Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part three
Speaker 3: in our series on Future Shock, the title and the
Speaker 3: subject of a best selling futurology book from more than
Speaker 3: fifty years ago. If you haven't heard parts one and
Speaker 3: two yet, you should probably go back and listen to
Speaker 3: those first. That'll help you understand what we're talking about today.
Speaker 3: But I thought we could start with a recap here
Speaker 3: at the top. So Future Shock is the name of
Speaker 3: a very influential book published in nineteen seventy by an
Speaker 3: author named Alvin Toffler, who was known to be a
Speaker 3: close collaborator with his wife, Heidi Toffler. So in this
Speaker 3: series we've sometimes been speaking of the ideas of the
Speaker 3: Tofflers rather than just Alvin, though originally he was credited
Speaker 3: as the sole author of the book. And I would
Speaker 3: describe the main idea of the book Future Shock as follows. So,
Speaker 3: of course, the human technological tool set is always changing
Speaker 3: to some degree, but the age beginning in like the
Speaker 3: second half of the twentieth century is truly a special
Speaker 3: time in history. It's a time when technology is developing
Speaker 3: much much faster than ever before. I think there are
Speaker 3: a lot of data points you could use to show
Speaker 3: that it's not just that it feels this way, but
Speaker 3: this is objectively true, Like you could measure the rate
Speaker 3: of acceleration of energy consumed around the world, the accelerating
Speaker 3: number of patents issued, the productivity in various industries per worker,
Speaker 3: the acceleration of time spent on technologically mediated activities, and
Speaker 3: so forth. And the authors of this book argue that
Speaker 3: these changes are so drastic we should think of the
Speaker 3: time beginning in the mid twentieth century as a totally
Speaker 3: new technology regime. Maybe the previous regimes began with the
Speaker 3: transition from hunter gatherer lifestyle to agriculture, and then after
Speaker 3: that the transition to the industrial age through inventions like
Speaker 3: the steam engine, and then this would be the third one.
Speaker 3: And this new age that we exist in they call
Speaker 3: the super Industrial Age, and the acceleration in technological change
Speaker 3: that characterizes this age may of course come with lots
Speaker 3: of benefits for human life. You can easily point to
Speaker 3: medical advances that make life human life longer and help
Speaker 3: people live with less illness, and you know, all kinds
Speaker 3: of things that are pretty unambiguous positive impacts on human life.
Speaker 3: But the Tofflers argue that these changes also come with
Speaker 3: a profound cost that we have to understand and prepare for.
Speaker 3: And the cost that they focus on in the book
Speaker 3: is a mass psychological condition that they call future shock,
Speaker 3: and they compare future shock to the pre existing idea
Speaker 3: of culture shock, which is the state of anxiety and
Speaker 3: psychic distress brought on when somebody is plunged into an
Speaker 3: unfamiliar culture where they don't speak the language, they don't
Speaker 3: understand the laws or customs, they don't know how to
Speaker 3: interact with anything. They say future shock is like that,
Speaker 3: but for one's own culture, as it changes rapidly around
Speaker 3: us due to the effects of the new science and
Speaker 3: the new machines. And they say this new environment will
Speaker 3: be characterized primarily by transience, novelty, and diversity. So transience
Speaker 3: things situations coming into and out of being faster and faster,
Speaker 3: arrangements lasting for shorter periods of time of course, novelty
Speaker 3: meaning new things you've never had to deal with before,
Speaker 3: and diversity meaning just a lot of different things. To
Speaker 3: understand and decide between and choose from. And so the
Speaker 3: Topler's right that these changes in technology have profound effects,
Speaker 3: not just on the gadgets we deal with, but you know,
Speaker 3: they've got these secondary effects that revolutionize our work lives,
Speaker 3: our family lives, our minds, and our culture. And that
Speaker 3: the accelerating rate of change alters our culture faster than
Speaker 3: most people are able to adapt, so we can never
Speaker 3: get used to it. We can never grow accustomed to
Speaker 3: the new normal as people can when overcoming culture shock,
Speaker 3: because with culture shock you can eventually maybe learn the
Speaker 3: language and learn the local norms and adapt. Or you conversely,
Speaker 3: you can just go home. With future shock, you can't
Speaker 3: ever really do that because you can't go back to
Speaker 3: the past, and by the time you get used to it,
Speaker 3: you learn the new language and the new customs, it
Speaker 3: has changed again. And technology will just keep changing the
Speaker 3: world faster and faster, so we can never keep up.
Speaker 3: And they say this leads to a widespread sense of unease, anxiety, frustration,
Speaker 3: and confusion, the future shock that defines our age.
Speaker 2: You know, I have to throw in here that in
Speaker 2: the first episode I mentioned that when I explained the
Speaker 2: concept again to my wife. She was like, Oh, well,
Speaker 2: that's not real. I don't really believe that's the thing.
Speaker 2: But then a listener wrote in and encouraged everyone to
Speaker 2: watch a particular episode of SpongeBob square Pants, an episode
Speaker 2: or part of an episode titled SB one nine, in
Speaker 2: which Squidward travels into the future and is overcome by
Speaker 2: all of the chrome technological advancements around him, including multiple
Speaker 2: SpongeBob clones, curls up in a ball on the floor
Speaker 2: and begins to go future future over and over again.
Speaker 2: My family watched this episode over the weekend, and my
Speaker 2: wife tells me that now she understands future shock.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, wait, she understands it, but still thinks that
Speaker 3: it does not describe the reality we live in. Or
Speaker 3: she does think it describes the reality we live in.
Speaker 2: I would say that she understands the concept and sees
Speaker 2: how you could apply that concept to some of our
Speaker 2: interactions with technology today.
Speaker 3: Okay, so she's partially converted, thinks it is partially descriptive
Speaker 3: of reality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can't argue with squidword on this one.
Speaker 3: I'd say that's where I am. I think it is
Speaker 3: partially correct, partially descriptive of our reality.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, anyway, in this series, we've been taking a look
Speaker 3: at this fifty three year old book future Ology to
Speaker 3: see what we think about it, what we think the
Speaker 3: Tofflers were right about, what we think they were wrong about,
Speaker 3: if there's any empirical evidence that can be brought in
Speaker 3: to assess the accuracy of their predictions, and so forth.
Speaker 3: And so we've already talked about a number of their
Speaker 3: specific predictions about the future. Though to be fair, I
Speaker 3: do recall there's a part in the book where Toffler says,
Speaker 3: these are not quote predictions. You know, so when I say, like,
Speaker 3: in the future, we're going to be living a lot
Speaker 3: more underneath the ocean and having to learn to navigate
Speaker 3: submarine environments and stuff, for some reason, he says, they're
Speaker 3: not predictions. They're more just sort of like imaginings, and
Speaker 3: we shouldn't be overly concerned with whether d specifics are right,
Speaker 3: but instead should think about the general trend. Okay, fair enough, Alvin,
Speaker 3: But in fact, the way we use the word prediction,
Speaker 3: I do think these are predictions, so I think it's
Speaker 3: fair to describe them that way, even though he didn't
Speaker 3: like using that word.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I kind of see where he's coming from. Like,
Speaker 2: he's not saying we will definitely put embryos on spaceships
Speaker 2: and send them to other planets, but he points to
Speaker 2: that as sort of like in the Tree of conceivable possibilities,
Speaker 2: based on like unchecked scientific advancement, that's somewhere we might
Speaker 2: get to. And if we do get there, are we
Speaker 2: really ready to deal with that? And I'd think the
Speaker 2: most part he tends to lay out those ideas in
Speaker 2: a very sort of neutral fashion, though again, it is
Speaker 2: a book written in the late sixties, published in nineteen seventy,
Speaker 2: and some of that cultural texture is there, as we've discussed, agreed.
