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.Thus the future shockvictim who does employ these strategies experiences a deepening sense of confusion anduncertainty.Caught in the turbulent flow of change, called upon to make significant, rapid-fire life decisions, he feels not simply intellectual bewilderment, but disorientation at thelevel of personal values.As the pace of change quickens, this confusion is tinged with self-doubt, anxiety and fear.He grows tense, tires easily.He may fall ill.As the pressuresrelentlessly mount, tension shades into irritability, anger, and sometimes, senseless violence.Little events trigger enormous responses; large events bring inadequate responses.Pavlov many years ago referred to this phenomenon as the "paradoxical phase" in thebreakdown of the dogs on whom he conducted his conditioning experiments.Subsequentresearch has shown that humans, too, pass through this stage under the impact ofoverstimulation, and it may explain why riots sometimes occur even in the absence of seriousprovocation, why, as though for no reason, thousands of teenagers at a resort will suddenlygo on the rampage, smashing windows, heaving rocks and bottles, wrecking cars.It mayexplain why pointless vandalism is a problem in all of the techno-societies, to the degree thatan editorialist in the Japan Times reports in cracked, but passionate English: "We have neverbefore seen anything like the extensive scope that these psychopathic acts are indulged intoday."And finally, the confusion and uncertainty wrought by transience, novelty and diversitymay explain the profound apathy that de-socializes millions, old and young alike.This is notthe studied, temporary withdrawal of the sensible person who needs to unwind or slow downbefore coping anew with his problems.It is total surrender before the strain of decision-making in conditions of uncertainty and overchoice.Affluence makes it possible, for the first time in history, for large numbers of people tomake their withdrawal a full-time proposition.The family man who retreats into his eveningwith the help of a few martinis and allows televised fantasy to narcotize him, at least worksduring the day, performing a social function upon which others are dependent.His is a part-time withdrawal.But for some (not all) hippie dropouts, for many of the surfers and lotus-eaters, withdrawal is full-time and total.A check from an indulgent parent may be the onlyremaining link with the larger society.On the beach at Matala, a tiny sun-drenched village in Crete, are forty or fifty cavesoccupied by runaway American troglodytes, young men and women who, for the most part,have given up any further effort to cope with the exploding high-speed complexities of life.Here decisions are few and time plentiful.Here the choices are narrowed.No problem ofoverstimulation.No need to comprehend or even to feel.A reporter visiting them in 1968brought them news of the assassination of Robert F.Kennedy.Their response: silence."Noshock, no rage, no tears.Is this the new phenomenon? Running away from America andrunning away from emotion? I understand uninvolvement, disenchantment, evennoncommitment.But where has all the feeling gone?"The reporter might understand where all the feeling has gone if he understood theimpact of overstimulation, the apathy of the Chindit guerrilla, the blank face of the disastervictim, the intellectual and emotional withdrawal of the culture shock victim.For these youngpeople, and millions of others the confused, the violent, and the apathetic already evincethe symptoms of future shock.They are its earliest victims.THE FUTURE-SHOCKED SOCIETYIt is impossible to produce future shock in large numbers of individuals without affecting therationality of the society as a whole.Today, according to Daniel P.Moynihan, the chiefWhite House advisor on urban affairs, the United States "exhibits the qualities of anindividual going through a nervous breakdown." For the cumulative impact of sensory,cognitive or decisional overstimulation, not to mention the physical effects of neural orendocrine overload, creates sickness in our midst.This sickness is increasingly mirrored in our culture, our philosophy, our attitudetoward reality.It is no accident that so many ordinary people refer to the world as a"madhouse" or that the theme of insanity has recently become a staple in literature, art, dramaand film.Peter Weiss in his play Marat/Sade portrays a turbulent world as seen through theeyes of the inmates of the Charenton asylum.In movies like Morgan, life within a mentalinstitution is depicted as superior to that in the outside world.In Blow-Up, the climax comeswhen the hero joins in a tennis game in which players hit a non-existent ball back and forthover the net.It is his symbolic acceptance of the unreal and irrational recognition that hecan no longer distinguish between illusion and reality.Millions of viewers identified with thehero in that moment.The assertion that the world has "gone crazy," the graffiti slogan that "reality is acrutch," the interest in hallucinogenic drugs, the enthusiasm for astrology and the occult, thesearch for truth in sensation, ecstasy and "peak experience," the swing toward extremesubjectivism, the attacks on science, the snowballing belief that reason has failed man, reflectthe everyday experience of masses of ordinary people who find they can no longer coperationally with change.Millions sense the pathology that pervades the air, but fail to understand its roots.Theseroots lie not in this or that political doctrine, still less in some mystical core of despair orisolation presumed to inhere in the "human condition." Nor do they lie in science,technology, or legitimate demands for social change.They are traceable, instead, to theuncontrolled, non-selective nature of our lunge into the future.They lie in our failure todirect, consciously and imaginatively, the advance toward super-industrialism.Thus, despite its extraordinary achievements in art, science, intellectual, moral andpolitical life, the United States is a nation in which tens of thousands of young people fleereality by opting for drug-induced lassitude; a nation in which millions of their parents retreatinto video-induced stupor or alcoholic haze; a nation in which legions of elderly folk vegetateand die in loneliness; in which the flight from family and occupational responsibility hasbecome an exodus; in which masses tame their raging anxieties with Miltown, or Librium, orEquanil, or a score of other tranquilizers and psychic pacifiers.Such a nation, whether itknows it or not, is suffering from future shock"I'm not going back to America," says Ronald Bierl, a young expatriate in Turkey."Ifyou can establish your own sanity, you don't have to worry about other people's sanity.Andso many Americans are going stone insane." Multitudes share this unflattering view ofAmerican reality.Lest Europeans or Japanese or Russians rest smugly on their presumedsanity, however, it is well to ask whether similar symptoms are not already present in theirmidst as well [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]