in the taste of the past. Bisham Azgad on Hamish McCray's book. Translated from English: Yaakov Aharonson, Hed Artzi Publishing.
Bischem Azgad
We - take a good look around and rub your eyes - are living what remains of the predictions and hopes of those who lived in this world, say, 114 years ago. And in the process we try to predict the shape of things to come. for the future
our children
Yesterday, on April 24, 2001, it was 114 years since the publication of Edward Bellamy's "Looking Back" 2000-1887. A book that almost changed the world, but Auschwitz and Hiroshima curbed its influence. In 1935 Charles Byrd, John Dewey determined
And Edward Weeks, unanimously, that "Looking Back" is in second place on the list of books that have influenced human society. The first on the list was Marx's "Capital".
"The world in 2020" is competing for the slot of the modern replacement for "looking back". The determining criterion in this competition is the combination between the range of the prophecy and the degree of accuracy in its fulfillment. Marx spoke, almost like the prophets of Israel, about the end of days. Between the appearance of Bellamy's book and the period he described, 113 years separated. Victory in all practical respects. McRae's book was published in 1995 and he only dares to go as far as 2020. This could be accepted, if only the man who clipped his wings with his own hands
He would reach a level of success that was not the share of prophets and futurists who worked before him. But he failed like them, though for different reasons.
Mounds of words have already been written about Marx's failure. Bellamy's failure stems from what project management software defines as unforeseeable. In his attempt to predict the shape of things to come, Bellamy uses a rather well-worn trick: he casts a deep slumber on one, Julian West, a rich and spoiled young resident of Boston in the year 1887. West wakes up 113 years later, and finds the Boston of the year 2000 completely different from the industrial city Sooty and haunted by the hardships in which he fell asleep. Now he has no choice but to look into the past ("looking back") and compare the reality of the year 2000 with that of 1887.
The use of the long sleep trick in the style of the circle dwellers may not indicate too much originality, but beyond this single technical point, "Looking Back" is a pioneering work in the full sense of the word. He paved the way for hundreds of books written in his wake in the last hundred years. And this is the context in which it should be seen
Same: greatness of firsts.
Alongside the technological futuristic literature of Jules Verne and the stories of time machines and aliens by Herbert George Wells, Bellamy founded a new futuristic literature: social-political-economic, whose image of the future is created thanks to the logic of the reorganization of human society. McCray's "The World in 2020" also belongs to this group, and this is how it should be seen: a pale and weak member of a group of spectacular adventurers.
Julian West, examining the reality of the year 2000, reports to Edward Bellamy's readers that a great many changes have taken place/will take place during the 113 years that separate them from "the future". It starts with a small but basic fact: money has passed from the world. The means of production are in the hands of the democratic state. People volunteer to work in the "Industrial Army". Everyone is allowed to choose an occupation or a profession according to their inclinations. The main reward for excellence at work is the appreciation and affection of the people living in your immediate environment. Those who believe that they are talented for studies may study at the university instead of working. The quiet social contempt prevents parasitism. There is no hostility and competitiveness between the citizens. Everyone "supports" everyone. The citizen in the "industrial republic" only consumes the services he is willing to return to others.
As Dr. Leith tells Julian West, "After all, our main goal is not to accumulate wealth but to live a good life."
Cars move in the covered and air-conditioned streets. In the huge shopping malls, the citizen chooses what he needs from a catalog and receives the goods through pipes that connect the store to the warehouses in the various parts of the city. No one is trying to "push" you products that you don't need. There are no marketing efforts and no commercial advertising.
Bellamy "invents" in his book, one by one, the radio, the television, the airplane and the calculating machines, but the technological development that is a source of wonder does not play in the center of the field for him. The story focuses on the complete equality that exists between the citizens of Boston in the year 2000. The society must allow a welfare life for all the individuals that make it up, regardless of their "value" or the extent of their contribution to society. There is no longer a need for lawyers and judges. The law is so simple and logical that any person can act as a judge and arbiter between two of his friends.
