[Thinking about the Future]
TO TURN ON YOUR MIND...TO HELP SWEEP AWAY SUMMER COBWEBS...THE LWV WILL PLAY THE FUTURES GAME. WHAT HAPPENS TOMMOROW IS BASED ON WHAT HAPPENS TODAY!
PEOPLE DON'T THINK ABOUT THE FUTURE IN ANY ORGANIZED AND SYSTEMATIC WAY, AND SOME FIND IT EXTREMELY DIFFICULT TO TRY TO DO SO....ONE AIM OF OUR 21ST CENTURY DISCUSSION IS TO GET YOU THINKING ABOUT THE FUTURE. IT'S STIMULATING: IT AFFORDS NEW INSIGHTS INTO THE PRESENT AND INTO TODAY'S
VALUE SYSTEMS.
THE FOLLOWING MATERIAL IS A TEASER--TO GET YOU INTERESTED AND TO PROVIDE CONCEPTS FOR YOUR IDEAS 70 GROW ON.
The Urban Renewal Act of 1949 wasn't intended to be one of the causes of riots in 1967...but it was.
The Federal Aid Highway program wasn't intended to eliminate effective public transportation...but it did.
We are learning, slowly and painfully, that we must think ahead, that ordinary citizens must learn to
weigh both short-term and long-term effects of public policy decisions.
Our form of government is a representative democracy. If we care about this form of government, we cannot leave it to the leaders, the professionals, the politicians, to consider the future implications of current decisions. We, as citizens, must learn to do this ourselves.
The following are comments of a view of the future by participants in a "future conference" held in January-1973, sponsored by the League of Women Voters Education Fund.
"I think that large numbers of people in a mass society really act publicly only through the mechanism of voting. Therefore, the first approach I would strongly recommend is a system of compulsory voting, with mandatory education in governmental mechanisms for all citizens. I think the rights of citizenship should be translated more and more into the duties of citizenship and I think our society has made a mistake in assuming that you can leave voting to the voluntary public act." Charles Hamilton, Columbia U., Prof. of Political Sciences.
"I think the notion that social change occurs very slowly is an illusion because we tend to disguise social change from ourselves. Two examples. The nuclear family was really invented less than a century ago and moved within two generations to being the ultimate model for maturity, mental health and moral posture. And now we've invented youth, allowing for the first time in human history a very privileged but not insignificant segment of the population to grow up enjoying what could be called an adult repertoire of gratification without first having earned the right to have it. And that is why we find them so unnerving. Those of them who've had that fundamental relationship altered now begin to look at things without their having either moral or political significance as they did for us." William Simon
"Increasingly, government will be
unable to anticipate the important problems that face us as a society, and even when it's able to perceive these developing problems, it will not want to talk about them because it will be so politically unpopular." Lester Brown
"I don't think there is going to be as much change as some people feel we will have by the year 2000. New groups are being brought into the power structure as we go along. In the last two or three decades, most notably the blacks have been brought in. I suppose that by the year 2000 women will be truly in." Constance Baker Motley, Judge, U,S. District Court, New York.
"Businesses such as IBM have a 15 or 20 year plan which is relatively specific as to what they want to happen over that time. They have a much more specific 5 year plan and a one year plan to work toward the 20 year plan. However, every quarter, results of the one year plan are compared to what they had hoped to do, and they can very quickly make a change if they see something is not working the way it should." Ralph Lewis, Editor, Harvard Business Review.
"It's not possible to have a society that's half guided by the "Eat drink and be merry, because tomorrow we don't care whether the ecosystem is around" group and the other half by the conservative "Wow wait a minute; you can't consume that resource. Your grandchildren might need it." group. There's not really a way of compromising those two points of view. A decision has to be made one way or another.
Who's in charge of the long term? Who's in charge of the population problem? Who's in charge of the energy problem? the resource problem? the environmental problem?
"In a government run the way ours is with very short term pressures on anybody who is elected, how can we get somebody who is in charge. of the long term who does think about where we are going and why we are going?" Donella Meadows, author Limits to Growth.
"The society we have is so complex that inherently it is going to require management by some kind of elite. We're shifting from an elite based on property and ownership to a managerial elite, which is based on a presumption, at least of skill. I think the problem of a democratic process is to make the elite responsible and accountable. That's what we're losing now...it seems to me that the question we must ask ourselves is what's going to happen between now and the year 2000. One possibility is that we'll have radical change, a genuine revolution. I don't consider that likely. The fashionable theory' in the country is that we are undergoing a revolution without violence... What's left is some kind of evolutionary change. There seems to me at least a 50-50 chance that we might be in a period of retrogression, in which we might lose some of the progress we've made towards social justice and cut back on individual liberties." Harry Ashmore President of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions
"One thing is crucial... the recognition on the part of everybody that people constantly make mistakes. Even the people• who are trying the hardest to do a good. job make mistakes. Some corkers have been made in the area of energy, for instance. We sit 'clown to work up systems and laws, to work out how to organize government, how to make it more responsive. We work up a model. But the model never takes into consideration the people who have to run it. ..The big problems are the ones that require cooperation, and we don't have the structure to provide that cooperation..." Lucy Benson
There is no such thing as THE Future. Instead there are as many possible futures as people want and are willing to work for.
If the world goes on as it is going now, where will we be in the 21st century? Where would we like to be in the 21st century? Please come to September units and share your views with us.
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June-July 1974
October 1974
