The Future Trap

Newburgh Pointe, The Last Twilight of 2021

From The Screwtape Letters, Chapter XV:

The humans live in time but our Enemy destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things: to eternity itself and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment--and of it only--humans have an experience analogous to the experience which our Enemy has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them. He would therefore have them continually concerned either with eternity (which means being concerned with Him) or with the Present--either meditating on their eternal union with, or separation from, Himself or else obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing a  present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure.

Our business is to get them away from the eternal and the Present. . . It is far better to make them live in the Future. Biological necessity makes all their passions point in that direction already, so that thought about the Future inflames hope and fear. Also, it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities. . . Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the Future. Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.

. . . To be sure, the Enemy wants men to think of the Future too--just so much as is necessary for now planning the acts of justice or charity which will probably be their duty tomorrow. The duty of planning morrow's work is today's duty; though its material is borrowed from the Future, the duty, like all duties, is in the Present. This is not straw splitting. He does not want men to give the Future their hearts, to place their treasure in it.

We do!

. . . (We) want a man hag-ridden by the Future--haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon earth--ready to break the Enemy's commands in the Present if by doing so we make he think he can attain the one or avert the other . . .    

-C. S. Lewis