Which genre is suitable for discussing a future fundamentally different from the present? While "trend discourse" fails to significantly deviate from the present, culture is trapped in unconscious religious perceptions and barriers when confronting the "deep future". Therefore, there is a need for a genre that will replace prophecy in modern culture - and enable a new futuristic discourse. A summary of trends in "The Degeneration of the Nation"
In recent years, Yuval Noah Harari decided to sound the alarm. He warns not about the present, nor about the future, but about the present discourse on the future. The claim is that an obsessive preoccupation with the here and now (for example, focusing on politics or our immediate desires) comes at the expense of serious engagement with the desired future image - and that this lack is dangerous for humanity. Like many others, Harari tries to outline trends into the future, but ultimately his solution to the fundamental challenges is surprisingly reactionary. Harari argues that what distinguishes humans from artificial intelligence algorithms is consciousness, and therefore we should explore our consciousness through meditation. There's no point in dwelling on the ridiculousness of this proposal, which is equivalent to ideas like returning to Islam (if we just replace Muhammad with Buddha), but it's worth noting its essential characteristic: it is a religious proposal.
Harari, a secular man in his lifestyle but a Buddhist in his faith, retreats to his religion when confronted with the wall of the future - artificial intelligence. His ideas are helpless and introspective - in the image and likeness of this religion, but he is far from being the only secular person who retreats to his religious structure when it comes to looking at the future. In fact, a significant portion of Western intellectuals looking at the future see in it the good old Christian structure - the apocalypse. The main future discourse of these intellectuals is the "discourse of the four horsemen" - identifying harbingers of the coming apocalypse in the current reality, along with raising a voice crying in the wilderness for "repentance" (a typical example in Israel: Ofri Ilani).
Like in Christianity, they are helpless in the face of the apocalypse, but being secular, the spirit of prophecy has also been taken from them and they shy away from predicting the future. The result is a neutered future discourse that is wary of "vision", meaning lacking a positive proposal with imagination ("dream") - against the background of countless negative warnings, concerns, and fears. But the fate of these neurotic Western alarmists is better than that of Muslim intellectuals. Because in the Muslim religion there isn't a sufficiently dominant structure of the desired future, Muslim culture is stuck in dreams of returning to an imagined past, and completely fails in dealing with the future.
When it comes to the image of the essential future (that is, fundamentally different from us, distant in time or not), the secular world is left without intellectual tools - and even an appropriate writing genre. In the West, "it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism", not because it's so hard to imagine the end of capitalism, but because it's so much easier to rely on the ready-made structure of the end of the world. In the East, many cultures never bothered to imagine a future image. When secularism tried to imagine a desirable future image - it led to two murderous catastrophes, to such an extent that it became taboo.
Thus we are left without a developed future discourse precisely when we need it most. The structure of culture still relies on the past. The structure of media - on the present. Accordingly, the two central technological structures are also built: Google, which never forgets, and its servers contain the global memory - preserves the past eternally and cumulatively. Facebook, on the other hand, is a discourse of eternal present - nothing persists in it beyond the lifespan of a butterfly. Future historians will surely lament the loss of all cultural discourse from the early 21st century, a period in which culture chose to revert from printed discourse to oral-type discourse. As with traditional oral cultures - nothing will remain of Facebook and countless clever posts, "deep" discussions and the enormous human effort invested in it (unless a Sisyphean process of compilation, selection and editing of oral culture is carried out towards its decline, as happened with the Mishnah, Aggadah and Talmud. Any volunteers?).
According to this division of time, Facebook dominates the immediate and superficial news discourse, and therefore it is a flat network without user ranking, while Google dominates the deeper cultural discourse, and therefore has differences in prestige and ranking in results between old and new sites. But what is the platform for future discourse? Perhaps only literature is still capable of imagining a different future, but it too is trapped in genres like fantasy and science fiction, which are highly problematic in that they are built on describing the future as an existing reality (i.e., writing in past or present tense), and therefore projecting past genres (like the realistic novel) onto the future. The result is almost always an unconvincing future image lacking internal depth - and literarily shallow.
Prophetic discourse is not legitimate in current culture, and feels utterly ridiculous to us, unlike the cultures of the ancient world that recognized it as a legitimate and central genre. Poetry, prose, chronicles, lament, law, wisdom literature and parables - all biblical genres survived the vicissitudes of history, except for prophecy. Why? Does prophecy need God? Not necessarily. Moreover - prophecy ceased about 1500 years before the process of secularization, and precisely in the period when the idea of God began to gain cultural momentum. Is it because preaching was disqualified? But preaching is still a living genre, which reached its peak in the Middle Ages, and precisely after the cessation of prophecy. Today, even in the field of literature, one cannot write prophecy. What is the source of this taboo?
