In The Future
The Reasoning Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
I'm feeling the push and the pull of what could be
Cause and effect, eventuality
Dreams of tomorrow, drifting away on the sea
With no direction
Left to what will be
Nothing can change, except our perception
So who cares if we're dying in perfect harmony
When the song that we sing is so sweet
Bathing in mockery, waiting
For some disease to take a hold of me
Corrupt files, broken codes, forgotten ways
Information fades like yesterday
Old photographs, documents, nothing stays
Everything decays
Except our ambition
So who cares if we're dying in perfect harmony
Instrumental
These are but my thoughts and ideas (thoughts and ideas)
Hopes and fears (hopes and fears)
And they will pass like clouds in the sky
So who cares if we're dying in perfect harmony
When the song that we sing is so sweet
Instrumental until end
The lyrics of "In the Future" by The Reasoning deal with existential themes such as the transience of life, the impermanence of information, and the indifference of the universe towards the fate of human beings. The first verse describes the singer being overwhelmed by the ebb and flow of reality and the uncertainty of what the future may hold. The chorus offers a fatalistic perspective on mortality by suggesting that our demise is inevitable and that the only consolation is to enjoy the beauty of life while it lasts, symbolized here by the sweetness of the song they sing.
The second verse refers to the paradoxical nature of progress, in which every step towards a brighter future entails losing some part of the past. The metaphor of decaying documents and forgotten ways hints at the impermanence of human knowledge and the possibility of regress. Nonetheless, the song maintains a sense of optimism by praising human ambition as the one thing that can potentially transcend the fleeting nature of existence. The final verse acknowledges that the preceding lines are but fleeting thoughts and emotions that will pass like clouds in the sky, emphasizing the existentialist notion that everything is impermanent and subject to change.
Line by Line Meaning
Waves of reality wash over me
I am overwhelmed by the harsh truth of the world
I'm feeling the push and the pull of what could be
I am conflicted with the endless possibilities of the future
Cause and effect, eventuality
The consequences of our actions are inevitable
Dreams of tomorrow, drifting away on the sea
My aspirations seem to slip away and become unattainable
With no direction
I feel lost and aimless
Left to what will be
I have no control and must let fate take its course
Nothing can change, except our perception
Our outlook on life is the only thing we can alter
So who cares if we're dying in perfect harmony
It doesn't matter if we're all going to die, as long as we're content
When the song that we sing is so sweet
Life can be beautiful, despite its hardships
Bathing in mockery, waiting
I am basking in ridicule and waiting for something to happen
For some disease to take a hold of me
I am hoping for an excuse to succumb to my ailments
Corrupt files, broken codes, forgotten ways
The past, present, and future are riddled with mistakes and misinformation
Information fades like yesterday
Knowledge and data have a limited lifespan
Old photographs, documents, nothing stays
Memories and history are fleeting and eventually lost
Everything decays
Everything is subject to decay and deterioration
Except our ambition
Our drive to succeed is everlasting
Instrumental
No lyrics, just music
These are but my thoughts and ideas (thoughts and ideas)
These lyrics are simply my reflections and ponderings
Hopes and fears (hopes and fears)
My optimistic and pessimistic outlooks on life
And they will pass like clouds in the sky
These emotions and musings will eventually dissipate
So who cares if we're dying in perfect harmony
Once again, it doesn't matter if we're going to die, as long as we're happy
When the song that we sing is so sweet
Life can still be enjoyable and fulfilling, despite our imminent demise
Instrumental until end
No lyrics or vocals until the end of the song
Writer(s): Samuel Cohen
Contributed by Levi O. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
That Time Stamp Guy
3:45 Uncertainty
4:50 Growing at the Speed of Reason
5:35 “What if reasoning wasn’t built for what we’ve become?”
6:53 Future Impact lessens tension of present concern
7:45 We make inferences
8:30 Reasoning stems from measurement and experiment 🧪 🔬
9:30 Why don’t we all agree on everything? The world is not a logic puzzle.
