# Why Are We Tormented by the Future?  ## About - Author: Joshua Rothman - Title: Why Are We Tormented by the Future? - Tags: #articles - URL: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/open-questions/why-are-we-tormented-by-the-future ## Highlights Not long ago, my six-year-old son was in the bath, building cities out of colorful foam blocks. (“City blocks!” he said. “Get it?”) One metropolis, on the tub’s outside edge, was supposed to be based in the present day; another, closer to the wall, was a future city. A third was constructed on a purple rectangle that floated in the water. “What’s that one, on the purple island?” I asked. “It’s a fresent city,” he said. “It’s in between the future and the present.” The fresent—does that sound like a nice place to be? To my ears, it registers as possibly exciting but also as frenzied and unpleasant. Yet I often feel that I’m living in the fresent. - Note: I want to keep an eye on the present but remain rooted in the here and now. ---