It seems to me that what most of us have to fear for the future is not that something terrible is going to happen, but rather that nothing is going to happen... I could sum up the future in one word, and that word is boring. The future is going to be boring.
Interpretation
The fear of an unremarkable future can be more daunting than the fear of catastrophe.
This quote by J. G. Ballard reflects a common anxiety about the future, suggesting that people often fear a lack of excitement or progress more than potential disasters. It conveys the idea that a stagnant and uneventful future might be more troubling than facing challenges, as it implies a sense of hopelessness and dullness in life.
In practice
In a motivational speech about embracing change, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of pursuing meaningful goals.
Science is the ultimate pornography, analytic activity whose main aim is to isolate objects or events from their contexts in time and space. This obsession with the specific activity of quantified functions is what science shares with pornography.
The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It's over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now: the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Vietnam.
Au revoir, jewelled alligators and white hotels, hallucinatory forests, farewell.
Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.
Most English writers are not interested in change but in the social novel. That demands a static backdrop. I'm intensely interested in change - probably as a matter of self-preservation. What the hell is going to happen next?
Deserts possess a particular magic, since they have exhausted their own futures, and are thus free of time. Anything erected there, a city, a pyramid, a motel, stands outside time. It's no coincidence that religious leaders emerge from the desert. Modern shopping malls have much the same function. A future Rimbaud, Van Gogh or Adolf Hitler will emerge from their timeless wastes.
We need a fundamental change of mindset with regards to the way we speak and behave about sex and sexuality. Boys and men have a particularly critical role in this regard, changing the chauvinist and demeaning ways sexuality and women were traditionally dealt with in both our actions and speaking.
How many black people are there in the higher echelons of any industry? We can talk about journalism, we can talk about politics. So why should football be any different?
How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me?
Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age.
What we want to be is something completely new. There is no physical analog for what Amazon.com is becoming.
You cannot expect to achieve new goals or move beyond your present circumstances unless you change.
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