Future: Promise or Threat?. How true was Chuck Palahniuk in 2011? | by Karen Hoffman | Promptly Written | Jan, 2024 | Medium

PROMPTLY WRITTEN | MONTHLY THEME | ESSAY

Future: Promise or Threat?

How true was Chuck Palahniuk in 2011?

Karen Hoffman

Published in

Promptly Written

4 min read

Jan 26, 2024

image created in Canva by Karen Hoffman

When Chuck Palahniuk wrote Invisible Monsters (2011) and coined the quote: “When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?” could we have imagined the state we’re in as we begin 2024? I know I couldn’t. So, when our friends at the inspiring publication, Promptly Written, included the quote as a writing spark for this month’s theme of “future,” I couldn’t get away from it — like being haunted by a recurring nightmare that often seems to be so fearfully real.

“What does she mean?” some may wonder. And as I sit with this thought burrowing its way into me like a squirrel storing nuts for the winter, I’ll pick a few little flashes that come to my mind, wiping out the beauty and promise of a rainbow, and replacing it with the dark stormy clouds bringing in all kinds of threats.

Safety in Schools and Streets

The year that Palahniuk wrote his book and we first heard his quote about the future was 2011, the same year that U.S. Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot. The nation was in shock, asking “How could that happen here?” And from that point on, we’ve seen the soaring of school shootings, as in Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012 — and the more than 100 K-12 school shootings since then. School shootings had their notorious beginnings with Columbine in 1999. However, Sandy Hook was the elementary school situation that shook the nation with 26 lives lost in that shooting. And on and on on they continued. With each shooting spree (at schools, theaters, shopping centers, workplaces), there is outrage and sadness, grief and words of protest. Yet the killing continues as we lose innocent lives, the hopeful promises of their futures cut-off suddenly and shockingly. Where are we in 2024 in terms of feeling more of a promise of safety in our schools and on our streets?

Dis-Ease

Putting aside the global pandemic we have recently lived through, there is disturbing and growing concerns about the level of disease, or dis-ease, in our world. It’s not promising when every other book that comes out has to do with mental well-being, the epidemic of loneliness and disconnectedness, and the workplace situations that many find…