Fred Polak Quotes

:(10) All objectives meet in the endlessly continued approach to and progress towards the ideal “summum bonum”, though this, the most valuable humanistic good of a full human society, may perhaps never be capable of realization in total perfection.

The brain attempts to recognize this odor image by scanning and resolving it into previously stored patterns

:(1) I think about the future, therefore I am and can be a human being;

As the reader is aware, at the cradle of our learning stood the philosophy of Asia Minor and Greece, itself influenced in turn by Indian and Oriental philosophical and religious conceptions. It is the tragedy of this philosophy that, although it was traditionally directed towards the undogmatic acquisition of wisdom and virtue, always regarding the freedom of human rational thought in visionary fashion as the highest good, it nevertheless inevitably led to a mental hardening of the arteries into coercive thought models.

Utopism is the forerunner of all modem conceptions concerning social policy, social organization, and social peace. All the art of social engineering could not place one stone upon another in the social edifice if the broad outlines of the system as an idea had not been projected long before, and if the seeds of the motivating ideals had not early been sowed in the hearts of men.

The trends in modem technology reveal most clearly the contrasting modes of development in thinking about the future. Technology offers an unprecedented confirmation of the possibilities of the utopia, often far exceeding the utopian fantasies in its concrete achievements. Through technology, Homo sapiens can transform ail things; at last man appears to be master of his own fate.

Modern technology could advance to the point at which social engineers would be true masters of a complete conformist society which could no longer distinguished from a mass concentration camp. We might ultimately be directed by a superstructure of intelligent machines... Revolutionary changes in the next 30 years would be farther-reaching that many over the past 3.000 years.

Awareness of ideal values is the first step in the conscious creation of images of the future... for a value is by definition that which guides a ‘valued’ future.

The rise and fall of images of the future precedes or accompanies the rise and fall of cultures. As long as a society's image is positive and flourishing, the flower of culture is in full bloom. Once the image begins to decay and lose its vitality, however, the culture does not long survive.

All kinds of separate, fragmented portions of the jigsaw puzzle are of little avail, unless they are fitted together in the best possible way, to form an image of the future depicting a number of main areas of development.

:(6) For this purpose everyone, choosing in complete freedom and on his own responsibility, must be able and permitted to utilize all the philosophical and scientific thought models useful for this vital choice;

Social change will be viewed as a push-pull process in which a Society is at once pulled forward by its own magnetic images of an idealized future and pushed from behind by its realized past.

:(3) Anyone who ponders the future will learn that this is still open to a considerable extent that can be further determined from case to case...

:(7) Thought models, or models of the future, are useful insofar as they can reasonably contribute towards the optimum realization of man’s future-directed wishes and actions in a given situation or period;

Values, means and ends... [that drive this process in current societies; mean that we now] stagger under the double load of not only having to construct (his) own future but having to create the values that will determine its design.