Virginia Postrel: The Future & Its Enemies (Free Press)


There are, according to Postral, two basic kinds of cultures, two incompatible outlooks: the dynamist and the stasist.

The stasist model is that of the technocrat, striving to manage the future, plan and ordain where technological developments may lead and predict and control outcomes. This is wedded to legislation and government "evaluation" of new ideas and developments and their regulation.

The dynamist model is more relaxed. The world is full of millions of inventive peoples, with just as many potential opportunities, new ideas and creative impulses. The dynamist wants to let them get on with it.

The Stasist wants to be able to plan, to determine direction, to lead and govern into the future. He or she wants a simple, clear future, not the messiness of uncontrolled development. The stasist is risk-averse and thinks in terms of legislation as the means to their end. Fundamentally it is an issue of knowledge. Can we know the outcome of our actions and impulses and those of millions of people? Well, not completely, so the stasist wants to deal with that risk. But more basic than that, the stasist vision is static - theirs is a plateau that one can attain to and maintain.

The dynamist is all of the opposite: organic, fosters growth and diversity, moves forward by trial and error and is dynamic and variable. Dynamists look for unintended consequences and adapt to them and then reap further benefits from them. It can cope with change and eagerly embraces it; it delights in unintended consequences and is basically adaptive. Dynamists allow individuals and groups to act on their own knowledge and to "play" with possibilities. Curiosity is the stuff of the dynamist, unbridled and free. The dynamist is not afraid of the unknown but moves into the future, with the hope of sorting out problems and issues as they come along.

Adam was a dynamist - he had to be. He was sent out into an undeveloped world with a task and that's all. The garden was his basic starting point and development was his task. Adam had to be a dynamist to survive.

God has placed in man an unquenchable desire to create and to invent and to change. The enemies of the future seek to stifle that, through their tendency towards risk-aversion, safety-first and a planned future. Environmentalism is one of the drivers of modern stasis thinking. The earth must be managed and saved. Outcomes must be assured.

Ultimately the plan is with God, and therefore we do not need a beaucratic class to plan outcomes for us. Governed by His word we can embrace a basically dynamist view of our calling and enjoy the richness and opportunity it affords us.