Word: toffler
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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ALTHOUGH many of his ideas are absurd, they are all interesting. For instance, Toffler prefaced his stormy-weather warnings by questioning the validity of science and knowledge as our society conceives it. The modern notion of causality, Toffler proferred, may be nothing more than an unprovable idea that would quite predictably emanate from any highly industrial, interdependent society victimized by a time fetish. The linear consumption of time--which gave rise to society's belief in causality--is just the type of idea one would expect a society run by clocks to adopt. Modern society, Toffler contends, is quite narrow...
Well, that is an interesting notion. Nihilism of that sort creates the perfect Catch-22 situation. Exactly how does one go about proving--proofs being rooted in the acceptance of causality--that causality does not exist? Needless to say, Toffler did not pursue that interesting philosophical question too far. After all, he had only an hour to speak. It is difficult to dismantle the foundations of knowledge and still have time to warn your audience of the third great revolution that is sweeping the world...
...Toffler's theories about the disaffection of many members of modern society would infuriate any Marxist. The problem with society today, Toffler says, has little to do with the separation of the wage-earner form the fruits of his labor or the inability of modern man to realize himself through his work activity (alienation). Quite to the contrary, Marx was making his own biased psychological presuppositions when he decided that man could never be a happy cog in the industrial machine, even if he were well-greased. Toffler attributes modern man's problems to natural difficulties in adapting...
...Toffler is being quite pretentious. He has not only not worked as hard as Karl Marx, but he also made a fair amount of money from Future Shock (only a fraction of the size of Das Kapital) while Marx died in penury. But Toffler has some points. Why should society's malaise be confined to "alienation" the way Marx narrowly defined it? Toffler takes the broader view that the problem is more profound than simply the inability of man in modern society to objectify himself through his activity (or labor). Man, Toffler says, developed certain biological equipment long...
...TOFFLER IS a renaissance man of the social sciences. Actually more than a pop sociologist, he is a social theorist, if you will. By this nothing more is meant than simply that Toffler works economics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, a meager portion of history, and whatever else there is into his all-encompassing scheme of the modern world. For instance, one part of his hour-long speech last week was devoted to explaining changes in family structure through the different historical epochs. Toffler explained that the family has traditionally been a large, stable economic unit. But now in technological society...