I have actually been thinking a great deal concerning futurism these past couple of weeks. And wondering what it is that makes fantasizing without bounds so dang challenging. I joined a calculated preparation session for an org that I enjoy just recently. We were welcomed to envision the organization 20 years in the future and people battled to actually assume past the existing ecosystems. I remembered another brainstorming session I located myself in a few years ago where the facilitator asked us to fantasize our greatest wishes for the community. My coworker and I drew a picture of cherished neighborhood with jointly possessed organizations, cooperative childcare, and locally expanded food. The state federal government representative at the table’s deepest need for the area was an additional 100 area 8 vouchers. Why is it so hard for us to artistically envision the future in extensive ways?
I appreciate this because I understand that we require to creatively and jointly envision, carefully, the world we intend to see post climate dilemma in order to build the course to that future. As Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, author of What happens if We Get It Right?, advises us, “Dealing with the environment situation requires … a reassessing of the essential systems that we depend on.”
We reside in a state of collective shock these days, filled with despair and temper as we browse from one unimaginable or unimaginable current occasion to the next. I recognize I am often just thinking of exactly how to endure the day and the week. Not surprising that it is an obstacle to envision the future with positive outlook and creative thinking. I started to question what might be the scaffolding of conversation and thinking prompts that can open up our minds to opportunity, to dreaming.
Futurist and video game designer Jane McGonigal discusses mental time traveling as a valuable experiment and method. She begins by asking us to envision strolling up tomorrow morning in vibrant detail: where will you be, what will you be wearing, what will the temperature and the light be like, just how will you be awakened, just how will you really feel literally and psychologically, what will be the first thing you do? Then picture on your own strolling up on an early morning 10 years from tomorrow. Fill in all the same vivid information like you did previously.
In the future circumstances we have to pick the details, choose what to picture. And as we project ourselves into that future, we lug with us our hopes, our worths, and all that we care about. This scenario building is specifically what we should do to build a simply and plentiful globe beyond the climate dilemma. As we construct out the information of the world we want, we reach ask ourselves, ‘Is this the world I wish to get up in?’, ‘What do I need to be prepared for this globe?’, and ‘Should I try to change what I am doing today to make this future basically likely?’.
We can only construct what we can picture. We can make a decision just how the future will be various.
McGonigal welcomes us to take part in social psychological time traveling , to do this together, with the challenge to open our schedules and scroll 10 years ahead to the future. Put something in that calendar in 2035– an event, an event, something. After that welcome 4 or 5 others to that event, start thinking of with each other what that future day could hold. Invite me, I would certainly like to be component of imagining the future with you.
Friends, life out here for climate justice non-profits is hard. Unlike during the first time the chief climate change denier remained in workplace, support for our vital job is diminishing. We remain in the middle of an End of Fiscal Year fundraising campaign. Your present allows us to proceed inspiring teachers and youths to fantasize concerning the future and co-create the options that bring us there. Many thanks.
Susan Phillips
Executive Director
Picture: João Queiroz