The Future Thinker’s Dilemma

A world that’s upside down cannot and should not be treated and measured as if it holds the key to creating a world that’s right side up. A new vision and world requires a new way of thinking, measuring, acting, and being

challenges to long-held assumptions take place when individuals dive deeper and deeper into anticipatory imagination and provocation, and this opens the door to transformative realities that profoundly change the perspective of the foresight practitioner. Consequently, the possibility of these new worlds become an internal experience that can no lo

“We think creatively (not predictively) about the future in order to decide what to do now in order to make possible different futures. There is no reason to be ‘future-oriented’ other than to try to change things, from now on . This means that you must be very careful when trying to ‘future’ to ensure that you are not unwittingly reproducing impl

I’m reminded of the words of sci-fi author Ursula K. Le Guin: “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.” Of course, it was also noted by philosophers Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek that “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” Such a statement displays the narrative wei

foresight has (generally) been looking to solve present-day problems that exist as a direct result of the life-draining systems that we presently inhabi t.

Our practice of “futuring to the problem” (a phrase that mirrors the idea of “teaching to the test” — a colloquial term for any method of education whose curriculum is heavily focused on preparing students for a standardized test), has resulted in the development of a plethora of tools and methods in the field of foresight that are meant to help us

Our present-day solutions are born from the present-day problems of our present-day systems that are fueled by our present-day perspectives, and foresight/futures thinking should be offering us an entirely different way of perceiving the world that supersedes our limited assumptions, our system-defined problems and our context-limited solutions.

as Albert Einstein was famous for saying, “ No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it ” Put another way, you can’t solve a problem within the context of that problem.

Neither of these individuals are saying that we should not be working with organizations, businesses, governments, for-profits, non-profits, or any other entities where people work and live — and neither am I. What we are saying is that our thinking and acting toward the future must challenge the systems that would seek to short-circuit the very fu