In 1995, Sagan looked at our advancement and human nature and put both together to peer into the future to see what happens to the greatest nation in the history of mankind. What he saw was troubling, and after nearly 30 years, we’re seeing it for ourselves.

What he saw was a society that had regressed dramatically. Despite being surrounded by the pinnacle of technological achievements and great leaps in science, we’re crushed under the weight of so much information that we lose track of what is real and what is false. We no longer create, we just consume. We rely more on mystical nonsense than our own intelligence to see what’s real. They will formulate worldviews based on what the media sells them in small bites, and people will uphold stupidity as a virtue.

Sagan’s striking prophecy deserves to be read in its entirety:

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.”

Frightening to think we’ve fallen directly into the future Sagan had predicted, but fall we have. Everything Sagan predicted came true to the letter.

We live in an age of information but we’ve never been more ignorant. We embrace the complete denial of science in order to push ignorant positions narratives as not just the truth but as virtuous. We have the media selling panic and many in America willing to buy it in bulk, even against all common sense. We have people deny biology at the risk of both their physical and mental health but are so addicted to the victimhood and protection the community provides that they can’t imagine doing anything else. Leaders will say the sky is green and saying it’s “blue” may result in your life being ruined by roving, unthinking mobs on social platforms that are overseen by monopolistic overlords whose bias is undeniable.

Despite the potential for being a highly advanced and knowledgable culture, society has chosen regression into emotional, scared, and ignorant children who are more likely to throw temper tantrums when told we’re wrong than engage in a level-headed debate where we may learn something.

While this is dire, I’d like to remind readers that we’ve been here before, at least as a species.

The Dark Ages were also a time of superstition and not a lot of thought was put into the way things were. You served a Lord who dictated everything from how you worshipped to how you lived, and if you didn’t die in a war you probably died of disease. You worked, you served, you bred, you died, and that was life.

Then something sparked in Florence, Italy around the 1300s’. A new way of looking at life emerged which would trigger an entire revolution of education, healthcare, and law. The Rennaisance, as it was called, changed the world forever and definitely for the better, spurring humanity onto the next stage of its societal evolution. The enlightening of the people came from the people being in the dark and wanting something else.

Today we can look around see that things are in a state of pure lunacy. Just logging onto a social media website opens up a world where the news is selling you blood and conflict amidst a population that gobbles it up while signaling virtue after virtue and offering little to nothing in terms of real substance. We have regressed as Sagan said, but something is going to break. People are going to get tired of the nonsense and noise and look for a better way. They’ll refuse to slide back any further, turning, instead, to the wisdom of those who came before us in order to pave the road ahead with knowledge and a thirst for something better.

The second renaissance may not happen today or even in the next few years, but I do believe it’s on the horizon. Humanity has never been one to love wallowing in the mud for long, and soon society will reject those who wish to keep us there and move on to something greater.

Sagan’s prophecy may have come true, but it doesn’t mean we’ll remain in that state forever. The law of undulation is absolute.