What will 2010 bring in the way of culture, media, world events, economic matters, technology and Tiger-sized scandals? Speakeasy asked several writers to offer their thoughts on the coming year. The predictions range from a vigorous defense of the book to the resurgence of a certain mustachioed ‘80s pop star. Over the next few days we’ll publish the results. You can read all of the 2010 essays here.  2010: a prediction. We won’t cure cancer or AIDS or poverty. We won’t win the war on drugs. On terror. On adult illiteracy. On unemployment. We won’t win. But you know some of us, goddamnit, are going to try. We won’t stop drinking cheap beer or passing the buck. We won’t master the necessary powers of compassion. We won’t stop tweeting or reading our text messages when we should be listening to self, to others.  When someone describes a racist/sexist/homophobic incident we won’t be able to resist saying “You’re exaggerating” or “That never happened to me.” The necessary powers of empathy will elude us. Our education system will still suck. And if you’re from a poor part of our country it will suck even more. And yet many of our teachers and students and librarians will keep trying. Thank God. We’ll still believe in angels more than in Darwin. Angels will not give a press conference but a Darwinist might.  We won’t go extinct (and if we do who’ll read this anyway?) But we will push plenty of things into extinction. We won’t stop devouring the planet. We won’t stop devouring ourselves. We won’t stop. The next stage of human evolution will not appear. There will be no X-Men. No one will discover life on another planet. If Superman crashes in Kansas (72 years late) I get a feeling he’ll use his supermind to build another space-creche so he can find another home. I won’t blame him. We’re not a country that is kind to immigrants, though we are all beneficiaries of their sacrifices.  We won’t save enough. We won’t read enough. We won’t do enough community work. We won’t dance enough. We’ll send more of our kids to war. We’ve already sent two of my nephews. We’ll send more. We’ll vote for idiots. We’ll vote for fear. We’ll vote for divisiveness. Occasionally we’ll vote for change. But the truth is most of us won’t vote.  We will fall in love. We will fall out of love. If we’re lucky we will be find the courage to risk love again. The year will end. We will make more predictions. Most won’t come true. But it won’t matter. We will hope we will hope we will hope. We might as it ends think it a lousy year because Superman has not come because cancer has not been defeated because we have not risen above our baser selves but we should never forget it will be the only 2010 we will ever have. We should cherish it. We should honor it. Despite all its failings we should honor it. Because one day in the future we will miss it. That’s all. Good night.  Junot Díaz’s novel, “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2008.
The Year of More of the Same: one in a series of essays by writers looking ahead to what 2010 will bring.