Let’s build cathedrals with a Futures Consciousness
Image created by the AI Midjourney
We need ultra long term thinking to solve the wicked world problems we are facing today. Let’s reignite the habit of building cathedrals.
wondermash visited the Brave New World conference in Naturalis, Leiden last week and the political engagement was palpable. The futuristic innovations presented at the conference are already here: data storage in trees, bacterial signalling in health care, artificial intelligence. But so are climate change, ecosystem destruction, poverty and systemic inequality: wicked (complex, multilayered) problems that do not have a single solution.
‘A lack of Futures Consciousness is what got us in this mess’, Rudy van Belkom, director of the STT (Stichting Toekomstbeeld der Techniek) stressed at Brave New World conference. Politicians, he said, have a hard time looking beyond the four-year timeline that defines their jobs. Future Consciousness is a practice that helps people overcome their (natural) tendency for instant gratification and short-term plans for long-term problems.
The Dutch housing problem, the refugee crisis, and climate change could all have been anticipated and mitigated decades ago. Famously the first mention of climate change was in the eighties of the previous century, but policitians didn’t heed the message until a few years ago.
So how can Futures Consciousness help? Luckily Futures Consciousness is, like short-term gratification, also a very human trait. It is the capacity to understand, anticipate, prepare for, and embrace the future. We do it all the time: in our minds, using our imagination, we are able to plan for and set concrete actions for something as invisible as a future.
Another hopeful clue that the human species has the capability for this, is the intergenerational cooperation that was necessary to build cathedrals not too long ago. A 16th century mason laying the first stone for a cathedral would never in their lifetime see it finished. And probably his (grand)son wouldn't either. People cooperated regardless. Did they feel more connected to their ancestors and future generations? Where they able to postpone immediate gratification in exchange for being part of something that would outlast them and would be seen by millions? We can only guess (it might also be that they were forced in a feudal system to work on whatever their overlords told them too, with less loftier aspirations).
Anyway, Futures Consciousness is a useful set of individual abilities and tendencies that can be shifted or developed with practice. The University of Turku (Helsinki) describes a set of five dimensions of Future Consciousness that will help individuals and organizations to take a broader view of future possibilities: time perspective, agency beliefs, openness to alternatives, systems perception and concern for others. Improving our Futures Consciousness will help us identify our own role in shaping the future and build our capacities to become active change-makers.
Mind you: Futures Consciousness is not about predicting the future. It is not trendcasting, forecasting or scenario building. It is consciously imagining different possible futures and planning for the diversity of futures that might arise.
I am really curious if there are individuals or organizations out there that have consciously imagined a future beyond their immediate time perspective, say 50 years into the future? Is that something you take into account when building your organization?
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