The Abagond Principle

This idea is not original with me. I am only naming it after myself because I forget its real name (if it ever had one).

The idea is this: we live in a universe where things come and go: they come to be, last for awhile and then come to an end. Stars, dogs, empires, illnesses, floods, disputes, marriages, low crimes, good times, bad times, tables, cups, bottles, eggs and whatever that thing in the picture is. Like a good story, all created things have a beginning, a middle and an end.

The question is this: Is there any way to tell how much longer something will last? Absent anything more certain, you can say this: in most cases you are probably not at the beginning of the thing’s existence nor near its end, but somewhere in the middle.

For example, I live in the United States. The country could come to an end next year in some horrible war, or it might last for a thousand more years. Who can say? But given that it has been around so far for about 200 years, the best you can say is that it will probably be around for another 200 years.

That is the Abagond Principle.

Now for an example. Both to see how it works and how well it works.

Say it is 1906, a hundred years ago. What would we be able to predict about 2006? That anything that existed in 1806 and 1906 will probably still exist in 2006. And that anything that existed in 1906 but not in 1806 may no longer exist by 2006.

What does this include? What does it exclude?

What will most likely still exist in 2006:

• the United States
• English
• the British Empire, but much smaller
• Tsarist Russia, in full force
• tables
• trees
• ships
• books
• theatre
• alphabet
• Gregorian calendar
• universities
• horse-drawn carriages
• hatred between races and countries
• science
• religion and belief in God
• newspapers
• the West on top
• the world as a mix of nation-states and empires
• the rights of man
• war: mostly small ones, but one world war by 2006.
• revolution
• political parties
• rich and poor

What may no longer exist in 2006:

• nearly everyone who is alive
• current fashions in dress and hairstyles
• Communism
• money backed by gold
• Victorian morals
• Britain on top
• trains
• telephones
• aeroplanes
• Olympics

Many in 1906 thought that war, religion and the divisions between rich and poor would wither away; that science and progress would sweep all before them and that we would have unending prosperity and enlightenment. The Abagond Principle would have told us to doubt this.

The Abagond Principle’s chief weakness concerns inventions.

Trains are the perfect example. The Principle is right in that trains are no longer the chief means of transport and have long been overtaken by better ways of getting about. But it is wrong in that trains are still around. And that is a surprise: I doubt that anyone in 1906 who saw the first cars and aeroplanes and believed in them would have supposed that trains would still be around a hundred years later. Not only are they, I am on one right now!

Once something is invented, it tends not to become uninvented. Inventions have a long tail.

Another problem the Abagond Principle has with inventions is that it has no way of predicting them. In 1906 it could not have predicted computers,  rockets, television game shows or plastic bottles. But then apart from the likes of Jules Verne or Leonardo da Vinci, who could predict such things?

On the other hand, it would have told us that, despite such unpredictable inventions, the future would be more like 1906 than we would tend to think.