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Fred Polak
14 quotes
“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.”
Fred Polak (1907–1985) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote about the future challenges that industrial society faced due to the societal catastrophe, which was considered to be 20 to 50 years away. Cited in: Ian Murray (1972) "Workers told of peril of technology". In: The…
“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.”
Fred Polak (1907–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My own philosophical position, if I may put it that way, is very briefly as follows:”
Fred Polak (1907–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Fred Polak (1907–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every great thinker who has concerned himself with the historical process has speculated about the meaning of time and its flow in history. Marx, Hegel, Spengler, Toynbee, and Sorokin, each with his own variation on the theme of time-flow as mechanically patterned fluctuation, predict the future but ignore its dynamic interaction with the past and the present.”
Fred Polak (1907–1985) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 1 (partly cited in: European Centre for Leisure and Education (1975) Society and leisure. Vol. 7. p. 22)
“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.”
Fred Polak (1907–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 1 (as cited in: H.C. Marais (1988) South Africa: perspectives on the future. p. 15)
“Once he (man) became conscious of creating images of the future, he became a participant in the process of creating this future.”
Fred Polak (1907–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Fred Polak (1907–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 9, as cited in Rowena Morrow, "Hope, Entrepreneurship and Foresight", in Regional Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research (2006)
“Awareness of ideal values is the first step in the conscious creation of images of the future and therefore the creation of culture, for a value is by definition that which guides toward a 'valued' future.....Any student of the rise and fall of cultures cannot fail to be impressed by the role in this historical succession by the image of the future. The rise and fall of images of the future precedes or accompanies the rise and fall of cultures....In the end, the future may well be decided by the image which carries the greatest spiritual power.”
Fred Polak (1907–1985) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 10, quoted as epigraph in O. W. Markley and Willis W. Harman (eds.) Changing Images of Man (Pergamon Press, 1982) p. v; further ellipsed in Morrow (2006)
“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.”
Fred Polak (1907–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Fred Polak (1907–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Fred Polak (1907–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The brain attempts to recognize this odor image by scanning and resolving it into previously stored patterns”
Fred Polak (1907–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 469 as cited in: Donald A. Wilson, Richard J. Stevenson (2010) Learning to Smell: Olfactory Perception from Neurobiology to Behavior. p. 2
“The rise and fall of images of the future precedes or accompanies the rise and fall of cultures. The image of the future can act not only as a barometer, but as a regulative mechanism which alternately opens and shuts the dampers on the mighty blast-furnace of culture. It not only indicates alternative choices and possibilities, but actively promotes certain choices and in effect puts them to work in determining the future. A close examination of prevailing images, then, puts us in a position to forecast the probable future. Any culture which finds itself in the condition of our present culture, turning aside from its own heritage of positive visions of the future, or actively at work in changing these positive visions into negative ones, has no future...”
Fred Polak (1907–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source