According to Toffler, “whoever rejects change will be a victim of “shock”!
Renewal, Change or Transformation?
By Dr. Nurfer TERCAN
Just as we were saying that the virus was about to get past its second wave, and while we were still being chased with the stick of the mask, we looked and saw that New-wave Wars had begun in the east of the Mediterranean and in the waters of the Aegean. While some of us were furtively asking Google, the sage of our household, the question “What is a Navtex?”, we found ourselves sharing in the chat groups on our smartphones the map-by-map addresses of retired generals of ours whom we had never known before. And the doomsday we were expecting from the Aegean broke loose and came from the Caspian Sea. Before we could rejoice over the Maraş of the TRNC, we suddenly heard the scream of Hatay in Kahramanmaraş.
In short, the expected virus in its mutation jacket, grazing past its wave the second time round, promptly gave way to its 3rd wave with a different scenario. I think we have by now accepted that the new silk road has waves of every dimension, from its sea to its land.
The cry of the Wednesday that could never be predicted had in fact been uttered by a Thursday left over from the 1970s, and once again we were unable to Read it!
Alvin Toffler is the futurist writer who, in his books Future Shock, The Third Wave, Revolutionary Wealth, Powershift and his other works, gave news that a new age had begun and that great changes would take place, and who best described the information age. Toffler, who from the 1970s onwards pointed to the signs and the direction of this great change, explained in the best way that at the centre of the changes lie what he called the deep fundamentals: time, space and knowledge. Toffler did not hesitate either to explain that in Ilya Prigogine’s work “Order Out of Chaos” the principle of Ceteris Paribus (all things being alike) had changed, and to explain today’s variable, unbalanced and turbulent conditions and chaos theory.
I think there is no one left on earth who has not understood the struggle between the Nation states and the globalists as the unfolding of the absolute power of change. Alvin Toffler in fact explains clearly that those who resist the phenomenon of change will also experience shock and, in a sense, will disappear…“People will either accept change or will be unable to exist”!
When he wrote his work “Future Shock” in the 1970s, he had in fact explained what the warning of 2020, “Nothing Will Ever Be the Same Again”, was, and had also made the best analysis of the question “what is happening to us”. “The throw-away culture will spread… Uniformity will prevail… Even relationships will be temporary”… The only things he did not say were social distancing and masks. If we read carefully, what else he said, and we did not hear.
I think no one yet has been able to write, with as much proof and documentation as Toffler, that Heraclitus, who stated more than 2,500 years ago “that the only thing that does not change is change”, was right. With this work “shock”, which he published in the previous century, the one we lived through and witnessed, he said, “Hey! you young people and children of today,” be advised, you are going to be SHOCKED, and yet…
One feels like saying, deeply, deeply, “Good heavens”!
In Future Shock, Alvin Toffler first spoke of our coming from the hunter-gatherer society that does not think of its tomorrow. He as good as said, “Mind you now, whatever you do, ‘know yourselves’, and then do not go into Shock, God forbid.”
Alvin Toffler explained transience very briefly, by way of a warning, as “throw away, buy a lot, consume a lot, so that in the new world order they may thoroughly grind you down”.
“…In parallel with the change in human relationships, the relationships between people and objects have also turned into the ‘throw-away’ style, with products such as paper napkins, tissues, towels, plastic bottles and ready-meal containers.
…Fast living has created a society of a nomadic character. The concept of distance has completely lost its meaning. Today’s outlook requires people to travel a great deal, both for work and for pleasure. And the technological symbol of this mobility is the ‘automobile’. A life tied to property is now defined as less free. For this reason renting a home is also becoming preferable to acquiring one. Those who are better off culturally and economically make up the more mobile section.”
Renewal, change or transformation? If these concepts are not well understood, are we not dragged towards an outcome like the formation of a bacterium that eats a person away? Toffler’s concept of Novelty: a powerful trigger system for the dominance of transience. The greatest poison injected into society is “the feeling of owning and merely consuming even though there is no need”. Nor should we overlook his finding that the next aim of savage capitalism is that it will insidiously continue to exist.
What more could Alvin Toffler say, and in the 1970s at that! “…The few long-lasting friendships of the past will be replaced in the future by the concept of many short-lived friendships. Relationships between people will take on a more temporary character, and the ‘modular relationship’ type established with people such as the barber, the waiter and the repairman will occupy an important place in our lives. In our day the tempo at which human relationships are formed and forgotten will accelerate. This will be more marked among those of high social status and among richer people. For the poor’s need for solidarity requires them to keep human relationships somewhat tighter. The relationships of neighbourhood, of coming from the same home town and of citizenship will be replaced by the ties of company, profession and friendship. The nuclear family will break up, people will give up having children, and the way of life described as ‘solo living’ will become increasingly widespread…”
Another of Toffler’s findings for today’s Wednesday: while drawing attention to the fact that the “throw-away” culture would spread, he was also bringing news of adhocracy.
According to Toffler, it is the type of organisation defined as “adhocracy”. In short, he is speaking of an organisation that works the “throw-away” culture deep, deep into us.
Toffler: “…These are temporary teams whose members come together to solve a particular problem and then disperse. These will be more important than bureaucracy; bureaucracy will collapse and they will perhaps take its place. Because the pace of change will reach a level to which bureaucracy cannot adapt. In the adhocracy type of organisation, ability and professional training will gain importance, and a person’s title will not matter as it does in bureaucracy.”
With the creation of subcultures, he speaks of a way of life that is new but that we do not know at all. Heaven forbid!
For the human being the unknown is terrifying. Because we were always afraid, we somehow never managed to love… Because we always Hated, we fought. Whereas the purpose of the creation of the “HUMAN BEING” was solely to Love. We could not know it! And as long as we do not Know Ourselves we shall not be able to know, we shall not be able to love, we shall always be afraid. And for this reason the war of evils will never end! “Future shock is a dizzying phenomenon that arises as a result of the future entering our lives before its time.”
As Toffler points out, could we not think a little more about fear and about loving? With the prayer that our broken-down, crumpled, throw-away life may turn into a life full of love… You know how the more we fall, the more we dream, and the more we dream, the more we think… Let us say it is exactly the right time to think!
Keywords: Change Alvin Toffler Virus
Translated from the Turkish original.