Visions looks forward, not backward

This Sunday’s NY Times, alongside a piece chortling about the problems that Roy Moore is causing Republicans, featured five Democratic leaders providing a message for their party. Surely the stunning and devastating defeat put on the party by Trump and the Republicans has prompted Democratic political leaders to do some soul-searching, re-thinking and strategizing? So, what have we got?

• Leaders #1 called for “jobs and economic growth.”  I think we’ve heard that one before.
• Leader #2 suggests going back to JFK and FDR…and “folks in the middle.” Okay, let’s look 50-and 80+ years back….
• Leader #3 recognizes that a high school diploma is no longer a ticket to a good job, but at least acknowledges we can’t turn back the clock.
• Leader #4 talks about the need for a vision of the future, refers to back to Kennedy, and does some cheer-leading.  cheer.
• Leader #5 wants to keep it simple and “return to the center of gravity of lived experience.” I’m not 100% sure what that means, but it seems to have something to do with “sticking up for ordinary people.

Oh my! I apologize for my snarkiness, but this is dreadful. Readers of the After Capitalism series will likely recognize that my tendencies are far to the left of the Democrats. I am much more sympathetic to them than Trump and Republicans. I was [stupidly] hopeful that this zinging defeat might give the Democrats pause, and rethink what the party is about.

Let’s take off our political hats and put our futurist hats back on. A key message becoming increasingly clear in our After Capitalism series is that we lack a compelling vision of the future – despite the plethora of “new economy” concepts we identified and analyzed. We lack a “pull of the future” that a positive and compelling vision provides. That vision must come from looking forward, not backward. We are not going to find the answers to super-intelligent AI, gene splicing, nanobots, climate change, and global terrorism in a context of several generations ago. Sure, there are lessons from the past (I have a history degree – I’m not anti-history), but in effect the Democrats above are playing the same nostalgic tune about going back that simply is not possible.

These backward-looking visions are a response to fear of the future. Since we fear the future, we look back for the “simpler” days. As we futurists know, a trip back is likely to be driven by collapse. So, our work must go on to develop images and visions of the future that are positive and compelling, and offer a better choice than that drivel above.  – Andy Hines