“Change has come to America” and everywhere else
The challenge of futurism is in getting people to think in terms of systems. Once you seduce people into the infinite complexity of interdependent adaptive systems, getting them to see possibilities follows quite naturally. This, of course, is the trick. To understand complex adaptive systems is both to have an incredible fund of knowledge about how the world functions, and to believe that the world is complex. I constantly refer to a piece entitled The American Cargo Cult which asserts that most Americans reject the notion that the world requires complex information to understand, and moreover that those with expert-level understanding of complexity probably have their own agenda. To admit the world is complex is to put yourself in the hands of experts or to consecrate your own life to constant learning and acceptance of your own ignorance. Either way, fake certainty wins out over skepticism, comforting platitudes defeat unsettlingly complicated explanations, and blame assignation triumps all too often over simple understanding of the human condition.
In my future intelligence method, I teach a standard tool called a futures wheel, which explores the primary, secondary and tertiary implications of trends, events, and scenarios. For example, the development of the mass produced automobile resulted in obesity, sexual promiscuity and lonely grandmothers:
The reason for this is what I call superconnection, about the interconnection of all living things. I would never trademark this concept since it’s the basis of Zen Buddhism, not to mention all of ecology; I think it’s in the public domain as far as intellectual property goes.
This is, in the words of one of my colleagues, “retrospectively obvious.” As I mentioned, there is natural resistance to this type of analysis – so you have to spice it up with the references to teen sex.
Consider then, the current situation. Competitive Futures has been squaking about the real estate disaster for as long as people have been convincing themselves that townhomes in ugly, dangerous neighborhoods are now worth $1.2 million, around seven years now. We have been exploring the eventual implications of the housing bubble, which would go well beyond impacting real estate agents. Most people, however, have preferred to believe that housing was a simple equation:
MY house is now worth a lot, which is part of MY net worth. Assets must always go up, which will be good for everyone. There are no downsides to the appreciation of MY assets. Young people will one day buy this house at five times what I bought it for, with no relative inflation to reduce the value of MY other assets.
Instead, we got superconnection, which is resulting in:
- Failed banks
- Crony-socialist bailouts involving federal interventions that would have made Trotsky a bit wary
- Hyperinflationary monetary policy
- A collapse in Manhattan’s commercial real estate market
- The end of big box retail
- Deserted housing developments being torn apart rather than allowed to turn into crackhouses
Quite a list of current events, no? None of these developments were predestined in some sort of Calvinist way – we could have turned back from this bubble as recently as 2005 and saved ourselves a lot of chaos and pain and debt and hassle. But here we are, staring into the maw of the strategic implications of our own national policies. And you no longer need to talk about teen sex to get people into the concept – real, serious changes are occuring every day, and the roots of this change are evident.
As you read this, we are clearing away the last vestiges of our preternatural belief that everything will turn out all right, that the system always come back to some sort of equilibrium. 2009 was supposed to be a year of change, and boy howdy, is it ever. We’re out of the realm of theory and clever PowerPoint explanations. The fundamental theory of futurism is materializing in our destroyed banks, our scarred communities, our families moving in with in-laws, our eventual inflation. It’s real now.
This news is not happy, not in the giddy, hallucinatory way that leads us to think simply, but it is good news none the less. This is real. Leadership is real, with serious consequences. Moving forward will require that we master complexity, reject old bromides, and remain open to the possibilities. That is the only type of leadership that produces results. And it’s the only kind that this moment will allow.
Slides from “Winning the Future” at the New York State Economic Development Council
by Eric Garland
It has been a glorious week here on the East Coast of the United States, a welcome reprieve from the grey, damp and interminably depressing winter and spring we endured. I was afforded the wonderful opportunity to drive north, toward my homeland, into the lakes and farmlands of upstate New York, and all for the best of reasons. This past Wednesday I had the chance to speak before the annual meeting of the New York State Economic Development Council on major trends facing states like New York as they plan for their coming decades.
Then again, there are no other states like New York; they are historically, industrially, and culturally unlike any other province on Earth. Present at the birth of the United States, they include one of the world’s most important cities, formed the backbone of the twentieth-century industrial economy, gave rise to several world-class companies (IBM, Kodak, Corning), and most importantly, share a border with Vermont, the single best chunk of land in the world. (With apologies…kinda)
Their future is surely in flux. The financial debacle that has rocked the world happened within their borders and is dragging down their tax revenues as we speak. They seem to accept that the Gilded Age of financial bonus excess may dribble on for a few years, but that a new age of austerity is likely upon us. Their physical infrastructure is significant, but also aging and costly. Despite their world-class university system, young people are seeking opportunities in other lands.
Despite the hyperventilation of those who follow stock indexes as the ultimate measure of global health and happiness, my presentation focused on considerably more positive upside for the Empire State. One of my biggest themes of the year has been SMALL, SMART, and LOCAL. The centrally-controlled, centrally-screwed-up financial system is obscuring more opportunity than it is enabling. Communities are coming together, bartering, printing local currencies, starting new, low-cost social services, educating each other, and creating prosperity.
This is where New York is sitting pretty. The whole place is nothing but a series of communities, small, medium and large, connected by universities, railways, waterways, and interstates. The state could be a hothouse of new experiments in prosperity. Few places on Earth have the mix of agriculture, chemical industry, research, high tech, small retail, tourism, and finance that New York does. Few places boast HUNDREDS of universities.
New York is a state the size of Belgium with a long, proud history and incredible resources to tap. I hope they use the strength of those communities to build a bright future.
The Dinokeng Scenarios: Three Futures for South Africa
The future is not an academic exercise. It is about blood and tears, treasure and poverty, dreams achieved and destinies averted. It is about sweeping healthcare reform and the atrocity of war. As professionals, we are all too often trapped in our powerpoints, distracted by our petty intellectual rivalries, lost in the language of technocrats. But this is life and death, success and failure.
I am reminded of this as I read the wonderful Dinokeng Scenarios, a view of three possible futures for South Africa. Knowing the situation in that country – violence, hope, unemployment, illness, and burgeoning democracy – the stakes could not be higher. To quote the project:
We are at a crossroads, but what is wrong in South Africa can be fixed. South Africa is a country of great possibility. We have a reasonably strong asset base. But we also have a deficit – we are badly served by our leadership. There are dangerous seeds in our present which have the potential to lead us to disaster, possibly even authoritarian rule. This is a moment of choice that requires strong decisive leadership.
The project presents three guiding scenarios: Walk Apart, Walk Behind, Walk Together, representing the possibilities represented by allowing the status quo, expecting a government to provide solutions, and depending on community integration, respectively.
I suggest you download them all, for two reasons. First, to see how futures can serve as both professional and inspirational documents, since this project represents the highest level of professionalism and spirit in the world of foresight. Second, you owe it to yourself and to our neighbors in South Africa to understand their struggle, if perhaps to understand your own.
We are all in this together. When one person fights to make a brighter, more just, more humane, healthier, more prosperous future, we must all join in.
A new era?
Ron Paul says we can’t just create capital nor simply reinflate the bubble.
Is it the end of the Federal Reserve system?
A couple months old, but as we anxiously wait the ultra-scientific “stress tests” on banks, we need to consider whether banking as a system is at the end of an era.
About Eric Garland
Eric is one of the world's pre-eminent thoughtleaders in forecasting and strategy. He helps leaders of business and government make critical decisions about their futures.Connect with us
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