Speaker 3: But anyway, in the previous episodes, we've talked about of
Speaker 3: these things which I do think are fair to call predictions,
Speaker 3: but you're right, he couches them in a more nuanced way,
Speaker 3: but they range from quite thoughtful and accurately predictive to
Speaker 3: totally wrong and extremely funny ways. In the former column.
Speaker 3: One thing that stands out to me, I mean, it's
Speaker 3: often been pointed out that, wow, you know, he really
Speaker 3: sort of got a lot right about things like personal
Speaker 3: computers and the internet and how media would change over time.
Speaker 3: Like the rising importance of electronic media more and more
Speaker 3: in human life. I think he was on track about
Speaker 3: a lot of that. One that really stood out to
Speaker 3: me in the book is essentially the prediction of personally
Speaker 3: curated news feeds as opposed to having to read the
Speaker 3: same newspaper or watch the same news evening news as
Speaker 3: everybody else, which I think that's a profoundly meaningful development
Speaker 3: that I'm not so sure would have been easy to
Speaker 3: predict in nineteen seventy. But as an example of the
Speaker 3: things that they got wrong, you know, there is again
Speaker 3: like leaning heavily on the idea that way more of
Speaker 3: human life would shift to take place in the ocean
Speaker 3: or in space. That hasn't really panned out yet and
Speaker 3: I'm kind of doubtful whether it will. And there's a
Speaker 3: bunch of stuff about the changing biomedical environment like that.
Speaker 3: They say a lot about cloning, which in some ways
Speaker 3: I think is pretty accurate about like where the technological
Speaker 3: capability could be going, but wrong about the way that
Speaker 3: it would impact culture and the possibilities it would provide
Speaker 3: to the average person.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the cloning talk is very interesting. To decide a
Speaker 2: couple of details from it, I mentioned the spaceships already.
Speaker 2: That's definitely something that has brought up the idea that well,
Speaker 2: embryo is just way less than people, so it's cheaper
Speaker 2: to blast those into space, and those will presumably robots
Speaker 2: will raise them and grow them when they get to
Speaker 2: where they're going. But there's a bit where he's where
Speaker 2: they're citing molecular biologist Joshua Letterberg, and they raise the
Speaker 2: problem that narcissist will be the most likely to clone
Speaker 2: themselves and this could result in just more narcissist. Though
Speaker 2: Tofler mentions, this is really more of a concern if
Speaker 2: narcissism is biologically transferable rather than culturally transferable. And I
Speaker 2: started looking into this a little bit, and I realized
Speaker 2: we might have to come back and talk about narcissism
Speaker 2: in more detail, because it looks like there have been
Speaker 2: studies about narcissism as possibly being like something you can inherit.
Speaker 2: But I'm not sure where we currently are regarding the
Speaker 2: nature nurture discussion of narcissism.
Speaker 3: I mean, if it's like most personality traits that I've
Speaker 3: read about, it's going to be a mix. It will
Speaker 3: usually be that there's some kind of there is a
Speaker 3: heritable level of predisposition, but then that that doesn't get
Speaker 3: you all the way there. That just sort of like
Speaker 3: somewhat increases or decreases the chance that a person will
Speaker 3: in a given environment environment develop narcissism. And then there's
Speaker 3: probably a huge influence of like you know, experience, childhood,
Speaker 3: upbringing and things like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems like there's a lot to work out
Speaker 2: before we can actually make an argument for heritability for narcissism.
Speaker 2: But the angle is interesting, I think to me in
Speaker 2: light of the TV series Foundation, which I don't know
Speaker 2: how many listeners out there have been watching this. I
Speaker 2: guess caveat that we did read some ads for Foundation
Speaker 2: on the show, but afterwards we got into watching it
Speaker 2: and really great show.
Speaker 3: But you're not being paid to say this.
Speaker 2: I'm not being paid to say this, but it's a
Speaker 2: terrific show. But there's this whole angle that's apparently not
Speaker 2: in the Asimov books but is quite fascinating on the series,
Speaker 2: and that is that you have this genetic dynasty in
Speaker 2: the Empire where you see a procession of cleon the
Speaker 2: first clones that rule this vast interstellar civilization, and of course,
Speaker 2: many or if not most of them are narcissists. But
Speaker 2: you can also raise the question like how much of
Speaker 2: that is tied up in the genes of Cleon the
Speaker 2: first and how much of it is the way that
Speaker 2: Cleon is raised, because they are you know, they're raised.
Speaker 2: Each one is raised to be the emperor of an
Speaker 2: interstellar civilization.
Speaker 3: And presumably raised by other narcissists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you actually do, because you have three at a time.
Speaker 2: So there's there's a brother Don, a brother Day, and
Speaker 2: a brother Dusk. There's like a young version of the Clone,
Speaker 2: an adult version of the Clone, and like an elderly
Speaker 2: version of the Clone, with the middle Clone being the
Speaker 2: primary ruler, and so Day and Dusk are essentially raising Dawn. Anyway,
Speaker 2: we'll put a pin in that for later discussion, But
Speaker 2: in general, the toddlers do raise concerns over a number
Speaker 2: of quote unquote birth technologies, especially the idea of engineering
Speaker 2: certain properties into children. And this also crosses over into
Speaker 2: concerns that are raised elsewhere about the future of the family,
Speaker 2: and we talked about that in the previous episode. How
Speaker 2: a lot of these concerns about like the future of
Speaker 2: the family haven't really panned out, like, you know, the
Speaker 2: idea that well, the people will just be raised in
Speaker 2: communes and so forth. Now I feel like there are
Speaker 2: sort of three things going into modern considerations of the
Speaker 2: birth technology thing though, because on one hand, as we discussed,
Speaker 2: perhaps the alarm was raised early enough and we have
Speaker 2: been largely more careful in this area of technological advancement.
Speaker 2: But I think we also might consider that we're just
Speaker 2: not yet at the point of real crisis with birth technologies,
Speaker 2: at least not at scale. And also, you know, the
Speaker 2: tofflers might not be fully recognizing the overall benefits of
Speaker 2: birth technologies, and that we might be less culturally open
Speaker 2: to drastic changes in the basic family unit. After all,
Speaker 2: I don't know, but I do know people, real people
Speaker 2: in the world who have benefited from strategies you might
Speaker 2: call birth technologies. And I wouldn't say it feels it
Speaker 2: didn't feel super future shocky to me. It just feels like, well,
Speaker 2: there are perhaps some extra options available today, and people
Speaker 2: take advantage of those options if they can.
Speaker 3: Yes, And you could also argue that the fact that
Speaker 3: we're not currently surrounded by human clones could be an
Speaker 3: indication that, like the Tofflers suggest, in their sort of
Speaker 3: solutions section of the book. It could be indicative of
Speaker 3: the fact that, you know, scient the bodies governing scientific
Speaker 3: research saw this change coming and were able to essentially
Speaker 3: get enough thought and discussion out there early enough that
Speaker 3: there hasn't been much temptation for scientists to experiment with
Speaker 3: human cloning, at least not in the open.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Never underestimate humanity's power to fear change as well as
Speaker 2: a void doing anything with it.
