One of the major challenges which Humanity faces is the act of  forming a positive vision of our individual and common future. With all the progress that has been made over the last few centuries, with all of the options before us which would have seemed miraculous just half a century ago, the human race remains trapped, doggedly playing out old fears, old hostilities and prejudices. We remain entrained in centuries long patterns which we repeat over and over with often destructive, bloody results. If a single individual acted as we, as a race, are acting with our management of The Human Enterprise, this person would be committed for treatment as dangerous to self and community.

There are many factors which contribute to this condition. Chief among them is that Humanity has a self image deficit and exhibits a strikingly poor ability to imagine that our lives can be lived another way. We fail to take the tools and enormous social, economic, organizational systems we have created and transform this power and ourselves. That we can take responsibility for our actions and co-create an emergent, sustainable, vibrant planet which is habitat for all forms of life and ways of living.

It is the aim of FutureViews to facilitate an end to this deficit of collective self esteem and image. To show that we are on the threshold of an ability which can destroy us if we continue to create our future by default - yet, this does not have to be our outcome. Impoverished as our view of a  healthy future is, 10,000 years of human genius has stockpiled a magnificent warehouse of new answers, tools and social, political, economic options. We are starving to death and fighting over crumbs amidst unrecognized plenitude. Given the means we have created, how we imagine our future will be the future we actually experience.

This blog is called FutureViews Snapshots as its purpose is to provide a broad scan of possibilities. In depth analysis, designs and business models will be provided elsewhere. It is here that I intend to show the possibilities. The work-to-be-done will follow.

Matt Taylor

April 2009