Understanding and Practice of the Future in History and Modernity

Rozin Vadim Markovich Doctor of Philosophy Chief Scientific Associate, Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences  109240, Russia, Moskovskaya oblast', g. Moscow, ul. Goncharnaya, 12 str.1, kab. 310 rozinvm@gmail.com Other publications by this author

In the complex and uncertain situation of our time, in order to understand how to act, in which direction to carry out social transformations, they increasingly resort to "future practices", "working with the future" (forecasting, programming and social design, foresight strategies, depiction of future events in works of art, utopias, etc.). One of the many early examples of working with the future is A. Bogdanov's novels "Red Star" (1908) and "Engineer Manny" (1912). Here is a prediction of how the socialist economy will be organized (based on the principles of distribution and calculation of needs), but also a forecast of the possible tragic development of the revolution, on the one hand, due to the unpreparedness of the proletariat, on the other ? the contradictory development of the economy and the economy. And artistic foresight of the conflict of the intelligentsia and intellectuals with the workers and socialist leaders. And the utopia about the end of the world in the novel "Engineer Manny" (see ^[7]).   

If in Bogdanov's novels the understanding of the future still needs to be revealed (reconstructed), then in foresight technology it is put as the main content of the work, it is the task of the future and working with it that are the main ones here. For example, the Center for Strategic Studies of the Siberian Federal University published the results of an interesting analytical report "The Future of Higher Education in Russia" a few years ago.: expert view". Although the authors and experts of this report, among whom there are well-known philosophers and educators, emphasize that the future regarding the development of higher education is sufficiently uncertain, they nevertheless, using the methods of foresight research, characterize this future and draw in several scenarios the trajectory of school development in Russia… It is important, the authors note, that the image of the future is not just a political declaration, but really grasps the changes taking place and the prospects for global and country development<...> The project assumes: 1) building a picture of the future of higher education in Russia – the study of unfolding trends, possible critical situations, changes in the mission and functions of higher education in relation to society, promising technologies of educational and scientific activities, the expected activity of various subjects in the field of education, research and innovation; 2) the design of the field of scenarios, the definition of the "desired future" (the basic scenario) and the roadmap of "movement into the future"; 3) definition of requirements for state policy and management of higher education from the point of view of "movement into the desired future." ^{[2, p. 7-8] [9, p. 8-9]}

The published project has answers to all three of these tasks, and I analyzed how satisfactory and correct they can be considered ^[9]. The problem is different, it is not possible to create effective expert communities in Russia. For example, this is how the foresight technology is defined and the authors of another project (head S.A. Smirnov) characterize the Russian expert community. "If we summarize the specifics of conducting foresight research and implementing global foresight," they write, "then we can distinguish several basic differences between foresight and other projects and research. 1. Foresight necessarily involves working with concepts, with the semantics of the subject. It is necessary to clearly imagine what you want to see in the future… The subject becomes a "complex populative object", the result of configuring various representations ... 2. Foresight works in a long lag, with a horizon of 20, 30, 50 years ... 3. Foresight differs from the forecast in that the forecast assumes linear movement and change of finished objects while maintaining the current understanding of things, current speeds and lifestyles and etc. ... Foresight is based on the assumption of unexpected risks and on the competition of ideas. There is a struggle for the future. Different groups of people are competing for the future. Therefore, there cannot be one model and there cannot be a single image of the future. There are many of them and they all come into contact with each other, interact and compete… (but if we don't know which future will win, shouldn't we introduce the concept of an "uncertain future? - V.R.) 4. The future in this regard is not predicted, it is not a distant horizon. The future is man-made. It is being constructed. And it will have to be answered for by future generations... the future is not a direct continuation of the past. The future may be radically different, not the result of the past and the present ... 6. And therefore foresight assumes a step-by-step movement towards the future. It involves the construction of roadmaps for the future ... Many projects suffer precisely from the fact that even with a good elaboration of the image of the future, maps are not built, but are made hastily, in the format of any kind of sloppy event plans. Without resources, without responsible persons, without a proper traffic map, in which the passage of these points is mandatory… Forsyters together with expert groups and communities should offer a purely practical alternative: if we are not satisfied with the present that we are experiencing, then what should we do in the near and distant future to change this present? What specific practices do we offer?" ^{[5; 14]}.

