Sometimes it’s because the things they see when they think of that “tomorrow” are things they don’t quite agree with. Progress means change and sometimes change can be uncomfortable, even bad. But rarely do we know that something is a bad thing until it has already happened. We like to think that we’re fairly good at predicting the future. But really we’re not and that has a negative effect on our world view. Studies have shown people with more conservative tendencies have a larger fear center in their brain, meaning there’s a chance that our desire to avoid change is less about rational thought and more about fear of losing what we already have.

Of course, when you talk about fearing the future and fearing what could be lost, there is no more fundamental fear than losing ourselves. One of the most hotly debated issues when it comes up relates to the future of us and our relationship with scientific advancements. What will we be like “tomorrow”? Will we still be compassionate? Will we be caring? Will we still even be human?

But in today’s world, the abstract is more important than it ever was. Once upon a time, when we didn’t understand something that was happening, we had to put a face on it. When we couldn’t figure out lightning or thunder, we called it Zeus or Thor. When we couldn’t understand the changing of the seasons, we trapped a woman named Persephone in the underworld. When we couldn’t understand the stars, we said they were lanterns hung in the heavens by a powerful deity.

Today, we don’t have that luxury, we have to be able to come to terms with the abstract because we can’t afford ourselves to refer to it by a new god. Those who don’t believe in a god won’t be prone to doing so and everyone else already has their god of choice. When we look into the night sky and we see something that we don’t understand, it’s intellectually dishonest of us now to try to fill in the blanks with stories of pure fantasy. So, for the first time in hundreds of thousands of years, back to before a lone ape-like man stared into the sky and felt the need to explain it grip at his core, when we look into the sky we are truly alone with those abstracts.

Some would, could, and have argued that this takes away some of the magic of what is happening around us. Some would suggest that we should fear knowing too much and bringing about our own destruction. But the problem for them is, no matter how much you may resist it, the future is coming. There are so many quiet gears moving behind the scenes that people don’t want to acknowledge in the clock that keeps pushing us forward.