Reading Journal #1: Polak and Engerman

The history of the future sounds like quite an oxymoron. If history is by definition a study of the past how can we study the future? The trick is that rather than studying the future, we study what society expects of the future. Our first reading concerns a Dutch politician named Fred L. Polak. In his passage, Crossing the Frontiers of the Unknown, Polak describes how our desire to expand beyond our limited collection of knowledge pushes us on. His passage sounds more akin to a philosophical discussion over the motivation of human progress rather than a history essay. Yet his words do hold historical significance in that his views reflect on the atmosphere of his time period. He has a rather upbeat tone about the development of humans. His stance is akin to that of enlightenment thinkers who saw history as a line of progression. Polak is careful to indicate that the advancement of civilization has not been so one sided, evident when he says, “he (referring to mankind) has suffered, indeed, as a consequence.” However directly after that he goes on to state “man has always somehow realized that the impossible was absolutely necessary.” The rest of the passage goes on repeating this mantra of humans progressing by preparing for the future. Clearly, Polak is quite convinced that the future will continue to expand human knowledge for the better. On the other hand, I doubt that the expansion of human knowledge will benefit us all. A look at the technological progress of warfare demonstrates how we continue to develop more ways to efficiently kill as many people as possible. A glance at the current state of the Internet with its invasions of privacy shows we live ever closer to the fictionalized police state of 1984. As our knowledge of the human body expands we find our nations spiraling into economic instability with rising healthcare costs. In our modern times we have reached a point where knowledge is freely disseminated among the people thousands of miles away. Yet people still continue to live in ignorance preferring to listen to their own ideas over the truth, contrary to Polak’s statement that “man has never been able to accept ‘ignoramus, ignorabimus’ (ignorant we are and ignorant we will remain) as his motto.” The future is not composed of human bravely exploring the boundaries of their knowledge. Rather the future is fraught with well-minded people creating new problems at the same time they solve old ones.

The second reading is more appropriate when addressing the future. Histories of the Future and the Futures of History places three essays by Jenny Andersson, Matthew Connelly (and his associates), and Manu Goswami in the context of the future studies and expectation. This idea is similar to Polak’s idea of a “valued future,” in which the future reflects the values of its society. However, the essays each show how reality does not quite live up to expectations. Anderson with his transnational ideals was given a reality check during the 1972 conference “The Common Future of Man.” There the officials played up the ideals of their respective countries. Goswami wrote of another man who attempted to bridge the divide, Kumar Sarkar. Sarkar advocated for cultural exchange and cosmopolitanism. His thoughts were quite ahead of his time and as a result were largely ignored in favor of national self-determination. This second reading is frankly more down to Earth than Polak’s inspirational dreams of the future. Histories of the Future and the Futures of History displays how regardless of the futuristic progress of humans some things still remain the same.