Speaker 3: But unfortunately, to come back on the other side, I
Speaker 3: think a lot of times seeing a potentially dangerous or
Speaker 3: disruptive change coming is not enough if there are people
Speaker 3: who have powerful individual incentives to pursue it.
Speaker 5: Anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for the record, I think clone baby They're fine.
Speaker 2: I'm pro clone baby babies. Now.
Speaker 3: One thing we got into at length in part two
Speaker 3: was a paper that tried to use empirical research from
Speaker 3: the last fifty years to assess the general predictions that
Speaker 3: the Toffler's made about how we will use time.
Speaker 5: In the future.
Speaker 3: So this primarily concerns their prediction that the future would
Speaker 3: be characterized by greater and greater transience in life, a
Speaker 3: sort of general shortening of the length of episodes both
Speaker 3: large and small, and a shortening of commitments throughout life.
Speaker 3: The paper tried to compare these predictions to actual time
Speaker 3: use studies and concluded that for the parts we could check,
Speaker 3: the Toffler's predictions about time use were actually pretty good.
Speaker 3: Like we have seen time use become more fragmented, which
Speaker 3: you could characterize as as having more transience to it,
Speaker 3: more fragmented, more irregular, and more overlapped, and people do
Speaker 3: feeling increasingly stressed and hurried about time, even in cases
Speaker 3: where they actually objectively have more of it. However, there
Speaker 3: were also some predictions they made about time use that
Speaker 3: didn't really pan out, such as they sort of implied
Speaker 3: that people would end up devaluing home life and spending
Speaker 3: more time outside the home, coming and going a lot.
Speaker 3: In fact, the research has shown the opposite. People in
Speaker 3: high technology cultures seem to be valuing home life more
Speaker 3: and more and spending more time inside the home. Though
Speaker 3: it strikes me that this could possibly be interpreted as
Speaker 3: an effect of changing technology and to some extent future shock.
Speaker 3: So like the internet and media technology make it easier
Speaker 3: to stay home without being bored, and it's possible that
Speaker 3: like anxiety which may or may not be related to
Speaker 3: future shock increasingly makes people hesitant to go out. So
Speaker 3: we've already talked a lot about how the Tofflers described
Speaker 3: future shock, why they argued it was likely to become
Speaker 3: an increasing feature of human life. But they also spend
Speaker 3: a significant amount of time in their book talking about
Speaker 3: our reaction to it, like what could we do about
Speaker 3: future shock to help alleviate and even prevent it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they also lay out several different what they
Speaker 2: call maladaptive coping strategies that can emerge so ways that
Speaker 2: will sort of deal with future shock on our own terms,
Speaker 2: without perhaps even realizing that future shock is going on.
Speaker 2: And I found these categories rather insightful. You know, I
Speaker 2: have some caveats to add, but I want to go
Speaker 2: through these because I think there's some interesting ideas here.
Speaker 2: So the first category of maladaptive coping strategies for future
Speaker 2: shock that they outline is that of the denier. The
Speaker 2: denier blocks out unwanted reality and clings to the idea
Speaker 2: that any change is just superficial quote. He finds comfort
Speaker 2: in such cliches as young people were always rebellious, or
Speaker 2: there's nothing new on the face of the earth, or
Speaker 2: the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Speaker 3: This is funny because I did not expect when they
Speaker 3: said that there are deniers this is what they were
Speaker 3: going to mean by it. But I do see. So
Speaker 3: they're saying, like denier in the sense of denying that
Speaker 3: anything is really different this time, when they're saying no, no,
Speaker 3: it objectively is actually different this time. The technological regime
Speaker 3: we're living in now is different. It is actually happening faster.
Speaker 3: And so the denier here is saying, you know, it's
Speaker 3: always been like this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the toddlers, the denier essentially puts off change
Speaker 2: until change is forced upon them in just a one single,
Speaker 2: massive life catastrophe. So the preferable alternative would be, of course,
Speaker 2: to take on a series of manageable problems and solve
Speaker 2: those instead of dealing with one gigantic problem at the end.
Speaker 2: And I think it's an interesting way of looking at things,
Speaker 2: because I mean, certainly you don't need a future shock
Speaker 2: scenario to see, you know, versions of this. You know,
Speaker 2: there are all sorts of realities in life that you
Speaker 2: that are conquerable if you deal with them as small battles,
Speaker 2: as opposed to one enormous world ending battle.
Speaker 3: I think the denier attitude can be attractive to a
Speaker 3: lot of people because it sounds very care free, you know.
Speaker 3: It's actually it communicates a sense of confidence to say, like, ah, you.
Speaker 5: Know, I wouldn't worry about it. Things have always.
Speaker 3: Been like this, which that can be an assuring thing
Speaker 3: to hear, especially in the face of like actual, actual alarmism,
Speaker 3: when people are like getting freaked out about something that's
Speaker 3: not actually a prop problem, which happens all the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like with the denier there's sort of
Speaker 2: two I have sort of two feelings about. On one hand,
Speaker 2: I feel like you do kind of have to block
Speaker 2: it all out sometimes, like you can't constantly be waging
Speaker 2: battles against change and dealing with change. Sometimes you just
Speaker 2: got to, like, you know, get to work and do
Speaker 2: whatever you do. And as far as these generalities, you know,
Speaker 2: the more things change, the more they stay the same,
Speaker 2: or the young people are always rebellious and so forth.
Speaker 2: They are a million of these. And on one hand,
Speaker 2: reading this, I kept thinking, well, some of these are
Speaker 2: kind of true, right, I Mean, the reason we say
Speaker 2: them is that there is at least some truth to them.
Speaker 2: So I'm not sure we should just commpletely throw those
Speaker 2: out or see those as just red flags. But on
Speaker 2: the other hand, I do see where they're coming from,
Speaker 2: Like you could just if you need a generality to
Speaker 2: grab onto to keep from having to deal with change,
Speaker 2: they are available.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I guess another way of thinking about
Speaker 3: it is that when you are concent coittering whether things
Speaker 3: are really different today or whether a change is a
Speaker 3: change is really happening in the world, there are, to
Speaker 3: use statistics terms, there are type one and type two
Speaker 3: errors happening all the time around us. There are people
Speaker 3: saying this is totally different, it's never been like this before,
Speaker 3: when when it has it's you know, it's not different.
Speaker 3: And there are people who are ignoring things that are
Speaker 3: totally different now be saying like, ah, don't worry about it,
Speaker 3: it's always been like this, when it actually is something
Speaker 3: totally different.
Speaker 2: And I guess I guess we should also acknowledge that, Yeah,
Speaker 2: things can also be both, right, I mean, you can
Speaker 2: have something happening in a given culture that matches up
Speaker 2: with expected trends, but to channel into the future shock
Speaker 2: a little bit like if things are happening and it
Speaker 2: advanced great technologically, then you're dealing with a slightly different scenario.
Speaker 3: Also, if you're talking about future shock, you're talking about
Speaker 3: psychological effects on the person, in which case an error
Speaker 3: of the alarmist sort would still have negative psychological effects
Speaker 3: on you because you would still be perceived does a change.
Speaker 3: So you know, here's a false change that is freaking
Speaker 3: you out alongside all of the real changes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all right.
Speaker 2: Now, The next example that they give of a maladaptive
Speaker 2: coping strategy is that of the specialist. So the specialist
Speaker 2: doesn't block out everything. The specialist specializes in one area
Speaker 2: of the changing world and keeps pace with that, which
Speaker 2: creates the feeling that they're keeping pace with the larger
Speaker 2: pace of change in the world. Quote, he narrows the
Speaker 2: slit through which he sees the world, so it can
Speaker 2: be superficially successful as a coping mechanism for a while.
