In many ways the future is nothing more than the past played over again in a new key. The notes look new and sound different. It's wonderful to usher in a new year and all the hope that it holds!
As the calendar scrolls through January and then February, undercurrents of another story already under way from a previous year begin to surface. Family issues, perhaps. Employment. Friends. It's not that this new story wasn't there all along; it's just that those of us in the midst of our own story didn't notice it. Novelists sometimes call these the "threads" of a larger story. These threads unfold alongside of or even inside the story promised in the book's title.
The big story
History is really just a big novel that includes all of us as characters. We've each got our role to play in the story – the story we know about and the ones we don't. It may turn out that we know nothing about a story in which we actually play a very important role. Such was the case with the generation that fought World War I and II. They didn't know they were part of that story until it surfaced and they found themselves on the battlefields of Europe.
The Millennial novel
It is similar for the Millennials. I picked them because they are in the middle of families and careers right now. They see in front of them the story of their own generation as it unfolds before them. Yet their story is surrounded by and interwoven with the stories of previous generations and those yet to come.
The Sacrificial Generation?
The tyranny of the past and the future affects us all. The decisions of past generations still exert their pull on the Millennials – the national decision, for instance, to force everyone to go to college by shifting manufacturing jobs overseas, where they could be done, at least for a time, cheaper. Not everyone wanted to go to college. Not everyone was suited to go to college. But by the Millennials' time on stage the decent-paying alternative of manufacturing jobs was no longer an option.
How did that happen? This thread in our national story was never discussed. It was not voted on by Congress. No president ever signed it into law. The Supreme Court never considered its constitutionality. But it happened, and it impacted everyone.
Looking forward
Sometimes threads from the future emerge within the current generation's story as well. The USSR's Sputnik was like that. No one had sent a satellite into earth orbit before. Then one day the USSR launched a rocket with a 184-pound sphere strapped to the top of it. Every generation since the 1960s has had their research and development priorities altered by that event. Perhaps the money spent going to the moon would have been better spent curing cancer. Or a national vacation. We will never know.
Are there yet deeper threads still to emerge within the Millennial novel? To the thoughtful reader clues are beginning to surface. The singularity. Human genetic alteration. Artificial intelligence. Machine designed machines. Robots replacing workers. Pervasive surveillance by those in power designed to "keep us all safe." Yet that surveillance subtly controls our thoughts, which in turn controls our actions. The digital world has a long memory. A record of our thoughts and actions can be stored … forever. Will it one day be used against us by a more "enlightened" generation yet to come?
Who's in charge, anyway?
There are no national discussions on these deeper threads in the Millennial novel. Congress is unlikely ever to vote on them. No president need sign them into law. The Supreme Court won't hear arguments on their constitutionality or lawfulness.
Nevertheless, these threads continue onward, entwining themselves into our future. Then they will be the story of the Millennial generation … those coming after, and those after them.
The deepest thread
The oldest and deepest thread bound into humanity's novel, which encompasses us all, remains unseen, yet is woven through all the generations. It is the supernatural conflict between the Creator and the creation. God. Man. The angelic realm, the created universe, humanity's fall from oneness with God, and God's extraordinary efforts to set the relationship aright once again.
The threads are all in place; the stories within the story moving forward as one. The Millennial generation will see the end of that story unfold before their eyes. Few will understand that the story of humanity, like all novels, has a beginning and an end. Yet the clues are everywhere around us for those with eyes to see.
The greater truths are only found within fiction.
Media wishing to interview Craige McMillan, please contact [email protected].
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