"Judging by the text of the report, the authors of the project hoped, firstly, for the expert community, which was supposed to reach a common agreed vision of the future, and secondly, for the procedures for synthesizing and configuring expert knowledge. However, the authors themselves, summing up their work, admit that the expert community could not be formed. I will note, by the way, that the word expert comes from the Greek “connoisseur”. The meaning of public expertise is not to reach an agreed knowledge, but on the contrary, to get a fan of different judgments and opinions of experts, and it is assumed that experts, for example scientists, although they may actually belong to the same community, nevertheless have different views on the issue of interest. The synthesis of expert knowledge, in my opinion, looks unconvincing, besides, it seems that it was carried out by the head of the work, and, therefore, you can always ask why his point of view is taken as the main one. Here is the indicated, almost dramatic, but very honest result.          "The self-diagnosis of experts given above in two versions shows us, at a minimum, that we certainly do not have an expert community as an organized and united mental unity in horizontal connections…

In Russia, the problem of the expert community still remains unresolved, although in our country the project of long-term forecasting has already been developing for 5 years. The Russian expert community is characterized by decision-making within narrow groups of influence, and not in the space of a broad communication platform, the number of stable sites, forecasting centers is clearly insufficient. The reasons for this can be found in the mentality of the Russian expert community and in the low level of innovation activity of Russian companies, however, it seems fair to assume that relations between the scientific and technological, state and business sectors are fundamentally different in Russia. Russia, due to its national, state, political and economic specifics, is not as homogeneous a society with a high credit of trust in the state as Japan, is radically different from Britain, where small business is not as far from the state as in our country, and is not integrated into the large-scale unity of the European space as Germany. The state's initiative in long–term forecasting is what each of these countries started with, but in the future each of them chose its own direction of innovation activity, and it is logical to assume that the Russian foresight should also be methodologically and organizationally adapted to the Russian context. Otherwise, the gap between theory and practice, the "tops" and "bottoms", where, in fact, recommendations are implemented – the results of foresight will cancel many years of work and financial investments in collecting, analyzing and describing possible scenarios for the future of our country" ^{[5, p. 79, 84; 9]}.

But back to the education project. And here the expert community was not unified and competent enough. Consequently, the proposed image of the future of Russian education is not a plausible picture or expert ideas that will determine the development of education in the right direction, but rather a utopia.  In addition, where is the confidence that on the way to future education, the basic conditions and sociality will remain (or will correspond to the changes expected in the foresight), that they will not change dramatically, as it happened at the end of the last century?     

It can be noted that in both projects the authors proceeded from a certain understanding of the future. To what extent was it reflexed and elaborated? To a very small extent. But the approaches and logic of research depend on understanding the future. Perhaps this disadvantage is also characteristic of other practices of the future: they use a weakly reflected or unreflected image (understanding, concept) of the future in general. If this is the case, then the task arises to characterize the main images of the future. 

First of all, let's separate the "actual future" and the images of the future. For example, Francis Bacon in the XVII century sketched in his books such an image of the future: man will master nature, become powerful, create for these purposes natural sciences and "new magic" (engineering), build a new social organization that provides solutions to these problems ^{[10, pp. 148-156]}. In general, this project (if we now exclude the negative consequences that have arisen, but the author of the project did not guess about them) it was implemented, and the second half of the XIX and the first half of the XX century in relation to the Bacon's plan and image of the future can be characterized as an actual future. That is, the actual future is the period in which we live and which we see through the prism of a particular historical image of the future. Our current future may well be called uncertain, given the many ideas and images of the future that appeared in the twentieth century (and we are now in the XXI) and the inability to prefer any one.

Now consider the historical images of the future. Let us first give one historical material (case), where the image of the future has already been outlined. This is Plato's dialogue "The State". There is a fragment in it where souls before the next cycle of life on earth (while they are still in heaven, but must descend to earth and enter the human body) must choose their future destiny (different destinies are represented by lots offered by the goddess of fate Lachesis).

