i called the idea that a thinker doesn't want to miss the train to the future a "terrible" idea. and let me say that this is a characteristic delusion of the last couple of centuries; i guess we sometimes call it "modernism." that is, we've discovered the shape of history, can see where we're headed. no amount of disappointment seems fundamentally to alter this idea. every prediction marx or hegel ever made has been falsified, but still we wait. it's a religious impulse, and in the same way adorno was still waiting for the future, rick warren is still waiting for the second coming. that's what religions are for: to tell you the shape of the future, and anything that does is a religion, is only based on faith. this is true of, say, thomas friedman's technolatry, or american "progressivism": we're completely shocked by something as mildly "reactionary" as the bush administration, sticking out its foot to trip history. if you're thinking progressive vs. reactionary, i say you're engaged in a completely irrational religious structure. the idea that we can discern the shape of the future and help it along, be on its right side, be its avatar, is, um, false. you're going to get your ass kicked. again. but it's not going to register, is it? just do your work as best you can, try to love people here and now etc: our destiny - apotheosis or extinction, or just more chaotic muddling (my prediction) - is going to happen whatever you may think or want or declare. history has no shape. the terror of the progressive idea is that it is in its essence totalitarian. because the present is a mess, but the future has a shape, we must be pressed into this shape: friedman thinks so. so did lenin, pol pot, mussolini, john hagee. people: just let go. you don't know what the future is, and of course if you did it would be fate, not a program: you couldn't make it. trying to is just converting people into raw materials in your delusional technology of jive. even if it's all progress toward freedom and democracy, people have to be rendered comprehensible - simplified - and then driven.