Futures - Conscious Choices

And then we want to look at what is beyond the obvious. What kind of a world could we have? What kind of a future could we have? What could the world look like for our children? We are in a very difficult place in the world right now, which is very challenging, which restricts the opportunities, ambitions, even day-to-day life of millions and millions of people. That is a reality today. This is not a future scary scenario. This is a reality today. So we here who have the luxury and privilege of designing our futures, we should do a good job of that. We should really go beyond the obvious. We don't go beyond the obvious. We accept the obvious when we are lazy, when we're lazy in our thinking, when we are overwhelmed by too many things that we're just going to go with, with, you know, what is there in front of us. We do it when we are part of the hustle culture where we're trying so much to hustle and, and just do things and make money and keep up that we don't have the time for philosophical reflection to intentionally design a future that is more powerful than the one that we have at the moment. Here are just a few ideas. I'm just throwing them out here to consider. We could have different family structures. Decades, centuries ago, families lived with 2 or 3 generations in a household. So there was that continuity of family values. There was care for the aged and an environment for the younger children. Then we went to this nice, neat little, you know, 2 parents, 2 and a half children in a suburb isolated from other people. And now we're looking at new ways of designing family. We can, we can look at extended family. We can, you know, adopt grandparents as easily we could adopt children. So we can find a different way to define a family, and we could accept other people's definitions of family in, in a more open way. We could also define how it is that we work. We work 40, 45 hours a week theoretically, unless you work for yourself, then it's probably double. There is a really fantastic project going on right now called the 4-Day Week. And what they're trying to do, which is really good futures work, is run pilot projects about 4-day weeks and see what that means, test the results. So they get— they go into an organization, they look at the litany, they get all the data and details and statistics and productivity and everything else, and they capture that information. Then they coach that department on what it looks like to work a 4-day week instead of a 5-day week. And they've put a structure in place that makes sense for that organization, and then they let them go ahead and do that, and then they capture the results afterwards. So there are projects running here in South Africa on this. There are projects across Europe as well. And what they're finding is that people can still do the same amount of work, be as productive as before, but also find time to take care of family, to find new ways to develop and learn for themselves, to develop their own careers, to pursue hobbies, to rest and recover from illnesses. to take mental and physical health breaks so that they don't become overwhelmed and stressed and end up with a stroke. So there's a very practical way of looking at what that looks like. It does not work for every organization or for every, every job function. So not everybody can, you know, just take a day off of a week. But it is a good project to explore. But one of the things I said there is that people could take that extra time off to learn and develop for their careers. We could have a dynamic education system. We could totally redesign education so that it's not, you know, 12 years in school and a 3-year degree, and then you do a whole lot of work, and then you go and get an MBA, you know, in your, in your spare time. We could totally redesign how education happens. One of the ways this project works out is that there are various organizations in countries in Africa that are looking at how do they decolonize education. How would that country, as it developed without European colonial intervention, how would they have developed their own education system? And, and can they find what they have lost and go back and redevelop that? We could look at work that aligns with our meaning, purpose, and our flexibility. Again, not everybody has the luxury to do that. Some people need a job and need to get paid, but there are people who can go and pursue something that is more meaningful. There are companies that can provide that environment, and when you find them, that is the place where people do the best work and lead better lives because of that. We could design regenerative cities. This is a photo of, of in Singapore, but we can design cities where nature is integrated into the city. Plant trees down the streets where cars drive. You lower the temperature of those streets, of the buildings around it. You make it easier for, for human beings to be out on the street just because you've added a couple of trees down a road. But there are so many other ways that we can actually build, bring nature into our cities. So that we have actively healing ecosystems that we can embrace. We can also embrace circular economies, a wellness economy instead of just the capitalist economy that we have at the moment where you have to keep making more and more widgets and sell them to more and more people who hopefully get a little bit of a raise and then succumb to the PR propaganda so they can go buy that widget because it'll make them happy because their lives are so stressed by the environment and the worldview that they're living within. We can change that. There are places that change that. Bhutan as a country has a negative carbon footprint. They absorb more carbon in their country than produce it. They absorb it on behalf of other countries in the region. And they're also looking at ways to actually create wellness retreats and health retreats that become, become part of the culture of that country. There are ways to do that.