/o-1100818/n/faces-of-the-21st-century)
We have been born and brought up in the era of scientific temper, economic growth and body welfare. Logic and thirst for knowledge are necessary to understand the world around us and to harness the potentials of nature to evolve a prosperous civilization. Economic growth is a must to rise above the poverty level and pestilence. But man does not live by logic and bread alone [...] Logic inspires a human being to use her/his intellectual prowess to overcome obstacles on the way of his material advancement. Ethics on the other hand inspires her/him to look within and develop her/his spiritual potentials to become a better human being. The former is based on competition, while the later on cooperation. One takes man to the path of violence; the other to the path of nondash violence. A judicious mix of the two ensures human survival and development. (R.P. Misra)
The real future lies behind horizons of the current trends. This future might be ahistorical, if no new trends emerge, or a new bout of history might start, triggered by new trends, initiated by the yet unknown technological and social innovations. The past provides us with examples of both options [...] Presently, the problem is not in predicting the most probable future but in divining possibilities of the more favorable developments [...] It becomes apparent that some of the crucial trends are no longer sustainable. [...] The widespread assumption that the only `two ways exist is a linear fallacy, limiting our choices to either liberal or social option. [...] There is an infinity of ways to explore... (R. Galar)
It is necessary to distinguish between forecasting and constructing future. Both these functions concern prognoses, but differ essentially: forecasting says what will probably happen, constructing future says what might happen if we take appropriate actions, taking also into account emergence of essentially new events. [...] An argument that we cannot construct future and that constructing future is self-contradictory, is erroneous: many of our actions aim at constructing future, for example, we construct future when building a house [...] Naturally, we can err and forget to take into account some dangerous but improbable event that will actually occur. [...] Future prediction, including both forecasting and constructing future, is a natural activity of people, who have constructed future using more or less correct forecasts in throughout the history of civilization, starting with the construction of a hammer and a wheel (A. P. Wierzbicki)
The real future lies behind horizons of the current trends. This future might be ahistorical, if no new trends emerge, or a new bout of history might start, triggered by new trends, initiated by the yet unknown technological and social innovations. The past provides us with examples of both options [...] Presently, the problem is not in predicting the most probable future but in divining possibilities of the more favorable developments [...] It becomes apparent that some of the crucial trends are no longer sustainable. [...] The widespread assumption that the only `two ways exist is a linear fallacy, limiting our choices to either liberal or social option. [...] There is an infinity of ways to explore... (R. Galar)
It is necessary to distinguish between forecasting and constructing future. Both these functions concern prognoses, but differ essentially: forecasting says what will probably happen, constructing future says what might happen if we take appropriate actions, taking also into account emergence of essentially new events. [...] An argument that we cannot construct future and that constructing future is self-contradictory, is erroneous: many of our actions aim at constructing future, for example, we construct future when building a house [...] Naturally, we can err and forget to take into account some dangerous but improbable event that will actually occur. [...] Future prediction, including both forecasting and constructing future, is a natural activity of people, who have constructed future using more or less correct forecasts in throughout the history of civilization, starting with the construction of a hammer and a wheel (A. P. Wierzbicki)
