Future thinking is: changing in the reality of now

The Dutch are gloomy about the future. Perhaps that's not so strange: climate change is lurking and we are bombarded with information through various channels. In my series 'Toekomstdenkers' I investigate how we can look differently - more hopeful - at the future.

I took The National Future Course and delved into the skills needed to think about the future. In this last story, I am curious about how and where I put my skills into practice. I talked about this with future thinkers Farid Tabarki and Loes Damhof, who both teach a module of the online future course.

Love pivot

When asked to collaborate on and future course, Tabarki immediately raised his finger. As a trendwatcher, he has been researching the changing zeitgeist since 2000, is the founder of Studio Zeitgeist and won the Trendwatcher of the year award in 2012.

He hopes people will fall in love with the future again. “We have to make people look at the future optimistically again,” he says. In doing so, he does say that we should not be naive and that developments can go badly or that there are downsides to developments, “but it is necessary to build confidence that we can do it together.”

For Tabarki, the course is like a love pill. “A crush on a future with possibilities. And we discuss and debate those possibilities with each other in as many places as possible. Just like with a crush, you want to share your vision of the future.”

Because, the trendwatcher says, we need each other. In his module, he references the essay “When the Hero is the Problem” by activist and historian Rebecca Solnit. “It's fascinating that we have always believed in the frame and narrative of the one person who saves the world. We see it reflected in superhero movies, but we all know a great leader of the organization or politician who just takes care of it all. But that, of course, is not the case.”

Every competence

The future is shaped by many working collectively toward something, Tabarki continues. “Everyone is needed, every competency. One moment we need good listening and an empathetic person. The other moment, someone needs to take charge and make decisions.”

His message: with a diverse group of people, create places where you make the future tangible, by visualizing, or discussing the future. Like in the Rotterdam neighborhood of Bospolder - Tussendijken (BoTu). A village within the city, where there is much togetherness and solidarity, according to the website. The neighborhood has a large group of residents dealing with poverty, debt, unemployment, loneliness or poor health. Partly for this reason, residents, entrepreneurs ,and organizations from the neighborhood launched the Resilient BoTu 2028 program in 2019. By coming together, many neighborhood initiatives emerge, such as cleanups, exercise classes for women and seniors, and young people founding a circular clothing brand.

In his lectures and workshops, Tabarki gets people to talk to each other about what they see as their biggest social task. They do this in pairs with someone they did not yet know. Polarization is then a common development. “People are afraid of not being able to find each other anymore. That is precisely what we should try to keep doing together.”

Looking up differences

According to Loes Damhof, who is affiliated with the Hanze University of Applied Sciences where she holds a UNESCO chair in Futures Literacy, future literacy , future thinking is primarily about diversifying futures, about seeking out differences. About nine years ago, through a symposium on excellence in college, she came across futures literacy.

She was looking for something to help students embrace uncertainty. As a college professor of 21st-century? skills, she felt something was wrong. “How can I determine now what skills are needed for everyone forever? For me, it's about that uncertainty and embracing it. That's what I'm learning with future literacy.”

Future literacy, according to Damhof, is about seeking out differences, not coming together to form one picture. “It's important to listen to the other person's view of the future. When we use the future to express what we care about and share our visions of the future with each other, it brings us closer together.”

In 2016, Damhof was Teacher of the year. She also received the Comenius Scholarship, which she spent on an application for a UNESCO chair, allowing her to conduct 4 years of research under the aegis of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. She, along with her three colleagues, is now halfway through her second term.

She often takes people into a future 50 to 60 years from now. “That feels safer because nobody owns that. No one knows exactly what's going to happen. This creates an equal and common playing field in which no one is an expert either. In that playing field, you can talk about what's going on here and now.”

No better or worse images of the future

For example, Damhof was recently in Rio de Janeiro for five weeks at the Museu do Amanhã, a future-oriented museum, as a consultant to help the museum's design and education team redesign its permanent exhibition. She presented the team with a future scenario in which there is no more spoken or written language. How do you tell the stories then?

“Slowly came the realization that you make stories together; they are alive and constantly changing. In the new exhibition, the team wants people to experience the story and give space for the stories they bring. In the museum, the story has to travel with the visitors. Everything people see, hear, and feel there - the atmosphere, the temperature, the acoustics, the building itself - contributes to this. In the new exhibition, at least, there will be no more written explanations.”

Around the world

Damhof emphasizes that there are no good or bad futures. “My dream future can be a specter for someone else. Talking about it together creates space that makes me see my surroundings differently. That's how new possibilities arise.”

Different issues play out around the world. “Images of the future are a reflection of what people are working on at that moment. Here in the Netherlands, climate change is a recurring theme. In Nigeria, people are more concerned with the economy and job creation.”

Tabarki also sees this. As a world traveler - his goal is to visit all countries, he is now at 186 - he sees and experiences different perspectives everywhere he goes. It helps him put things into perspective and make connections that are not obvious. In doing so, he realizes that you do have to have the space to engage with the future. In Liberia, West Africa, for example, he learned how great an effect the war in Ukraine is having on the people there.

“We here in the Netherlands are dealing with the effects of increased food prices, but they have gone up worldwide. When I spoke to people last year in Liberia - one of the 10 poorest countries on earth - and they noticed I was from Europe, they quickly asked me when the war would stop.” Initially, he thought of a war in a neighboring country, but they meant the war in Ukraine. “A food price where you pay 4 times as much for your eggs, oil, and flour has a disastrous effect on a budget of $2 a day. Through my travels, I try to fully make the zeitgeist we live in and not just look at the zeitgeist within our national borders.”

Creating openness

It's then also about empathizing with someone else's perspective. Several years ago, for example, Damhof worked on a UNESCO lab, The Future of the Return to Syria. She interacted with Syrian refugees and asked them how they saw their return. Those conversations revealed big differences between the children and parents.

“Children had a freer view, with less hierarchy, while parents thought they were going back to the old values.” To bring the generations closer together, a follow-up exercise was conducted. “We asked the parents to sleep in their children's bed and the children in their parents' bed, and to sketch each other's picture of the future from that experience. Then space was created for empathy toward each other. A very simple exercise. You don't bring about earth-shattering changes, but you do create openness in such a family.”

So anyone who wants to be a future thinker must listen carefully and understand what the other person means. And where another person's vision of the future comes from. By sharing, you don't create the future you want, Damhof says, “but perhaps a reality in the world today.” “You create cracks in what we call frozen narratives. By comparing futures, embracing them, accepting them, respecting them, you create little cracks in frozen narratives and we can start to see things differently.”

Both Damhof and Tabarki hope the National Futures Course is just the beginning for participants. Damhof: “Future thinking is a skill that you have to keep practicing. You have to have the discipline to keep an open mind. The future's course is like learning to read and write. It shows us that there is an alphabet. Maybe you can make a word. But really Shakespeare, or writing a poem, or reading the newspaper, that's a whole other thing that requires investment and openness. In the end, it pays off a lot, but you're not just there.”

The course and conversations taught me that THE future exists only in my head. How that future will be no one knows, but what I do in today's reality affects tomorrow's. Then it is good to look at what I hope, and I hope we continue to listen to each other in the future.