Speaker 2: But this too, they right, will eventually catch up with
Speaker 2: the specialist.
Speaker 3: This is the person who thinks that they're the master
Speaker 3: of reality because they're in the crypto forums. It's like
Speaker 3: I've figured out cryptocurrency, I know everything about the future,
Speaker 3: and then suddenly, yeah, you just get according to the Toddlers,
Speaker 3: at least then that might sort of lully you for
Speaker 3: a while, but then it'll all catch up to you
Speaker 3: and you'll feel this shock where you're like, wait, I
Speaker 3: don't understand you know, what else is happening in culture
Speaker 3: for some reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so you think you're still stable on the bicycle,
Speaker 2: but then it's going to fall over anyway.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: This was an interesting one to think about because on
Speaker 2: one hand, I feel like you do have to sort
Speaker 2: of focus on the things you can change and adapt,
Speaker 2: where you can adapt and where it makes the most
Speaker 2: sense to adapt. But yeah, I suppose the idea is
Speaker 2: that if that's your day to day reaction, it still
Speaker 2: could eventually catch up with you.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 2: The next category that they present is that of the reservationist,
Speaker 2: one who rages against change and clings to the past,
Speaker 2: adapting not to the future but to outdated modes of
Speaker 2: what came before.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: This one is interesting because the Toddlers note that this
Speaker 2: sort of thing can manifest among both liberal individuals and
Speaker 2: conservative individuals. They're just reaching back to different models of
Speaker 2: the past, which I thought was interesting. So for my
Speaker 2: example that came to mind is like you had someone
Speaker 2: like Terence McKenna who called for an archaic revival.
Speaker 4: You know, it's like, oh, you.
Speaker 2: Need to go back to these older models of how
Speaker 2: we viewed the world. And on the other side of
Speaker 2: the spectrum you have you know, social conservatives who call
Speaker 2: for what a return to family values and so forth.
Speaker 2: So both see an escape from the future into the
Speaker 2: past to some degree. You know this ideas the toddlers
Speaker 2: drive home, you know, they're rallying around, we have to
Speaker 2: return to what worked. And I don't think it's necessarily
Speaker 2: you know, I don't think it's necessarily putting your head
Speaker 2: in the sand to look backwards. But I do see
Speaker 2: what they're going for here.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, one thing I would say about any model
Speaker 3: that says, I want to go back and you know
Speaker 3: it used to be good in the past, and we
Speaker 3: should make it like that. Again, that's always a fantasy.
Speaker 3: I mean, you can get sort of closer and closer
Speaker 3: to but like you're never really understanding exactly what the
Speaker 3: past was like, what that past point the you're idealizing
Speaker 3: is like. In many cases, it's just like a pure fantasy.
Speaker 3: It's just people like sort of dreaming up what they
Speaker 3: imagine the past was like, and then saying I want
Speaker 3: to return to that. In some cases it might be
Speaker 3: more based in actual knowledge about history, but no matter what, like,
Speaker 3: you can't perfectly recreate that past time, it is gone.
Speaker 3: There are things that have changed about the material world
Speaker 3: that cannot be undone, so you're not actually going to
Speaker 3: be able to go back. The best you could do
Speaker 3: is try to kind of imitate it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It reminds me of an interview I saw with a
Speaker 2: musician whose work I like, and the interviewer asked him,
Speaker 2: if you could live in any time in human history,
Speaker 2: where when would you live? And they said the Middle Ages?
Speaker 2: And they're like, well, but then you wouldn't have electric guitars.
Speaker 2: And they're like, oh, okay, I guess that's a good point.
Speaker 3: So yeah, live now. Yeah, but yeah, But personally, I
Speaker 3: tend to see anybody who wants to go back to
Speaker 3: a time in the past that they think is better
Speaker 3: that's always involving some kind of inaccurate idealization of the
Speaker 3: path is just like failing to realize that there were
Speaker 3: problems then too, and that many of the things that
Speaker 3: you think were good about that time cannot be recreated.
Speaker 2: And really this gets into the next category I think
Speaker 2: quite well, and that is that that of the super
Speaker 2: simplifier who seeks a quote unquote unitary solution and goes
Speaker 2: all in on it as a means of explaining the
Speaker 2: world or simplifying the challenges of the present. You know,
Speaker 2: it's a in their words, a quote simple way out
Speaker 2: of urgeoning complexity of choice in general overstimulation.
Speaker 3: The person who's got it all figured out because they
Speaker 3: read a book or maybe an article, or nowadays maybe
Speaker 3: they watched a video and that person they laid it
Speaker 3: all out for him. Now they know, now they understand
Speaker 3: the world because doctor so and so told them this
Speaker 3: is this is what's really going.
Speaker 4: On, right right? Yeah.
Speaker 2: They stress that this can only kind of take on
Speaker 2: a form as opposition or or support. So, you know,
Speaker 2: this world in this this worldview can be defined by
Speaker 2: its savior or by its enemy. Like if you know,
Speaker 2: this is the bad guy, and once you realize this
Speaker 2: is the bad guy, everything makes sense. Or this is
Speaker 2: the solution, and once you realize that everything makes sense,
Speaker 2: and of course you can dip into both categories.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, I think the Internet these days is just rampant
Speaker 3: with people who are who are trying to become sort
Speaker 3: of the world explaining cult leader to an army of
Speaker 3: people on the internet who listen to their podcast or
Speaker 3: you know whatever. It's like, I've got the one solution
Speaker 3: to tell you how everything is. Everybody out there be
Speaker 3: wary of this, especially if the person is a very
Speaker 3: charismatic speaker. Nobody is going to be able to explain
Speaker 3: how everything works or like, you know, nobody. Nobody is
Speaker 3: going to be the person who, like, ah, here's the
Speaker 3: here's the guy who's got it all figured out, and
Speaker 3: now I can just listen to him and he'll tell
Speaker 3: me what's going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think this guy of thing is especially noticeable
Speaker 2: and conspiracy thought. But I suppose you could also argue
Speaker 2: that it can be beneficial to some degree, Like if
Speaker 2: one goes all in on a particular social cause, you know,
Speaker 2: I can see the appeal of that, and and if
Speaker 2: them going all in on that particular social cause ends
Speaker 2: up producing beneficial results, then I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 2: are they happy, are they fulfilled? Are people benefiting from this?
Speaker 2: I can see where you can make it, you know,
Speaker 2: a more complex.
Speaker 4: Equation to figure out.
Speaker 2: And I should also know that the book stresses that
Speaker 2: this unitary solution might be found in various intellectual ideas,
Speaker 2: which of course could even include the concept of future shock.
