When the next Brood emerge...

I am entering a new phase of my life. The universe has decided that it will be in the political capital of the free world. It just so happened that my life in this city coincided with the emergence of the Brood X Cicadas. This is an insect that comes to life above the ground every ~17 years. During the one-month period after 17 years of sleep, they are busy having sex! They reproduce lay eggs, the egg hatch, and get undersoil to feed on tree roots and grow really slow. It will be another 17 years before they emerge from there and repeat the process. Ever since I came here I could hear the loud noise of male cicadas mating calls. Why do they take so much time to grow up? What are the biological functions? Hormonal mechanisms? These are all interesting questions for curious minds.

Cicadas.

However, I was wondering about the time scale of this biological phenomenon. A child born in 2021 might live long enough to see 4-5 more hatching of Brood X Cicadas (There are different varieties of cicadas with a varying span of life cycles, the one that follows 17 years cycle is known as Brood X). It would be fascinating to mark the cultural and technological progress through the cicada generation. These cicadas that are just flying around now have missed all the events that happened in the past 17 years (Just assuming they are a continuous consciousness, just for fun). That means they missed everything since 2004. Boy, did they miss anything?

They missed out on two historic American presidents, historic for various reasons. They were almost ignorant of all the technology platforms that we now take for granted. They would not know how to operate a smartphone. They would not know what Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Skype are. They would not know about Arab spring and all the autocrats who were executed. They would not know about CRISPR technology, high-speed internet, e-markets. They would not know about Nextflix and Amazone prime. So many events that happened in the past 17 years. The world has changed significantly. I was reading about someone who was released from prison a few years back after wrongful incarceration of 30 or so years. He came to a new world. He had to learn everything new. He had learned new ways of communications, new concepts of money, friendship, and society.

This cicada season will end in a few weeks. New nymphs will go underground to emerge in 2038. What would they witness. Would this world be here. What all events might have happened? Would we go to mars? Would we diagnose common diseases including cancer, before they even begin? Would we have designer babies? Would quantum computing a reality? Would we download the internet to our brain? Or would we upload our thoughts and consciousness to the cloud? What would the games the 6-year-olds would be playing then? What would the present 6 olds be? They would be 23 years old. Just finishing college. What would they be interested in learning? Would arts and music still exist as we see them now? Would they be the classic cyberpunks? Would aliens visit us?

If we carefully observe our lives we will note that our lives also follow a cyclical pattern. We go through similar life events and emotional states every 10-12 years. We can call it a phase change in our lives. By the time the next Cicada brood comes out most of us have moved on to another phase of our lives. Many of our beloved people might pass away. We ourselves would not be here to witness the next brood coming out. We might have learned new life lessons, become more wise, grey, and bald. Some of us would be more famous or notorious. Some of us might lose our identity, some of us might find new friends and make new enemies, some of us might elevate consciousness to a new level, some of us might leave big cities for the woods and hills, some of us might move to mars to colonize. 

17 years a very long period to make any predictions. Both the next dictators and messengers of peace are among us. Right now we are molding the heroes and villains of the next decade. Every thought and action of each one of us is shaping the future of this world. This is a powerful understanding. The knowledge that consciousness can, to an extend, shape the future of the world. It is empowering to know that we have some degree of control over our destiny, if willing.