PROGNOSIS

A TALE OF MULTIPLEX FUTURES: THIS IS A DIALOGUE IN THE MAKING

THIS is a short transcript of a futures conversation between Claire Nelson, Editor-At-Large and Ralph Mercer, Managing Editor. This type of conversation happens on most of our calls and rarely makes it into print. We decided it was time to make transcriptions of our off-the-cuff conversation. Enjoy and please comment and join our conversation.

NELSON: It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. The futures we would have wanted were no longer on any of the three horizons, and the futures we wanted were buried in a litany of conjunctive optimism and conspiracy theories. A futurist’s tale is based on making sense of the trends and signals emerging across life’s landscape. So what trends and signals should we be looking at for 2023?

with Ralph Mercer & Claire A. Nelson

MERCER: Before I speak to that, I think that some Futurists are overly reliant on exploiting trends, signals and data and seem unwilling to consider alternate futures that do not fall into the sweet spot of plausible futures. They gravitate towards connecting the dots rather than deciding where the dots should be placed. This reliance anchors futures to incremental and linear possibilities.

NELSON: What do you mean where the dots should be placed? Are the dots not already there, and is it not that we have to look for them? Or, as the Bible may say, have the eyes to see and the ears to hear? So, are we the ones placing the dots?

MERCER: The future is a collection of choices; we are constrained by the choices made in the past and responsible for the choices we make in the present, limiting the choices available to us in the future.

MERCER: Using “placing the Dots” as a metaphor for accepting full responsibility for our actions, it also encourages us to decenter ourselves as humans as the unit of measurement of a good future. It allows us to resist the tyranny of common sense, the doctrines of past social controls (education, political and faith-based) and plausible futures.

NELSON: I would agree that the future is a collection of choices. We are here living in this version of the future imagined by someone years and years ago. But I would argue that to say that we are now limited in the choices we make today is rather limited. We are still bound by the laws of gravity, thermodynamics, traffic laws, and all that, but that is the reality of life. We are not living an imaginary life. We are living an imagined life.

MERCER: It is our imagination that needs to be freed from the limitations of the human-centred (humanism, enlightenment, capitalist) mindset. The future will not and probably should not always be better for humans, but it always should be better for the planet.

NELSON: Well, I, for one, would agree that Mother Earth is getting to the point where she might just exterminate us in order to survive. Yes, I did say exterminate. But I am wondering if we are not getting it backwards. Does the planet have a future that is not circumscribed by humans? I’m asking the question if a tree falls in the forest and no human is around, does it make a sound?

MERCER: we have to stop the binary approach. It is not either or/ human or others. It is the maturity to understand that sometimes the less-than-human or more-than-human need to be the focus of our future planning. Humans do not have sovereignty over the planet, and its resource is not exclusively in support of the human destruction of the planet.

NELSON: I am in agreement there. Many indigenous cultures live by the ethos - we belong to the planet, but the planet does not belong to us. I am now a keen proponent of taking it one step further in this era of space exploration, and the cosmos do not belong to us – we belong to the cosmos. But to come back down to Earth, I agree we need a third way. That is why in my theory of SMART Futures design as a framework for designing futures of flourishing, I speak to the need for us to move towards metrics that matter. Meaningful Metrics. Moral Metrics. But that presupposes that what is ‘Meaningful’ and ‘Moral’ is the same across cultures. Moreover, we all agree that the planet’s health is a necessary and sufficient condition for our survival and our tribal. I have assumed that we humans all have the same common sense understanding about our interdependence. You spoke earlier about the tyranny of common sense. What do you mean? Help me understand your perspective about the doctrines of past social controls that need to be unshackled. I have my views about the need to decolonize the future. But let me hear yours.

MERCER: Claire, there is a lot to unpack in your question; I think the place to start is to ask, what if the colonization of the future, as you put it, is our common sense? I frame the meaning of common sense in this discussion to mean behaviours, actions and beliefs that are considered acceptable, expected, and plausible. Common sense then becomes inculcated in persons in the form of lasting dispositions or structured tendencies to think, feel and act (choose) in determinant ways.

MERCER: The personalities and structured tendencies, unconsciously acquired by individuals through experience and socialization when practiced collectively, become the world views and metaphors of social norms and expectations, eventually becoming embodied in our choices. The tyranny I mentioned is a need to understand that the signals, data, images, and processes employed in constructing plausible futures are products of our choices. Our beliefs and assumption become the weight of history that creates the structures of our present choices and ultimately constrains the possibilities of truly alternative Futures.

MERCER: Suppose morals are accepted standards of behaviour that enable people to function in a particular society or group. Then it is essential to understand the cultural, social, and structural formation that creates the choices, moral or otherwise. Again, metrics find and connect the dots.

MERCER: To “place the dots,” or in your words, decolonize, is to deconstruct and make visible, if you wish, what shapes our choices, what are the narratives, structures, world views and archetypical stories and metaphors that frame individual and collective choices.

MERCER: Someone once said that to fix something, you first must understand it; using this, I argue that if we want to find alternative futures, we first must understand what makes a future plausible, desirable and acceptable.

NELSON: On that note, I would say we can agree. We need to understand better what makes a future plausible, desirable and acceptable, so may that be the thing we watch for in 2023. Deeper Understanding. As the Australian aboriginals say: “The stories of the past must be sung into the present in order for the future to exist.”