Service in the "Industrial Army" ends when the citizen reaches the age of 45. From then on he is allowed to take on management roles. Only now, when he is allowed to be elected, is he given the right to vote in the democratic elections.
Choosing partners for reproductive purposes is freed from any considerations of expediency. Marriage is determined only by love. People naturally prefer to marry those with qualities that are considered "good". Over the years, in a process of natural selection, the "superior" traits multiply, while the less desirable genetic defects, such as mental retardation and diseases
Different heredities, disappear gradually.
Audiences loved Bellamy's book, which sold millions of copies and was translated into more than twenty languages. Among other things, in 1898 a Hebrew edition of "Looking Back" was published in Warsaw, translated ("copied") by Paltiel Yosef Tomarkin of Chisinau, under the name "The Year of the Millennium".
A few years after the book was published, hundreds of "Blamy Clubs" arose in the United States and Europe, which were the backbone of what was then seen as a new social-political movement that advocated the implementation of the ideas expressed in "Looking Back". Among the activists in these clubs were, among others, the law student Edward Benesch, later the president of Czechoslovakia, the student Ramsey Macdonald, later the prime minister of Great Britain, and the student Karl Renner, later the chancellor of Austria.
Unlike the socialists, Bellamy believed that the new society should arise through a process of natural and logical development. He vigorously opposed the "class war", the word "socialism", which does not appear in the book even once, seemed to him "problematic" in the American context. Because of this, he preferred to call his movement the "nationalist movement", a word that would later be very problematic, and would even completely cancel any chance of his prophecies coming true in the defined time frame he took for himself (113 years), but at the end of the last century, apparently no one could exceed his opinion
Auschwitz and Hiroshima.
The failure of Bellamy, the founding father of the "science" of social technological futurism, taught the new futurists a lesson. The shorter your prediction range, the greater your chances of success. Hundreds of "scientific" forecasting institutes are currently operating on this basis, providing forecasts to governments and economic companies. Thus, for example, news was recently published in the newspapers about a forecast submitted by the CIA's research institute to the American government. The forecast stretched over the length of 15 years (entirely!) speaks of: nuclear weapons in the hands of Iraq and Iran, an increase in the population of China and India, and an increase in the importance of oil. And this list cost the American taxpayer several millions of "scientific" dollars.
Hamish McRae is a careful financial journalist who tries to avoid repeating the mistakes of Marks and Bellamy. But in doing so, he puts himself in line with predictive failures like American intelligence. Here are some typical examples from McRae's predictions for the year 2020: The US will move away from its Anglo-Saxon roots and the influence of Spanish-speaking immigrants will increase. Many American citizens will not feel rich at all. Many immigrants will bring energy, skills and ambition to it.
Ensuring fairness and equal opportunities for members of different races will place a heavy budgetary burden on the government. The economies of Canada and Mexico will be integrated into the American economy. The US will remain the only superpower. It will continue to protect the areas in which it has a special interest, such as the Middle East. Europe will create a union of separate countries and not become a single superpower. The introduction of a European currency until 1999 seems now - in 1995 - far from reality (!). Europe will try to adapt itself to the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is difficult to see what can prevent China from its future as a major economy
in the world, etc., etc.
Wait, what's going on here? McRae talks about the year 2020 and describes, almost accurately, the reality we live in in 2001. A forecast intended for a period of 25 years was almost completely fulfilled in only five or six years. At first glance, one might think that this is a brilliant victory of "scientific" futurism. McRae can say with satisfaction "I told you so". But the fact that his predictions come true so close to the time
where they were published indicates that we have a list of almost self-evident assessments, that there is no process of drawing complex multi-process conclusions, and worst of all, that there is no willingness to take any risk, even the smallest. In short, another victory like this, and we lost.
Bottom line: futurism without flight is like a future without hope. On the other hand, a prediction that does not come true is not, necessarily, a failure if it teaches us where we could have reached, what we missed and where we can still strive.