Speaker 2: They note like they point out that you know that
Speaker 2: their book is not immune to this kind of thing,
Speaker 2: but they also stress that it could be an investment
Speaker 2: in action rather than thought, like I am you know,
Speaker 2: I'm going to do this one thing. I'm going to
Speaker 2: be this one thing, and that is going to sort
Speaker 2: of super simplify this realm of choices that would otherwise
Speaker 2: confound me. And again, I don't know that that is
Speaker 2: necessarily a bad thing in all cases, like if someone
Speaker 2: goes all in on cross training or whatever, you know,
Speaker 2: like this is who I am, now, this is what
Speaker 2: I'm doing, Like I don't know, live and let live
Speaker 2: right Well.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that's even even if you did
Speaker 3: this with a very good book or something. I think
Speaker 3: just there there's no authority or no single text that
Speaker 3: explains everything. And so if you try to under if
Speaker 3: every problem you're faced with, you try to say, well,
Speaker 3: what does my text say about it? And even if
Speaker 3: that text is future shock, you know, what wisdom can
Speaker 3: I get from the tofflers that would make sense of
Speaker 3: what's going on to me right now, I think that's
Speaker 3: just very limiting. Like you, you've got to reach out
Speaker 3: broader and like have more more influences on your mind
Speaker 3: than just sort of like one leader text stoor, a
Speaker 3: leader idea or person that you always go back to
Speaker 3: to explain everything.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I guess you could even apply it, of
Speaker 2: course to religion, like yes, one can. You could talk
Speaker 2: about religion as being a super simplifier kind of approach,
Speaker 2: and I think that would only be true to a
Speaker 2: certain extent, because I think once you really get into
Speaker 2: any given religion, there's a lot of complexity there. It's
Speaker 2: not just a simple top down system, though you might
Speaker 2: have like a slice of that again with a particular
Speaker 2: charismatic individual at the heart of it and so forth.
Speaker 2: But even then, it's like, Okay, future changes are coming,
Speaker 2: and they're coming at a pace that human beings can't keep.
Speaker 4: Up with the basic idea of future shock.
Speaker 2: Retreating into religion or becoming super religious might help to
Speaker 2: some degree on an individual level, but it is not
Speaker 2: going to help at the level and at the scale
Speaker 2: that they're talking about long term. I'm of course not
Speaker 2: accounting for any supernatural aspects, just focusing on the natural
Speaker 2: world scenario.
Speaker 3: Here as a way of trying to find some kind
Speaker 3: of explanation to help you understand what's going on in
Speaker 3: this confusing world. And yeah, you know, it's hard, Like
Speaker 3: the world is confusing to some extent that maybe due
Speaker 3: to the causes that the tofflers identify, and maybe there
Speaker 3: are other causes too, but yeah, it's like it's hard
Speaker 3: to make sense of this world. And it can be
Speaker 3: very comfortable to just find one authority to turn to
Speaker 3: that'll tell you here's what's going on. But like I
Speaker 3: just warned people, like, don't do that. You don't want
Speaker 3: to be the person who's who can't stop always referring
Speaker 3: to the internet guy they just latched onto that explains everything.
Speaker 4: You know. Oh yeah, yeah absolutely.
Speaker 3: Now there's another thing I've been thinking about in terms
Speaker 3: of maladaptive reactions to future shock, which is, what if
Speaker 3: the idea of future shock is to some extent real,
Speaker 3: if the toafflers were to some extent on target and
Speaker 3: describing a real phenomenon, but people don't quite realize it,
Speaker 3: and instead it manifests as a kind of anxiety and
Speaker 3: psychic distress that arises as if out of nowhere, and
Speaker 3: people end up blaming it on unrelated third party phenomena.
Speaker 3: You know, this kind of reminds me that. So I
Speaker 3: was reading the New York Times obituary for Alvin Toffler
Speaker 3: that was written by Keith Schneider, published when Alvin died
Speaker 3: in twenty sixteen, and there was a passage where the
Speaker 3: obituary quoted a critic of Toffler's and I thought this
Speaker 3: was kind of interesting. So I want to read this
Speaker 3: quote first. In recent years, benefiting from hindsight, some critics
Speaker 3: said mister Toffler had gotten much wrong. Shell Israel, an
Speaker 3: author and commentator who writes about social media for Forbes,
Speaker 3: took issue with mister Toffler twenty twelve for painting quote
Speaker 3: a picture of people who were isolated and depressed, cut
Speaker 3: off from human intimacy by a relentless fire hose of
Speaker 3: messages and data barraging us. But he added, we are
Speaker 3: not isolated by it, and when the information overloads us,
Speaker 3: most people are still wise enough to use the power
Speaker 3: of the off button to gain some peace. You know,
Speaker 3: I think this is a This is an interesting and
Speaker 3: funny example to highlight, because, of course I do think
Speaker 3: Tofler got a lot of stuff wrong, but I don't
Speaker 3: personally think that this was one of them. Like just
Speaker 3: to zero in on one example of information overload, it
Speaker 3: really does seem to me that the the bombardment of
Speaker 3: information we're getting from media, especially now Internet based media
Speaker 3: and social media, video content on the Internet and all that,
Speaker 3: I personally think that probably is responsible for a lot
Speaker 3: of feelings of isolation and depression. And I think it
Speaker 3: does make a lot of people more lonely, and a
Speaker 3: lot of us really do have trouble using the off
Speaker 3: button to escape from it. And here's kind of where
Speaker 3: we get back to what I was wondering about us
Speaker 3: not identifying the actual cause of potential future shock. Apart
Speaker 3: from the innately compelling addictive qualities of social media and
Speaker 3: Internet video media and all that, the things that like
Speaker 3: naturally just keep us scrolling for more. Often we are
Speaker 3: not quite able to realize it is the media that
Speaker 3: is causing us to feel so bad. And this is
Speaker 3: true about a lot of things in life. We're often
Speaker 3: just not good at identifying the causes of our own unhappiness.
Speaker 3: There's a whole like therapy industry that a big part
Speaker 3: of it is like helping people figure out what it
Speaker 3: is in their life that is making them anxious, you know,
Speaker 3: and so like it's just not always obvious to us
Speaker 3: what the sources of our unease are. And so I
Speaker 3: admit that this is I don't have like empirical evidence
Speaker 3: for this. All I can go on is just sort
Speaker 3: of my hunch about reality. But my opinion is that
Speaker 3: it is a really odd thing to choose to criticize,
Speaker 3: because I think this is one of the more prescient
Speaker 3: generalizations situated among many less prescient ones that you know,
Speaker 3: this information overload through media can really make people feel
Speaker 3: isolated and lonely and distressed. And I wonder if it's
Speaker 3: possible that a lot of future shock like effects exist
Speaker 3: in a context like that, where like they do have
Speaker 3: this negative psychological effect on us, but we don't really
Speaker 3: realize that it's the technology or the cultural changes downstream
Speaker 3: from that technology that are the root cause of it. Instead,
Speaker 3: it just kind of like life feels bad right now,
Speaker 3: and I feel confused and afraid and I don't know
Speaker 3: what's going on, but you don't realize why.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, because it's you can always find other reasons
Speaker 2: and not to say those other reasons aren't in play too, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: there are terrible things going on in the world, you know,
Speaker 2: there are a lot of things to be concerned about,
Speaker 2: and then certain generalities are also probably in play, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, the youth are always rebelling, right, I mean.
Speaker 4: It.
Speaker 2: Is often the case that it seems it's like harder
Speaker 2: to make friends when you get older, things like that,
Speaker 2: you know, And those are often sided as well. But
Speaker 2: perhaps the technology is a part of these scenarios and
Speaker 2: others as well.
Speaker 3: So I guess part of what I'm reacting to is
Speaker 3: maybe the assumption that when changes to our lives are
Speaker 3: brought on by technology, it will be clear to us
Speaker 3: that is what's happening. I don't know if it will
Speaker 3: be clear.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, that's a great point.
