Speculative thinking and the future

Humanity has reached its climax. This climax is most volatile. We don’t know how economies will change in the next day, or how political systems will evolve in The Big Bang of Artificial Intelligence, Generative AI, and the changing ecosystem demonstrates the continuously changing nature of our society. It is one of the most dangerous times we are living in. Stability in thought, cognitive dissonance and an unsustainable future are the agenda of today’s writing. At the same time, we expect a sustainable and resilient future. The equation to ensure sustainability demands speculative thinking which is characterised by imaginative powers, counterfactual instincts, future visions and emotional enablement. Speculative thinking requires creative abilities, an innovative mindset, and empathy.

In terms of human inclusion, climate change poses a threat. Climate change has huge impacts on societies and communities. For example, a small community lives near the coastal lines of Pakistan between Sindh and Balochistan. Climate change, rising sea surface levels and inconsistent hurricanes, wind patterns and ecosystems could displace them from their original place to somewhere in other parts of the country. The recipient community does not have a resilient structure to adjust to the upcoming climate migrants. Here the intersection of education and climate is in the loop to ensure a secure future. Through the national curriculum, we need to install future envisioning powers for students to understand the volatile nature of communities, accommodating mechanisms and precise conflict resolution frameworks.

Our focus is just on the physical economy extracted from earth sources. There is huge potential for a blue economy in Pakistan. Different natural rivers, lakes and sea coastal areas have tremendous untapped potential to contribute to economic performance. It is needed to divert the thinking abilities and channel the procedural research and development mindset for diversification of the economy. Speculative design in which future thinking and employing for meaningful contribution is a matter of discussion can be utilised for blue economy. Likewise, we have to focus on nature-forward global economy. Around half of global GDP — $44 trillion — has contribution from nature. Loss of biodiversity and natural resources is among three most cited threats for Global GDP by Global Risk Report 2024. A new nature-positive economy could develop more than $10 trillion in annual business value and produce 395 million employments by 2030, assisting to end poverty, which heightens inequality. So it is an important imperative to induce speculative design of thinking for the policymakers, academics and researchers to unveil the existing potential of blue economy as well as the nature-driven economic contribution. Without extrapolation and organised thought process we can’t materialise the untapped potential at domestic as well as global levels.

Our relations, connections and emotions are inconsistent and incompatible for the most changing world. For example, future parenting needs more strategic mindsets to nurture the children for a century of change. Without strategic and emotionally resilient parenting the future of many generations is at stake. From schools to universities, government must focus on reinstalling the new academic subjects over the emotional enablement, sustainability and resilient social focus for the students so that they could adjust themselves with the changing world. Additionally, Artificial Intelligence is displacing jobs for future. We need to understand the agility, flexibility and adaptability for the future relevance. All this depends on the speculative thinking —the thinking of future, learning of past and sustainability of the present.

To converge thoughts, speculative thinking is all about statistical thinking that can understand the fast-changing dynamics of the world and find optimistic outcomes out of those happenings. It needs strategic mindsets to survive in the flexible global market. The coming decade is all about markets volatility, climate disruptions, employment displacement, innovative changes, and emotional instability. We need to develop social safety nets around these issues, and enable our youth with opportunities and accessibility to new markets and models with creative and active learners. In short, we need new educational policy to sustain new paradigms of thinking, expressing and adjusting. New educational policy should premise over the Social Innovation Education, Speculative Design and Sustainability. Pakistan needs to adapt speculative thinking at domestic level from policymakers to coming researchers so that we can deal with future challenges.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 10^th, 2024.

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