430 - Things to Come: Thinking about the 70's and 80's

Things to Come: Thinking about the 70's and 80's
By Herman Kahn and B. Bruce-Briggs
New York, The Macmillan Company, 1972. 262 pp. $6.95.

In 1967, the Hudson Institute produced The Year 2000 by Herman Kahn and Anthony Wiener. After that, the Institute's look into the nearer future should be fairly simple. This book gives the findings with wit and skill.

Many theologians take a dim view of any such enterprise. Believing in the freedom of God and man, they emphasize the unpredictability of the future. By showing rather easily the wild errors of many past predictions, they discredit "futurology," a word that lends itself to spoofing. The other side of the argument is that our present world suffers from pains that might have been avoided if past generations bad given more thought to consequences of their actions. For this reason, I do not discredit projections about the future, even if I read them with some wariness.

The Hudson Institute knows that prediction is an art, never infallible. But it believes that some futures are more probable than others and that present choices should take account of those probabilities. Their method is to begin with a projection of present tendencies into a "surprise-free future," recognizing all the while that "the most surprising thing that can happen . . . is that there will be no surprises." Hence, the second step is to try to imagine the surprises that might change the projection.

This study sees the contemporary world as a characteristically "late, sensate" period, experiencing a slow erosion or evolution into a new era. To get more specific in this short space is to risk injustice by giving bare conclusions without their supporting reasoning. But I'll try to be fair. The authors see 1972 as less stable than the 1960s, and 1976 as still less so. But they do not expect a world war, partly because war is getting more dangerous and less rewarding. The bipolar world is becoming multipolar, and the nation-state is losing much of its traditional allure. There is an exhaustion of political emotions, an acceptance of the status quo or at least an apathy and fear of war, despite widespread alienation and anarchistic impulses. The world is easily disrupted by sabotage or terrorism. Yet, we may be moving in a relatively anarchic but also "relatively orderly and unified world." Beyond this early future may be the emergence of the "post-industrial world," as different from the industrial world as the latter is from the earlier agricultural world.

431 - Things to Come: Thinking about the 70's and 80's

Several events might change this future radically. The most obvious is nuclear war. Another is a triumph of the counterculture, but the authors think that it, despite some permanent effects, has peaked. Still another is economic and political revolution, which is judged not probable on any grand scale.

Then there is the possibility of technological crisis and disaster. Here the authors equivocate. They realize-like the scientists who did the Club of Rome study, The Limits to Growth-that infinite, exponential growth cannot continue on a finite earth. They grant that "apocalyptic language" is "to some degree justifiable." They expect some breakdowns and say that things may simply fall apart, but they think that mankind can cope with technology, at least for the next ten or twenty years. More curiously, they go on to project a post-industrial society of immense affluence and leisure, as though they had never written the early chapter on technological crises.

This book says little to help the professional esteem of theologians. Traditional Christianity, it says, is "in great disarray and I won't argue. Although many people are "searching almost desperately for a new ideology" and although religious groups may proliferate within the pluralistic, "mosaic" (not "Mosaic") culture, "a true religious revival" is unlikely. The clergy have moved from fad to fad, with the younger ones already seeing the middle-aged radical activists as anachronistic. Theologians share the "failure of nerve" that characterizes other intellectuals.

Although the writers pay conventional deference to the idea of "value-free" inquiry, they reveal their tastes and commitments. They describe their own values as somewhat "square," and they are more impressed with the "economic stagnation" of Cuba (to take an example) than with the élan of a people convinced they are experiencing liberation. They think that economic development promises more to poor nations and social classes than revolution. They score some points that romantic revolutionaries might well take account of. But, then, the revolutionaries are saying some things that the too comfortable Hudson Institute needs to hear.

Roger L. Shinn
Union Theological Seminary
New York City