Futures Anosognosia

We humans are anticipatory systems. That means we take future states into account when acting in the present. This is a system inherent ability of our biological system.

Anticipation is not the same as expectation. Anticipation is looking without the end in mind. That is why we are anticipative systems, because instinctively we know, when we act on future states in the present, at the same time we change those states.

According to the work of Riel Miller there are different kinds of anticipation. He differentiates if we look into the future, a specific future, a picture, or more in mind. Anticipation for Future.

Anticipation for future bears the risk, that we take all our assumptions, perceptions, biases and limitations from the present into the futures we imagine.

While full detachment of the futures from the present is by definition impossible, when assuming time is a continuum, this kind of anticipation overlooks one other aspect.

We are not only anticipatory systems, which is one of our possible descriptions, but also complex systems. A complex system is one, that cannot easily be divided in a subset of equally functioning parts. Or easier said: the whole system performs differently than its parts.

Complexity has another beautiful feature: since the whole system behaves different than its parts, sometimes the whole system shows unpredicted and unprecedented behavior. Since complexity theory has not yet found an explanation for this, they call it emergence. Emergence is still not explainable. Not predictable. It means a completely new behavior or pattern arises, that was not seen before.

Looping this aspect back to us being anticipatory systems, and our way of looking into the space of possibilities we call futures, the existence of emergence puts us in a difficult spot.

We usually anticipate with a future in mind, not for what kind of behavior might arise out of the pure fact that the whole performs differently than its parts.

This is what is called anticipation for emergence, and what Riel Miller calls the second leg in futures thinking.

He defines Futures Literacy as the capability of using anticipation for different ends, in different ways and in different contexts.

Fostering all anticipatory skills has the intricate purpose of remaining in the anticipatory behavior in whatever circumstances arise. Anticipatory systems that are put under stress and disruption sometimes react by changing their response into a reactive one.

An anticipatory system put under stress becomes a reactive system. That means it does no longer take possible future states into the actions in the present, but the actions are determined solely by the immediate input.

Systems that are able to remain in anticipatory state while put under stress are called resilient or antifragile.

That is the purpose of any futures work: to remain in the anticipatory state, and keep futures states in our response-ability. When we are able to respond to our futures, we are creating responsibility for our futures.

Futures work is not intended to only prepare us for what is to come, to make us better at seeing patterns, trends and predicting (while this can be a side effect). Its main purpose is to make us more resilient, more antifragile.

It prevents us from becoming reactive.

Anticipation is a whole brain activity. It requires our cognitive, and logic abilities, which are more situated in the left hemisphere, and our sensing and feeling abilities which are more located in the right hemisphere.

Trusting our intuition, "going with our gut feeling" is an example for anticipation based on sensing and feeling futures state in our present decision-making. Not seldom in past epochs of humanity drug-induced trance states were a part of looking into the future and deducting decisions from those states of mind. The purpose was to suppress the dominant logic planning thinking in order to get to new answers, that could not be seen before.

Our current world is a technologically enframed one, to use Martin Heideggers expression. He was referring to the fact, that we are so used to technology around us, that we see the world through that lens. Technology moved away from being a tool to being a worldview.

Already Heidegger claimed in the middle of the last century, that technology drives us to perfection. Perfection is based on the continuous calculability of things. We lost the ability to let things come into being ("Anwesen"), we want to predict them.

Connecting this thought to the divided brain theory, we suppressed and are still suppressing our right hemisphere in our attempts of anticipation. We rely more and more on the technologically driven logic approach to futures.

We reached a state of Futures Anosognosia.

Anosognosia is a neurological impairment of the right hemisphere. Through a stroke or other trauma, the right hemisphere becomes inoperable. The interesting aspect of this state is - patients remain unaware of their impairment. When asked to carry out a task with both hands, they are only able to use one of their hands. But they are convinced to use both, regardless of the physical evidence.

We experience that in our anticipatory attempts.

We think that we put all our abilities to play, when working with futures, and are truly shocked when this work does not result in higher resilience and anti-fragility, but still leaves us in a reactive state. As neurological Anosognosia patients, we insist that we use all of our senses.

In this state of Futures Anosognosia we perceive uncertainty as a lack of relevant data when in fact it is a lack of anticipation with the means of the right hemisphere.

Or in more drastic words: we think that we are in an anticipatory state when presenting all signs of a reactive state.

Since Futures Work is based on the anticipatory ability, this forms a thread to the effectiveness and agency of the engagement.

Therefore, Futures Work must focus on overcoming the state of Futures Anosognosia. That means training to remain in an anticipatory state, or even guiding to move back into this state. To achieve this, Futures Work needs to re-integrate embodied anticipation, namely intuition, sensing, feeling, being at its core and in all surrounding layers independently if the anticipation efforts are for the future or emergence.

Conclusion

Futures Anosognosia is the inability to acknowledge a deficit in anticipation. It is enabled to the technologically enframed structures of our modern times, that suppress the abilities of our embodied thinking.

In connection with anticipation this means we loose access to our embodied anticipation abilities, such as sensing, intuition and feeling. Without this part of our natural anticipatory system we are at higher risk to become reactive instead of anticipatory. Futures Work can only be efficient and agent when building on the assumption that participants are in an anticipatory state of mind. Therefore, Futures Works must integrate all levels and time horizons of anticipation to create the response-ability to possible futures states to translate the ability to respond into a sense of responsibility for our futures.

Hi, 

I am Eva Tomas Casado, futurist by nature, engineer by training, and philosopher by heart. With Simple Thinking, I am exploring the intersections of these three realms to deduct, induce, and build new ways of acting on present complexities and futures. Join me! Or reach out and let's have a conversation, about how we could apply these ideas to your life, your environment, organization, or company.