E
The Expected World
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Written
1930
Addressed to
1960

“Once we recognise this with all the clearness that the clearness of the fact itself demands we must then rise up against the 19th century. If it is evident that there was in it something extraordinary and incomparable, it is no less so that it must have suffered from certain radical vices, certain constitutional defects, when it brought into being a caste of men- the mass-man in revolt who are placing in imminent danger those very principles to which they owe their existence. If that human type continues to be master in Europe, thirty years will suffice to send our continent back to barbarism. Legislative and industrial technique will disappear with the same facility with which so many trade secrets have often disappeared.”

Jose Ortega y Gasset

The Revolt of the Masses

Annotation

The thirty-year window Ortega specified — 1930 to 1960 — covers the most catastrophic period in European history: the rise of fascism, the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, the Holocaust, and Soviet domination of the East. Legislative technique did collapse, spectacularly, across Germany, Italy, Spain, and Vichy France. But Ortega missed the second half of his own timeframe: by 1957, the Treaty of Rome had launched European integration, and the continent was deep in an economic miracle. He was devastatingly right about the disease and entirely wrong about Europe's capacity for recovery.

What Actually Happened

Within Ortega's thirty-year window (1930-1960), legislative technique collapsed across Germany, Italy, Spain, and Vichy France. The period encompassed the rise of fascism, the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, and the Holocaust — the most catastrophic decades in European history. However, recovery began sooner than he imagined: the Treaty of Rome launched European integration in 1957, and by 1960 the continent was deep in an economic miracle. Europe did not sink back to barbarism; it rebuilt.

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1980
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“Why did I pick on the next nine years instead of the next 900 for finding a solution to the population crisis? One answer is that the world is rapidly running out of food. And famine, of course, could be one way to reach a death rate solution to the population problem. In fact, the battle to feed humanity is already lost, in the sense that we will not be able to prevent large famines in the next decade or so.”

Dr Paul R. EhrlichCulture & Society
1981
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“In twenty years, the USSR will be producing almost twice as much industrial output as is now produced in the entire non socialist world.”

The 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet UnionCulture & Society
1888
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“At present weapons are being changed every ten years, and even more frequently. In another fifteen years or so, people will use for shooting not rifles but some kind of lightning, some sort of a machine emitting a holocaustal electrical stream. Tell me: what can we invent in this line so as to surprise our neighbors? What if in fifteen years every great power will have secretly stored away one such surprise for any kind of eventuality? Alas, we are merely capable of imitating and purchasing ammunition from others, and—at best—of repairing it at home. To invent such machines we should have to have our own independent, and not purchased, science, not an imported but a free one—one that has taken root in our soil. As yet we do not possess such a science, nor do we even have a purchased one.”

Fyodor Mikhailovich DostoevskyCulture & Society