The future will be fantastic, I’m already looking forward to it! We will have clean energy almost free of charge and available everywhere. We will have enough food for everyone and it will be grown ecologically and sustainably. We will gaze in wonder over and into our clean oceans, free of microplastics and waste. We will do the things we love and leave the rest to machines. We will live in a healthy environment with growing biodiversity. And we will use technology as a tool to make our lives more livable, to evolve and to shape our world.
Spinning? Well, we don’t know what the future will be like. But we do know today how focus works. What we focus on becomes more present. We start to find evidence for it and usually develop solutions for it quite unconsciously. True to the motto: The evidence proves it. If you buy a new car, you suddenly see it driving around everywhere.
Expectant parents see family happiness and offers everywhere that they hadn’t even noticed before. Software testers see weaknesses everywhere that no one else notices. So we carve our reality around the focus - a salute to the radical constructivists around Ernst von Glasersfeld and Heinz von Foerster.
Unfortunately, we have been excessively cultivating our problem trance for years now: I have no money. No retirement provision. No sense. Too much work. And it’s annoying. Got left behind. I can’t do it. My colleague doesn’t like me. The others are all stupid. The world is going down the drain. Blockchain will use up our energy reserves. Real estate crisis. Financial crisis. Autonomous vehicles will become human killers. Our habitat is collapsing. The next pandemic is surely just around the corner. Don’t look up - there could be an asteroid coming.
Keep looking at it and it will get bigger and bigger. The problems are growing, becoming ever more enormous, burdensome and overwhelming. But this is not the way to find a solution. This applies to us on a small scale, in our departments and companies, as well as to our society. “Problems can never be solved with the same way of thinking that created them.” This quote is attributed to Einstein and sums up the dilemma in a nutshell.
If we want solutions, we need a new narrative. A positive story that we tell ourselves. For our lives, our companies, our society. A different focus.
I am an optimist about the future. I have opted for the positive narrative of human history. One of visions, wishes and utopias. Because I believe that this view enables us to find better solutions to current challenges.
The pioneers of human history were always the ones who believed that something was possible - even though “everyone” said it was impossible. They were the ones who kept going. And I want to sow this seed. To awaken, support, encourage, inspire and motivate the little pioneer in us to keep going.
This narrative also resonates with an attitude. What could the cornerstones of such an attitude look like? Perhaps a future mindset that is characterized by:
And now: Let’s let the story unfold!