"After these words of the soothsayer, the one who got the first lot immediately came up, he took the life of a powerful tyrant for himself (before that, Lachesis, throwing lots into the crowd of souls, said: "Virtue is not the property of anyone alone, honoring or not honoring it, everyone joins it more or less. This is the fault of the elector, God is not guilty." – V.R.). Because of his unreason and insatiability, he made a choice without thinking, and there lurked a fatal fate for him – devouring his own children and other all kinds of troubles. When he then, without haste, reflected, he began to beat his chest, to grieve that, making his choice, he did not take into account the warning of the soothsayer, blamed for these troubles not himself, but fate, the gods – anything but himself…By chance, the very last of all fell to the lot to go to the soul of Odysseus. She remembered her former hardships and, having discarded all ambition, wandered for a long time, looking for the life of an ordinary person, far from business; finally, she found it lying around somewhere, everyone neglected her, but Odysseus' soul, as soon as she saw it, gladly took it for herself" ^{[6, pp. 417, 418-419]}.

It can be noticed that three plans are beginning to take shape: the present, set by the situation of choosing fate; the past, through the action of memory ("she remembered the previous hardships") and the future, on the one hand, as an actual getting into a certain reality in the future tense ("devouring her own children and other various troubles"), on the other ? as a potential being (Odysseus wants to live the quiet life of an "ordinary person"). The question is, what connects these three plans, how does past and future life determine the choice in the present?

Firstly, they are connected by a language in which there are time modalities. "To prove the existence of time," writes Francois Julien, "a single fact of conjugation is enough (we say "was" or "will be"). God, Plotinus says, cannot "make mistakes" by putting it this way" ^{[3, p. 46]}. At the same time, for example, the Chinese language has no conjugations, it is "not intended to distinguish between tenses" and, as a fact, there is no concept of time in China ^{[3, p. 46]}. When, at the end of the nineteenth century, the Chinese "got acquainted with European thought, they transmitted ? had to transmit – the term "time" through a neologism based on borrowing from Japanese. "Time" was translated into Chinese as "between-moments", and space in parallel as "between-voids"" ^{[3, p. 74]}.

Secondly, these plans are connected by the reincarnation procedure: souls, like the hands of a clock, move in a circle in one direction  ? they pass from heaven to earth and live life in a human body, and after his death they go to heaven and live there, then they descend to earth again, etc. Thirdly, the past, present and future are united in Plato by his "philosophical-esoteric concept of the right life. The right life, Plato is convinced, allows the soul to remember the world of ideas and gods, to join them, and therefore leads to salvation and bliss ^{[11, pp. 23-41]}. From the point of view of this concept, Odysseus' past life was wrong, and the future leads to salvation, and the first step on this path is the right choice of fate.

If we keep in mind the analyzed discourse, then Plato outlines a scheme known to us, namely, that knowledge of the past and the future determine actions and conscious life in the present. Although Plato considered his picture of the world and salvation objective, Aristotle assessed it as a subjective construction of Plato himself. But if this is a subjective construction and a subjective choice, then there are as many different futures as there are different personalities. Such a subjective and multiple future can be called "subjective-personal". This is the first type. For example, most esoteric concepts of the future belong to it" ^[12]. 

The analysis of this case allows us to build a schematic diagram of the future as an image (concept and discourse) of Plato.

In Plato's concept, the future is set in two ways: on the one hand, it is a person's choice (event, image, experience, different in relation to the past, present and future), on the other ? an objective, deindividual relationship (in time and the process of reincarnation). As we will see later, these three "coordinates" are always preserved for the future: the first, the position and concept of the thinker (ideologist) as a frame that allows us to understand the meaning of the future (past and present), the second, the image of the future as a product of the work of the subject's consciousness, the third, objective reality that sets the connection between the past and the present and the future, usually involving two processes ? time and another non-temporal (subject) process.

