The power of a story: what future scenarios can teach us about our present
By Renata Zimbarg, Convenor
It was mid-March 2020, when the world started to collapse in lockdowns, when Sohail Inayatullah and Peter Black published an article on the Journal of Future Studies website about four scenarios of possible futures for the COVID-19 crisis. They argued that the world pandemic is not a black swan that emerged unpredictably, and that if we don’t take the right measures, the next pandemic will be around the corner. More than two years later, the scenarios still make a lot of sense.
The first scenario foresaw a total collapse of the economy, political institutions, where panic and fear rule the world. This might have made more sense at the beginning, but nothing more real than the second scenario - “the needed pause”: it proposes that COVID-19 becomes just another winter flu - as dangerous for elderly and people under vulnerable health conditions - but also an opportunity for the world to slow down; people start focusing on their inner lives, and society rethinks relations and production chains. There should be no gain in romanticising the tragedy of millions of people who suffered actual losses and live the raw consequences of the crisis and COVID-19 itself.
However, it would be foolish of us - and even disrespectful to those people - if we don’t learn anything from this fatality upon earth. But if we just slow down to speed up again, what will we have learned after all?
The third scenario described a “global health awakening”, in which AI companies, start-ups, science and public health expertise come to the rescue and implements the fourth industrial revolution. Breakthrough after breakthrough within innovation, new work relationships - and jobs! - are created, basic income is supported, insights are applied to climate change, and we undergo a social revolution, although there are concerns about privacy. Apparently that is not the scenario we are living in, but not all of it seems to be distant - and it’s probably hard to deny we would like to get transported into that reality.
The fourth and last scenario marked “the great despair” and the decline of health and wealth, while the virus spreads without containment and all efforts to address fail - which is something we do not desire, in a common sense.
These, of course, are only four of several possible scenarios, and they are based on hundreds of articles, expertise, data, and methodological analysis - speculation is for “market investment and stock trading”. The authors, then, propose three steps to take, considering the future and present scenario: 1- banning the wet markets (live animals markets) and dealing with all the challenges within, in order to avoid other world pandemics of this kind; 2- increase the detection capacity of prospective disease spillovers; 3- increase prevention strategies to contain zoonotic pathogens emerged as a result of human activity (food production and consumption, agriculture, land use contact with wildlife, etc). However, they recognise that this is much more than a health crisis, but a trial by fire for leadership, governance, and us thinking about the type of world we wish to live in.
The point here is not to speculate or debate about what we have learned from the pandemic - that isn’t over yet by July 2022 - but to enhance the importance of discussing future scenarios. Using as a practical example of analysis made by one of the most influential contemporary futurists and a foresight practitioner and veterinary epidemiologist, we can visualise how the future can look like. Creating future scenarios, according to the authors, “is about creating the capacity to anticipate tomorrow’s problems and act today”. It’s not about prediction, but bringing the future into a more manageable size, so we can navigate its uncertainties in the present.
Some would say we have to carpe diem and connect more with the present instead of thinking too much ahead, but I would say that is a quite tangible and truthful way to connect with the present with purpose. Thinking about the future requires a lot of understanding of our history, analysis of the present, deconstruction of our status quo, questioning our practices and institutions; and by doing so, we can recalculate the route, discuss the direction we wish to go, and make better decisions in the present.
As humanity walks towards complexity, we require a more prepared leadership with a holistic and long-term approach to encompass all the variables involved - COVID-19 is not only a health crisis, but an issue of a system and network that is not programmed to stop or slow down. Most democratic and political institutions are aristotelic, and it’s time for us to start rethinking our institutions and production systems for our current and future challenges.
Maybe imagining how we are going to colonise Mars can teach us much more about our life on earth than exploring space, after all! And that’s the power of a scenario: how are we going to live on Mars? What kind of activities will we develop? Will we have families? Schools? What do we teach at schools? How will the production system work? Will Martians have an “Earth passport” or citizenship? Who will be our leaders? Presidents, prime ministers, kings, anarchy…or what else is there? Can you picture it? If we can think and implement all of these new structures on Mars, why can’t we do it on Earth, then?
A systematically co-created scenario tells us a story that we want to come true, and helps us think of the steps we have to take to get there by starting TODAY. Creating scenarios for after COVID-19 crisis can provide tools for leaders to deal with the challenge in a more mindful and responsible way, by mobilising all agents towards a common objective.
What is your desired future scenario?
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