Exploitation of human society for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many is an old story that extends through the entire record of written history. Every civilization has produced a cluster of institutions and practices that enabled a few rich and privileged to live in affluence at the expense of the impoverished many. This juxtaposition of riches and poverty is the logical outcome of a system of social relations designed to provide the few with comfort and luxury while the many are forced to accept penury and hardship. Exploitation, carried to its logical conclusion, permits and requires a parasitic minority to live in abundance while the majority must content itself with scarcity, extending to death from malnutrition.
Another goal presented to individuals by the promoters and fashioners of civilization is individual perfection, physical, mental, emotional, moral. Every generation of human beings contains individuals who are beyond the average—bigger, stronger, more talented, seeing farther, searching more deeply, endowed with greater sensitivity, working more conscientiously, imbued with a love of their fellows and determination to serve them. Such individuals have genius in one or another form and offer themselves and their products as a gift to the general welfare of their generation. Scientists, poets, musicians, inventors, artists, teachers, healers, philosophers, statesmen have appeared in each civilization adding their mite to the sum-total of community culture.
Innovators, moralists and counselors of perfection have played a noteworthy part by advocating and often by living noteworthy lives. Reports of their sayings and doings are part of the folklore and the history of each civilization. If they did not set the tone of their generation, they provided it with a model toward which their less talented, less creative fellows might aspire. If they were creative artists their works provided models which were admired, copied and emulated by their successors. If they were moralists or philosophers their sayings were recorded, respected and repeated by successive generations.
Each civilization has adopted lines of thinking and codes of action which embody the best and most advantageous in theory and in practice. These codes of thought, feeling and action are attributed to some outstanding individual and passed on from generation to generation as codes of conduct to which all right-thinking individuals may or should aspire.
Human beings know everything about themselves except whence they came, what they should do and whither they will go. To compensate for this lack of knowledge and wisdom each civilization has established and maintained religious organizations and institutions whose duty it was to search out the truth, record it and teach it to successive generations.
In some civilizations the religious institutions have dominated the secular. At other times and in other places the secular has maintained its ascendancy over the religious. In still other cases the religious and the secular forces have maintained an uneasy balance leading to acrimonious bickering and sometimes to civil war.
Central to their discussions is the nature of life. Is it continuous, as it appears in vegetation and the animal kingdom, or is it discontinuous like the rocks on the mountainside or the grains of sand on the seashore? Those who live for the moment prefer discontinuity. Those who observe their natural environment are forced to the conclusion that life today is part of a sequence or progression which relates the life of yesterday to that of tomorrow.
Recorded history, from fossil and geological remains, to the books on library shelves assures us that man has had a past. Projecting this experience, it seems quite reasonable that barring accident or a purposed intervention, man will have at least some future. To prepare for that future, using the knowledge and wisdom at our disposal, seems to be a must for any reasoning creature.
Even for the short planetary life-span of the average human, the logic of this position seems inescapable, whether it applies to the next hour, day, year, or century. In terms of our children and grandchildren it is even more impressive. Today we find it desirable to live as well as possible. If there is any future, the same principle should apply to its implementation and utilization.
If the "hereafter" begins tomorrow and if those whose well-being concerns us will probably be "alive" tomorrow, the science and art of the future (futurology) takes its place beside other fields of theory and practice as a must for all responsible members of the human race.