How to

Move Forward?

SeongWon Park West Maui on March 3, 2012 Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies

Today, we have gone through the envisioning process, in which we focused on what futures visions should be created in West Maui by those who are (or will be) responsible for the visions, and with using what available resources.

In executing the process, we learned the essence of futures studies from John at the beginning, we practiced creating our own visions with Aubrey,

and we made a timeline, which illustrated what events impacted our society in the past, and what issues are impacting our society at present.

We moved onto the next session, which was to identify trends and emerging issues. Scott explained the differences between trends and emerging issues.

Those activities are very important in forecasting futures, because the future that we will face might not be the one that we have become accustomed to.

The future may look absurd and ridiculous from the perspective of the present.

The significance of the activities that we have done today lies not only in preparing for uncertainties of the future, but also in perceiving self-efficacy toward the future.

Thus, it can be argued that futures studies aims not to increase accuracy in forecasts, but to perceive your can-do spirit toward the future.

The more futures exercises you do, the better you can adapt to change, chaos, and an unpredictable world. In fact, you can enjoy them and dance with them.

As Aristotle formulated the paradox over two thousand years ago,

If you can know the future, then you cannot do anything about it; If you can do something about the future, then you cannot know it in advance.

Futurist James Ogilvy aptly elaborated on it: You can no more predict human values than you can predict movements in contemporary art. It is the artists who will do something about the future of art, And it is human beings who will revalue their values. If either one is predictable, then she is not an artist; he is not a human being.

Both beauty and humanity share an inherent unpredictability

(J. Ogilvy, Futures Research Quarterly, 1992).

Finally, we wrote our own scenarios with clear vision statements. And, we shared the scenarios.

You might know that these scenarios include more futures issues than those of our initial visions.

Which is great!

But, I have a question for you:

Do these revised visions become more reliable and certain to accomplish at present?

If so, I assume that these visions are not futureoriented, but present-oriented.

In other words, these visions are valid only in the short term, but not in the long term.

Ironically, the long-term vision does look ambiguous and vague right now.
It is hard to prove with scientific facts.

Why does it?

One example can be found as follows: Most medical interventions focus on hospital treatments and medications, which yield more immediate results. We also need public parks, where people can exercise for better health. The investments for the public parks look nebulous and vague at present, but provide substantial long-term benefits.
(Example from Bradley Kreit at the Institure for The Future)

So, the long-term vision is interested in how to construct public parks while the short-term vision is interested in how to build hospitals, which is necessary for sure, though.

Any useful long-term visions come from a futures consciousness, not from a shortsighted now-ism.

A group of Asian futurists interestingly argue that in order to overcome crises that could wipe out the very existence of mankind, we have to go five beyonds:

beyond Egoism, beyond Economism, beyond Now-ism, beyond Nationalism, and beyond Scientism.
(K. Yazaki, 1994, Going Beyond Boundaries for Our Future Generations)

Most present-oriented visions led and continue to lead to egotistical competitiveness, short-sighted now-ism, and extreme nationalism that plague our society.

If we aim to create a long-term vision, we have to use both the useful and the useless.

In order to use the useful, we need to ask ourselves a question like

What is the first step you will take on Monday to come up with your vision?

In order to use the useless, we need to ask ourselves questions like

What if we could design a life-form?

Or

What if we met extraterrestrial beings?

The point that I want to emphasize on the useless is that we have to generate more opportunities for wonder, knowledge, and insight through a process of envisioning your future.

In addition, networking and cooperation in identifying future options is as in some cases even more important than the tasks of forecasting.

In short, in order to move forward, we have to

1. give the benefit of the doubt on our current visions. 2. invite more people to discuss and revise our visions. 3. continuously study diverse futures. 4. make our relationships more significant in revising our visions.

Any questions on the task of moving forward?

Thank you