Across society old narratives about progress are breaking down. At the same time, new narratives are yet to emerge in any clear way. And so we find ourselves in a narrative vacuum. Not sure where to turn to tell compelling and convincing stories about the future. Unfortunately, dystopian stories thrive in this vacuum because they play to our fears. So people sell us more and more dystopia, filling our feeds and phones, creating a vicious cycle in our content consumption. What’s more, as we consume more dystopian stories we shrink our natural capacity to positively create the future.
My podcast guest this week is Ari Wallach, a futurist who has spent the past decade thinking about this narrative vacuum problem. These days much of his time is spent finding, planting, cultivating, and amplifying “protopian” stories to counterbalance the dystopian ones. It was an uplifting 45-minute conversation that helped me reframe our current moment and gave me a shot of hope. A few of his key points in a wide-ranging conversation…
Don’t fight old systems, create new ones. Fighting old systems, as noble as it may seem, is a losing battle. It doesn’t generate enough positive energy that people want to move towards.
Trying to predict the future isn’t a good use of energy. Far more valuable is cultivating the forces that will shape a positive future regardless of the specifics that unfold.
Companies poised for success in the years to come will do three things: (1) Structure themselves for continual adaptation, (2) Build agency in their employees and, (3) Build trust networks across their stakeholders.
Younger generations are drawn to protopian stories. The ability to tell grounded, believable protopian stories about the future creates a culture where people want to be. It also makes it easier to recruit employees and create satisfying work.
Curate your information diet. Be on your phone less. Read more fiction. Meet people face-to-face. Don’t allow your attention to be hijacked.
Changing things for the better is a multigenerational project. We don’t have to solve the world’s biggest problems today. We just have to start working on them now and hand off whatever momentum we build to successive generations.
You can find the podcast at any of these links below