The way of visionaries: foresight and imagination, computed
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The way of visionaries: foresight and imagination, computed Robert Hogenraad1 Accepted: 29 October 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Do foresight and imagination change in the words of power elites? We first extract information present in stories with a text mining tool equipped with text-analytical filters, the ‘Foresight’ and ‘Imagination’ lexicons. We also convert Kermode’s views on time in novels into computable data drawn from the ‘Foresight’ lexicon. We then test these views on tales of scattered episodes—Sartre’s “Nausea” or Murdoch’s “Under the Net” for example. Our lexicons are then tested on novels showing concordance between beginning and end— James’ “The Bostonians” or Joyce’s “Ulysses”—where each episode leads to the next. The ‘Imagination’ lexicon of words that transcend time and space is tested on fantasies: such as Kerouac’s “On the Road”—a spiritual and endless search—and Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children”, places where boundaries between the real and the unreal collapse. The last step and basic target entails rolling out each confirmed lexicon on power elites’ speeches, casting into sharp relief how foresight and imagination take shape over time. The era explored resonates with extreme events. Foresight and imagination unfold disparately in power elites. Imagination increases in the Bilderberg Reports (1954–2002), and the speeches of Pope Francis (2013–2018), President Xi (2012–2019), and President Tusk (EU Council, 2014–2018), but droops in President Draghi (ECB, 2011–2018). Foresight goes up in the Bilderberg Reports and partway in Pope Francis; it weakens in President Xi, declines in President Tusk and flattens in President Draghi. Except for the Bilderberg group, power elites do not seem to understand the present, essential for foreseeing. Keywords Foresight · Imagination · Time · Stories and power elites’ speeches · Lexicons · Text mining
1 Introduction: down memory lane The future is a foreign country: they do things differently there (Tóibín 2010, p. 84). 15 April 2019, minutes after 6:00 pm: Flash news of the fire of the Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral. Bystanders, lamenting the death of archives, suddenly need the past tense to * Robert Hogenraad [email protected] 1
Emeritus, Institute of Psychological Sciences, Université catholique de Louvain, Place du Cardinal Mercier 10, Louvain‑la‑Neuve, Belgium
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speak of the Cathedral, with flashbacks, where the past becomes the present. Did modern psychology not invest enough in the fields of time and imagination, casually looking backward as observed by Proust (1996, p. 222) “The true paradises are the paradises that we have lost”? On balance, there is a sense of nostalgia—reality forbidding any hope—feeding “a perpetual calendar of the deep anxieties of the human soul” (Focillon 1970, p. 70, quoted in Kermode 1967, p. 11), and living constantly at a turning point. Having brought up the subject of the death of archives, let’s now address it, because the relation of archives to time is t
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