4 minute read
Yvonne Curtis
I HAVE A DREAM FOR FUTURING IN NEW ZEALAND
By Yvonne Curtis
IBELIEVE we need to create spaces for deeper conversations about our future in New Zealand. I was invited to join the founding members of the New Zealand Futures Trust, a NGO, in 1982; since then, I have been involved in exploring ways to understand and use Futures Studies in a New Zealand context. What inspired me back then, and still inspires me now, is the way futuring lifts our heads above our limited views and everyday timescales to search for a larger, longer-term perspective. Futuring can enable us to evolve as conscious living beings. It can help us reflect collectively, see ourselves in the context of wider forces and influences, recognise our choices, and consciously shape how we respond. It’s a whole heart, body, mind and soul activity. To do it well requires imagination, curiosity and broad human questions.
As I reflect on the New Zealand context now, my concern is that our collective thinking has become narrowed and is orientated on the short term. Over the past forty years the complexities and crises in the world have expanded exponentially - environmental, humanitarian, cultural and economic. We have the capacity to contemplate this at an individual level and make choices for ourselves and our families. But at a governance level, we lack a structure within the current official government framework to allow us to consider these complexities collectively at a national level. Almost as an aside, Government guidelines mentions futuring as a methodology within departmental planning processes.
FIRST OBSTACLE
This aside underlines one fundamental obstacle to New Zealand’s capacity to undertake furturing. Essentially, to begin a project, to get funding from government, you (as an individual, family, community, organisation, or NGO etc) must first establish that it is in the government’s interest within their predefined guidelines (see DPMC home page and type in futuring). For futuring, to create an environment where we can unlock the wider, long-term perspective we need to see outside of our narrow boundaries. To bury futuring into a planning process, once a problem has been identified, means by definition the activity isn’t futuring.
SECOND OBSTACLE
Another obstacle is that our current governance system at all levels is primarily managerial. It is based essentially on confrontational thinking, with Parties and candidates pitted against each other - one answer thrown against another. This ethos of competition is incapable of addressing the complexity of the world. We need a more collaborative approach with more heart and imagination. We need to feel our way forward. This means engaging our 6th sense (feeling - ESP) as well as our other five senses to guide us to any new understanding. Positive, pragmatic imaginative futuring needs both/and/ but thinking to dominate, rather than elimination either/or options only.
THIRD OBSTACLE
A third obstacle is our present reliance on data, models, and predictions as our first cast into the future. We have become overly focused on numbers and squeezed imagination out. Our councils, for example, have the mandate under the 2002 Public Bodies Act to look at possibilities fifty years into the future. They keep taking one option, based on a range of projected numbers, and call it futuring. The tragedy is that people believe these predictions and fail to realise that we have more than one choice. Numbers are important, but only to add definition to the possibilities we first imagine.
FIRST NEED
For futuring to be effective we need to imagine first and then plan. Futuring needs to be cross-sector, inclusive of diversity, gathering as many people and perspectives as possible from across society. It needs to start broad, then focus in. First, we need the big picture to avoid potholes and find the desired destination. Otherwise, we’re like a sailing crew with our eyes fixed on the water just in front of the boat looking for obstacles, without seeing the star that we are navigating by.
SECOND NEED
We need to create spaces that invite the whole person as people to contribute - not just our heads. We need to gather people of different ages and cultures from across society and allow time for trust to grow and to explore the diverse views we embody as a collective. There is a magical thing that can happen when a group of people come together and take the time to trust each other. Out of this synergy, truly new ideas can be born. In situations that seem restrictive, complex, or overwhelming, at least two inspired ideas can be enough to change a lot. These can become the weft and waft threads to weave new futures. In a way, it’s simple. But, at present, it can take courage to resist the persistent apparent public demand for productivity and gain, just for long enough, to be able to imagine and feel and taste the future images that could include us all.
- Elizabeth Connor 2020 ”
TECHNICAL NOTES
