From Inter Ice Age 4 (1959):
“The real future, I think, manifests itself like a ‘thing,’ beyond the abyss that separates it from the present. For example, if a man from the fifteenth century could return to life today, would he consider the present hell or paradise? Whatever he thought, one thing is quite clear and that is that he would no longer have the competency to judge. It’s the present, not him, that judges and decides.
“I too, therefore, believe that I must understand the future not as something to be judged but something rather that sits in judgment on the present. Thus, such a future is neither utopia nor hell and cannot become an object of curiosity. In short, it is nothing more or less than future society. And even if this society is developed to a far higher degree than the present one, it only occasions suffering in the eyes of those entombed in their microscopic sense of a continuing, predictable present.
“The future gives a verdict of guilty to this usual continuity of daily life.”
