A visit to the future
A Spaniard, a Hungarian and an Australian all walked into the United Nations. Nothing happened.
Those three then walked into a bar. That’s when the real diplomacy begun.
Like the beer and wine, ideas flowed and unique stories were exchanged.
Not everyone was drinking and no one was drunk, but the stories were authentic and engaging and not stifled by a process or procedure.
The Spaniard, the Hungarian and the Australian were soon joined by other people from around the world who also left their coats and national agendas at the door.
Suddenly, people from around the world were engaged in robust, passionate debate. No one was too idealistic and no one was too cynical because ultimately no one was being formally judged — not by their country, not by the United Nations.
Despite the lack of structure and despite the informal setting, each individual was able to extract meaning from certain things said by people from completely different backgrounds.
After a raucous night of frivolous conversation, the diplomats headed back to their accommodation and went to sleep.
But before leaving the bar, they all made sure they grabbed their coat and national agenda on the way out. Of course, they’d need it the next day.
So the next morning, they all headed back to the United Nations. Despite the relationships they had formed the night before, most still made sure they brought their national agendas with them.
As they all arrived in dribs and drabs, many were horrified by a newly placed sign out the front of the building.
“PLEASE LEAVE ALL NATIONAL AGENDAS AT THE FRONT DOOR,” the sign said.
Looking around, there was anguish on the faces of people everywhere. They were puzzled by this sign that prohibited the pre-conception of ideas prior to entering.
Some people even voiced their concerns.
“We came here to help our communities,” one person yelled.
“How can we come up with global actions without them,” another shouted.
As chaos threatened, a voice of reason emerged. It was Albert Einstein.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them,” Einstein said.
The group fell eerily silent as they pondered this profound sentence.
After a few moments, one bold leader began to move.
This person had been at the bar the night before and had in that brief moment recalled the feeling of openness they had experienced when they had parted with their national agenda the night before.
In an emotion charged moment, this brave person discarded their national agenda and walked into the United Nations.
After this moment, another person followed, then another, and then most followed after that.
Inside, the building was still the same. The tables were still nailed to the floor and the rooms were set out with traditional seminar décor.
But the people had changed. They hadn’t necessarily changed what they thought, they’d just questioned the way they’d arrived at those conclusions.
My first tangible diplomacy experience at the 9th UNESCO Youth Forum was certainly different to how I expected it to be.
The forum was in a sense disregarding of what we already knew about international relations and global issues and focussed on analysing the way in which we had arrived at these conclusions.
In a philosophical sense, I found myself continually critically analysing my version of utopia. What did it actually look like? This was not as simple as I’d first thought.
But in the most part, young people in attendance were encouraged to change the way they think about the future.
There were over 500 participants from around the world that gathered for the forum in Paris late last month to discuss topics relating to sustainable development and climate change ahead of UNESCO’s General Conference and COP21, both to be held in Paris in November.
The city of lights, steeped with history and tradition, was for me a profound travel experience in itself.
But underpinning the entire forum was the idea that the future is inherently imaginary and based on a set of assumptions that governs the way we live in the present.
The idea that people should take a more considered approach to the future is known in academic circles as “futures’ literacy”.
In his paper titled, The Future Now: Understanding Anticipatory Systems, Dr Riel Miller, who created and convened the forum, describes futures literacy as “the capacity to develop and tell anticipatory stories”.
“A futures’ literate person is able to recognise and recount different forms of the potential of the present, just the way an accomplished reader can distinguish fiction from non-fiction, a detective story from a romance novel,” Dr Miller said.
As such, participants were broken up into small groups of eight members and asked to imagine what life in 2040 will look like.
Once participants had established what their preferred and predicted futures future were, we were asked to examine the assumptions that underpinned those particular futures.
This process was extremely difficult for some participants including myself.
Many believed that the assumptions underpinning their ideas were unchallengeable.
At the heart of economics student, Raaj Rayat’s, prediction for 2040 was an assumption that economic scarcity would still exist.
When challenged about this assumption, Raaj felt conflicted.
“Scarcity was something so ingrained within me that I struggled to even imagine a world in which it doesn’t exist,” he wrote in a deeply personal, reflective blog post.
“I couldn’t help but see it as an entirely unfeasible suggestion and, in an attempt to hold on to the familiar, I sought to justify my viewpoint arguing that we live on a bounded planet.”
But after breaking the assumption that the world was bound by scarcity, Raaj was able to appreciate the limitless potential of unrestricted thinking.
“The point is not that scarcity will not exist in 2040, the point is that I was unable to even imagine a future without scarcity. And in doing so, I was limiting my own conception of the future,” he said.
“I could see only certain possibilities and in doing so I was neglecting the infinite possibilities.”
Raaj’s personal account illustrates how distinctly personal thinking about the future is.
Dr Miller also spoke to me about the personal nature of the future.
“The future is something that’s very visceral. People use it all the time,” he said.
Dr Miller, who has an extensive background in economics, believes that by thinking about the future, people can build their capacity to anticipate things.
“Anticipation is a fundamental attribute of our universe,” he said.
“This allows us to realise that there are things that are unnameable happening all the time. If we can in a small measure increase our capacity to appreciate that and to make sense of it because we are not locked into a particular view of the future, it allows us to see things we couldn’t see before.”
It’s interesting to relate this thinking to a tangible situation. Take the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 as an example.
Despite the billions of dollars that were spent on economic modelling tools, the credit crunch took many by surprise.
Perhaps a more anticipatory approach could have reduced the impact of such a crisis?
The idea of becoming more futures’ literate is concept that has been recognised in Australia and is being tackled by some organisations.
The Australian Futures Project is one such organisation that is working in the area.
Their objective is clear.
“The project responds to the widespread frustration that, as a society, Australia is struggling to make the decisions that will enable us to flourish in the 2020s and 30s. We know what we need to do but we are not doing it,” their website states.
The Australian Futures Project is currently undertaking projects related to early childhood education, agriculture and parliamentary leadership.
Dr Miller believes there are already many examples of the value of anticipatory thinking that exist within the world today.
“The idea that time and space changes, means that evolution can create systems that are based on anticipation. For example, trees lose their leaves because it’s better for their survival. They’ve integrated anticipatory systems into their functioning.”
As the Spaniard the Hungarian and the Australian left the United Nations that evening, they felt empowered.
But this time, they were not feeling empowered by the endorsement of their national delegation or the personal endorsement of anyone else.
They felt empowered by their new line of inquiry — a line of inquiry that goes further than building on the ideas of the past and present.
