As a new year dawns, a profound and unsettling shift is occurring in how people envision tomorrow. Instead of looking forward with hope, many find themselves psychologically trapped in an overwhelming present, unable to conceive of a stable future. This phenomenon, noted by therapists and researchers, is being driven by what experts term a 'polycrisis' – multiple, interacting global crises that create radical uncertainty.
The Paralysing Present
This widespread difficulty in future-thinking is not merely anecdotal. Dr Steve Himmelstein, a clinical psychologist in New York with nearly 50 years of practice, reports that a significant number of his clients have effectively 'lost the future'. He observes that people are feeling overwhelmed, overstimulated, and bombarded daily by bad news: global instability, the rising cost of living, job insecurity, and severe weather events.
'Clients are less optimistic now and they don't talk about the future that much,' Himmelstein states. 'The consensus is that people don't seem to feel that good about their lives now. There's a lot of despair.' When asked what they look forward to, many have no answer. Himmelstein, one of the last students of Holocaust survivor and psychologist Viktor Frankl, notes that the current climate might even scare his mentor, whose concept of 'tragic optimism' was essential for survival.
Why Our Brains Struggle with Uncertainty
The human brain is not evolutionarily primed for distant planning. Dr Hal Hershfield, a psychologist at UCLA, explains that we don't so much 'think' about the future as 'remember' it, through a process called episodic future thinking. We construct mental memories of possible tomorrows to guide decisions and plans.
However, the radical uncertainty of a polycrisis – where outcomes are fundamentally unknowable – severely disrupts this ability. A recent study found that participants reminded of future uncertainty generated 25% fewer possible future events and took longer to do so, rating their own thoughts as less reliable.
Dr Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard psychology professor, adds that our prefrontal cortex, responsible for envisioning our future selves, is a relatively recent evolutionary addition. 'One problem is that we don't imagine events correctly,' Gilbert says. 'The larger problem is that we don't know who we will be when we are experiencing that event.' This instability in our sense of a continuous future self undermines purpose and makes planning feel futile.
Historical Precedents and Coping Mechanisms
This is not humanity's first encounter with paralyzing uncertainty. Anthropologist Dr Daniel Knight of the University of St Andrews studied communities in Greece during the 2008-2010 debt crisis, a period that also involved migration and energy crises. He observed people abruptly abandoning narratives of progress and instead turning to history, comparing their plight to past hardships like the 1941 famine.
Another key coping mechanism was a retreat into the immediate present and community. 'Some of them hunkered down in the now,' Knight notes, focusing on short-term plans, family, and friends. This led to the creation of 'micro-utopias' – local cycling clubs, community gardens, and support networks, a pattern mirrored in post-lockdown New York City.
Knight's research into 17th-century Europe, a time of plague, fire, and economic crisis, shows that such polycrises can be catalysts for profound change, ultimately contributing to the Enlightenment through improved governance, science, and sanitation.
Reclaiming the Ability to Look Forward
Despite the challenge, experts urge against abandoning all future-oriented thought. Hershfield advises planning around core values, like saving for a child's education, while maintaining flexibility and self-compassion. He warns that uncertainty can trigger paralyzing regret over past choices. His recommendation is to refocus on likely, near-term events to rebuild the cognitive pathway to your future self.
The fundamental message from psychologists is one of resilience. 'People are not the fragile flowers that a century of psychologists have made us out to be,' asserts Gilbert. 'People who suffer real tragedy and trauma typically recover more quickly than they expect to... We are a hardy species, even though we don't know this about ourselves.'
While the fog of polycrisis makes the road ahead difficult to see, the act of choosing a desired future and collectively working towards it remains a powerful tool to transform our actions today.
