3 Imagining our futures

The three parts

Photo by Belinda Fewings on Unsplash

I recently read a post that included a quote probably paraphrased from Carl Jung – thinking is hard, that’s why we judge – and I realised that this insight was what Imagining our Futures is about. Our decision making and actions are underpinned by unconscious judging that we believe hold validity and belief. When we are asked to think about the new and novel - like imaging new futures - our brains rebel unless we have expanded and deepened our thinking. You are pushing your brain to change its habitual processes and that is hard.

Why bother then? In futures work, our obsession with predictions, our willingness to dismiss some futures and vehemently reject others, to spend time on a strategic plan but not a futures process are indicators we are judging not thinking. Underpinning our lack of deep thinking are our assumptions that shape what we believe to be right and proper or wrong. In turn, our assumptions are shaped by our worldviews which help us make sense of our realities.

If we are asked to think in new ways, we are being asked to move beyond constrained thinking and its underpinning assumptions. For me, the way to crack open those constraints is to surface and use of foresight capacities – the ability to expand and deepen our thinking about futures. Choose the hard not the easy in futures work.

It took me over 20 years to be able to write what is above because I too had assumptions that I needed to crack open, challenge and explore for validity, which I am still working on. I’m hoping what I’m writing here helps you to find that crack to find your assumption walls.

---

What follows is the structure of Imagining our Futures which seems sensible to me, particularly around the need for us to reframe the present. I’m writing here not because I am an expert; I’m someone who wants to leave behind a useful legacy of writing to help inform the FS field, and that has helped some people surface and use their foresight capacities in their lives – and cracked open their thinking to new ideas even a little. This is but one book to add to the Futures Studies (FS) library.

While thinking in new ways does hurt your brain, but I can say that once you have allowed yourself to break through your assumption walls you will never be able to think about ‘the future’ in the same way again.

The three parts of Imagining our Futures are listed below. Each part has it own page with links to separate posts.

---

Part 1: Introduction

Photo by Tyler Lastovich on Unsplash

The introduction covers why I’m writing about imagining our futures, from how this space evolved for me with its focus on the connections across worldviews, assumptions and futures thinking. At the core is our foresight capacities, the innate neurological process that allows us to imagine futures in the present. But there is another neural process that allows us to mentally prepare for our futures - anticipation which we will also explore.

We will explore how understanding the connections across our worldviews, assumptions, and thinking about and imagining futures will enable us to move beyond the current, constrained thinking about futures that dominates our processes now. The latter type of thinking has little to do with allowing us to use our foresight consciously, and it doesn’t allow us to reframe the present. It also has little to do with ensuring we do no harm to future generations by our decisions and actions today. We should aim not to control ‘the future’, or predict and forecast events, because that keeps our actions trapped in short-term thinking. We aim to find the new and the novel in the present, and to let our minds and imaginations be free of our unconscious assumptions.

Part 2: The Assumptions Mapping Framework

Photo by Lisa Forkner on Unsplash

This section explores why the AMF is needed. We first how our current futures processes often lack the depth and scope of thinking that is necessary in today’s world. Here our embedded focus on ‘the future’ and finding the ‘right future’ is challenged because futures is about reframing the present not predicting something that is unknowable. Anticipation and Futures Literacy are useful to consider here too - as Riel Miller (2018, p2) writes:

The future does not exist in the present but anticipation does. The form the future takes in the present is anticipation.

We then move to the design of the Assumptions Mapping Framework (AMF) and its Integral Futures base. We can’t challenge our assumptions and the worldviews that underpin them if we can identify them. I introduce Assumptions Sets here which are the foundation of the framework.

PART 3: Using the framework

Photo by Prateek Kochar on Unsplash

This part is still being put on paper. It ‘bones’ are there, but need more work. Coming soon, I hope.