in order to mobilize present potential to move into the direction of this future.”1
(Van
der Helm, 2009, p. 100). In contrast, in unstable times of despair and doubt, our vision of the future may be a source of fear. Perhaps it was Bill
McKibben, in his 1989 book The End of Nature, who first crystallized an idea surfaced earlier by folks like Rachel Carson and Aldo Leopold: that the future in front of us may be of a diminished and damaged web of life. McKibben pointed out that there was no place left that was ‘natural’, and that human influence extended every place as even the atmosphere was now a human artifact, changed beyond ‘natural’ by the impact of human industrial activity. That activity is now also reflected in the scholarly papers written for the scientific journals. Reading those papers can leave one with a sense of loss and dimin- ishment, a sense of increasing risk around climate change, loss of habitat, fisheries disappearing, Antarctic ice sheet disintegration and more. With such disturbing findings, is it any wonder that we – both young and old – might be concerned with the future? When we as a culture have, by our collective actions,
negated the possibility of realizing our individual dreams — and all of us have similar dreams related to the flourishing of our personhoods, families and communities — what do we tell our youth? When our images of the future are increas- ingly of loss and diminishment, of extinctions, of pollution, of rising sea levels and shrinking glaciers, what and how do we teach our children? We can imagine a variety of futures. When our desires
and expectations for the future are confronted by a present reality that radically differs from that expectation, what can we do? If, in fact, our expectations are nothing more than wishful thinkings which bear little relationship to the future that our present actions seem to be generating, our self-deception can not and will not serve us well. Our vision of the future needs to have the power of hopefulness and not the pathology of deception. There is a power and greatness in a view of the future that is both hopeful and at the same time a vision with motive force.
The rise and fall of images of the future precedes or accompanies the rise and fall of cultures. As long as a society’s image is positive and flourishing, the flower of culture is in full bloom. Once the image begins to decay and lose its vitality, however, the culture does not long survive. (Polak, 1973, p. 19)
When we talk about the future with youth, do we offer
images of a hopeful future, and by this I mean a future that is both desirable and achievable through collective and individual actions? Or do we present images of despair? Is
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our image a dystopian vision of the future as hell, or a utopian one, a vision of heaven? Do we feel that we can influence the future for good or ill, or do we believe we are powerless? Is the future already determined, or can we change the course of history through actions needed to make our vision a reality? Do we have a vision that is optimistic, healthy and hope- ful, or pessimistic, sick and hopeless? These are questions that we as educators need to ask ourselves and reflect on the cultural zeitgeist as we talk with our students about the present and future. “The future may well be
decided by the images of the future with the greatest power to capture our imaginations and draw us to them, becoming self-fulfilling prophecies” (Olson, 1995, p. 34). Indeed, Fred Polak, author of The Image of the Future, felt that “…the potential strength of a culture could be measured by mea- suring the intensity and energy of its images of the future. These images were seen to act as a barometer indicating the potential rise or fall of a culture” (1973, p. 300). While the influences of a culture’s positive vision can become self- fulfilling, so too can the influences of pessimism and despair. When a culture’s aspirations die out, as the psalmist tells us, the culture dies: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” (Proverbs 29:18). The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead provided this memorable image of a culture’s movement into the future:
When man ceases to wander, he will cease to ascend in the scale of being. Physical wandering is still important, but greater still is the power of man’s spiritual adventures — adventures of thought, adventures of passionate feeling, adventures of aesthetic experience.... Modern science has imposed on humanity the necessity for wandering. This progressive thought and its progressive technology make the transition through time, from generation to generation, a true migration into uncharted seas of adventure. The very benefit of wandering is that it is dangerous and needs skills to avert evils. We must expect, therefore, that the future will disclose dan- gers. It is the business of the future to be dangerous” (1925, p. 208).
Danger and Fear
“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance” (Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s First Inaugural address, 1933) If it is, as Whitehead puts it, the business of the future to be dangerous, then we have to come to terms with the fear
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