Future Shock
By Alvin Toffler.
Random House, 1970.
Reviewed by John Rodden.
More than seven years after the #MeToo movement exploded in October 2017 in the aftermath of public outrage over allegations of sexual misconduct by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, the American public stands at a cultural crossroads: Should the nation push forward or scale back the behavioral codes initiated by many institutions in the wake of #MeToo? Has the movement gone too far or not far enough?
Although the historic sentence of 23 years imprisonment against Weinstein was overturned in April 2024, #MeToo is still “booming,” headlined the financial services internet engine Noticieras Financerias that month: “The movement will persist.” If the number of men in influential positions of authority is any indication, that judgment seems accurate. The last year has witnessed the fall from grace—and even the legal entanglements—of hundreds of prominent and sometimes powerful men in senior positions in the media, government, industry, and academy—and often in mid-level positions as well.
“Future Shock?” I use that phrase to characterize what I have observed as the predicament—or (as they might view it) the “plight”—of aging white males who are buffeted by a host of new developments, ranging from the #MeToo and Black Lives Matters movements to revolutionary technologies of the digital world, that have confused or even paralyzed them. Or rather “us,” I should say. Many of us suffer from a form of cultural lag—that is, “future shock.”
This near-forgotten and once-faddish phrase from the 1970s has acquired new relevance in the twenty-first century—and it applies, fittingly enough, above all to my Baby Boomer cohort. It was during the 1970s and ’80s, the formative period of their lives in their 20s and 30s, that the publication of Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock became the cult book of pop sociology. It sold five million copies and whose themes gained even broader circulation from the much-acclaimed documentary of the same title narrated by Orson Welles. Yes, the decade of the 1970s and 1980s is the epoch in which men now in their 60s and 70s grew up and formed their attitudes and views. Those are the attitudes and views that they still carry around in the second and third decades of the twenty-first century, the new developments both in society and technology notwithstanding. All this belongs to the heavy furniture in their heads to which they have become accustomed psychologically.
The firing in 2022 of Mark S. Schlissel, president of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, was headlined “the sex scandal of the decade” by the Detroit Free Press. It turned out that not much sex—in fact, none whatsoever—was involved. Nevertheless, the incident briefly became a cause célèbre in higher education, with headlines not just in publications such as the Chronicle for Higher Education but also in The New York Times and even in foreign-language newspapers as far away as China, along with copious quotations from the 118-page email file of presidential correspondence about the affair that the University’s regents released to the public.
The U-M scandal points to historical and social currents beyond this single case. The U-M president’s dismissal has been just one of more than 300 examples worldwide of a highly successful, prominent white male—this time a distinguished scientist and educator—who transgressed the shifting boundaries demarcating ethical behavior in professional life. His transgressions apparently never even rose beyond the level of flirtation to a physically intimate relationship. That is a description of the facts, not a personal judgment.
The question is: Has a flirtation now become sufficient grounds for dismissal from an influential position of authority?
That is the crossroads at which we find ourselves. It requires no defense of Dr. Schlissel to acknowledge further that his behavior never involved the expenditure of university funds for private pleasure and that his personal behavior in office has traditionally not served as a cause for dismissal. Any defense is complicated by the fact that Dr. Schlissel violated the university’s own strict policy on “romantic” relationships—and that the “traditional” behaviors were long treated as private conduct by a (white- and male-dominated) corporate and academic culture, thus inviting plausible charges of hypocrisy.
The significance of the Michigan case, therefore, is that it represents a new stage of siege, marking the increasingly embattled position of those in power—particularly middle-aged men and, above all, middle-aged white men. The intense glare emanating from that new spotlight on senior white males means they are going to be—indeed, they already are being—held to higher standards than ever before. Dr. Schlissel’s firing is a case in point.
Unlike the case with virtually all his predecessors in the worlds of politics (Andrew Cuomo, Eliot Spitzer, Al Franken, Anthony Weiner), news/entertainment (Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Bill O’Reilly, Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, Garrison Keillor, Mark Halperin, Kevin Spacey, Andy Dick, R. Kelly, James Toback, France’s Gerard Depardieu) and literary/academic life (Leon Wieseltier, Hamilton Fish, Lorin Stein, Jorge Dominguez, Ari Shavit)—Dr. Schlissel’s “abuse of power” had nothing to do with the kinds of offenses that have brought down powerful men in recent years and with which we have become accustomed. No allegations of sexual harassment or violence, whether in the present or distant past. No outcry from numerous voices testifying to patterns of exploitative behavior. No offenses, either by word or deed, against women or persons of color.
