Visions of the Future: The Distant Past, Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow (Oxford American Lectures)

From Publishers Weekly
In this short, stimulating essay, eminent economist Heilbroner argues that humanity's expectation of a future measurably better than the past became widespread only with the rise of capitalism and its handmaiden, technology, beginning around 1700. By contrast, from the emergence of Homo sapiens to the dawn of the modern European nation-state, he contends societies preached acceptance of the status quo. Since roughly 1950, in Heilbroner's estimate, optimism about the future has given way to pessimistic resignation, partly because of decline in real incomes and growing political unrest. Predicting that capitalism will be the principal socioeconomic system in the 21st century, he ponders ways to prevent structurally or technologically induced unemployment. Given the requisite political will, he maintains, the U.S. could undertake a massive government-led program to create jobs and rebuild slums, while coordinated international efforts could stabilize population growth and eradicate poverty worldwide. Sadly, he surmises, the requisite political will is missing. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From School Library Journal
YA?Heilbroner ruminates on the economic implications of four time periods. Much like the classic Abbott and Costello routine, "Who's on First," verbally covering four bases takes precision, timing, and delivery. The author integrates civilized history, quotes from other economists and philosophers, and laser-sharp hindsight to ultimately bring home a vision for "tomorrow." However, his professional delivery and vocabulary make Visions of the Future best suited for gifted YAs.?Karen Sokol, Fairfax County Schools, VACopyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Economist Heilbroner's premise is that there are several ways of looking at the future. In the 100,000-year-long distant past, which ended in the 17th century, there was no vision of a better future. In yesterday's world (the two and a half centuries that followed), the idea of progress evolved, promising a better life for all. In today's world, however, the dangerous and dehumanizing consequences of scientific and technological change and a socioeconomic order (capitalism), less trustworthy than when it first evolved, have created great anxiety about the future. For a better tomorrow, Heilbroner believes that humankind must preserve the earth, stabilize the size of the population, abolish war, and give human nature the educational and cultural support it deserves. This is a thoughtful analysis, gracefully written. Recommended for most libraries.Harry Frumerman, formerly with Hunter Coll., CUNYCopyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Economist Heilbroner's contribution to the New York Public Library/Oxford University Press lecture series (which produced C. Vann Woodward's The Old World's New World, Robert Hughes' Culture of Complaint, and Garry Wills' Witches and Jesuits) argues an elegantly simple thesis: throughout some 150,000 years of history, "humanity's worldly expectations [embodied]. . . . no more than three distinct visions of the future," visions that both reflected and articulated the three era's distinctive experiences with and interpretations of reality. Until the early eighteenth century (when the "Distant Past" became "Yesterday"), virtually all cultures expected both an earthly future controlled by "the same forces--divine, natural, or man-made--that had produced the past" and some form of life after death. During the industrialized world's 250 years, changes wrought by science and technology, capitalism, and popular political movements produced a vision of endless earthly progress. At some point between World War II and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Heilbroner suggests, this vision fell apart, as the people who most benefited from Yesterday's faith in progress discovered that science and technology, capitalism, and popular movements are not necessarily unalloyed goods. A thoughtful, challenging reading of our current anxiety as something more fundamental than "fashionable pessimism." Mary Carroll


Book Description
A prophetic vision of the shape of things to come, from one of America's most eloquent economists. Heilbroner gives a penetrating historical overview of how we have thought about the future through the ages, and issues a clarion call to face the challenges of the 21st century with a new awareness and resolve strengthened by the inspiration of our past.


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Heilbroner calls the first view that of the Distant Past—the immense span that begins with the Stone Age, moves through the great early civilizations of the Near East to the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome, and ends only with the advent of modern times in the eighteenth century. Heilbroner makes the bold assertion that through all this vast panorama a single phrase depicts humanity's expectations of life on earth: it will be like the past. As he asks, what reason was there for expecting anything else? Change comes with the second, much shorter period, from the 1700s to the mid 1950s. Heilbroner calls it Yesterday. Now three immense forces, unknown in the Distant Past, dominate the expectations of the West. One of these is science, with its promise of controlling nature. A second is the advent of a dynamic means of organizing production called capitalism. And a third is the appearance of the revolutionary idea that the people themselves were the master of their destinies. Together these three forces imbue Yesterday's view of the future with an idea utterly unknown in the Distant Past: the expectation that the future will be better than the present. The third view is that of Today. Heilbroner points out that our own view of the future is still linked to science, capitalism, and democracy. What is new is that these powerful forces no longer appear as unambiguous carriers of progress. We look to science with fears as well as hopes; capitalism on a global scale brings economic difficulties along with new horizons; the expression of mass political sentiments conjures up the nightmares of Yugoslavia and Africa as well as possibilities for a widening of democratic government.


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