Our inability to envision alternative futures

This is a fascinating essay that came out around the time of the beginning of Occupy about our inability to imagine anything but capitalism as a driver of civilization:

There is very good reason to believe that, in a generation or so, capitalism itself will no longer exist – most obviously, as ecologists keep reminding us, because it’s impossible to maintain an engine of perpetual growth forever on a finite planet, and the current form of capitalism doesn’t seem to be capable of generating the kind of vast technological breakthroughs and mobilizations that would be required for us to start finding and colonizing any other planets. Yet faced with the prospect of capitalism actually ending, the most common reaction – even from those who call themselves “progressives” – is simply fear. We cling to what exists because we can no longer imagine an alternative that wouldn’t be even worse.

I’m not here to grind an axe for or against any last-century -ism, capital, social, commune, or otherwise. Whenever I hear those outdated terms, I know that a pointless conversation is soon to follow. I am however interested in the fact – evident in most every classroom, board room, and living room in the Western world – that we cannot envision alternative futures.

Futurism or foresight, which I have studied now for around 15 years, is not about the prediction of future events. Obviously, nobody can know The Future. As has been said a billion times, it is about the recognition of alternatives, about the making of decisions while there is still time. Since the crisis point of 2008, I have seen a disturbing atrophy in the general ability to see possibilities, to say, “Hey wait, this isn’t working, but maybe something else might work better.” People appear gripped by fear, from CEOs down to the young person getting his/her first job. The alternatives are suddenly too terrible to contemplate.

This is a shame, since we have a largely peaceful society (seriously, compare to past centuries) and we have miracle technologies at our disposal. Yet people seem to think that alternatives of even the most mundane type are the seeds of disaster waiting to be sown.

Before you need a stock to go up in price, more than you need housing values to return, far beyond our desire to get a job – as individuals and as a society, we need to reclaim the ability to think of alternative futures for ourselves.

It’s easier than one thinks.