Rather, Dr. Schlissel was summarily fired—as his letter of dismissal phrased it, for “inappropriate conduct” with a “subordinate” in the president’s office.
“Inappropriate” because the university had redefined its employee relations’ code of conduct in July 2021: consensual or not, romantic relationships between colleagues in the same department at differing ranks would henceforth constitute “abuse” of power. (Schlissel’s messages disclosed that his colleague is a mature, accomplished woman with a Harvard M.B.A. Cited as “individual” in the redacted emails; neither her name nor any biographical details about her have been released by U-M.)
The climate in 2024 pertaining to office romance in general and university personnel relations in particular differs greatly from the climate of 2017. Or even 2021-22, when the Michigan events transpired. Although no comparable case came to public view since the firing at U-M—that is, no case of a top administrator fired on the basis of conduct officially described as “inappropriate”—decisive change in the cultural climate is perceptible.
That is just the obvious part. Less obvious is that the “vulnerability” has to do with the cultural lag in which middle-aged white men find themselves, a time warp in which many of them, today in their 60s and 70s and at the peak of their careers, are living.
This time warp is three-dimensional: technological, political, and social.
Aging White Male Future Shock (a.k.a. AWMFS) is first a condition of disorientation and denial borne of rapid structural change in the immediate institutional “culture.” It is perhaps foremost a technological phenomenon.
Friends have asked me: How could a man of such brilliance as Dr. Schlissel fail to realize that his official U-M email account was subject to state university regulations and might become public knowledge? Why did he not grasp the obvious fact that, in light of the new U-M professional code of conduct, any personal relationship—regardless of how seemingly “innocent”—with a member of his office would be folly? How? Why?
A key reason is that some large part of “us”—my generation, now in their late 50s, 60s, and 70s and at the height of their power and status—is still operating in the pre-digital era. We meet the reality of the digital age with a smug (“of course, I know”) intellectual assent—minus a gripping emotional understanding (“yeah, but I just didn’t realize!”). Regarding the technologies that permeate our environments and govern our every word and every movement, our IQs far outstrip our EQs.
It needs to be emphasized that the “shock” induced by the digital revolution is the temporal—the Scarlet “A” or “aging”—part of my acronym. A university president—or a state governor, a news/entertainment host, a literary editor at a national magazine—has “subordinates” who handle his social media and even his emails, tweets, and text messaging. Frequently, “he” never bothers much with the tech side of things. He is “in” yet not “of” the digital world, partly oblivious to the reality of the digital sea changes all around him. So he never really gets used to the practical implications of living in a virtual universe, let alone in the brave new world of social media. Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, and on and on: they are all around us, but they are not our world.
And it is inexorable: the less you do, the less you can do. As technological change accelerates, you fall further and further behind. Until… F-f-f-f-future Shock!
So one dimension of the time warp is technological: senior (white) men, who have come to occupy a disproportionate percentage of the leading positions in the country, are still dwelling mentally in an analog world and in the pre-Panopticon days before the rise of constant and ubiquitous surveillance.
The second dimension of the time warp is political. Americans today live in such a polarized, relentlessly ideological era that anyone in a position of power—including (or in some instances, especially) white males nowadays—is an immediate target. Or rather, let us say that those in a position of power, particularly white males, are “vulnerable” to the charge at some point in their career that they are “patriarchal oppressors.” Politics is today omnipresent and the personal is political (as well as the reverse). With this new-found “transparency,” the disadvantaged and their allies (many of whom are in fact white and even male) are seizing every opportunity, no matter how debatably borderline the case may be, to right the wrongs of the past and to send a message.
Welcome to the “new normal.” The private sphere has narrowed; what was formerly “personal” business and “private” conduct is now a matter of public interest and accountability. And the personal is political.
