Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

N the opening sentence of this year’s most critically ac- I claimed nonfiction book, Futirre Shock (Random House), Alvin Toffler prophesies that ‘‘In the three short decades between now and the twenty-first century, millions of ordi- nary, psychologically normal people will face an abrupt col- lision with the future.”

Tofflcr’s theory is that the rapid acceleration of change is forcing us to live at a faster tempo than our nervous systems can tolerate. Hc predicts that we will succumb to the disease, future shock, which is manifested by a “dizzying disorienta- tion brought on by the prematurc arrival of the future.”

I believe I am its first casualty! The onset of Toffler’s disease coincided with the prepara-

tion of this issue on the challenge of change and nursing’s ability to adapt. When looking back to trace the threads of yesterday’s causes to today’s effects, I was abruptly confronted with the realization that the three short decades that separate us from the twenty-first century are the same number of decades that bridge my professional past with my professional present. For the 20-year-old looking ahead, 30 years may seem a millennium. For a 50-year-old looking back, thosc intervening years seem just a moment.

Such a precipitous collision with the relevancy of time can engage one in long thoughts. How will nursing evolve in the next three short decades? Will i t find a deeper dimension of practice or will nursing as we know it become extinct?

326 VOLUME IX NO. 4 1970

John Dewey wrote, “To the being fully alive the future is not ominous but a promise.” Yet the magnitude of the prob- lems facing nursing today and projected for tomorrow are greater than was ever imagined thirty, twenty, or even ten years ago. A combination of social ills-poverty, urban decay, drug abusc, population explosion, race relations - and the host of ethical and moral dilemmas forecast for a society dominated by rapid technological and bio-genetic innovations will affect how and where nurses will practice and under what conditions. However, nursing still has manageable jurisdiction over some aspects of how it will evolve and it also has, within limits, a freedom of choice. The authors in this issue discuss some of the possible choices if nursing is to measure up in practice to what it professes to be committed to in theory.

No doubt, as Tofflcr forecasts, our nervous systems are due for a shaking up as we shift gears to accelerate our capacity to keep up with the increasing demands of a changing society and a changing world. But before we plan for the next century we had better look at the effects of dccisions we made yester- day and those we make today, for as Alfred North Whitehead has said, “The future has an objective existence in the present.” In other words, tomorrow is what we will make of it. However, if we don’t know what we want to make of it there may be no future, for Whitehead also advises us, “How the past perishes is how the future becomes.”

ALICE R. CLARKE, EDITOR

NURSING FORUM 327