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What is social foresight?
Social foresight is the ability to create and sustain a variety of high quality images and understandings about
futures and apply these in a range of socially useful ways; for example, to develop policy, guide strategy, avoid
or mitigate disasters and pursue social innovations.
Why social foresight?
All normal human beings have the innate ability to think (and act) forward. Without this capacity people
would be unable to function in daily life. Some organisations use limited forms of foresight as part of
strategy and planning. But societies as a whole tend to be powerfully guided by past perceptions of problems and,
overall, lack any developed foresight capacity. Hence we have a contradictory situation:
- humans have and use foresight
- some organisations use limited forms of foresight
- society as a whole largely lacks this capacity, therefore
- it travels blindly into an unknown future.
Solutions
A paper published in 1996 called Futures Studies - From Individual to Social Capacity set out a framework for
creating social foresight. This approach was then the subject of a three-year research project carried out by
the Australian Foresight Institute and published in a series of monographs, papers and books.
Gaining clarity
Humanity has reached a dangerous stage in its development. (For more see The Foresight Principle and Futures
Beyond Dystopia.) Some feel powerless and depressed when faced with the evidence of widespread suffering and
dysfunction. Our view, however, is that to clearly understand how overshoot and collapse scenarios may occur
is a significant step toward more constructive outcomes. The clearer we are, the easier it becomes to generate
motivation to energise and enable a wide variety of helpful changes, while there is yet time and the future
remains open. Futures Studies and applied foresight are constructive responses to altered global conditions,
including new dimensions of hazard and risk.
Integral futures
Integral futures is a new stage of development and capacity. It transcends and includes earlier work,
re-balances the field in profound ways and provides powerful new methods and perspectives. It is part of
a renaissance occurring in Futures Studies and applied foresight. Overall, this is an exciting and invigorating time to be involved in futures work.
NEW
Richard Slaughter now has a personal blog, it can be found HERE |