Addressing the U-M firing, a Detroit Free Press column headlined that the U-M regents “seemed bent on humiliating” the president by publishing his emails. Inside Higher Education deplored the regents’ “email dump” as a classic example of “internet trolling” that simply feeds “our sadistic desire to feel superior.” Meanwhile, a labor lawyer interviewed by a Detroit news station argued further that the president may have been ousted on insufficient grounds. Still another article (in the Detroit News) reported that a state official believed that the U-M regents had violated state policy by holding an unannounced, closed-door board meeting via Zoom on a Saturday—and then voting immediately thereafter to remove the president, all of which violated prevailing Michigan sunshine laws pertaining to a state university.
All this underlines the point that these issues are intricately enmeshed in larger political issues—and shenanigans.
Here again—rather typical for any university nowadays—several regents had a history of conflicting and volatile relationships with Dr. Schlissel during his eight-year tenure, whether over his handling of the pandemic or his positions on the university’s investment portfolio. His insistence in September 2020 on conducting in-person classes outraged a majority of the faculty, resulting in his becoming the first president in U-M history to receive a vote of no confidence, which was non-binding yet nonetheless reflected the faculty consensus.
So Dr. Schlissel took unpopular stands, becoming a target for his enemies. They were waiting, and they seized on the possibility of his romantic improprieties after receiving an anonymous tip on December 8, 2021.
The third factor bearing on AWMFS, and certainly the most pertinent to the WM of my acronym, is social. The rise of the BLM and #MeToo movements—along with the prevalence of diversity initiatives and sexual harassment training seminars—has radically altered norms in the workplace and interpersonal relations.
As a result, despite the precipitous, sensational falls suffered by white men, many of us are behaving as if we are still living in the twentieth century, perhaps in fact even in the pre-Monica Lewinsky era of the early 1990s. Or even the pre-Gary Hart days of the mid-1980s. (Remember Hart’s recklessly defiant challenge to the press during his 1988 presidential run, which proved so fateful (and fatal)? “Go ahead, follow me around! I dare you!”) Those casualties have flattered themselves that all is still well, that all will always be well, that they can “handle things,” for haven’t they always “handled things”?
They could, until they couldn’t. The cultural lag borne of future shock strikes again.
A fundamental question here is: How far do we go with legislating morality—including romantic relationships between consenting adults? Let me be clear: I take issue with Dr. Schlissel’s behavior, particularly in light of the employee relations policy that he himself announced. Equally, if not more strongly, I take issue with the severity of the penalty imposed on his behavior. In a humane world, without politics intruding, he would not have been summarily fired in the wake of a secret, illegal trustees meeting conducted via Zoom on a Saturday.
One constructive step would be to formulate and maintain careful distinctions throughout our analysis. Worlds of difference exist between the conduct of Harvey Weinstein (or Bill Cosby or Danny Masterson) and Al Franken. Yet they tend to get tarred with the same broad brushstrokes. Ditto between Dr. Schlissel and Dr. Robert Anderson, the late director of the U-M Health Service, who molested at least 1,050 people (and whose behavior over four decades resulted in a final settlement in January 2022 just days after Schlissel’s firing: a U-M payout of $490 million).
Such distinctions with a difference are crucial to draw—and equally valuable is a better balance between perspective-taking and position-taking.
Where are we headed? Are we committed to the creation of an Orwellian surveillance culture in which corporations, universities, and government bureaucracies determine the private lives of adults? Do we now expect people to sign contracts stipulating that they will “disclose” any private relations with other persons within the organization—and even “report” (“inform”? “snitch”?) suspected behaviors of colleagues engaging in such relationships?
Here again, I have no pat answers. Only the conviction that the questions must be posed—and pondered.
Whatever our thinking about those elephantine enigmas in the room, AWMFS is likely to be with us for the foreseeable future. The rapidly shifting cultural norms generated by Big Tech, by vicious political gridlock, by BLM, and above all by #MeToo have resulted in a denial of and from reality, with many wealthy, powerful, and aging white males living in a dream world that bears only a glancing relation to what is happening “in real time,” as we now say. The repeated, cumulative shocks—the shock of potential 24/7 technological surveillance and invasiveness, the shock of political enemies hovering like vultures, the shock of “dethronement” by onetime subordinates—have estranged them from themselves as well as their surroundings. Many AWMs are not only not ready for the future: they are not even ready for the present.
John Rodden has taught at the University of Virginia and the University of Texas at Austin.
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