10 Big Mistakes People Make in Thinking About the Future - Sara Robinson/AlterNet
10 Big Mistakes People Make in Thinking About the FutureBy Sara Robinson, AlterNet Posted on April 3, 2012, Printed on April 9, 2012
Being a working futurist means that I think a lot about how people think about the future. It also means spending a lot of time with people who are also thinking about their own futures.
Typically, this involves a dialogue between three distinct groups.
First, there's usually a small handful of very foresighted people, who are aware of their own blind spots and biases, and who are eager and open about the prospect of soaring into a wild blue sky to gather a lot of exciting new information.
Second, there's a larger group of people who don't usually think at 50,000 feet -- but are willing to go there if they're with people they trust. Their wings aren't sturdy, and they are prone to some very common mistakes in thinking, but they're often the most gratifying group to work with. What they want is permission to let go, encouragement to go big, and a watchful eye to keep them out of the rocks and ditches.
And then there's a third small group that's very resistant to the idea that anything could or should change. I've spent a lot of time over the years thinking and writing about that last group, because I'm fascinated by the question of what drives change resisters. What they want from me is safety -- the reassurance that if they overcome their natural reticence and try to embrace some constructive thinking about change, they won't end up all alone somewhere terrifyingly unfamiliar.
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To the end of helping progressives think more productively about the future we're trying to create, here are 10 of the most common mental hiccups that keep people from seeing the bigger picture and planning for it with a full measure of courage and intelligence.
http://www.alternet.org/visions/154773/10_Big_Mistakes_People_Make_in_Thinking_About_the_Future_/
= new reply since forum marked as read
...by people almost exclusively written off as bitter, insane conspiracy theorists.
Find some writers from the sixties or seventies who predicted our current quasi-fascist government. Invasive body searches, high-tech spying on millions of innocents, illegal remote-control warmaking, fundamentalists with significant political power, global corporate dominance, the continuing extermination of native cultures worldwide.
How seriously did we take them? How much mainstream press did they get?
Why would we take people who accurately predict the future today any more seriously?
"The future won't be like the past" - therefore your predictions will fail in unpredictable but probably serious ways.
"Trends end" - but there's no way to tell that something is a trend until it ends.
"Avoid groupthink" - abandon American consumer culture completely. "Fixing" the economy isn't going to fix anything real.
"If it's taboo, it's probably important" - yep, like that taboo about shitting in your well even if you don't believe in germs.
"Any useful idea about the future should sound ridiculous at first." - wait - you just said "avoid groupthink", which is what makes new seem ridiculous.
"What stays the same?" - Scientific principles, the behavior of the physical universe. What varies wildly? Human culture and therefore human "nature". The fact that nearly everybody can be addicted to Western culture (often against their will in the case of genuinely non-Westerners) doesn't demonstrate anything at all about its superiority.
"The other side is not always wrong." - maybe good advice in the 1000-year big picture, but not helpful currently with any of our major problems (i.e. lawless war, corporate rule, religious fundamentalism). In those issues, there is a clear lawless criminal element that cannot be argued or justified into being anything other than "wrong", i.e. against all planetary life.
"Be aware of different change theories." - no duh. Isn't this what college is for?
"Don't think in five or 10 years" - you can't meaningfully think 100 years ahead (according to all the rest of this), so to think long-term means to generalize about the future based on the past. Sometimes brilliant, sometimes useless.
"Better yet: don't assume anything, ever." - this will leave you an utterly mindless consumer, with no further guide to action than your immediate impulses. Join the Pepsi generation.
About as useful as Herman Kahn was as a futurist.
It's also interesting that the "ten theories of change" the article refers to doesn't acknowledge any negative human emotion as a force for change, as well as being saturated with the manifest destiny progress message - technology and development make everything better for everyone, except for minor spats. 
Basically there are two kinds of futurists. One kind works for places like the Project for a New American Century, or the Heritage Foundation, and makes things happen. The other kind explains to us why we have to go along with what the powers that be have determined is the correct path.
An example - consider the end of technology, but NOT the end of humanity, as a possible future. Does the article help?
4. If it's taboo, it's probably important. The thing you are not discussing -- the elephant in the room -- has a very high probability of being the very thing that will put an end to the present era, and launch you into the next phase of your future. Worse: the longer you ignore or deny it, the more at its mercy you will ultimately be when the change does come down.
A big part of being a futurist is to gently get people to start thinking and talking about those taboo subjects, the ones that are too scary or painful to think about. The very act of bringing those hard issues out onto the table and beginning to grapple with them, all by itself, has tremendous power to make people more courageous and resilient. The elephant only has power as long as we refuse to talk about it. When we finally confront it, its power becomes ours.
As for her change bucket all ten seem quite logical to me, I imagine they all rotate, take turns or combine to create change depending on which one (s) have reached critical mass at the time.
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/why-change-happens-ten-theories
Why Change Happens: Ten Theories
Thanks for the thread, Miral.
and I am going to mildly disagree on the litmus tests that something has to be taboo to be important, and that useful ideas have to sound ridiculous.
I think a big mistake in predicting and steering the future is not seeing the present clearly; not accepting things as they are. For example, Congress is exempt from insider trading laws so you have to factor their self interest into the future of the country. The system rewards congress people for changing laws in ways that have playable effect in the stock market. And you can flip that over -- the Supreme Court knows their ruling in Obamacare but won't release it for months. A good indication of what the ruling is ("will be"
could probably be determined by looking at the stock trades of Clarence Thomas's wife.
Another loophole into the future is secrecy. No secret can exist without a lie to cover for it (unless it is "an unknown unknown" , so any long term plan based on certain things staying secret is doomed. Secrecy is an illusion in the sense that nothing that 2 people know is actually a secret, it is just unknown, or unaccepted as fact, by the majority. So look under a lie, find the secret and you have a piece of the future.
