“Envisioning a Future Without War”

December 20:

“Exploitation and domination of one nation over another can have no place in  world striving to put an end to all war.”

–Gandhi (Press Statement, April 17, 1945) 

One of my favorite fields of serious academic study is called Futurism or Future Studies. I find it intriguing because we certainly study history (or some parts of it, from some perspectives…), but how can you study the future? Well, it turns out that we are doing it every day, we just don’t consider it a systematic process, and that is what these people look at. This is not just reading science fiction, it’s about asking what kind of future are we working out for ourselves individually and collectively. Can you think of a futurist? What about Martin Luther King, Jr? His “I have a dream” speech is certainly a key example. He upheld a positive vision of the future to guide a movement, a future where there is harmony with the environment and harmony among human beings from whatever background. Gandhi was a futurist, in the same sense. He knew that swaraj, self-rule, was going to happen and he never let it out of his sight. In fact, without that positive vision of the future, his work would not have happened. Vision is a requisite of action, knowing what you want; and a positive, possible, and practical vision is a main driver in nonviolent action.

One of the founders of the field of Peace Studies, also a futurist, Elise Boulding, used to give workshops on future visioning. The idea is that you start with a big vision, 100 years down the road, for instance, and then begin to back up by decades: what did you do 10 years prior to make that 100 year goal possible, and you do this until you get back to five years, then three years, then the present moment: where do we begin? Positive, practical and possible. It gives us the driving force of a vision and the concrete sense that we can begin with something very doable.

Experiment in Nonviolence:
Nonviolence makes you a futurist! Describe your positive vision of the future and offer some concrete steps to get there.