Earlier this week, VJM Publishing paid homage to science fiction author J R Mooneyham and his outstanding website. Because Mooneyham’s website relates to science fiction and to predictions of the future, we at VJM Publishing decided to pay more homage by imitating it. Here are our predictions for the 2020s.
We predict that the current movement across the West towards right-wing populism will increase. This was foretold as early as 2012, when Vince McLeod wrote about a Great Right Shift in his cyberpunk novel The Verity Key. We are seeing the Great Right Shift come into play now, and it will continue for several decades.
Western capitalist economies are built on the belief that all human beings are the same, and therefore that it’s possible to boost economic growth indefinitely through immigration. The reality is that human groups are almost as different to each other as dog breeds are, and so our system is doomed to collapse. This is the fate of all systems built on falsehoods.
It’s possible to predict, then, that social cohesion will continue to decrease across the West. Diversity will continue to increase, and this will eat into solidarity like an acid. This decrease in solidarity will be the immediate cause of most of the phenomena listed below.
It’s hard to tell if Trump will win next year, on account of the vagaries of the Electoral College system. If he loses, America will continue to fracture culturally. Even if he wins, the demographic trends will force a sharp increase in white identity. By the end of the decade, it won’t be unusual for people to openly identify as white nationalists.
The Sweden Democrats are currently polling at around 25% – we predict that they will be close to 50% by the end of the decade. Other nationalist movements in Europe will also gain ground. Marine Le Pen will win in 2022, leading to change across Europe.
There is ample space for a similar nationalist movement in New Zealand, and the lure of power will pull someone into that space. Already it has become apparent that National and Labour are two wings of the Establishment Party, and ten years from now someone will have taken advantage of the sentiments this evokes. By 2030 they will be polling at 25% and the Establishment parties will refuse to work with them.
In the realm of religion, the 2020s will be marked by the further collapse of the Abrahamic cults. Islamic apostasy in particular will be extremely strong, driven by Internet exposure to other cultures and by a reaction to the horrific scriptures. By 2030, organised ex-Muslims will be powerful forces in many countries, including Western ones. This process will lead many Westerners to Satanism.
Nearing the end of the 2020s we will start to see the rise of an esoteric form of Luciferianism. In the same way that Buddha acted to reform Hinduism and Jesus acted to reform Judaism, so too will the common Western religion of Satanism get reformed into an advanced form of Luciferianism. This movement may or may not have a great leader, but an original literature will be composed.
Related to this is an end to the suppression of psychedelic spiritual sacraments. Both cannabis and the major psychedelics will be fully legal everywhere by the end of the 2020s. The War on Drugs will be widely seen as an embarrassment akin to the criminalisation of homosexuality. The suppression of psychedelic science has done 1,600 years worth of damage, but much of this will be repaired by 2030.
Popular intellectual culture will continue to decline in the West as the public discourse drifts ever-closer to its lowest common denominator. This will be exacerbated by Western leftists moving even further away from common sense. By the end of the 2020s, Western leftists will be openly agitating in favour of pedophila, and people who claim that pedophilia harms children will be branded as bigots.
Despite this, small pockets of extremely high intellectual culture will come into existence, guided by the Internet. Because the Internet makes it possible to overcome the tyranny of geography, it can bring together people who are interested in a particular topic from all over the world.
This will lead to extremely immersive online communities relating to all kinds of topics rising up. On the topic of politics, communities like /pol/ on the various chans will grow ever stronger as authoritarian crackdowns on free speech intensify. The Establishment will be aware that it is losing control of the narrative and will therefore crack down hard on alternative sources of propaganda.
The 2020s will see a pronounced rise in the number of hikikomoris and incels. Already the trend towards dropping out of society is worrisome, partially thanks to economic conditions that make it all but impossible to own a home while earning the average wage. In the 2020s it will become extreme. By 2030, many people will have come to see sex as a crude instinct best suppressed.
Interest rates will remain low, bordering on subterranean, until they don’t. The point at which they don’t will mark the point when the shit hits the fan for real. Once they start to rise, many enterprises will fall into bankruptcy. This will lead to panic, and the measures that Governments take to prop up the banking system will be ruthlessly authoritarian.
It’s uncertain what the climate will do over the next 10 years. What we can predict, however, is that climate hysteria will continue to increase. It’s never admitted, but one of the reasons why climate hysteria is pushed so hard is that it induces people to think globally, and to ignore local issues. Hence, climate hysteria is an integral part of manufacturing consent for United Nations dictates, and this will intensify.
The impact of technology on the organisation of human life will become ever stronger. Ted Kaczynski will continue to be vindicated. Some countries will ban personal ownership of motor vehicles as the entire fleet moves to self-driving cars and trucks. Others will force Internet users to declare their identity every time they use the Internet. Mass surveillance will become normalised, and anyone who objects to it will be dismissed as paranoid.
Another phenomenon that will reach fever pitch is spree killings and random murders, whether carried out by firearm or by blade. Mass shootings are already becoming common on account of the general social malaise, and mass stabbings/machete attacks aren’t far behind. In some places, stretches of the 2020s will be like the film Battle Royale. This will cause some very strange alliances and feuds.
By the end of the 2020s, the majority of the population will be on some kind of psychiatric medicine. The idea that people need it because we evolved to live in a different world will become normalised. Social pressures will become so intense that it will be hard to function without sedatives. Related to this, cannabis will replace alcohol as the first choice recreational drug among Western youth.
Culturally speaking, we agree with Rick Giles that the 2020s ought to see a return of physical Honour Culture. The increasing paranoia and worsening economic conditions will cause many to realise that a social collapse is eminently possible. Many have already taken measures to prepare for this by hoarding firearms and precious metals, but there will be a surge in those who prepare by getting fit.
In summary, the 2020s will be worse in most ways, and better in a small number of other ways. It will get worse in terms of society, which will become ever shittier and more soulless and authoritarian. It will get better in the sense that it become possible to reject the system and to carve one’s own niche in cyberspace or in the counterculture that will dominate this decade.
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If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 is also available.
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