 [Larger view] | Future Shock
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 Problems Creating "Future Shock" Are Still Unresolved | |
| This book was first published in 1970 and was a call to take heed of the looming "Future Shock" or backlash of humanities biggest, unresolved dilemmas such as, the widening disparity between rich and poor- the wealth of the world being monopolized by smaller and smaller percentage of the world human population, while the growing number of poor or outright poverty stricken are growing by leaps and bounds; burgeoning human population pressures with it's ever-increasing demands on limited resources; pollution of the food chains; technology with it's blessings and baggage of intrusive, dehumanizing side-effects; world health crisis, etc.
While humanity is currently preferring to live in a state of denial about the impending backlash of the mostly human-caused problems facing our present and immediate future, there is a growing accumulation of data never historically available to us before on how to deal with our problems. Will we put this knowledge to use in time? So what exactly is "Future Shock"? Toffler explains: "We may define future shock as the distress, both physical and psychological, that arises from an overload of the human organism's physical adaptive systems and it's decision-making processes. Put more simply, future shock is the human response to over-stimulation". Overload= breakdown! The socio-political, economic and environmental bills are coming due and they WILL be paid, shocking or not! Toffler sees that our time consuming, stressed-out, hyper-industrial, compulsive consuming society is leaving parents no time for proper child rearing- as if they were qualified for the task in the first place. Un-guided, un-taught, un-disciplined children set themselves and society up for another of the many aspects of future shock with their aberrant behavior expanding as they get older. "We don't let just anyone perform brain surgery or for that matter, sell stocks and bonds. Even the lowest ranking civil servant is required to pass tests proving competence. Yet we allow virtually anyone, almost without regard for mental or moral qualifications to try his or her hand at raising young human beings, so long as these humans are biological off-spring. Despite the increasing complexity of the task, parenthood remains the *greatest single preserve of the amateur*." Toffler suggests that society should "professionalize" child rearing and parents should be educated by mandate of society. That along with every other level of society for a literate, more successful society. Guidelines for instituting "appropriate technology" vs. irresponsible, runaway technology are covered. "Utopian" models for society should always be considered as guidelines for future adjustments and upgrades to consider- and think-tanks for that very purpose should be established. This along with "sanctuaries for social imagination"- sounds like ancient Greek, eh? Ten years after this book was published, Marilyn Ferguson came out with her block-buster book, "The Aquarian Conspiracy". She somewhat took-up where Toffler left off and created a blueprint of where we are and where we should be heading to stave the trauma of future shock. She expertly delineates the "Paradigm Shift" or changes needed in our collective thinking and proffers an abundance of guidelines and resources for that objective. The following year (1981), Duane Elgin comes out with his "Voluntary Simplicity", more guidelines for transitioning to a more harmonious existence. This is followed by a very similar book to "Future Shock" and "The Aquarian Conspiracy", "Awakening Earth" (1993), then followed by "Promise Ahead"- a continuation of the paradigm shift of collective consciousness needed for survival into the future. To all of these fine books, one could add Theodore Roszak's "The Voice of the Earth" and we then have a hand full of some of the most instructive and helpful books ever published for the immediate betterment of our existence on Earth. "How-to" manuals on global change in human perception of reality. | |
 More valuable as hindsight | |
| I first read this book on its initial publication, and as an impressionable, twenty-three year old former Marine in college, thought I was holding a Rosetta stone of the world to come, imagining myself one of the anointed cognoscenti, an imprint not discouraged by the publisher. Similar ideas of the coming decades were then being propounded by (among others) Daniel Bell and Herman Kahn. I encountered Mr. Toffler briefly in the spring of 1970 after an address at the University of Florida, and asked him whether, for all the absorbing projections he presented, the dreary, elemental reality of the foreseeable future would not be the simple crush of numbers (this was the heyday of Paul Ehrlich, remember). He said that he thought that by that time we would be colonizing planets. And while I certainly can't hold one to a casual comment tossed off to a shouted question, it does illustrate the golly-whiz aspect of the general argument here that tends to sidle up to hysteria. I mean, twenty five billion dollars to send five to Mars where real population relief would mean sending billions, you see the problem.
Consider, in the year 1800 the fastest a person or message could reliably travel was the pace a horse could walk in a day, same as in 1800 BCE. In 1900, a person could cross this continent in three days, a message instantaneously, and we were on the verge of flight. Talk about obliterating time and space; that was real, orders-of-magnitude existential change, yet it is one of the conceits of the early twenty-first that our ordeal is blindingly unique. The fascinating thing , as recounted by such as Eric Hoffer and Barbara Tuchman, was that, at least in the West, the nineteenth century was imbued with hope for the future, while in the twentieth atavistic terrors from mankind's dark past were what created the age of anxiety, not the novelty of the new. This book is a valuable popularization of late twentieth futurist ideas, but the overwhelming psychological challenge today is the disappearing Twin Towers, not the disappearing Safeway | |
| A timely work | |
| Toffler saw something important. He in 1970 saw that the accelerated pace of technological development would have a profound effect on the daily life of individuals. He understood that the disjunction between the technological changes and the human adaptation to them would be the source of major problems.
He understand that a new era of customization was bringing a variety to human choice, a kind of freedom which might in another sense take away freedom. He saw too the importance of ' information' and how it would be at the heart of transforming the world economy. Toffler went on to write a number of other works about ' social change in the future' but this is by far the most interesting and profound one. 'Future Shock' is now a part of mankind's vocabulary and a continual element in our everyday life - experience. Who knows what will come next and how wonderful or terrible it will be for us all? |
