The future landscape
The Psychological Landscape of the Future
The visual framework shown here represents the future as a psychological landscape. It depicts the future as a mental space populated with the principal elements of strategic thinking. I developed it as a simple reminder of what we need to hold in mind when we develop strategic ideas about the future.
It also throws light on how we think about time in general and how the future is shaped.
The way organizations and individuals think about the future is based on prevailing cultural beliefs about time and causation. Management thinking is still grounded in a mechanistic worldview and therefore tends to lag behind the scientific frontier. Popular futures methods rely on assumptions derived from classical physics, even though these were superseded in twentieth-century physics and biology.
Psychologically, our response to the future is complex. We freely imagine all sorts of different futures and react to them emotionally, typically not analysing them rationally. Our ‘landscape of the future’ is a jumble of psychological material including hopes, fears, ideals, ambitions, intentions, expectations, images. We project this confusion into the future and it shapes our thinking and actions in the present.
It can be helpful to bring some clarity to our mental future jumble by sorting it according to the different areas of the psychological future landscape. This enables us to become aware of the different categories of future thinking – aspirations, objectives, expectations, predictions, choices – and progressively refine our future consciousness.
While the conscious mind is largely in the dark about the future, depth psychology suggests that the unconscious mind has some greater insight into it. The unconscious mind may even play a role in shaping the future, as indicated by Jung’s concept of synchronicity, which he called an ‘acausal connecting principle’. This points to the importance of surfacing our unconscious as well as conscious views of the future.
Introspective futures work can help us to discern meaningful future potentials and anchor our focus on ones we choose. We can also, so to speak, tap the power of synchronicity by resetting our personal ‘expected future image’ of different areas of life.
This overall approach to the future can be thought of as future mindfulness, and has the potential to bring us much closer than previous futures methods to an active relationship with the future, and to the meaning it holds for us. This lights up our future path and can replace uncertainty with confidence.
Despite appearances, we are not at the mercy of a random future. Our personal and collective future is ours to determine within boundaries to be discovered experientially. While it is important to understand how the ‘objective’ future landscape is changing, our actions should not be ruled by mechanistic predictions, projections and scenarios. At best, these can help us see what potentials lie ahead. Our future ultimately depends on our willingness to choose freely and creatively, shaping our future focus based on our own greatest wisdom and self-knowledge.
The future is not inevitable. It’s in our gift.