5 minute read
Ralph Mercer
FUTURES studies can be described as the systematic study of the possible, probable, and preferable futures, including worldviews and myths, by embracing uncertainty, unexpectedness, complexity, and emergence, both collectively and individually[1] .
When the planet is roughly 4.5 billion years old, and humans have only been leaving tracks on the surface for 200,000+ years, how does one define or distinguish the near future from the distant future? Oddly, the common measurement for the future appears to be the success or failure of the human species. Perversely that may be appropriate if we consider the success of the human futures as the nexus of the Anthropocene (a period of human destruction of the planet described by the Working Group on the ‘Anthropocene’[2] as the point of origin roughly around the 1950s) The possible, probable, and preferable futures mutate in the Anthropocene into the deserved, wanted and needed futures.
The future ‘deserved’ is a product of collective narratives of the dominant influencers that go unchallenged either through lack of perceived agency or apathy. It is a future that follows the path of least resistance, where we consider living with; pandemics, climate change, political corruption, inflation, fake news, and conflict as the new normal. In contrast, the stories underpinning the ‘wanted’ future are formed from our cultural beliefs and the hope that humanity will find a way to build a [technical] solution to solve the world’s pressing problems. Utopian and dystopian images weave through the ‘wanted’ future narratives heralding and lamenting the impact of technology on our lives, jobs, privacy, and the fabric of society in equal measure. It is the future that favours the incremental advancement of the status quo.
The association between a ‘deserved’ future and the ‘wanted future is primarily one of power and privilege bound by the belief in human exceptionalism. The boundary between the deserved and the wanted futures is one of agency constrained for one group and not the other by the dispositions and dependencies that shape lives. No one wakes up in the morning intending to accept a crappy future; however, the layers of dominant narratives, organizational structures, world views and myths all work to disempower and give the illusion of limited futures choices.
Deserved and wanted are products of twentiethcentury theories built from the concepts of humanism. New ideas and theoretical approaches challenge how the “human” and the others (e.g., technology, less-than-human, non-human and animals) are understood and recognize the entanglement of sciences and humanities, humans and technology, and recasting the relationship between researcher and the researched as intra-active. Ontologies grounded in humanism begin to unravel from this new vantage point, challenging how the “human” and the others (e.g., including machines, less-than-human, non-humans and animals) are understood and undermine the stability of the human-centred future[3][4].
The post-humanism vantage point also underlines the
question/s of who speaks for the planet in futures scenarios and the marginalized ‘others’ in this conversation. Can institutions supporting Futures Studies reach a critical mass to become the narrator of the ‘needed’ futures? To chart new paths away from the ‘deserved’ and ‘wanted’ futures to the post-Anthropocene is a messy, uncomfortable journey and disruptive at a cultural level. However, the planet’s fate is now entangled with the steps we take in crafting futures that decenter the human as the unit of measurement. Utopian futures are unrealistic, and dystopian futures are undesirable; the debate about the needed futures is one that embraces the post-Anthropocene and addresses the world’s biggest challenges.
The real fuel of innovation at this level isn’t the individual futurist but a critical mass of voices and metanation investments. Should this responsibility fall to organizations like the WFSF, and how do they [re]become the voices of planetary futures?
NOTES:
1 Edited WFSF definition of “Futures Studies” https://wfsf.org/about-futures-studies/ 2 Working Group on the ‘Anthropocene http://quaternary.stratigraphy.org/workinggroups/anthropocene/ 3 Ferrando, F. (2020). Philosophical posthumanism. Bloomsbury Publishing. 4 Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press.
PHOTO CREDITS
Main Cover Image - maximalfocus - Unsplash Inside Cover Image - john-fowler - Unsplash Pages 4-5 - Leonardo Yip - Unsplash Pages 6-7 - graham-holtshausen - Unsplash Page 9 - johny-goerend - Unsplash Pages 10-11 - aldebaran - Unsplash Page 12 - edgar-moran - Unsplash Page 13 - casey-horner - Unsplash Pages 14-15 - freepik Pages 16-17 - marc-a-sporys - Unsplash Pages 18-19 - jeremy-bishop - Unsplash Page 20 - alex-george - Unsplash Page 22 - josh-post - Unsplash Page 24 - matt-howard - Unsplash Page 24 - noaa - Unsplash Page 25 - chandler-cruttenden - Unsplash Page 26 - kelly-sikkema - Unsplash Page 27 - nikolas-noonan - Unsplash Pages 28-29 - patrick-perkins - Unsplash Page 31 - brett-jordan - Unsplash Page 32 - brent-gorwin - Unsplash Page 33 - janko-ferlic - Unsplash Page 34 - anupam-mahapatra - Unsplash Page 35 - erik-mclean - Unsplash Page 38 - md-mahdi - Unsplash Page 40 - rohan-makhecha - Unsplash Page 41 - jens-lelie - Unsplash Pages 42-43 - joel-filipe - Unsplash Page 51 - steven-diaz - Unsplash Page 54 - cory-schadt - Unsplash Pages 60-61 - zhen-hu - Unsplash Pages 62-63 - aldebaran - Unsplash Page 64 - daniel-olah - Unsplash Page 66 - glitch-lab-app - Unsplash Page 67 - heyerlein - Unsplash Page 68 - danilo-batista - Unsplash Page 69 - deepmind - Unsplash Pages 70-71 - jonas-verstuyft - Unsplash Page 72 - NASA Page 73 - spacex - Unsplash Page 74 - monica-garniga - Unsplash Pages 74-75 - NASA - Unsplash Page 76 - NASA - Unsplash Pages 78-79 - daniele-levis - Unsplash Page 80 - maximalfocus - Unsplash Page 81 - johannes-blenke - Unsplash Page 82 - thisisengineering-raeng - Unsplash Page 83 - thisisengineering-raeng - Unsplash Pages 84-85 - gayatri-malhotra- Unsplash Page 87 - scott-rodgerson - Unsplash Pages 88-89 - laurent-jollet - Unsplash Pages 94-95 - aldebaran - Unsplash Page 96 - elia-pellegrini - Unsplash Page 97 - romain-tordo - Unsplash Pages 98-99 - maksim-istomin - Unsplash Pages 100-101 - jeremy-bishop - Unsplash Page 102 - billy-huynh - Unsplash
