Image of the Future

* Book: The Image of the Future. By FRED POLAK. Jossey-Bass / Elsevierf, 1973

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"I have long felt that the original version of The Image of the Future was one of the most significant works of the twentieth century." - Kenneth Boulding (foreword)

Contextual Citations

1.

"The human condition can almost be summed up in the observation that, whereas all experiences are of the past, all decisions are about the future. It is the great task of human knowledge to bridge this gap and to find those patterns in the past which can be projected into the future as realistic images. The image of the future, therefore, is the key to all choice-oriented behavior. The general character and quality of the images of the future which prevail in a society is therefore the most important clue to its overall dynamics. The individual's image of the future is likewise the most significant determinant of his personal behavior."

- Kenneth Boulding (foreword)

2.

"Polak is very explicit that in this book he is concerned with the future in Western culture only, and that he is analyzing images of possible futures on this world. Taking the task of image-making for the future very seriously, he ruled out fantasies about other worlds as just that - fantasies. The timeliness of Polak's book today is that it marks the end of that part of human history in which man could trace out one part of the global cultural heritage and have it make sense, and it also marks the end of the time when thought about human life elsewhere than on earth was only a fantasy. Intellectually and spiritually, man is hardly ready to face the implications of a common global heritage on earth, or of cosmic belongingness in the universe. Polak's Image of the Future can help disoriented Western man get his bearings, understand the road he has traveled, and thus help him face the task of image-working for the now-incredible futures which lie before him.

The pessimistic tone of the second part of The Image of the Future, as Polak depicts moment-ridden man trapped in a moment-bound culture, never gives way to despair. At every turn, the author reminds us that there still is a turning possible, that new vistas can open up. Today we are glimpsing these new vistas, and Polak's work will help us make both more realistic and more daring use of the new chances that history is offering man."

- Elise Boulding (Translator's Preface)

Contents

PART ONE: THE PROMISED LAND

I. The Future as a Work of Reconstruction

1. Basic Concepts: Time, Images, and the Future

2. Image and Actuality

II. Images of the Future from Western Civilization

3. Oldest Sources

4. Hellas

5. Persia

6. Israel

7. Christianity

8. The Realm of the Future in the Middle Ages

9. The Renaissance as a Renaissance of Utopism

10. The Image of the Future: Guiding Star of the Age of Enlightenment

11. The Image of the Future: Primary Source of Socialism and Marxism

12. The Image of the Future: Conductor of the Age of Progress

13. The Future Becomes Present and Past

III. Dynamics of the Image of the Future

14. The Image of History and the Image of the Future 162

15. The Unchanging Historical Task of the Changing Utopia 176

PART TWO: ICONOCLASM OF THE IMAGES OF THE FUTURE

IV. Devastation of the Image of the Future

16. De-utopianizing

17. De-eschatologizing

V. The Breach in Our Time

18. Timeless Time

VI. The Broken Future of Western Culture

19. The Future of the Christian Belief-System

20. Other Cultural Components and Their Future

21. A Modern Depth Psychology: Trigger or Barrier to Rebirth?

22. Art and Culture.

23. Socio-Cultural Dynamics

24. New Perspectives

Excerpt

From Chapter I

Fred Polak:

1.

"Every great thinker who has concerned himself with the historical process has speculated about the meaning of time and its flow in history. Marx, Hegel, Spengler, Toynbee, and Sorokin, each with his own variation on the theme of time-flow as mechanically patterned fluctuation, predict the future but ignore its dynamic interaction with the past and the present. This book will give an added dimension to our understanding of the historical process by including the interaction between completed and noncompleted time. Social change will be viewed as a push-pull process in which a society is at once pulled forward by its own magnetic images of an idealized future and pushed from behind by its realized past. Poised on the dividing line between past and future is man, the unique bearer and transformer of culture. All of man's thinking involves a conscious process of dividing his perceptions, feelings, and responses, and sorting them into categories on the time-continuum. His mental capacity to categorize and reorder reality within the self (present reality) and in relation to perceptions of the not-self (the Other) enable him to be a citizen of two worlds: the present and the imagined. Out of this antithesis the future is born. Man's dualism is thus the indispensable prerequisite to the movement of events in time, and to the dynamics of historical change."

2.

"The duality of the now and the Other is a continuous theme in history, but how this dualism functions in any given period is a more complex question. Of the many ways in which man has approached the problem of his own dividedness,

the following five summarize his major orientations to the realm of the Other:

1. Life cannot be purely transitory: there must be something more enduring. Man hopes for future grace.

2. Life cannot simply end in imperfection. There must be an Other realm into which man can enter.

3. Life should not be transitory and imperfect. Man rebels out of despair, but without hope.

4. Life is not as it appears to be. This world is an illusion and the essential reality is veiled from man.

5. Life does not have to be the way it is. Man can reform and re-create the world after any image he chooses."

3.

"Spatial images of the Other have taken many forms through time.

They may be roughly classified in the following seven categories:

• Before this world: Images concerning an original state of nature, a

lost paradise, Eden, Arcady.

• This world: Images of the Promised Land, the New Jerusalem.

• Below this world: Images of Hades or Tartarus, an oceanic or

volcanic kingdom, a land of the dead, a land of shadows, hell.

• Above this world: Images of the beyond, a Kingdom of Heaven,

Olympus, empyrean.

• Outside this world: Images of the isles of the blessed, Atlantis,

never-never land.

• After this world: Images of Elysium, Valhalla, a .hereafter, a

resting place for spirits of the departed.

• Beyond all worlds: Spatial images of a metaphysical-cosmic nature, which are essentially nonspatial and ethereal: The All-One,

infinity, nirvana."