of the Earth was accessible to any reasonably prosperous human being for a few days wages. This is the period when a civilization is both fulfilled and exhausted.

Not, of course, that there aren't some surprises. The future is ruled, or at least refereed, by an imperial government that in principle commands the allegiance of all mankind. Sometimes the emperor is a disciplinarian, sometimes insane, often a well-meaning chief bureaucrat. At least in theory, and occasionally in practice, he is selected by the free choice of an ecumenical College of Electors. There is no pretence of popular suffrage on the imperial level; this rarely convoked assembly of the Great and the Good represents not the people, but Greatness and Goodness. There is no more fitting way to select the suffering First Servant of Mankind, even if he is in fact (often) simply his predecessor's son or (sometimes) the designee of the military.

However, while many people are often eager to relieve the imperial incumbent of the burdens of office and take them on themselves, no one seriously argues that the office itself should be abandoned, or that there is any ethical alternative to the universal government. Indeed, people exert themselves to stay away from conventional politics, despite the fact that responsible local government is still possible, indeed urgently promoted by the central authorities.

The fact is, however, people refuse to vote if given any choice in the matter. If they are compelled, they will only confirm the decision of the nominating authorities. Indeed, most of the social and political rights acquired over the course of modernity are less and less exercised in the Future (just as the duties of citizenship are less and less required of citizens). "Politics" in the broader sense of meetings of locally important businessmen and bureaucrats continue, of course, so that parks and public institutions are still endowed by the civic-minded wealthy. However, to everyone's relief, the duty to "participate" in the affairs of the day, to fight in wars for freedom and justice and to take seriously the ideas of reformers or reactionaries, is no longer an integral part of citizenship. To pay taxes, and to obey the criminal law, are all that the imperial government asks. After a while, few local governments ask more.

In this age of final consequences, many activities which seemed evergreen finally come to an end. This is the period when science and mathematics are seen to be completed, when the basic truths of the world are reduced to a few volumes and taught in the schools. This is not because of laziness on the part of scholars or for lack of public funds, or even because of a cultural discouragement of natural curiosity. Indeed, there are many great descriptive naturalists in the Future. There are great technical universities, and the exploitation of the existing stock of physical theory by engineers goes from strength to strength for at least a century. Science and mathematics come to an end, except as historical bodies of knowledge, because there is nothing more to say. The culture's way of looking at the world has been exhausted.

The same is true of all the arts. Despite eruptions of libertinism among the ruling strata from time to time, the mood of the Future is generally one of increasing puritanism, of belief in decorum, of respect for form. As we noted in a previous age, in the Future much of the literature and representational art of the modern era is discarded, often because of its (sometimes imaginary) scatological content. This censorship, however, is only one aspect of a great work of criticism and redaction. The goal, sometimes merely implicit and occasionally even denied, is to produce a common language of thought and feeling and reference for the whole world for all time. The surprising thing about this kind of effort, whether in China or the West or elsewhere, is how often it succeeds.

In the Future, prosperity reaches the highest levels consistent with available technology. Those cultures which favor private enterprise for economic growth find business enterprises reaching unprecedented ranges of operation and levels of complexity. However, the old intensity of the modern era is gone. The imperial government determines how rich and how influential anyone can be. Sometimes, the rich, whether corporate or individual, are simply expropriated, or called upon to provide some voluntary but unavoidable public service. Finance is at any rate less important. Great stocks of uncommitted capital only appear when sellers have trouble reaching buyers and people in one market have difficulty operating in another. Pure capitalists are simple middlemen. In the Future, the political and economic balkanization of the world which made great financial institutions and financiers so very important for a few generations is greatly reduced. The economic growth that does occur is largely a function of the scope of operation which has become possible. It is nothing less than the whole civilized world in most cases, and sometimes a little more.

The growth of the economy increasingly parallels the growth of world population, and both get slower as the period progresses. This does not happen in all regions of the world or at the same pace where it does occur; it is most pronounced in the old centers of civilization. The fact is, however, that the general vitality of civilization tends to decline in the later Future, even if public health does not necessarily do so.

The Future is not necessarily a time of complete peace. In this period, all civilizations expand their borders (even inflexible Egypt subjected an ever wider hinterland to systematic tribute). Islam went ever deeper into Europe, taking the Near East and northern Africa at the same time. China pressed westward toward the center of Eurasia and south toward Indochina. Rome went north and into Britain, and only toward the end of the period did it move toward the east, where its long-term enemies lay. The Western imperium, on the other hand, which controlled the whole planet either directly or through unequal treaties, expressed the tendency to expand by moving into space. This enterprise was never quite as economic as it was hoped to be, and the actual movement of people and equipment to the Moon, Mars, Mercury and, in the most tragic case, Europa, was always an expense only the imperial government could bear. None of these settlements changed the course of Western history, though they often influenced it. On the other hand, in the real long-run, far beyond the Future, they may have been the only enterprises by any civilization which altered the destiny of the species. (This was particularly the case with the long-maintained project to alter the orbit of any considerable body in the solar system which might conceivably collide with the Earth someday, thereby removing the chief cause of the great biological die-offs which disfigure the geological record.) For most civilizations, however, this was the last epoch when expansion was an obvious good. It was certainly the last period when their societies were competent enough to accomplish it.

Even so, however, these great exercises of power were not such as to disturb the average citizen. The Golden Age had begun, and civilized mankind settled in to enjoy it.