Strategic Foresight
Firstly, human beings generally dislike being proven wrong. In some cultures, this can bring about an embarrassing loss of face and even dishonour. Secondly, we tend to rely more and more on measurement rather than on using observation and exercising wise judgement.
While analysis and calculations are useful in many situations, the measures we adopt are often open to misinterpretation: they can be used in ways that convince us we are on the right track, even when we are not. The unrealistic calls for further economic growth and development as a response to the detrimental social impacts and environmental costs caused by that very strategy, is an example of how impoverished our judgement has become in that respect.
Occasionally, however, we might attempt to reconsider the entire situation, viewing changing circumstances through fresh lenses in the hope of noticing something different or seeing a factor we had previously overlooked or understated. But rethinking entire systems and their conditions is never an easy thing to do. It takes time, imagination and deep reflection to understand what caused the current state and, above all else, a willingness to let go of past preconceptions.
Any expression of a different reality entails the development of new mental models as well as the application of appropriately designed tools and techniques. Many of the existing ones are stale, having created the simplistic economic remedies and myopic political agendas that gave rise to the unsustainable situations in which we now find ourselves. For example, continued use of industrialism’s reductionist ethos, dogma and models will only cause us to become mired in more of the same. Then again the sheer aggression and oppressive nature of Western ideals and models (with their accompanying empirical institutions and ingrained practices) forces us into working within a paradigm that is becoming more and more obsolete.
Such expressions of alternative futures also require dedicated methodologies that allow us to overcome the quicksands of the past while inventing practical, coherent and meaningful futures out of the dynamic cosmic dance of a complex, continuously evolving present.
The ability to reflect sensibly and inventively on alternative futures is extremely challenging for most people simply because our fascination with the present is so all encompassing. It overwhelms us by its immediacy -- as the sphere in which our most routine thoughts, feelings and actions connect and play out. Because of this, our rational spirit acts rather like an immune system, assuring us that tomorrow will simply be a continuation of today, even when our most deeply embedded instincts caution us that this cannot possibly be so.
Strategic foresight as practiced by the AFI enables us to escape the mind traps that would otherwise hold us back.