This might change your mind…
As someone who enjoys thinking about the future, I spent a lot of time looking for new, emerging narratives and ideologies.
See, foresight or futures thinking for me isn’t merely about extrapolating trends and creating future scenarios. It’s more about seeing the systems that form our world as they currently are from different perspectives. Because it is only when we realize that alternative realities exist, that we become actual designers of our future as opposed to drifters of some future.
“It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things.” Niccolò Machiavelli (1950): The Prince and The Discourses
“To initiate a new order of things” or let’s say at least to irritate your mind, I have compiled this list of random new perspectives on different issues…
Most scientific findings are wrong and useless. For example, “in 2015, only about a third of 100 psychological studies published in three leading psychology journals could be adequately replicated.” [source]
Could this be the future service/platform economy?
And this the future of Art?
Did you know that the richest families in Florence, Italy, in 1427 are still the richest families in Florence? [source]
Or that “62 people own the same as half the world”, and that “30 percent of all African financial wealth is estimated to be held offshore, costing an estimated $14 billion in lost tax revenues every year. This is enough money to pay for healthcare for mothers and children in Africa that could save 4 million children’s lives a year, and employ enough teachers to get every African child into school.” [source]
Did you know that “about 60 percent of occupations [in the U.S.] could have 30 percent or more of their constituent activities automated” — right now! [source]
Where are the rich and developed countries at?
Humanitarian-aid expert Kilian Kleinschmidt: Refugee camps “are the cities of tomorrow. The average stay today in a camp is 17 years. That’s a generation. In the Middle East, we were building camps: storage facilities for people. But the refugees were building a city.” [source]
Another crazy idea: What if instead of “developing” poor countries, we “de-develop” rich countries?
“Costa Rica manages to sustain one of the highest happiness indicators and life expectancies in the world with a per capita income one-fourth that of the US. […] In light of this, perhaps we should regard such countries not as underdeveloped, but rather as appropriately developed. And maybe we need to start calling on rich countries to justify their excesses.” [source]
On that topic: Did you know that Africa loses approximately $1 Billion Weekly To Illicit Transactions and that commercial transactions by multinationals accounted for 60 per cent of the unlawful flows, followed by criminal activities such as trade in drugs, weapons and people which all accounted for 35 per cent. [source]
Q: What Shell, you have only paid this few taxes in Nigeria? A: Yes, we sold toilet papers worth $4 billion to our subsidiary in the Cayman Islands. Hence, we had to report a dramatic loss.
Planning your next holiday? Shift your perspective and check out this story by Ciku, a Kenyan woman, travelling through Europe and South America and all the trouble she has to deal with due to her African passport. [source]
Very impressive chart, showcasing the ascent of renewable energy:
More than half the people on our planet live in some region that experiences water scarcity at least one month of the year:
Some things that happened last year from an environmental perspective:
“In just the past few months, record-setting heat waves in Pakistan and India each killed more than 1,000 people. In Washington state’s Olympic National Park, the rainforest caught fire for the first time in living memory. London reached 98 degrees Fahrenheit during the hottest July day ever recorded in the U.K.; The Guardian briefly had to pause its live blog of the heat wave because its computer servers overheated. In California, suffering from its worst drought in a millennium, a 50-acre brush fire swelled seventyfold in a matter of hours, jumping across the I-15 freeway during rush-hour traffic. Then, a few days later, the region was pounded by intense, virtually unheard-of summer rains. Puerto Rico is under its strictest water rationing in history as a monster El Niño forms in the tropical Pacific Ocean, shifting weather patterns worldwide.” [source]
The Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, no! the Plastic Ocean. “Each white dot represents 20 kilograms of plastic — and when you zoom in on the original interactive version, you can see just how many dots there are.” [source]
Air pollution kills more people worldwide than AIDS, tuberculosis and car accidents combined. [source]
Still, annually around 1.25 million people worldwide die from road traffic injuries — the leading cause of death among 15–29 year olds [source]. Maybe we should look at roads and cars this way:
Companies are like little children. Well, then let’s change them!!
Finally, why don’t we all ignore conventional wisdom, view the world from different perspectives and choose for ourselves what “wisdom” really is…
Thanks so much for going through my random list!! I’d like to post stuff like this more often, shake people’s perspectives a bit and while doing so, maybe give them new ideas.
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Thanks!
