Ryan Haraki
Before I started university during the summer of 2021, I made a wonderful friend who introduced me to a YouTube video called “All Tomorrows: the future of humanity?“.
All Tomorrows is a story about the chronicle of mankind over a billion years. It tells the story of the Star People - a subspecies of Humans who migrate to Mars, and their eventual encounter with the Qu, a godly species that has mastered genetic modification. The Qu, finding humanity a threat to their galactic dominance, wage war with the humans and eventually punish them by transforming them into a myriad of different species which they place across the galaxy.
Post-war, All Tomorrows tells the tale of the rise, and fall of these species as they begin to achieve galactic dominance, wage wars with each other, upload their consciousness to the computer, commit horrific crimes, and finally disappear.
There is no main character to All Tomorrows. Instead, the author tells the story in a documentary-style format from the third-person perspective.
It’s an extremely weird YouTube video, and I remember being very confused and estranged by the content - particularly the drawings.
Last month, I decided to find the book online and give it a read. It is now one of my favorite books of all time.
C.M. Kösemen tells a grand tale; All Tomorrows is a very “fantastic” book. Whilst reading about these subspecies of future, biologically morphed humans and their wars, I was left wondering “this is cool, but what is the point?“. All Tomorrows is one of those books with an “aha” moment. This exert I now share with you below put a smile on my face:
NOTE: If you plan to read the book, do that first before reading this!
”Ultimately, however, what happened to Humanity does not matter. Like every other story, it was a temporary one; indeed long but ultimately ephemeral. It did not have a coherent ending, but then again it did not need to. The tale of Humanity was never its ultimate domination of a thousand galaxies, or its mysterious exit into the unknown. The essence of being human was none of that. Instead, it lay in the radio conversations of the still-human Machines, in the daily lives of the bizarrely twisted Bug Facers, in the endless love-songs of the carefree Hedonists, the rebellious demonstrations of the first true Martians, and in a way, the very life you lead at the moment.
Many throughout history were unaware of this most basic fact. The Qu, in dreams of an ideal future, distorted the worlds they came across. Later on the Gravital, with their insane desire to recreate the past, caused the ugliest massacres in the history of the galaxy. Even now, it is sickeningly easy for beings to get lost in false grand narratives, living out completely driven lives in pursuit of non-existent codes, ideals, climaxes and golden ages. In blindly thinking that their stories serve absolute ends, such creatures almost always end up harming themselves, if not those around them.
To those like the misguided; look at the story of Man, and come to your senses! It is not the destination, but the trip that matters. What you do today influences tomorrow, not the other way around. Love Today, and seize All Tomorrows!”
This simple exert answered an extremely important question for me: “What is love?”
I wasn’t sure what exactly it was. Throughout life, you are given a grand narrative for love. Your perfect someone that you explore the world with, share food, laughs, and experiences with. It’s exciting, it’s exhilarating, it’s eventful.
My relationship has all of that, but I wasn’t sure what to feel. I started by asking many people what they thought love meant, but I was extremely dissatisfied by their answers. Everyone had their own words to describe the same thing society tells us.
All Tomorrows told me something different.
We are sold on love being a grand narrative - one with a sparkling beginning, and perhaps no ending. It is not the pursuit of experience, trying to find the ideal scenario, or any of that.
It is the mundanity of love that makes it so special. It is the ability to sit in silence with someone, and not feel awkwardness, stopping to appreciate the flowers blooming during the spring, stepping outside, breathing fresh air at the same time, and giggling because it was funny for some reason - it is a strikingly simple feeling.
I used to think that my greatest memories would be made in my greatest moments, but reflecting - many of them are rooted in the simple, human experiences of everyday life.
Of course there is a balance between the two. But my learning, and this extends to life in general, is to not take mundanity for granted. Life is fast-moving, and during periods of rapid growth, I am often extremely different from who I was only a few months (or sometimes days) prior.
Not even you are constant, but your memories and cherished moments are. Do not fret over simplicity, there is genius (and humanity!) in it.