Dilemmas in a New Europe

Abstract

The starting point of his introductory essay is the forecast, well-known by now to connaisseurs of prophecy, made by Herman Kahn and Anthony Wiener in their book, The Year 2000. There is, they said, a basic, long-term multifold trend towards

• 1. “Increasingly Sensate (empirical, this-worldly, secular, humanistic, pragmatic, utilitarian, contractual, epicurean, or hedonistic, and the like) cultures”;

• 2. “Bourgeois, bureaucratic, “meritocratic”, democratic (and nationalistic?) elites”;

• 3. “Accumulation of scientific and technological knowledge”;

• 4. “Institutionalization of change, especially research, development, innovation, and diffusion”;

• 5. “Worldwide industrialization and modernization”;

• 6. “Increasing affluence and (recently) leisure”;

• 7. “Population growth”;

• 8. “Urbanization and (soon) the growth of megalopolises”;

• 9. “Decreasing importance of primary and (recently) secondary occupations”;

• 10. “Literacy and education”;

• 11. “Increasing capability for mass destruction”;

• 12. “Increasing tempo of change”;

• 13. “Increasing universality of the multifold trend.”