Making the future less scary

While most of my time is spent looking for positive guiding images of the future, I think it’s important to look at a wide range.  In particular I’m trying to gain some insight into groups who want to return to the past.” I reported on the Bronze Age Mindset, and just finished Quinn Slobodian’s Hayek’s Bastards. Part what I’m hoping to find is some common ground between left and right. There is some, I think.

Readers of this blog know that I’m a proponent of a development theory of social change that posits a consistent direction of change over time toward greater complexity and choice.

I’ve used the data of the World Values Survey in support of this, including writing it up in the 2011 Consumershift book and the 2025 Imagining After Capitalism book identifying values changes as the most influential shift in moving to post-capitalism with possibilities captured in three guiding images.

It is fair to ask – how does what is happening right now square with the above? A couple thoughts:

First, an assumption. I think most would agree we are in a period of turbulence. My Imagining After Capitalism research found that at least a part of the explanation is that the dominant capitalist orders appears to be nearing its end and it is losing fit with the emerging future. If one can hold that assumption, then:

• The World Values Survey noted that, in times of difficulty or crisis, the data showed the gradual changing of values stalled, and in some cases reversed. Eventually, the change trajectory resumed again, when it was deemed safe and conducive to experiment once again. It makes total sense that we hunker down in turbulent times. It also makes sense that this is not a permanent condition.  
• A characteristic of the turbulence is that we are seeing is a fear of change. I’ve seen it in my client work over the last 5-10 years; the ethos about the future has shifted from generally positive to generally negative. Unfortunately, if one looks for views about the future today, the vast preponderance of them are dystopic.

If looking forward isn’t working, it’s very natural to look backward. Thus, we see a whole of host of efforts to turn back the clock. And this is both on the left and the right. Going back to some form of simple communal life … whether it’s the Bronze Age or an off-the-grid intentional community. We can understand that people look to the  past because it provides something familiar and comfortable. The future, right now, looks pretty scary!

Even in the best of times, people tend to resist change. This is exacerbated in turbulent times. We are going to have to be patient. I did not put the After Capitalism transformation at 20-30 years lightly. It is going to be a challenging time, but also one with great possibility. We really can contribute to building something better.  

One of our jobs as futurists is to help craft future possibilities that are positive and desirable. That’s the aim of Imagining After Capitalism and we can all make our contribution to creating an ideascape where the ideas of where we are going look more compelling than the ideas of where we have been. – Andy Hines