Predicting the Future, Part IV

In Part I of this series we learned that expert predictions are usually wrong. In Part II and III we touched upon successful predictions based on historical or social knowledge. Edmund Burke foresaw the future course of the French Revolution in its first chapter; Max Weber saw the rise of bureaucracy as a logical outcome of democracy; Joseph Schumpeter predicted socialism's steady advance against the free market and capitalism's steady retreat. The predictions of Burke, Weber and Schumpeter were of limited scope. With the exception of Schumpeter, great scholars seldom mapped the future. By the late 20^th century, scholars were not so modest. In 1976 Herman Kahn, William Brown, Leon Martel and the Hudson Institute published The Next 200 Years: A Scenario for America and the World.

It is impressive when researchers rise above the pessimism of their own time to offer an optimistic assessment. Kahn and his co-authors anticipated America's return to growth and confidence at a time when economic optimism was unfashionable. "For the past several years many concerned, intelligent people have developed strongly pessimistic feelings," they noted. "More recently, rising concern about pollution and the possible exhaustion of many natural resources has increased the already serious doubts about the continuation of this 'disproportionate' consumption...."

The pessimism of the 1970s was so deep-rooted that on July 15, 1979, President Jimmy Carter delivered his ill-conceived "Crisis of Confidence" speech to the American people. "I promised you a president who ... feels your pain," explained Carter. What the nation wanted, of course, was a leader who would make the pain go away. The journalists and scholars of the moment did not think such a leader was possible. A consensus had emerged, to paraphrase Kahn and his co-authors, "that a turning point has been reached in world history, one that portends either a much more disciplined and austere - even bleak - future for mankind...."

The pessimistic consensus of the 1970s collapsed in the 1980s, after the election of Ronald Reagan. Kahn and his co-authors deserve credit for anticipating this collapse: "The Hudson Institute has been engaged for some time in ... a major attempt to examine and analyze these issues in world development," Kahn explained. "In our view, the application of a modicum of intelligence and good management in dealing with current problems can enable economic growth to continue for a considerable period of time, to the benefit, rather than the detriment, of mankind."

Kahn charted the world's future in terms of a "GREAT TRANSITION."

Kahn contradicted the "limits to growth" crowd. He did not fear the "population explosion" or raw material depletion. Instead, he warned of something he called "educated incapacity," defined as: "an acquired or learned inability to understand or see a problem, much less a solution." Kahn would doubtless say that university-educated environmentalists, neo-Luddites and socialists are exemplars of "educated incapacity." Here stands the problem of the non-existent problem - politicized and fanaticized. "In the transition to postindustrial society," wrote Kahn, "a vast group of intellectuals will be created as the need for expertise increases (and for self-serving reasons as well). These intellectuals may suffer from the most intense anomie of all social groups."

Kahn anticipated a decline in intellectual standards due to the creation of what he called "mass professions." The newly minted intellectual experts, shabby in comparison with 19^th century scholars, believe "that they should wield social power." Organizing themselves to promote new bureaucracies based on problems that do not exist or cannot be solved, these "experts" threaten mankind's progress. "If one considers the acceptance of the zero economic growth thesis currently put forward by some groups, together with a willingness to organize and harness scholarship," Kahn warned, "one can imagine a trend over several centuries toward an essentially Confucian meritocratic social order dominated by self-serving and self-justifying ... university-trained mandarins and bureaucracies."

Unfortunately we haven't had to wait several centuries for the new mandarins. They are with us today, clothed in white lab coats, claiming to know best how to cope with global warming, ozone depletion and poverty. The work of these new mandarins is, as Kahn predicted, self-aggrandizing and unscientific. Here the struggle for power corrupts the struggle for truth. Nothing could be more corrosive to scholarship and science than an ever-expanding bureaucratic power that fuels itself on the basis of "scientific" claims.

Kahn also touches on the question of Western nihilism and the collapse of traditional values. Kahn and the Hudson Institute correctly predicted that traditional values would continue to erode. "If we are correct," wrote Kahn, "and traditional values cannot be restored, then Americans will have to import, invent and inculcate new values. It is optimistic to believe that this can be done easily and consciously." In other words, the values of tomorrow will emerge from the unconscious. They will struggle to the surface against long odds. Kahn does not tell us what the new values will be, but if history is any indication the new values will be the same as the old values. The struggle to realize them will be no less ridiculous than the re-invention of the wheel.

The good news, according to Kahn, is the economic news: "Americans are going to be enormously wealthy, so they must learn how to spend their wealth without becoming satiated, disappointed or fashionably anti-materialistic." There is also the possibility, noted by Kahn, that affluence might lead to the atrophy of "republican virtues, by which are meant moderation, self discipline and modesty."

Kahn's study suggests that food, energy and population do not present us with insurmountable problems. But transcendental questions of right and wrong, spiritual truth and humanity's relation to God are not addressed. Man's moral limitations, along with the utopian misconceptions of intellectual mandarins, suggest an approaching age of chaos. But Kahn and his colleagues at the Hudson Institute suppose that by 2175 the world population will have stabilized at 15 billion with a GWP of $300 trillion at $20,000 per capita (in 1975 dollars). Does anyone seriously believe this prediction today? Is it rational to suggest that economic progress can survive the erosion of traditional morality? How can institutions (like the free market) expect to outlive the values that made them possible in the first place?

It must be emphasized - in fairness - that Kahn predicted the continued erosion of traditional values. But how can economic growth and international peace be maintained in the wake of this erosion?

There is a problem with a purely materialistic idea of progress. It is a contradiction to maintain that mankind's standard of living can increase while his standard of morality crumbles. In his book, Enemies of the Permanent Things, Russell Kirk wrote: "Life without principle, in letters or politics, soon becomes insufferably boring; also it cannot long endure. Nothing is sillier than the concept of an 'amoral' society...." According to Kirk, if we ignore morality "the game is soon over, and genuine humanity ceases to exist."

The Next 200 Years is an optimistic book. It admits that traditional values are disappearing. It supposes that new values will emerge to replace the old values. But who will choose tomorrow's values? Will it be the Islamists or Europe's social democrats? Will it be the Christian fundamentalists or the liberal atheists? What is implied, however indirectly, is the inevitability of a planet-wide struggle over planet-wide values. How will this struggle be waged? Will it be fought with conventional weapons or nuclear weapons? Will it be fought on a clandestine basis or in the open?

Next week we will attempt to answer these and other questions.