For example, the historical and cultural merit of St. Augustine can be understood in such a way that, discussing the past, present and future, firstly, he realized (reflected) the work of the individual's consciousness, and secondly, he replaced, in fact, the archaic realities of the soul and reincarnation with the reality of being (acts) of the Christian God (creation of the world by Him and man, parousia, the transformation of an old man into a new one, a Christian).

"In you, my soul," Augustine writes in Confessions, "I measure time <...> Only because it happens in the soul, and only in it there are three times. She waits and listens, and remembers: what she waits for passes through what she listens to, and goes there, what she remembers. Who will deny that there is no future yet? But there is an expectation of the future in the soul. And who will deny that the past is no more? But there is still a memory of the past in the soul. And who would deny that the present is devoid of duration: it passes instantly. Our attention, however, is long-lasting, and it translates into oblivion what will appear" ^{[1, pp. 173, 174, 176]}.

If, writes V. Zenkovsky, "the promise of salvation was given in the Old Testament, then the New Testament opens with a sermon: "Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand"... Thus the end of history has already been marked ? and it has happened more than once in the history of Christian peoples that they experienced acutely and excitedly the proximity of the end of history, "parousia" ? the second coming of the Savior. The consciousness of the nearness of the end of history in later Judaism led to the appearance of numerous apocalypses, and the New Testament responded to this with the Revelation of ap. John. No matter how mysterious the opinions of the parts of the picture that we find here are, but the main motive ? “a new heaven and a new earth”, the transformation of being (“I create everything new”) dominates everything...It is known that, for example, at the end of the XV century. we in Russia waited with such confidence for the end of history, what did paschalia no longer constitute in the XVI century ? In a number of eschatological movements in the XIX century (among Protestants), we find attempts to calculate exactly the day when the second coming of the Savior will be" ^[4].

                              V. M. Vasnetsov, The Militant Christ 

                   (The Second Coming of Christ before the end of the world), 1887

  A picture of the end of the world from The old pinakothek, previously attributed to Bosch

Aristotle outlined a completely different image and discourse of the future. He divides practical actions interpreted in the modality of the artificial and natural processes occurring "by nature", and asserts that only those practical actions that are performed taking into account natural processes (unfolding as if on their wave) will be effective (ensuring the set goals). The task of science, according to Aristotle, is to identify and describe natural processes. If we analyze the "Physics" of Aristotle, we have to admit that the necessary condition for the construction of science is not only the identification of natural processes, but also the use of mathematics. Aristotle's research suggested that the future should be understood as a natural-artificial phenomenon. For example, although the movement of planets in the sky can be studied as a natural process, which was the case in ancient astronomy, but at the same time this process is artificial, because, according to Aristotle, the divine mind ("prime mover") moves the planets. 

As you know, this program greatly contributed to the construction of natural science in modern times. Within the framework of the concept of natural science, it was argued that it is mathematics that makes it possible to describe natural processes, but natural processes differ from ordinary ones observed, so to speak, "outside the window". Natural processes can be considered, which, firstly, are described mathematically, and secondly, are brought in accordance with these descriptions in the experiment (for this it is necessary to transform nature outside the window, creating "technoprirodnye" formations). For example, outside the window, observations show that the heavier the body, the faster it falls, (this was established by Aristotle and confirmed once again by Leonardo da Vinci). But in the void, all bodies, regardless of weight, fall at the same speed. Galileo had already established this law by mathematically describing the fall of bodies and creating conditions (equivalent to emptiness) in which the fall of bodies occurred in strict accordance with this mathematical description. Falling bodies in the void ? this is both a natural process and an artificial one, because the environment in this case (i.e., the conditions in which the fall occurs) is created by a person.   

The development of natural science has also led to a new understanding of the future. This can be better understood by considering what the calculations and predictions of the upcoming solar or lunar eclipse are. First, it refers to a future event. Secondly, an eclipse is a special arrangement of planets in the solar system, which, as a natural natural process, obeys physical laws and can be mathematically described. Thirdly, a person can make sure that the eclipse really happened exactly at the predicted time and in the specified place of the earth. This is one variant of effective practical action, the other, engineering, when the laws of gravity of Kepler and Newton began to be used for the design and navigation of aircraft and rockets. Fourth, for a person, an eclipse is certainly an important event and experience. This is a new image of the future ? it exists in the future tense, is a state (event) of a natural natural process, this state can be characterized based on the laws of nature and mathematics, they also allow solving engineering problems.   

