FUTURE SHOCK: NOT SO SHOCKING
In 1970, Alvin Toffler published his mega-bestseller, Future Shock. Its basic message was that because the world was changing so quickly and in so many ways, we are having a hard time understanding it and adjusting to it.
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.
Our inability to adjust to the rapid changes will cause us to be confused, unable to cope or understand it. Future Shock is the discomfort and bewilderment of a changing technological world.
Now, more than fifty years after the publication of the book, it seems evident Toffler was correct, but for the wrong reason. His prediction that the rapid pace of technological change would be difficult to cope with, did not happen. Cassettes, videos, electric typewriters, video cameras, printers, computers, word processors, the internet, Amazon, Apple, cell phones, GPS systems, thousands of satellites orbiting the Earth, drones, GPS, Siri, Alexi, HD TV and Artificial Intelligence have not bewildered us. I am in awe of this technology; I am grateful for it. I sometimes worry about it. But I am neither shocked nor confused. On some level, I’m annoyed that I don’t know how these things work, but that doesn’t prevent me from recognizing, using and being grateful for these extraordinary tools that make my life easier and more interesting.
My grandparents were born in 1879, one year before Edison’s first successful light bulb. Wyat Earp was sheriff in Tombstone, horses left tons of manure and carcasses in the streets of cities, Indians still roamed the plains, and almost 40% of children did not survive past five years. Yet my grandmother lived to see men land on the moon. Grandma was twenty-four when the Wright Brothers flew their plane at Kitty Hawk, and forty-one when she got the right to vote. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, when electricity became available, my grandparents saw an explosion of inventions: vacuums, dishwashers, refrigerators, air conditioning, ice cream, movies, radio, affordable automobiles, airplanes, and telephones. Marconi and Tessler simultaneously had the crazy idea that electric signals could travel through the air, without wires. As far as I can tell, my grandparents, born in horse and buggy days, were not disoriented by the changes.
No future shock there.
When I roam around nostalgias web sites of life in the Bronx in the fifties, you would think it was utopian. Life before McDonald’s, Wal Mart, space ships, Amazon, computers, cell phones, Microsoft, hand-held calculators, HD TV and frozen foods, is almost universally loved as a time when kids played with other kids, not with electronic gadgetry. Yet if you look at pictures of the Bronx, it wasn’t pretty but we
loved it. Yes, we remember the time fondly but we were not shocked or confused by the technological changes. Just saddened and wistful.
Toffler’s book was provocative, interesting, dramatically written, compelling, surfeited with information and original; one had the sense he was on to something, and that the next few decades would confirm his predictions.
In retrospect, however, we easily adjusted to technological change,
A better label for today’s adjustment would be Temporal Culture Shock. Technology doesn’t confuse us, social and cultural changes do. I know how to us my smart phone; I feel in control of it. But the extraordinary societal changes of the last two generations have transformed American values, religion, marriage, family, the work ethic, public education, university education, morality, language and race relations, leaving many to wonder what is happening, and fondly recalling their childhoods.
But when change is the loss of our identity and order, we suffer the pain of a lost world. When a generation find itself “between two ages, two modes of life,” as Herman Hesse wrote, when they can’t go back to the familiar, when they are unable to understand the confusing present, and are uncertain and fearful about the future, then disorientation morphs into fear, demoralization, and sometimes hatred. When their children go off in almost incomprehensible directions, when they feel order rolling over a cliff, and they are powerless to change society, and unable to understand it, then this is a time, as Hesse wrote, when “human life is reduced to real suffering.”
I experienced Culture Shock when, for example, I traveled to Marrakesh, Morocco and saw teeth pullers and readers sitting cross legged in marketplaces, and saw girls in the Casbah in frilly dresses, who were really boys, dancing and shaking tambourines in a small cafe. When worshippers prostrated themselves on prayer mats facing Mecca five times a day, it seemed alien, but interesting, even quaint. We are not shocked by the culture. After all, that’s what we came to see: the exotic and different. But when our way of life is evolving into something unrecognizable, confusing and even menacing, we experience more than pain and discomfort; we experience fear. We stay the same while the world transforms around us. It goes beyond normal concerns. A war, for example can be shattering; we lose loved ones, our land in invaded, bombs explode. As painful as that is, we at least understand what is happening, and there is reason to believe our civilization will eventually be restored. But when the familiar world of our childhoods becomes unrecognizable, we experience a different kind of pain. We want the world to make sense; we want our familiar society back and are fearful of what’s to come.
That’s the real future shock
Substack Side Bar
Among the general characteristics of centenarians is to be adaptable and flexible in the face of social/cultural change. It’s not easy to do. When my wife’s grandfather died at eighty-three, people noticed that Nana didn’t cry. Nana was even-tempered and non-judgmentalism. She had an aura of benignity about her. Centenarians deal well with grief. Life changes like losing a spouse, and cultural changes like hippies and drugs of the sixties, are accepted as part of the natural order of things. They do not use up their life juices over problems they cannot influence; they do not succumb to stress like the rest of us do.
They roll with the punches and live a very long time.
Thanks so much to the 200 followers of CRISIS. I’ll never put up a Paywall, blocking access to these essays. I would, of course appreciate likes, new subscribers, recommendation for the CRISIS publication, and the sharing of individual posts.