It is a paradox that in our time of drastic rapid change, when the future is in our midst devouring the present before our eyes, we have never been less certain about what is ahead of us.
Eric Hoffer
It is a paradox
This content has been archived. It may no longer be accurate or relevant.
No, it isn’t.
Obviously he hasn’t heard of FUTURE SHOCK. Just because he can’t see it doesn’t mean others can’t. Toffler’s term was “surfing” waves of change.
https://www.amazon.com/Future-Shock-Alvin-Toffler-ebook/dp/B09MVMZJ3L/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3KREAVY8YSX6C&keywords=future+shock&qid=1684191399&sprefix=future+shock%2Caps%2C202&sr=8-1
Doesn’t speak well about his ability to pontificate on the future. 😐
It’s only 53 years old. Still current.
—–
“The 800th Lifetime
In the three short decades between now and the twenty-first century, millions of ordinary, psychologically normal people will face an abrupt collision with the future. Citizens of the world’s richest and most technologically advanced nations, many of them will find it increasingly painful to keep up with the incessant demand for change that characterizes our time. For them, the future will have arrived too soon.
This book is about change and how we adapt to it. It is about those who seem to thrive on change, who crest its waves joyfully, as well as those multitudes of others who resist it or seek flight from it. It is about our capacity to adapt. It is about the future and the shock that its arrival brings.
Western society for the past 300 years has been caught up in a fire storm of change. This storm, far from abating, now appears to be gathering force. Change sweeps through the highly industrialized countries with waves of ever accelerating speed and unprecedented impact. It spawns in its wake all sorts of curious social flora—from psychedelic churches and “free universities” to science cities in the Arctic and wife-swap clubs in California.
It breeds odd personalities, too: children who at twelve are no longer childlike; adults who at fifty are children of twelve. There are rich men who playact poverty, computer programmers who turn on with LSD. There are anarchists who, beneath their dirty denim shirts, are outrageous conformists, and conformists who, beneath their button-down collars, are outrageous anarchists. There are married priests and atheist ministers and Jewish Zen Buddhists. We have pop . . . and op . . . and art cinétique . . . There are Playboy Clubs and homosexual movie theaters . . . amphetamines and tranquilizers . . . anger, affluence, and oblivion. Much oblivion.
Is there some way to explain so strange a scene without recourse to the jargon of psychoanalysis or the murky clichés of existentialism? A strange new society is apparently erupting in our midst. Is there a way to understand it, to shape its development? How can we come to terms with it?
Much that now strikes us as incomprehensible would be far less so if we took a fresh look at the racing rate of change that makes reality seem, sometimes, like a kaleidoscope run wild. For the acceleration of change does not merely buffet industries or nations. It is a concrete force that reaches deep into our personal lives, compels us to act out new roles, and confronts us with the danger of a new and powerfully upsetting psychological disease. This new disease can be called “future shock,” and a knowledge of its sources and symptoms helps explain many things that otherwise defy rational analysis.”
—-
The future before us is can be easily mapped, if you bother to look.
The trends are all around us and the outcomes that matter can be listed on a single double spaced sheet of paper. With room to spare.
All you have to do figure out who talks and who acts.
The future is crafted by the latter, the former just get in the way.