Another image of the future, which does not coincide with the physicalist one, began to take shape during the formation of the humanities and social sciences. If natural science allows us to make the future, so to speak, "transparent", in the epistemological sense, since a scientist can describe it mathematically as a natural process, and an engineer can even reproduce it naturally (technically), then the social image of the future, on the contrary, is usually unclear, precisely epistemologically. Yes, a person plans the future, for example, sets the task of building socialism or winning a war, but whether it turns out to be conceived or not is always a question.

This is the first difference of the social future ? it is not transparent. To make it transparent, that is, to describe it in such a way as to be sure that the actual future coincides with the planned one, and social sciences are created, on the one hand, and social practices, including practices of the future, work with the future, on the other. The most important task solved at the first stage in these practices is the construction of reality and the image of the future. For example, when developing the "Donor" project, which I analyzed in detail, the methodologists first solved this task. After considering the problem (the urgent need to persuade Russians to donate more blood) and analyzing the situation here and abroad, they came up with the hypothesis that blood donation involves both a special consciousness and behavior within a social institution, and that, therefore, the task is to build a new social institution of donation.

         The principal model of the donation instituteThe second difference is the lack or insufficiency of knowledge about natural social processes.

Therefore, the second task solved in the practice of working with the future is to obtain such knowledge, which involves the study of the processes of formation and development of social formations, as well as their functioning, including factors such as the activities of people and organizations, the economy, national traditions, resources, etc. Even from this enumeration alone it can be seen that the nature of natural social processes ("second nature") is fundamentally different from the nature of natural physical processes ("first nature"). For example, it changes under the influence of people's activities ? their plans, projects, programs, technologies; it also changes as a result of changing culture, as well as historical collisions. As a consequence, social changes, on the one hand, are singular, on the other ? law-like. So, the developers of the "Donor" project, on the one hand, proceeded from the fact that the Russian situation of the late twentieth and early twenty?first centuries is unique (outdated blood collection equipment, decreased desire to help patients, etc.), and on the other hand, general social patterns (institutional and psychological) continue to operate. 

The third difference is no less significant: not engineering practices and activities, but retraining, propaganda, creation of new conditions for life and communication. "Based on this research, a program and activities were developed to work with significant social figures (famous statesmen, politicians, artists, TV presenters, etc.) who promoted donation and often donated blood themselves. 

In general, the methodological and theoretical applied research carried out made it possible to develop and implement the following actions (activities) in 2008-2009:

- detailed informing of the population of Russia about the basic social need that the donation institute satisfies, its scope and consequences in case the donation institute fails to fulfill its functions;

- formulation and formation of the values of the institute of donation (donation is the norm of life, donation is useful, the donor is a healthy person, etc.);

- identification of the main participants of the donation institute, stimulating their activity;

- creation of standards and norms of communication, interaction and behavior both within individual social organizations and positions, and between them;

- creation of symbols and corporate identity of the Blood Service, with which the donation institute as a whole is identified, holding symbolic actions (All-Russian videoconference, Blood Service Forum, individual actions in the regions);

- formation of communication and interaction of the blood service with other social institutions indicated in the basic scheme of donation.

- assignment of traditional events for the donation institute.

It is worth noting that all these actions were implemented only in those regions where the infrastructure was ready for changes (the corresponding re-equipment of blood transfusion stations was carried out).

Since the development of a social project involves social management, the implementation of the "Donor" project included such technologies as organization, training and consciousness tuning. As you know, management  ? this is a job not only related to the organization of the workflow (production in a broad sense), but also with people. In the latter case, it largely boils down to the organization, training and the necessary manager to adjust the consciousness of specialists and users. All these three types of managerial influences were implemented in the "Donor" project after appropriate research. For example, employees of blood transfusion stations and clinics were retrained and trained, significant work was carried out with government officials to form the right attitude to donation, organizational work was carried out with almost all project participants" ^{[13, p. 100-101]}.