Speaker 3: But okay, we said we were going to get to
Speaker 3: the section of the book where the Tofflers talk about
Speaker 3: strategies for reacting to and weathering the storm of changes
Speaker 3: brought on by technology. How do people how should people
Speaker 3: deal with future shock? Maybe prevent it in some cases
Speaker 3: or alleviate its effects in others.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is a very interesting part of the
Speaker 2: book as well. And again they're dealing with like essentially
Speaker 2: strategies for survival off future shock, not for survival of
Speaker 2: any particular you know, realistic or even fanciful prediction of
Speaker 2: what the future might consist of. Right, So, the first
Speaker 2: thing they lay out is direct coping. This is managing
Speaker 2: overstimulation and anxiety at the individual level, not just at
Speaker 2: the and not just at a subconscious level as in
Speaker 2: like the maladaptive practices, but at the conscious level of things.
Speaker 3: Okay, so what does that mean? Managing it at the
Speaker 3: conscious level?
Speaker 2: I think this is basically the pushing the off switch
Speaker 2: area of the equation, like the idea that like, okay,
Speaker 2: at some point, you've got to be able to to
Speaker 2: to some degree, step up and manage your over stimulation.
Speaker 2: Like maybe you, you know, to go back to the
Speaker 2: movie we watched most recently on Weird House Cinema. Maybe
Speaker 2: you cut down your wall of television sets to just
Speaker 2: one or two television sets that you play at one time.
Speaker 2: You know, you make like sensible decisions that you can
Speaker 2: regarding your overstimulation. You're not gonna have control over everything,
Speaker 2: but you are going to have control over some things, right.
Speaker 3: Right, Realize when it's getting to you, and then demand
Speaker 3: as David Bowie did, that the televisions get out of
Speaker 3: my mind. Yeah, in a practical sense by turning them off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, And that's again sometimes easier said than done.
Speaker 2: But O get we acknowledge that that could be one step.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, it's certainly easier to do if you
Speaker 3: are put in place a sort of cultural regime around
Speaker 3: yourself to remind you that that's an option and to like,
Speaker 3: you know, bring it up over and over. It's easier
Speaker 3: then than it is if you're just like sitting there
Speaker 3: with your media devices and like never even hearing you know,
Speaker 3: people say, hey, if you considered that this media might
Speaker 3: be making you less happy than you could be or
Speaker 3: causing you anxiety, maybe you should do something.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then again, it's also easier to imagine with the
Speaker 2: basic like nineteen seventies television scenarios like the television is
Speaker 2: stressing you off, We'll just turn that baby off, man.
Speaker 2: But it's different now, like when you have so many
Speaker 2: people that you work through the internet that you need
Speaker 2: the Internet and social media for their job, Like you
Speaker 2: can't just ease necessarily easily just hit the.
Speaker 3: Off switch on all of that, right, I have to
Speaker 3: have my phone on because I might get a work
Speaker 3: email I have to reply to. But then also, yeah,
Speaker 3: there's the old Twitter or whatever it's called.
Speaker 4: Now, yeah it's the X.
Speaker 2: It's the X Joe, right, because you exit out and you.
Speaker 4: Make it go away. Right. I'm sure I'm the million
Speaker 4: person to make that.
Speaker 3: Joke the first time I've heard it.
Speaker 2: I've actually when I have checked it out once or twice,
Speaker 2: you know, to see what somebody had to say about something.
Speaker 2: And I found my finger going to the X logo
Speaker 2: because I identify it with A with a canceling out
Speaker 2: and exit out, and I'm perfect. It just feels like
Speaker 2: a design error. But who am I to say?
Speaker 3: Get out of my mind?
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 2: The next thing that they highlight is the idea of
Speaker 2: personal stability zones, so a way of managing in life
Speaker 2: rather than suppressing it, sensible preparations for the future, planning
Speaker 2: for things that that fulfill you, and avoiding unnecessary changes,
Speaker 2: especially the just cause changes, you know, like we're changing
Speaker 2: this just because you know, update and something you don't
Speaker 2: really need, but we're just changing it because we need
Speaker 2: the next upgrade. Like figuring out ways to avoid that
Speaker 2: and maintain stability.
Speaker 3: Okay, so you understand that there are a lot of
Speaker 3: changes that are going to happen that you cannot avoid.
Speaker 3: So you identify what are the things that you can
Speaker 3: avoid changing, that don't have to change, and you can
Speaker 3: keep those stable to help give yourself a sort of
Speaker 3: a foothold.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The next one that they highlight is that of situational grouping.
Speaker 2: So future shock absorbers social organization not based on what
Speaker 2: we are, but what we are becoming.
Speaker 3: Right, So they say, because life is just going to
Speaker 3: be characterized by more and more change all of the time,
Speaker 3: we should have social groupings that help people through changes.
Speaker 3: They're designed to be sort of social identification groups based
Speaker 3: on the changes that you're experiencing, for example, sort of
Speaker 3: social clubs or social organizations for people who are moving
Speaker 3: to a new city, or people who are changing careers,
Speaker 3: or people who are getting divorced or whatever.
Speaker 2: The ultimate irony, based on what we were just saying,
Speaker 2: is that you do kind of find this with various
Speaker 2: like Facebook groups, right, I mean, there is a group
Speaker 2: for everything these days. And you know, I didn't attempt
Speaker 2: to do anything like itally, but I'm betting there are
Speaker 2: you know, a huge number of groups that are positioned
Speaker 2: to help people going through various changes in life, or
Speaker 2: could certainly be utilized for them.
Speaker 3: Well, from my own recent memory, I know that there
Speaker 3: are a lot of things that are geared toward people
Speaker 3: who are currently or about to have a baby.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, so anyway, with all these would be interesting
Speaker 2: to hear listener feedback. But hey, listeners, if you if
Speaker 2: if you have benefited from some sort of a group
Speaker 2: in real life or online, et cetera, that is essentially
Speaker 2: situational grouping, it'd be interesting to hear from you, all right.
Speaker 2: The next one is crisis counseling, one on one counseling
Speaker 2: during the crisis of adaptation. This one I felt I
Speaker 2: felt like this one. I felt like this one made
Speaker 2: a fair amount of sense, right, I mean, if if
Speaker 2: you're going through some sort of a crisis, be it
Speaker 2: a crisis of future shock or something else, it makes
Speaker 2: sense to get professional help if professional help is available
Speaker 2: and you know, affordable and so forth.
Speaker 3: I mean, it seems like it would just be generally
Speaker 3: socially beneficial to have more free crisis counseling for crisis
Speaker 3: of whatever cause.
Speaker 2: Right right, Yeah, And it and it also kind of
Speaker 2: falls in line with the whole idea of like when
Speaker 2: are you when when are you going to get involved
Speaker 2: in a crisis scenario? Are you going to get involved
Speaker 2: in those little winnable battles or that one massive life
Speaker 2: destroying catastrophe, and you, I think you can. You can
Speaker 2: certainly point to examples in the world where yeah, there's
Speaker 2: some sort of crisis, counseling wasn't available, and then at
Speaker 2: the very end, you end up with a situation nobody
Speaker 2: wanted to have.
Speaker 4: To contend with.
Speaker 2: All Right, the next thing that they recommend is halfway
Speaker 2: house future shock absorbers, so urban recreation centers for rural
Speaker 2: people entering into their systems. I'm not so sure about this.
