Many of us have expectations of a bad future. Can we use them to get a clearer view of the present and to find behaviors to create a new destination?

"The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," is William L. Shirer's look back at his life as a CBS reporter in Nazi Germany. Written 40 years after W.W.II, the book takes the form of a diary with prewar events unfolding as daily reports. Hindsight does not change what happened, but it changes the focus of Shirer's eye. Where he originally reported the development of a world power, he now reports a malignant social process overtaking Germany. In one entry (left column below) he explains how hard it is to maintain his hold on reality immersed in the Nazi experience. In the right column below is what Shirer might write in a hindsight diary if he lived in the year 2025 and looked back on today.

"I myself was to experience how easily one is taken in by a lying and censored press and radio in a totalitarian state.
 
Though unlike most Germans I had daily access to foreign newspapers, especially those of London, Paris, and Zurich. And though I listened regularly to the BBC and other foreign broadcasts, my job necessitated the spending of many hours a day combing the German press, checking the German radio, conferring with Nazi officials, and going to party meetings.

It was surprising and sometimes consternating to find that, notwithstanding the opportunities I had to learn the facts and despite one's inherent distrust of what one learned from Nazi sources, a steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions made a certain impression on ones mind and often misled it.

No one can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime’s calculated and incessant propaganda.

Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but on such occasions one was met with such a stare of incredulity, such a shock of silence, as if one had blasphemed the Almighty, that one realized how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which had become warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels, with their cynical regard for truth, said they were." (pg. 247.)

"I myself was to experience how easily one is taken in by good-intentioned educational processes and media.

Though, unlike most people, I had access to research which describes reality as a system of physical objects connected by causal relationships, most of my day is spent being barraged by media, conferring with people who, and interacting with institutions that, understand the world as a set of "dictums."

It was surprising and sometimes consternating to find that, notwithstanding the opportunities I had to learn about systems and despite one’s inherent distrust of what one learned in school and the media, a steady diet over the years, of farmer's almanac like phrases made a certain impression on my mind and often misled it.

No one can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the distortions of reality unintentionally created by educational and media immersion.

Sometimes one was tempted to say as much. But on such occasions, one was met with such a stare of incredulity, such a shock of silence, as if one had blasphemed the Almighty, that one realized how useless it is even to try to make contact with a mind, which had substituted a catechism for causality'"