FUTURES LITERACY: A DANCE BETWEEN IMPROVISATION AND PLANNING By Riel Miller, Kushal Sohal, Anna De Mezzo
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OSTLY, at the corner café, when someone asks you a question and you say: “I don’t know”, the expectation is that there is a way to find out. It is assumed that knowledge is attainable even if it isn’t immediately at hand. Same expectation applies to a somewhat stronger admission of ignorance – such as “No, there isn’t any way to know”. Even then, the typical reaction is not that the topic is irremediably unknowable, rather that there is just some obstacle that needs to be overcome. Today the default view is that humans can gain knowledge of anything. All we have to do is put our minds to the challenge. A comforting confidence in light of the widespread assumption that as a rule wanting to know is good thing. Who can argue with the proposition that it is better to be informed than not? Well, perhaps surprisingly the study of human anticipatory systems and processes, points to situations where the affirmation of unknowability and the rejection of the desire to know are fundamental to enhancing human perception. Perhaps the most familiar situation where this stance towards knowing is a prerequisite is when dancers or musicians improvise. By definition planning, a score or choreography, that lays out the notes or steps in advance, is the opposite of improvisation. When an artist improvises, on the basis of considerable, usually planned, mastery of many pre-conditions, they do not and should not know in advance
what they will do. No additional or better information is needed. Nor should they aspire to know what notes or movements they will use in advance. Since both are irrelevant, nay contradictory, to the invitation of improvisation – to be unplanned, generating novelty in the emergent moment. Fine, as far as it goes, but improvisation is for marginal creatives and the negligent who failed to plan sufficiently, right? After all you should know in advance and if you don’t you just didn’t try hard enough or pay sufficient attention to what was either already known or at least knowable. Why get blindsided by a pandemic? Why do things that end up moving the planet off of the climate patterns that were formative of today’s path dependent and brittle ways of organizing the species’ activities? Should’ve known better, right? Alternatively, could it be that these unanticipated situations are, at least in part, due to living with the expectation that the future is knowable and therefore fair game for human manipulation? From the Delphic Oracle to your favorite reigning deity of the moment the promise has been that at least some expert knows what’s going to happen. In the land of the blind the one-eyed person is king, of course. Only, as we gather knowledge about the different reasons and methods humans deploy to harness their ability to imagine
HUMAN FUTURES
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