Humanity: No, We Are Not Doomed!

A friend of mine has a 9-year-old daughter who came home from school last week in tears. “Mom, my teacher says the world will run out of water by 2040. Will we all die of thirst?” she asked.

Her daughter, my friend told me, is terrified, fearing that her entire future has been foreclosed.

My friend, after doing some scientific research on the question, found that she couldn’t really reassure her child that everything would be alright — because it may not be.

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After all, the scientific evidence doesn’t look promising, future-wise.

That bleak sense of terror, felt by children and youth all over the world now, is real — a legitimate response to serious threats to our collective human tomorrows.

In multiple surveys, including a recent one conducted among 10,000 young people in ten countries, 75 per cent of those surveyed said “the future is frightening,” and more than half of all respondents said they feel “sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and guilty” about climate change.

Anxiety about the future, and even about human beings’ continued existence as a species, has spread across the globe. Caused by information overload, the bias toward negative news in our media, and yes, real evidence-based fear over actual social ills, our worries about the future have become paralyzing to some people and enormously anxiety-producing for others. We’ve even invented a name for the behavior associated with that anxiety: doomscrolling.

The Baha’i teachings recognize and understand that anxiety and have much to say about its causes — and its remedies. Those hopeful teachings reassure us that our world and our species will continue to exist for a very, very long time. Abdu’l-Baha said “Lift up your hearts above the present and look with eyes of faith into the future!”

We can all understand, though, why so many people feel so hopeless — sometimes, the world does seem doomed. We have no lack of severe issues and problems, many of them truly global and truly frightening. This piling up of overwhelming crises has led many people to seriously doubt humanity’s future prospects, convincing them that the human species will never get it together and deal with our problems. 

Baha’is, on the other hand, strongly believe that a better future will inevitably arrive. The Baha’i teachings affirm a glorious but realistic vision for the eventual oneness and wholeness of the human race. Baha’u’llah, the prophet and founder of the Baha’i Faith, promised that after our current period of struggle and strife, humanity has a bright destiny:

The whole earth is now in a state of pregnancy. The day is approaching when it will have yielded its noblest fruits, when from it will have sprung forth the loftiest trees, the most enchanting blossoms, the most heavenly blessings. 

Abdu’l-Baha, Baha’u’llah’s son and successor, gave us this hopeful, heartening vision of the future in his book Some Answered Questions:

… in this wondrous Dispensation the earth will become another earth and the world of humanity will be arrayed with perfect composure and adornment. Strife, contention, and bloodshed will give way to peace, sincerity and harmony. Among the nations, peoples, kindreds, and governments, love and amity will prevail and cooperation and close connection will be firmly established. Ultimately, war will be entirely banned … The five continents of the world will become as one, its diverse nations will become one nation, the earth will become one homeland, and the human race will become one people. Countries will be so intimately connected, and peoples and nations so commingled and united, that the human race will become as one family and one kindred. The light of heavenly love will shine and the gloomy darkness of hatred and enmity will be dispelled as far as possible. Universal peace will raise its pavilion in the midmost heart of creation and the blessed Tree of Life will so grow and flourish as to stretch its sheltering shade over the East and the West. 

So Baha’is have hope, and offer that hope to the world. 

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From a Baha’i perspective, however, none of this can happen immediately. It will take an enormous amount of effort and work and sacrifice. Humanity may have to go through great tests and trials before we gradually arrive at a more evolved state of unity and oneness; and our generation and even the generations that follow us may not fully witness the emerging results. But, as Abdu’l-Baha said in a talk he gave in the Lincoln, Nebraska home of William Jennings Bryan in 1912, that’s no cause for disillusionment, pessimism, or cynicism:

Work for the sake of God and for the improvement of humanity without any expectation of praise and reward. His Holiness Christ was not appreciated in His lifetime. The magnitude of His character and the sublimity of His teachings were duly recognized long after His crucifixion. The present is always unimportant, but we must make our present so filled with mighty, altruistic deeds as to assume significant weight and momentous importance in the future.

In this series of essays, we’ll examine the reasons we can reassure ourselves and our children that humanity has hope for all of its future generations.