The future will be fantastic, I'm looking forward to it! We will have clean energy almost free and available everywhere. We will have enough food for everyone with organic and sustainable farming. We will gaze in wonder over and into our clean oceans, free of microplastics and trash. We will do the things we love and turn the rest over 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 it works with focus. What we focus on becomes more present. We begin to find circumstantial evidence for it and, usually quite unconsciously, to develop solutions for it. Freely according to the motto: The evidence proves it. If you buy a new car, you suddenly see it driving around everywhere.
Focus
Expectant parents see family happiness and offers everywhere that they hadn't even noticed before. Software testers see weak points everywhere that no one else notices. So we build our reality around the focus - a salute to the radical constructivists around Ernst von Glasersfeld and Heinz von Foerster.
Problem trance
Unfortunately, though, we've been overly nurturing our problem trance for years now: I have no money. No retirement plan. No sense. Too much work. And that sucks. Got hung up. I can't do it. The colleague doesn't like me. The others are all stupid. The world is going down the drain. Blockchain will deplete 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 might be another asteroid coming.
Keep looking at it, it will get bigger and bigger. The problems grow, become more and more enormous, more burdensome and more overwhelming. Only: A solution does not come so. This applies on a small scale to us, in our departments and companies, just as it does to our society. "You can never solve problems with the same mindset that created them." This quote is attributed to Einstein and sums up the dilemma.
A new narrative
If we want solutions, we need a new narrative. A positive story that we tell ourselves. For our lives, our companies, our society. Set the focus differently.
I am an optimist for the future. I have chosen the positive narrative of human history. For the one of visions, wishes and utopias. Because I believe that this view enables us to find better solutions for the current challenges.
The pioneers of human history were always those who believed that something was possible - even though "everyone" said it was impossible. They were the ones who kept going. And this is the seed I want to sow. To awaken, accompany, encourage, inspire and motivate the little pioneer in us to keep going.
Future Mindset
This narrative is also accompanied by an attitude. What could the cornerstones of such an attitude look like? Perhaps a future mindset that is characterised by:
- Humanity through connectedness, acceptance and the dismantling of thought prohibitions.
- Curiosity about technologies and innovations. To try out and be creative with these immense potentials. Making them available as open source/data/everything.
- Personal development to bring these worlds together.
- People and companies who courageously take responsibility.
And now: Let the story unfold!