Dude, where’s my 22nd century? – On the Burnout of Future Images

in a 1978 paper, sociologist Elise Boulding argued that society was suffering from a type of “temporal exhaustion in which...one is mentally out of breath all the time from dealing with the present, there is no energy left for imaging the future.” And, little time left to reflect upon and understand the past.

Long time horizons aren’t just psychological. They’re cultural. Modern society suffers from temporal exhaustion. Or as, sociologist Elise Boulding once said: “If one is mentally out of breath all the time from dealing with the present, there is no energy left for imagining the future.”