Speaker 2: And this is the basic idea that like, cities are
Speaker 2: just going to get bigger and bigger, and they're just
Speaker 2: going to keep drawing in people from rural environments, and
Speaker 2: they're going to go through future shock, especially as they
Speaker 2: enter into these urban centers, and so you're going to
Speaker 2: need to have a halfway house, a way a place
Speaker 2: where they can go and become better at and more
Speaker 2: adapted to what's going on in the city.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know how much this one, how much
Speaker 3: sense this one makes then again, I mean, I guess
Speaker 3: the idea of a halfway house, you know, the main
Speaker 3: sense in which we're familiar with the halfway house is
Speaker 3: like for people coming out of institutions, like people who
Speaker 3: have been in a you know, in a prison or
Speaker 3: maybe in like a mental health care facility or something
Speaker 3: like that, will have a sort of semi stable house
Speaker 3: where it's like, you know, everything is the same and
Speaker 3: it's a controlled environment for a part of the day,
Speaker 3: maybe at night, where you stay there, and then you
Speaker 3: are being slowly reacclimated into the rest of society by
Speaker 3: spending part of your day outside the house. So I
Speaker 3: don't know. I mean to think about it in that
Speaker 3: broader sense, I could maybe imagine something like that, But
Speaker 3: then again, I don't know how much Like I don't
Speaker 3: know how much like the future shock is really different
Speaker 3: between say, like the rural environment in the city environment.
Speaker 5: I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong about that one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: It also feels like the whole idea of future shock
Speaker 2: is that you would have to always be in the
Speaker 2: halfway house because you'd never be able to fully adapt.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, this one, this one was I was definitely
Speaker 2: less sure about. The next two are interesting to talk about,
Speaker 2: though I'm not sure how how sensible they are either.
Speaker 2: The first is that you would have enclaves of the past,
Speaker 2: so communities in which turnover, novelty, and choice are deliberately limited,
Speaker 2: basically Westworld or some other like past or simplified environment World.
Speaker 2: I guess if we're to realistically imagine, it's like, Okay,
Speaker 2: there's so much internet, there's internet everywhere. For the weekend,
Speaker 2: we're going to go to No Internetville. And then when
Speaker 2: you go there, you're going to feel a certain bit
Speaker 2: of relief, and we often we often do. If you
Speaker 2: travel around, you may find yourself in a situation that
Speaker 2: is essentially no Internetville. It may be your mom's house
Speaker 2: in the country. It may be you know, you've traveled
Speaker 2: to somewhere where there's cell reception, isn't there you don't
Speaker 2: have an international cell plan or something like that. But
Speaker 2: this would be a place that is deliberately created for
Speaker 2: this purpose.
Speaker 3: This was one section of the Solutions here where I
Speaker 3: was noticing what I thought was kind of a recurring
Speaker 3: problem with the book, which in my opinion was I
Speaker 3: think the book sort of has a problem projecting a
Speaker 3: realistic picture of what is likely to be done. Like,
Speaker 3: there are a lot of recommendations and predictions in the
Speaker 3: book that are things like you know, yeah, we will
Speaker 3: we will create future shock absorption zones where people can
Speaker 3: go live as like a you know, a medieval farmer
Speaker 3: for a few months so that they can recover from
Speaker 3: the pace of change in modern life. And I was
Speaker 3: kind of thinking, like, apart from whether or not that's
Speaker 3: a good idea, like, practically, how is that going to happen?
Speaker 3: You know, like ninety nine percent of people they can't
Speaker 3: afford to do that. They've got to go to work
Speaker 3: to make enough money to survive, take care of their
Speaker 3: families every day, and all that you can't just like
Speaker 3: leave for however long you need to to you know,
Speaker 3: recover like this. So I think a lot of predictions
Speaker 3: sort of have the unspoken assumption of a post scarcity
Speaker 3: abundance future where everything is like, you know, there's a
Speaker 3: very generous state that like provides for whatever people need
Speaker 3: in order to adapt, and you know, it's almost like
Speaker 3: anything not prevented by the laws of physics will be possible.
Speaker 3: But I think it turns out that there are like
Speaker 3: big problems of will and incentive that prevent a lot
Speaker 3: of things from happening, even if they are both desirable
Speaker 3: and physically technologically possible, just because like I don't know,
Speaker 3: it would like take resources and will to make this
Speaker 3: possible for people in general, and that you know that
Speaker 3: hasn't happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they would require a drastic restructuring of society,
Speaker 2: which ultimately is something they kind of push for. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but we'll I think we'll get back to that in
Speaker 2: a minute. The flip side of West World, for those
Speaker 2: of you who are familiar with the original movies at least,
Speaker 2: is of course future World. They also argue for enclaves
Speaker 2: of the future where people may experience aspects of the
Speaker 2: future in advance, kind of a halfway house for future living. Right,
Speaker 2: It's like, well, I don't know if I'm gonna be ready.
Speaker 4: For the future.
Speaker 2: Well it's all right, we have a place you can
Speaker 2: go for the weekend and that'll help you get ready
Speaker 2: for it.
Speaker 3: Perfect, same caveats I had before. But yes, I think
Speaker 3: that should be and it should be publicly subsidized. Everybody
Speaker 3: should get to go to Future World, not just for
Speaker 3: the super rich.
Speaker 5: As John Hammond said, Now.
Speaker 2: The next one is I think a little bit of
Speaker 2: a head scratcher, but also makes sense, but also is
Speaker 2: something that I think we're just going to do on
Speaker 2: our own as human beings. And that is what they
Speaker 2: call global space pageants. So the introduction of additional stability
Speaker 2: points and rituals into a society to give it structure
Speaker 2: as older stability points and rituals fall away. Again, one
Speaker 2: of their whole things about future shock is like even
Speaker 2: the institutions and ideas that you would cling to for
Speaker 2: stability as you're moving into the future and dealing with
Speaker 2: all these other changes, those are falling away too, and
Speaker 2: so you feel completely unmoored from the past. There are
Speaker 2: all things, well, we just need to keep coming up
Speaker 2: with new things. But aren't we doing that already? Like
Speaker 2: International Cat Day is a thing and we all love it,
Speaker 2: but it's not like rooted in deep human history or anything.
Speaker 2: I think things like that we're always going to keep
Speaker 2: coming up with that, We're going to keep creating these
Speaker 2: quote unquote stability points.
Speaker 3: I think this is a really good point. I think
Speaker 3: in general it's true that we underestimate the importance of
Speaker 3: rituals and the work they do in helping us feel
Speaker 3: stability amidst the inevitable changes of life.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: And then the final point that the survival tactic that
Speaker 2: they mentioned this is a big one, and this one
Speaker 2: makes perfect sense, really, and that is a future facing
Speaker 2: education system, which is kind of a broad concept, but
Speaker 2: certainly in like individual takes on it like this makes
Speaker 2: perfect sense, Like you should be educat people in a
Speaker 2: way to where the lessons they're learning are appliable to
Speaker 2: the future, preparing them for change, etc.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And a big part of the future facing education
Speaker 3: system both necessitates and would involve programs for predicting the future.
Speaker 3: So in a lot of ways, the Solutions section of
Speaker 3: the Toffler's book could be seen overall as a case
Speaker 3: for futurology itself. A big part of the Toffler's Solution is,
Speaker 3: for example, what they call anticipatory democracy, which would be
Speaker 3: mechanisms for democratically predicting what will happen in the future
Speaker 3: and setting long term goals. So you know, technocratic planning
Speaker 3: will have tangible objectives to aim for. And they spend
Speaker 3: a lot of time talking about the benefits of having
Speaker 3: professional future imagineers who specialize in predicting the future in
Speaker 3: various ways so we can anticipate what's coming and plan
Speaker 3: around it to reduce future shock impacts.
