Thirty young participants explored the topic of ‘wellbeing’ in Egypt in 2050using a tool called the Futures Literacy Lab-Novelty (FLL-N). Wellbeing is an open concept that invites many different ways of defining what it means to ‘live well’.
The shocks generated by the COVID-19 pandemic have naturally generated a great deal of reflection, anxiety and action. One aspect often less remarked, but perhaps the most important, is that the fragility illustrated so vividly by the pandemic arises from deep systemic biases in the dominant systems and processes that shape what we see and do. In other words, a case can be made that the damage done to communities worldwide arises from the accumulation of everyday perceptions and choices that make society overly brittle and unnecessarily vulnerable .On the one hand, such fragility can be attributed to asymmetry of information, failures of the technocracy in achieving efficiency defined in the light of both fabricated and actual urgency. On the other hand, humanity’s sustained inability to accept and appreciate our status as part of a living, creative and fundamentally uncertain universe, points to a very different problem. One that cannot be fixed by tweaking the bureaucracy or seeking governance through greater prophetic talent. This global shock, arising from a very familiar disruptive force, offers a chance to question why and how people use the future. Thereby opening up the possibility that a different logic might inform the functioning of everyday perception and choice. One that is more humble, welcoming difference and uncertainty, shaping humanity’s resilience through diversification, improvisation and fluidity. A key ingredient needed to create the conditions for this more diversity-oriented strategy towards resilience involves a capability that UNESCO calls Futures Literacy.
