Monday was Memorial Day and we have the old standbys Christmas, Easter, Passover, New Year's, Thanksgiving Day, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Presidents' Day, Veterans Day. But what will the future bring? Over the past 5,000 years mankind has moved from the edge of hunting and gathering to the point where it's gained the capability to depart from the habitat in which it came into being. When the sun dies humans will be forced to leave the earth for good and it won't necessarily mean a migration over centuries in which mini worlds become stop off points to a final destination -- say one of the planets amenable to human life, circling Kepler 186f. Indeed by that time human consciousness would have long found a home in its own safe and eternal cybernetic ether, with the body turned into a relic of a past way of life. When it comes to holidays, man in whichever form he's manifest will be confronted with a whole new range of civilizations whose triumphs, struggles and mythology of survival will be commemorated in ways that it's almost impossible to conceive today. Remember the Pilgrims came to the colonies in the 17th Century, making Thanksgiving only four hundred years old, Christmas celebrates an event which occurred only a couple of thousand years ago, as does Easter and the contributions that made Martin Luther King someone whom we celebrate occurred in the lifetimes of a good portion of the extant population. Who will be the new Christ, the new father of the United States of the World or whatever entity exists in another one or two millennia? Will we be celebrating those who gave up their corporeal forms and settled in cyberspace the way we commemorate the pilgrims? Will there be a day to celebrate the first space travelers who defied time by way of a wormhole? And what will happen to our old holidays? Will it come to pass that in a far off time January 1 will no longer be New Year's Day?
Promotional Photo for National Blueberry Cheesecake Day
{This was originally posted to The Screaming Pope, Francis Levy's blog of rants and reactions to contemporary politics, culture and art}