Well, the source of this barrier is of course religious. Religions underwent codification, and new revelation became heresy - ending in excommunication or burning at the stake. Even today, the social sanction is similar. Intellectuals dealing with the future are often accused of being "false prophets" charlatans - and exposed to ridicule, while dealing with the present gives the intellectual a sense of urgency and popularity (in a society where he is often perceived as superfluous), and dealing with the past gives him an aura of classicism and depth. Therefore, a characteristic sign of intellectuals who dare to deal with the future is the frequent use of empty disclaiming phrases like "It may be that one day we will discover that-" or "It can be assumed that it is not impossible that perhaps" and so on, as they are prevented from speaking directly in future tense like the prophets, or worse - in imperative form.
Therefore, we must muster courage and create a new futuristic genre in which speculation is the basis for discourse, and in which it is also legitimate to say what needs to be done: what should we strive for? Judaism, more than other religions, can give legitimacy to such discourse through its unique messianic structure. The Jewish messianic discourse contains three necessary fundamental characteristics:
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It contains a fairly open future image, in which reality undergoes transformation to a higher state (but not necessarily better or worse), whose main tool for description is the metaphor. A good metaphor (as opposed to an empty metaphor) contains certain content, but it also remains fundamentally open to the future by its very nature - through interpretation. Prophecies usually prefer the poetic metaphor over the symbol (which is much more closed), and therefore unlike the Book of Revelation do not function as a detailed symbolic map of the future - but as guides.
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Jewish messianism is not necessarily the end of history, but a transition to a higher stage in history, and sometimes (as with Maimonides) it is a completely natural historical process. In fact, in Judaism one can identify several independent stages in the future image: a messianic era (completely natural and material), an era of resurrection (resurrection of the dead - a fundamental change in the natural order and revival of the past, but still within the material world) and the era of the world to come (exit from material nature to a completely spiritual virtual reality).
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Jewish future discourse connects the present to the future, as it is a process of "tikkun" [repair] that needs to be worked on in the present through appropriate means. In addition, the study of messianism (i.e., the image of the future) is often described as an integral part of creating the future itself. Thus also the dominant Jewish idea of learning, and all forms of discourse it enables, are harnessed for the future. We learn about the future, and we learn towards the future.
Trends in "The Degeneration of the Nation"
A futuristic culture is a culture that allows futuristic discourse and in which this discourse takes a central place - in short, a culture that deals with the future. It has genres through which it is customary to deal with the future, and therefore it is possible to discuss it openly and in rich structures - without apocalyptic panic and without ridiculous utopianism. In "The Degeneration of the Nation" there are several spearheads trying to build futuristic discourse, each from his own world - and in his own genre:
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Black Circle has been developing for over a decade the dream genre as a genre capable, among other things, of talking about the future, with the help of boundless intellectual fantasy but without the need for prophetic pretension - because after all, it's a dream. The trilogy he wrote is a pioneer in dealing with the future from within the Jewish-religious world and through the conventions and conceptual world of Hasidism. Its three parts - "The End of Nights", "Future Form" and "Human Engineering" - were published by "The Degeneration of the Nation" publications (here). In addition, we also published a unique interactive book, which could never have been published in a regular publishing house in our moldy and futureless literary republic, in the style of "Choose Your Own Adventure" (here). In my opinion, "Human Engineering" is Black Circle's greatest book and the peak of his trilogy, which climbs to it gradually, while his only and exclusive interview is the place where one should start to get to know his futuristic thinking (here).
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Balak ben Zippor dedicates the "Culture and Literature" supplement he edits to futuristic speculative prose, which does not shy away from dealing with prophecy, and in addition promotes on the front page the Singing Grave Digger who tries to develop a futuristic form of poetry - and a new poetic academic style - in the four poetry books he published with "The Degeneration of the Nation": "Collection from the Beginning of the 21st Century", "7X4", "Poems and Lessons", "New Species" (here). In doing so, Balak tries to contribute to a futuristic revolution in literature. This literary stream differs from previous sci-fi attempts in that it does not revolve around technological-scientific change but around spiritual changes, and therefore perhaps deserves to be called: SF (=Spiritual Fiction). Recently, Balak even wrote a first editorial column in which he explained the connection between the messianic idea and his vote for the Knesset [Israeli parliament], and he is also working on writing book reviews.
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In the field of thought, the leading Netanyahite philosopher [from the city of Netanya] never stops engaging in futuristic speculations and tries to shape a philosophy that deals with the future - "the philosophy of the future". The book of fragments he wrote will be gradually published in "The Degeneration of the Nation" - if only we can get him out of the armchair - and will spread the full breadth of his thought (here). Another important thinker in the Netanyahite school, with more mystical thinking influenced by Far Eastern thought, will also (in the future!) publish the futuristic guide he wrote for his students in "The Degeneration of the Nation" publications. The promising Netanya school will surely produce other thinkers in the future, pun intended.
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I too, Bilhah, am trying to open a door to journalistic engagement with the future through alternative current affairs that draw inspiration from all of these. The purpose of the column is to demonstrate how one can think about current issues from a futuristic perspective. This way we can fight the Facebook present culture - and the Google past culture - through futuristic culture. This is a culture war - but hey, the future is on our side.
