Marcus Raskin
FUTURAMA
I want to be a
luftmensch-a luftmensch
is someone who lives on air,
rises and has kicks in an intellectual way. This is the way Jews used
to
get high. This is what makes things exciting. For many years of
my life, I have been involved with the Academy and teaching courses,
now here is a chance
to
be a
luftmensch,
to rise high and now you tell
me I have to be an anchor, a balast (sic) to drag along. I don ' t want to
do that for a while. I want the members of the Commission to be
luftmensch.
Governments, corporations and ocial scientists believe that
control of the future can be accomplished by developing techniques of
analysis and action which assert power over the ways people act. Such
power can be asserted through classic means such as persuasion, terror,
manipulation, bribery, magic or scientific inquiry.
But since the Second World War a new mode of control over the
future has been developed. Its methods are epistemological handmaid–
ens to the standard techniques-short-term policy planning, quantita–
tive projections, scenarios, decision theory and simulation. These new
methods intend to show how people will act and interact in a future
problem situation with the situation structured like a military battl e
in which enemies and friends play out their assigned parts.
Those who intend to control the future generally share certain
epistemological and behavioral assumptions. The first, and perhaps
the most obvious, is the belief that it is in fact possible for man to
control the future and the world's resources-that he is not bound by
province of God or natural determinism. The future is open, to be
shaped by Faustian man. In a capitalist system the futurological
assumption is that the social and economic system will be shaped by a
technocratic elite of social scientists and planners who will develop the
"right" kinds of social institutions as well as the force to maintain
them.
Karl Mannheim has noted that:
...even the most radical democrat will admit today that in a world in
which the work of government requires increasingly specialized
