That sentence is widely posted as coming from the pen of Alvin Toffler, but he did not create it.
While those words might rightly be seen as a bit of wisdom for those who must interface constantly-changing hardware and software, it is not good advice for navigating social and political situations. While this insight can help a person adjust to the latest version of an operating system or to the newest update of an app, it is a poor way to view the world in general.
Instead, people are most successful in understanding the world when they seek and discover the unchanging principles which underlie and shape reality. However old human history might be — let’s say 10,000 years although the oldest known writing samples are only 5,500 years old — human nature hasn’t changed during that time. While people reshape technology and fashion at a dizzying pace, human nature remains reliably constant.
Likewise, the physical properties of the universe remain the same: the laws of physics and chemistry.
All which presents itself as new and different is usually a repackaging of something much older.
Education, to be truly useful, must give students skills and knowledge which will apply in the unanticipated and unpredictable circumstances of the future. Sometimes dismissed as ‘essentialism,’ an education which helps students to understand human nature, and therefore be able to understand all people, is a meaningful key in the midst of changing appearances but steady immutable underlying realities.
Human nature is a constant, a foundation under the diverse appearances of ethnicities, languages, nationalities, religions, and other demographic variables.
This is why the ancient utterances of Confucius and Aristotle largely agree with the common sense of today and tomorrow.
What did Alvin Toffler actually write? In his book Future Shock, he wrote: “Tomorrow's illiterate will not be the man who can't read; he will be the man who has not learned how to learn.” In the context of changing computer systems and financial systems, Toffler is correct.
It is a misuse of his words to apply them to the essential structure of human society or to the timeless characteristics of human nature.
