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.