3 days Ago
BY Ted C. Fishman6 minute read In 1974, the worthy Saturday Review, then in its 50th year, published several anniversary issues that took stock of how the century led to a grim present of Watergate scandals, impending thermonuclear war, a population boom that would soon outrun the planet's food and tappable energy, and other world-threatening fumbles. To wrap up, however, the Review offered an atypically fantastical issue full of imaginative, sometimes loopy predictions and proposals for the world a half century into the future.
More erudite than newspapers or news weeklies and more timely and readable than academic journals, the now defunct Review was a home for center-left commentary, reviews, and reports. The magazine mostly dived deep into culture and geopolitics, yet it worked to offer a bright side to a bleak world, too. One of the anniversary issues in '74 was devoted entirely to ways "The World Can Get Its Confidence Back.
" The issues were shepherded by the Review's longtime editor Norman Cousins, himself a prolific public intellectual and once the nation's most famous optimist. Cousins was a kind of High Lama in our home. My mother, a high school counselor, cornered our family (or was it just me?) with snippets from his columns.
In 1979, his bestseller, Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient, described how, following a terminal diagnosis, he successfully treated himself, in part, with madcap movie comedies and belly laughs. Anatomy still influences my mom for whom, at 97, joy remains a potent elixir. Subscribe to the Compass Newsletter.
Fast Company's trending stories delivered to you daily Privacy Policy | Fast Company Newsletters Cousins's optimism hit my mailbox recently, too. When an editor friend was clearing out his parents' home, he found a copy of the prognosticative anniversary issue that his mom had saved. He sent it to me.
Because I write about the future, he said, he wanted my thoughts on this past version of it. He knew I'd..
. Ted C. Fishman.
