How Bob Dylan, Nobel Laureate, Predicted the Future

via GIPHY

There's a lot of opinions today about whether or not Bob Dylan, father of folk, should have won The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2016. But we're more interested in the fact that the dude was a prophet, and his lyrics, poetry or song, quite literally predicted the future.

On "License to Kill" (1984), for example, he basically sets the stage for climate change, and the impact of war and green on the earth, even if the term had not been invented yet:

And then, on "Talkin' World War III Blues" (1963), the famous dystopian track, he croons about the fear driven by not understanding the people around you. Sounds like Election 2016:

On "Union Sundown" (1986), Dylan's getting grips on globalization, as well as the supply chain and labor issues perpetuated by pretty much every company, from H&M to Nike:

Dylan even has a song called "Isis" (1976). But let's not stretch here.

The thing is, maybe Dylan didn't need to be a prophet to see what was going to happen in a few decades. Maybe he was just in the middle of a garden, watching the seeds get planted, sitting still enough to know what would happen when they were watered.

But the fact that his words ring as true today as they did 30 or 60 years ago makes him a genius, with or without the Nobel Prize. At the very least, we can probably all agree that one time he passed on teaching a superintelligent computer how to sing was a pretty boss move.