10:13 Yea
11:14 Logical Validity from Untrue Premises
12:04 STICK TO THE FACTS
12:37 Bias
15:09 Love of Puzzles
15:41 Function Sells Products
16:20 Reasoning evolved to help us be Social Animals.
17:32 ABC Burgers 🍔
Reasoning starts weak
Strengthens as it is pushed upon
19:30 Confirmation Bias
20:47 Lone Reasoner vs The Crowd
25:06 Why Lead when you could Follow?
25:39 National Deliberation Day
27:50 The Great Mind of Everyone and Everything
29:20 History is the great teacher
Aaron Solomon
@Simon K "You could have the experts of the domains (energy, social justice, law etc.) be democratically voted by all, by the previous group, by the previous experts, by qualified individuals in that area of expertise. Being a qualified individual could be as simple as your vocation or as complicated as your degree (vocational training, bsc, msc, Phd, some certificate)."
Good discussion, all. With respect, I think you (@Simon K) are not properly acknowledging the true difficulty of the problem @fingerboi describes.
You're basically saying "You can find the qualified people by asking the qualified people." But this is logically recursive. We don't know who the qualified people are to start with.
Just because someone has a particular vocation, doesn't make them an "expert", in the sense of an unbiased source of information worthy of trust by the lottocracy. After all, we generally choose our own vocations, and so careerism and self-selection biases would be determinative. Similarly, we can't look to degree, as academia is subject to political and organizational biases. In the USSR, only scientific theories (e.g. Lamarckian inheritance) that comported with the prevailing political ideology were allowed, and we may easily observe similar impositions of ideology on academic and scientific pursuits today in the modern West.
Finding a set of unbiased experts would be a similar problem as finding a source of unbiased news or information--namely, no such things exist, nor can they, since all news and expert opinion is produced by human individuals and institutions, and is therefore riddled with the same fundamental, pervasive, "feature-not-a-bug" biases described early in the video.
What might work, is to only allow lottocracy members to introduce information to the discussion. After all, we are trusting them to contribute their reasoning abilities to the group effort, so we might as well trust them to choose their info sources as well. Some members would cite MSNBC and others would cite Fox News, but we are talking about finding a way to access the wisdom of the crowd--not the wisdom of the crowd "nudged" by the invisible hand of an elite. If we're eager to embrace public policy as designed by corruptible, self-selected technocrats, we hardly need to design a new system--after all, that's the system we have now.
Yes, some/all of the lottocracy members would certainly avail themselves of flawed or detestable information and modes of reasoning, but the whole point of social reasoning is that, while we expect the contributions of individual members of the crowd to be wildly wrong--such as when one guesses a wildly high or low number of jelly beans--the crowd supposedly will come to a better conclusion than the individual.
Great observation, @fingerboi. Although Michael Stevens' work is brilliant here, it was a bit of a blunder for him to not realize that introducing experts to advise the lottocracy would essentially negate its entire premise.
Scoot t
Can we just appreciate that Michael has consistently made nothing short of phenomenal content for almost a decade now
Jza
The last video on time was one of the best things I've seen on the Tewbs
Max Anderson
That’s VSauce for ya
Talnar D. Var Fellen
With this quality, I don't actually care that the videos take long the do to come out.
Gabriel Lutz
I heard "reason" so many times that now I feel that I don't know the word.
Jossos
"teenagers... are spooky! but what else is spooky?"
Lud
Michael is a genius of communication, I guess that there's a staff that contribute to the script and editing and all that stuff, but the way that Michael explains such topics and ideas is amazingly good, every vsauce video feels like it's illegal to watch for free.
COOOL SAM
he does it alone which is crazy
EeryTunic
@COOOL SAM he has a team lol
doortonowhere
@EeryTunicyes but ideas and scripts are ALL michael