Wars, economic problems and disasters killing millions around the world have changed our perception of the future from positive to negative, an expert has claimed.

The destructive world events that happen around us have led to lose familiarity with the idea of a positive utopia in the world around us, says Dr Christian Sieg from the University of Münster’s Cluster of Excellence

Because of this we have become obsessed with the idea of colonising Mars, Sieg said, as it would allow us to escape from the ideas of the future we have developed in recent years.

As such it is impossible for us to imagine anywhere we know of on this planet being perfect.

“Instead, the challenges of the future such as climate change and digitalisation are often depicted in an apocalyptic language and rhetorically linked to the end of the world,” he said.

“In the light of economic crises, wars and environmental disasters, we have for decades been looking to the future with scepticism.”

“Today, hardly any people buy into the utopian master narratives of the previous century, such as socialism or the belief in progress by technology.”

Sieg said that now people tend to look to environmental protection or maintaining our human rights.

This has been caused by the problems of the world becoming closer and more connected.

As we have learned more about others around the world there has been the realisation that nowhere is perfect, and we are not able to escape to somewhere that is infinitely better than where we are.

He said: “Globalisation has gathered the world so closely together that it is difficult today to still imagine an unknown place ‘Utopia’ as a model for an ideal future”.

“At best, desires are associated with colonising faraway Mars. We no longer dare to conceive universal utopias.

“The idea of being able to do things completely different and far better has lost in plausibility, which is also due to our historical knowledge of problems in building ideal societies.”

Image two courtesy of NASA