"In the light of our culture, these are not unreasonable questions and tactics, but if once again, we try to see the lens through which we look, we can see that there is far too great an emphasis placed on the future"
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A folklorist’s side-eye, delivered in the calm diction of an educator: Dundes isn’t scolding people for planning ahead so much as diagnosing a cultural reflex. “In the light of our culture” is the tell. He’s granting that certain “questions and tactics” make sense inside a particular American (and broadly modern Western) operating system: optimization, forecasting, self-improvement, the belief that the next move is the real move. That opening concession disarms defensiveness, then pivots to the real target: not our answers, but our instrument.
The line that does the work is “see the lens through which we look.” It’s a meta-invitation, almost methodological. Dundes is smuggling in a core humanistic lesson: culture isn’t just what we do; it’s the set of assumptions that makes our doing feel rational. Once you notice the lens, you can notice what it excludes. Here, what it excludes is the present (and, implicitly, the past) as legitimate places to live, not merely reference points for a more efficient tomorrow.
The subtext reads like a critique of progress religion: the future as moral alibi. If you can keep life framed as preparation, then dissatisfaction becomes virtuous, and urgency becomes identity. In a postwar America enthralled by technology, growth, and managerial thinking, Dundes is warning that “reasonable” tactics can still be distortive. The punch isn’t that the future matters too much; it’s that a culture obsessed with futurity stops recognizing itself as obsessed, and calls the compulsion common sense.
The line that does the work is “see the lens through which we look.” It’s a meta-invitation, almost methodological. Dundes is smuggling in a core humanistic lesson: culture isn’t just what we do; it’s the set of assumptions that makes our doing feel rational. Once you notice the lens, you can notice what it excludes. Here, what it excludes is the present (and, implicitly, the past) as legitimate places to live, not merely reference points for a more efficient tomorrow.
The subtext reads like a critique of progress religion: the future as moral alibi. If you can keep life framed as preparation, then dissatisfaction becomes virtuous, and urgency becomes identity. In a postwar America enthralled by technology, growth, and managerial thinking, Dundes is warning that “reasonable” tactics can still be distortive. The punch isn’t that the future matters too much; it’s that a culture obsessed with futurity stops recognizing itself as obsessed, and calls the compulsion common sense.
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