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A Nightmare
| Article
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20221 |
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Section : |
SPECIAL SECTION
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1992 |
3,345 Words |
| Author
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Morton A. Kaplan
Editor and Publisher |
"Nightmare" is an appropriate designation for the scenario that follows. Although it will read like an account of a frightening dream, the world of 2042 might resemble that dream if we extrapolate certain tendencies in society.
The seeds of this nightmare, bizarre though they are, lie in the real world. And the arguments for many of the individual steps that might bring it to pass in some cases might even be considered praiseworthy.
Much of what occurs in this scenario is not original. Aldous Huxley in Brave New World and George Orwell in 1984, as well as many other novelists, created anti-utopias in which omnipresent social controls radically changed the nature of man and of society. The anti-utopias usually have been regarded as merely imaginative extrapolations that were technologically unfeasible. Unfortunately, a few short years later, as we now write, it is less difficult to extrapolate from existing progress in the science to the technological developments necessary to produce these anti-utopias. Huxley's Alphas and Betas would still seem scientific marvels; yet recent advances in genetics, with specific reference to the unraveling of the DNA code, show them to be within the range of possibility. Many of the scientific developments of the future could be even more consequential than nuclear fission, less controllable by current techniques, and more inconsistent with existing social institutions and cultural values.
Many of the demands for increased social controls will stem from the vulnerabilities of modern complex societies. Although modern complex society has both greater instantaneous and long-range flexibility than simpler societies, it also has less redundancy and more bottlenecks that could affect the whole society. Thus major interruptions that overwhelm its instantaneous or short-run adjustment capability, or occur too suddenly for its long-range flexibility to get a change to work, might cause great damage to the society. Because simple societies are less interdependent than modern complex societies, their breakdowns are often much less total in their effects. The modern industrial society is highly differentiated and therefore requires greater integration in order to function effectively. The disrupted complex society, under at least some important conditions, might not be able to sustain even the low level of productivity that is normal to a simple society.
Sensitivity requiring control
The greater wealth and
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