Futures As Such
Project: Polytopia

"The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men."
JOHN F. KENNEDY

Futurists differ from the natural extrapolative mind not only in degree but possibly in kind. This difference may be due to the particular wiring certain minds have adapted themselves into, an adaptation that brings a capacity for visualization outcome of complex systems emergence to the forefront.

Some people believe erroneously that futurists are humans that believe life’s fulfillment and meaning lies in the future and not in the past or present, allow me to correct them, nothing is farther from the truth.

A futurist is a human mind that acknowledges mind as a hovering vision floating as it were upon the current of times and sequences.
A futurist sees all life as a continuation of events interspersed by moments of intelligent conscious awareness; moments in which the vista of emotional comprehension suddenly enlarges the immediate reality so as to encompass a much greater and much subtler one.
Futurists grant life the greatest of all values, that of meaningful continuity, we might call this: semantic extension of consciousness.
The semantic extension of consciousness is what futurism is all about, for though some will choose to apply their skills to the evaluation of the technology and science involved in the unfolding future, others will muster their efforts to understand their minds and the minds of their peers as they evolve in time.
It is my firm understanding that whether one chooses the former or the later as his preferred path of actuation, both involve continuity.
Continuity in fact is what brings the moments together; it is the meaningful glue that binds perception and comprehension into one holistic whole.
This whole however, being multidimensional in nature and fuzzy by definition, demands a very particular skill to be deployed. The skill I refer to may be described as a combination of observation, knowledge, a capacity for in depth analysis and parsing, coagulated with an intense passion for the barely grasped intuition. For our purposes here we shall call it “future intuition”: the ability to perceive probable scenarios decoupled from their obvious antecedents. For if one thing is certain, it is that our past is no more reliable in predicting the future than is, say, a Neolithic mind in predicting the cell phone or indeed any of the technological miracles with which our current civilization is endowed.



Some men see things as they are and say, "Why?" I dream of things that never were and say, "Why not?"
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW:

A futurist then can be said to be a mind that might at moments steal a look, a peek, a glance or what have you across the horizon of opening possibilities. But that is only part of what a futurist does, a futurist by yits very action of observational intuition invokes certain futures into being more probable than others. That is really the part that interests me, for to my eyes, we are all to different degrees futurists. And though it may be said that we are very bad at predicting the unpredictable we are conversely very good at invoking desirable futures if indeed we invest the necessary mind resources needed for such. We are very good at this invocation for the simple reason that we are (or can potentially be) the creators of such desirable futures.
Therein lies the problem of futurism; it is not our incapacity to create a better future that is at stake but the immense diversity of desires and innumerable directions the human collective provides. The very terminology of ‘desirable future’ is problematic, for what is the desire involved? Whose desire? Is a desire for a better future universal? Collectively agreed upon?
Some humans, so called believers in the natural order of things believe that the future shouldn’t be messed with at all, but be allowed to proceed according to…. To what?
It is my argument here that if there exists at all a meaning to the phrase:” the natural order of things” the meaning of it is embedded in our minds and our very capacity of self-metamorphosing, as individuals as a culture and as a civilization.

It is thus an implicate reality of our very existence that the desire for continuity, a natural desire one might say, implies that we are a specie of futurists, even if not all of us agree on the same future, or for that matter on the same desire or indeed the meaning of “better”.
Taking into consideration the above, my premise if so is first and foremost that the future of humanity is one of diversification.

The diversification I refer to here I see on practically all levels of existence and all fields of human endeavor.
Simply put then, humanity is right now at a crossroad of diversification. Not only are we diversifying as we speak, but said diversity will increase exponentially until such a point in time in which we will truly become not only variations on the same human theme, but possibly (and to my eyes probably) many species.

Is this a good or bad future? I do not know, (though at present I do not think so) but more importantly I do not think that a futurist should, or indeed can, make politically correct observational intuitions.

The point of diversification is of course tightly coupled with our ideas about uniqueness and identity, in this case, the identity of our human race and our illusory belief in our natural uniqueness.

As a self-described futurist I take my cue from the extrapolative capabilities arising in our current era of obvious desire to self-guide our own evolution. The very fact that we carry such a desire and aspiration within us is to my mind the main signifier of the coming diversification.

—-
note: this inspired me: it is recounted that In his later years Pablo Picasso was not allowed to roam an art gallery unattended, for he had previously been discovered in the act of trying to improve on one of his old masterpieces.

(this is part one of " The un/natural future of mankind")

Tue, Dec 16, 2008  Permanent link
Categories: polytopia, Futures, Futurism
Sent to project: Polytopia

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