Speaker 2: And uh.
Speaker 3: This could involve anything from banning a particularly dangerous coming
Speaker 3: technological development to coming up with these future shock absorbers
Speaker 3: like you were just talking about rob in advance of
Speaker 3: the coming changes. But ultimately they say that this work
Speaker 3: cannot be all top down. It can't all be from
Speaker 3: like you know, the government Office of Predicting the Future
Speaker 3: with professional imagineers. There's also an important role for an
Speaker 3: ad hoc democratic future anticipation potential. They say, maybe you
Speaker 3: should assemble these units out of the people, so like
Speaker 3: people maybe would be maybe would be selected at random,
Speaker 3: just like juries are from from the demos, to come
Speaker 3: together and predict what's going to happen in the future
Speaker 3: and say what how that interacts with goals that they
Speaker 3: have for their society and what should be done about it.
Speaker 2: I'm going to read a quote from the book here
Speaker 2: where they get into this event quote. The time has
Speaker 2: come for dramatic reassessment of the directions of change, a
Speaker 2: reassessment made not by the politicians or the sociologist or
Speaker 2: the clergy or the elitist revolutionaries, not by technicians or
Speaker 2: college presidents, but by people, by the people themselves. We need,
Speaker 2: quite literally to quote, go to the people with a
Speaker 2: question that is almost never asked of them. What kind
Speaker 2: of a world do you want ten, twenty, or thirty
Speaker 2: years from now? We need to initiate, in short, a
Speaker 2: continuing plebiscite on the future. The moment is right for
Speaker 2: the formation in each of the high technology nations of
Speaker 2: a movement for total self review, a public self examination
Speaker 2: aimed at broadening and defining, in social as well as
Speaker 2: merely economic terms, the goals of quote unquote progress. On
Speaker 2: the edge of a new millennium, on the brink of
Speaker 2: a new stage of human development, we are racing blindly
Speaker 2: into the future. But where do we want to go?
Speaker 2: What would happen if we actually tried to amend answer
Speaker 2: this question.
Speaker 3: That's a very good point. And I don't know, I
Speaker 3: don't know about like the particular mechanics that the Tofflers suggest,
Speaker 3: but I would say I think it would be a
Speaker 3: good thing if the conversation of democracies was way more
Speaker 3: focused on the long term goals and on the future
Speaker 3: instead of just like quarreling over what is or is
Speaker 3: not happening in the present.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the Toddlers contend that contended that ultimately change
Speaker 2: can certainly remain the protagonist of the human story, provided
Speaker 2: that wild, unchecked and unanticipated change is control through a
Speaker 2: host of personal and systemic changes. You know, what they're
Speaker 2: proposing here is hardly as advanced is something like the
Speaker 2: psychohistory of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series we have, which is
Speaker 2: a you know, sort of an advanced sci fi concept
Speaker 2: of futurology where you're like mathematically modeling the trends in
Speaker 2: the future. But this thing still at its heart it
Speaker 2: remains a challenge for you know, we can point to,
Speaker 2: you know, to various examples in the modern world to
Speaker 2: underline this. You know that our inability to really completely
Speaker 2: appreciate changes that are coming and feel like they are
Speaker 2: real to us and then act on that information. And
Speaker 2: I think climate change is perhaps one of the more
Speaker 2: alarming examples. You know. In response to scientific consensus that
Speaker 2: modern industrialized society is inflicting considerable change on our environment
Speaker 2: and altering the course of temperature and climate, a certain
Speaker 2: amount of social and political effort has been applied to
Speaker 2: the problem, but not seemingly enough so far to alter
Speaker 2: the course to the degree that is advisable.
Speaker 3: And this seems to be to come back to actually
Speaker 3: some of the points we raised earlier about like problems
Speaker 3: of will and incentives, like there are also people who
Speaker 3: have countervailing incentives and a lot of power to try
Speaker 3: to pursue those incentives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then just you know, individually, on the human level,
Speaker 2: it's like, we just have difficulty dealing with problems that
Speaker 2: extend into the into the future, you know, especially the
Speaker 2: future that exists beyond our own lifespan. So you know,
Speaker 2: this is not to say we should give up hope
Speaker 2: or anything. You know, obviously I'm the climate front. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of momentum out there, and small changes do
Speaker 2: add up. But paradoxically, some of the ideas that the
Speaker 2: Tofflers outline actually seem to work against these efforts though,
Speaker 2: because people, again they don't want to change and change
Speaker 2: be it. You know, various changes in your life to
Speaker 2: lessen the effects of climate change or the changes brought
Speaker 2: on by climate change itself, those can be ignored, avoided,
Speaker 2: and explained away via the various maladaptive coping mechanisms discussed earlier,
Speaker 2: at least for a certain amount of time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thinking of direct analogies to you know, the Denyer mindset. Oh,
Speaker 3: it's always been like this, you know.
Speaker 2: Oh, okay, this isn't really different, nothing's different.
Speaker 4: This is just the same.
Speaker 2: This is just you know, this is like the newsweek
Speaker 2: cover from the nineties. But yeah, exactly anyway, you know,
Speaker 2: the basic paradox here, I was certainly in play with
Speaker 2: just future shock in general as a broader topic. According
Speaker 2: to the Tofflers, we must change or we or we
Speaker 2: will be changed.
Speaker 4: You can.
Speaker 2: You can either figure out those those small battles that
Speaker 2: can be won and win those small battles, or you're
Speaker 2: going to deal with that much larger conflict that is
Speaker 2: going to be much more difficult to deal with. And again,
Speaker 2: coming back to that basic question, what kind of future do.
Speaker 4: We actually want? And if, you know, if.
Speaker 2: We answer that question, we answer it honestly and intelligently,
Speaker 2: then do we have the you know, do we have
Speaker 2: the will to do something about it?
Speaker 3: Well said well, Rob, I am glad you you spurred
Speaker 3: us to do this, this exploration of future shock. Like
Speaker 3: I said in the first episode, I'd never read the
Speaker 3: book before, it was only a little aware of the
Speaker 3: the concept, and I think it is. This is the
Speaker 3: kind of book that I think a lot of times
Speaker 3: people don't go back to. But I think there's a
Speaker 3: lot you can learn from it, even in the places,
Speaker 3: there's a lot you can learn learn from like the
Speaker 3: things that books like this get right and wrong. It's
Speaker 3: interesting to see, like what they got wrong, why you
Speaker 3: might think that they would end up thinking like that.
Speaker 5: So I don't know.
Speaker 3: I love this sort of thing. The future ology of
Speaker 3: the past is endlessly interesting to me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is a fun one.
Speaker 2: So again, we'd love to hear from everyone out there
Speaker 2: how these episodes or the book itself, if you have
Speaker 2: read it on your own, or if you've watched the
Speaker 2: TV documentary version of it that again can be streamed
Speaker 2: in some places, though not in great quality. Let us
Speaker 2: know we would love to hear from you. But yeah,
Speaker 2: on that note, we're going to go ahead and close
Speaker 2: out our look at Future Shock that we may discuss
Speaker 2: some of it a little bit more in listener mail
Speaker 2: episodes ahead. We'll remind you here that Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind is primarily a science podcast, with core episodes
Speaker 2: on Tuesdays and Thursdays, listener mail on Mondays, a short
Speaker 2: form artifact or monster effect on Wednesdays, and on Fridays,
Speaker 2: we set aside more serious concerns to just talk about
Speaker 2: a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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