Futures Making Groups

Two choices: the observer’s future or the creator’s.

We know lots about what’s wrong with the world and we have for a long time.  The news is bad and old and has been “bad” so long it’s what we expect. There’s nothing new under the sun except sun screen is highly recommended.

We feel ourselves to be powerless before what we’re seeing. The default is to watch like the pre-quantum scientist and believe we’re not a part of this phenomenon.

Except we are.

From the observer’s standpoint we can lament the state of the world, study it, worry about it, drink to forget it, deny it, feel impotent about it, talk about it, take it out on our partner, seek therapy for our anxiety, or shrink ourselves to fit a diminished sense of possibility.

One step above is to take hesitant action, working alone with no context or sense that we’re part of something bigger, with no or few friends or allies and a sense that our puny action action is dwarfed by the force of a relentless foe.

The second choice is to work with people we know and trust to take inspired action to make a difference.

Immediately when we do things start to change. Here’s to those friends and allies, a sense of working in a context that makes sense,  the field of possibility.

An emerging model for a group

Exciting learnings at the monthly Futures Conversation group I’m hosting in Sharbot Lake (and will do in Ottawa starting next month). We met last night, a very small group as most people were away on holiday. But we did great work anyway, and why not. For me it’s becoming clear that hooking up our own interests, loves and gifts with what’s needed out there in the world (or our local corner of it), is a powerful way to go. Things get real and juicy quickly.

If we just focus on what’s needed “out there” there’s a tendency to have ungrounded and more or less conflictual debates on what’s going to happen.And who knows anyway! And if we just concentrate on ourselves we’re missing the whole dimension of the future or ourselves in the world. (And what does it mean to talk of ourselves as if we weren’t in a context anyway – Elizabet Sahtouris said something like you can’t talk about a rabbit as separate from a habitat, just a rabitat.)

To link the inner and the outer we did an exercise I lifted from “Thank God for Evolution!”. The exercise shifted the conversation entirely and was like sowing seeds in good ground. We each divided a page into three columns and took five minutes to write something in each. Column 1 for our loves, gifts, talents, what people say we’re great at. Column 3 for what needs to happen “out there,” what is needed and what “wants” to happen. In column 2 we noted possible places where our column 1 soul needs and the world’s needs could connect. Column 2 is playful, visionary and speculative; we’re not committing to anything at this point.

This is a very expandable exercise. Each person had things that could have been “unpacked” and explored with open questions. We consciously refrained from “helpful suggestions” or advice by the way, to respect each person’s contribution as they chose to share it. Expanding those visions will tend to make them burn brightly, I think, though we didn’t have much time last night to fan the flames.

Another value of the group is that it’s a natural place to be accountable for whatever local future has caught fire for us personally, a sounding board for our integrity as we do our futures work. Each meeting we can take ourselves one step further, or at least get clarity on where we are in our process – sometimes being still might be what’s needed.

This sort of group work fits right in the middle of my personal “column 2″ and I’m delighted to be doing it.

No Future without us

It seems that the old certainties are headed for the dustbin and that we’re not going back to the way it was: a stable economy, climate, resource supply. These may exist for some but not for all. Even the “we” in we’re not going back to the way it was is changing methinks, or is going to. The old “we” of common speech implies a them that’s not there anymore. We’s gonna be them and they’s gonna be we.

Maybe

Anyway the more I think about discussing the future with others the more it seems to moi at least that we can’t really talk about a future out there without talking about ourselves. You know the old saw (I guess it’s a new saw) that the therapist can’t take you where she’s not been herself? Or a very old one that “you can’t give what you don’t have?” We can’t envision a future we haven’t dealt with ourself. Everyman Men’s Journal used to have on its banner “The world changes when we do.” Similarly the new future will be here right around the time we’re ready for it.

I’m not ready!

I’m cooking slowly though and I know many of my friends are.

It’s like resisting political dumbness, and creating more political dumbness. It’s like Brer Rabbit punching the tarbaby and getting stuck. Like hating evil and making more of it . . . Trying to see and help the future while addicted to the past can’t help. And I’m mired in the past! Oy vey!

I’m almost having such a good time describing the problem I hate to stop and think about the direction out. But I think there is one and I think there’s always one, but that’s another story.

The direction is to include our own process in the visioning and manifesting of the new we want. The new Ottawa, the new Sharbot Lake, the new future for our family, the new world.

An exercise that might help us break through this is one I got from Michael Dowd, author of Thank God for Evolution!, an amazing book on the transition we’re in. A personal favourite for information and energy.

(In abbreviated form it goes . . . ) Make three columns on a paper and take your time to relax and fill in column one with all the things you love, are great at, do easily, what fulfills you. Column three is what the world (or where you live) needs – what’s missing and cries out for remediation.
Column two is where connections can be made between you and the world. Play around in column two and see what comes up to fulfill you that cries out for doing. Hint: temptation to stretch may be involved!

The group or somewhere outside of yourself is where you can, if you’re so willing, make yourself accountable for whatever you’re up to. It’s where you affirm your evolutionary integrity.