So it’s another new year.

We are, right now, living in the future. Also now. And now as well. You get the idea. Time is fleeting. Or at the very least, passing quickly in a lazy, cumbersome manner.

Anytime in the next twelve months, hoverboards, flying cars, another JAWS movie and many other such wonders will come bursting out at us to officially state that “Yes! The Future is NOW”.

More likely, parts of the world will be mired in religious and political forms of persecution and turmoil, inequality will be rampant abroad and at home, and we will, each of us, continue to make ends meet and get our hands on the next generation of gadgets, gizmos and fads.

Listen:

Nothing much change from year to year. Evolution, social or otherwise is a painfully dull process. A law gets passed in one place, and a group of like minded people protest in another. Critical mass is required at all levels, for experiments to be deemed viable, for trends to take shape, for hearts and minds to shift.

Whether you are seeking justice at the hands of the authorities in which we place our trust, or the right to control what happens to your body, or just the consideration to spend your life with whom you choose, every one has a story worth telling. Every single voice is a part of the choir. Each one of us seeks some kind of achievement.

Preparedness. Planning. Goal setting. These buzz words have bounced around our collective vocabulary for the better part of the last sixty years or so. As we begin another new year, should we not then consider what we as a species would like to achieve locally, nationally, internationally?

High minded and terrible idealistic, I know. “12 Angry Men” shows us that it’s almost impossible to get a small group, let alone nations, to come to consensus.

But as we successfully arrive at the start of yet another new year, we prove to ourselves over and over and over again, that eventually, we can smooth off the edges, and find a common patch of ground on which to lay the foundations of our shared future hopes and dreams. That should be important to us, that regular, routine, mundane achievement.

Five hundred years from now, there will still be fanatics. There will still be unsavory elements to our society. It will be virtually impossible to pull ourselves away from any kind of conflict, because it is just part of who we are. For now. Until we choose to change the script. Unless we decide it will be different this time. Unless groups of people gather together, as a show of unity, a critical mass, to rewrite our story, then we can only live with our inaction.

It’s 2015. The Future is Now. And it always will be.