If we return to the understanding of foresight, we can agree with Sergey Smirnov's statement that the future is man-made. The development of the Donor project has fully confirmed this, as well as the fact that it is impossible to create the desired future without serious social and methodological knowledge. Social knowledge is necessary for the construction and formation of natural social processes, and methodological knowledge is necessary for effective thinking that guides such man-made social architecture. In particular, the "Donor" project made it possible to formulate the following provisions on the role of methodological work:

- "Methodological design, research and support are an organic part of the transformation of the current situation and the formation of a phenomenon of interest to society.

- For the purposes of transformation management, it is necessary to distinguish between two interrelated horizons: the transformation itself as an artificial plan and the formation of the phenomenon as a natural plan, and transformations and methodological work are involved in the formation of this phenomenon. Thus, methodological work and various activities aimed at creating the institute of donation contributed to the formation of this institute.

- Features and characteristics of the emerging phenomenon (whole)  they are identified and defined on methodological schemes and are further refined and brought to light in the process of implementing a methodological project.

- A necessary condition for the concretization and necessary modification of the methodological project is the study of subsystems, units and relations of the emerging phenomenon identified on methodological schemes. Another condition is the formation of subsystems, units and relations defined by methodological schemes, since the "natural components" of the emerging phenomenon are constituted in purposeful transformations (training, retraining, communication companies, etc.).  

- The effectiveness of methodological schemes and the project is determined not least by how correctly the social problem is identified, whether there is a need for proposed changes in society (for example, during the implementation of the project it turned out that many Russians have an urgent need for meaningful, socially significant affairs), whether methodological management and support is provided.

- Methodological schemes and knowledge cannot be considered strict models, their effectiveness and feasibility are clarified in the process of implementing a methodological project. This implementation itself is an iterative process, during which both the idea and the schemes and the project are clarified and, if necessary, revised.

In general, the logic of actions within the framework of this social technology obeys a principle that can be called the "principle of changing realities and modalities". Thus, the methodological design and assignment of the whole (in this case, donation as a social institution) presupposes an "artificial modality" and movement in the "project reality". In turn, design and methodological work are based on research, which means a change of modality (from artificial to natural) and a transition into the reality of scientific thinking (more broadly, into the reality of cognition, since knowledge can be not only scientific, but experienced). The formation of missing units and relations of the whole is again a modality of the artificial, but the reality is now different, namely, the reality of "practical action". However, since the formation, as well as, in general, the methodological management of the process of formation of the institute of donation are included in this formation and therefore can be studied, in particular, in order to correct the initial schemes, attitudes and goals, to the extent that the modality of the natural and the reality of the emerging whole (the institute of donation) simultaneously takes place.     

It is especially worth discussing the axiological side of the task of the whole. In this particular case, the positive values of restoring the institution of donation were obvious to everyone. For the sick, it is the hope of saving lives and healing. For doctors, donor blood is an absolutely necessary means and resource of their professional activity. For donors, blood donation is one of the conditions for the realization of personality and social identification (I help my neighbor, donate my blood to a good cause, so I feel unity with other people and compatriots, and so on). For society, donation as a mass movement is evidence of its consolidation and unity.

But much more often, the absolute positive value of the planned social changes is not overlooked, but various considerations arise that indicate possible negative consequences" ^{[13, pp. 105-107]}.

The "Donor" project was quite successful, the Russians went to donate blood, and the problem was removed ^{[13, pp. 104-105]}. The question is, how successful are other Russian projects of the future?  But even if most of them are ineffective so far (unfortunately, this is the case), it is difficult to deny the "quiet revolution" taking place in the awareness and practice of social architecture. One of the features of this revolution is the formation of a new image (concept, discourse) of the future. So far, we are talking about different practices and forms of awareness (foresight, ecosystem approach, methodological approach, soft system approach, etc.) competing with each other. But all of them, in one way or another, oppose the physicalist interpretation of the future, understand the future in the logic of an artificial-natural modality of thinking, form practices of working with the future, and come out on new ontological grounds.