Polak’s (1973, 200) case for images succinctly summarized is: “We found the positive image of the future at work in every instance of the flowering of a culture and weakened images of the future as a primary factor in the decay of cultures.” Here I will challenge the reader: can you envision today’s positive image of the future? I didn’t think so. Thus, the quest of this work was to identify them. For instance, one of the first ones I found was Haque (2011), who explicitly discussed the need for a paradigm shift from negative to positive with his Betterness concept (Haque, 2011).

Polak (1973, 183, 195) minces no words about the importance of images of the future and the dire need for them:

For the first time in the three thousand years of Western civilization there has been a massive loss of capacity, or even will, for renewal of images of the future.

• He found the existence of a vacuum where the images had once been. And not only is a there a vacuum, but he identified a “literal aversion to images of the future as such.”
• He talked about “defuturizing” as a retreat from constructive thinking about the future in order to dig oneself into the trenches of the present. It is a ruthless elimination of future-centered idealism by today-centered realism.

If you weren’t concerned about the future before, you should be now!