This is Andrew Benedict-Nelson, social change strategist and innovation educator. Each week, I share a question that you and your organization can use to find a new perspective on the toughest problems you face. Reply to the e-mail or comment on the site and we can talk about them together!
NOW FOR THIS WEEK’S QUESTION…
We can see many of the assumptions we are making about social problems if we look at our ideas about the future. But our ideas about the future are disproportionately shaped by the recent past. Think of one major recent development in the world of your problem and pretend for a moment that it didn’t happen. How might you be thinking about the future in that imaginary world? Are there any opportunities to apply some of that thinking in the real world?
It’s one of those fallacies that we human beings just can’t seem to avoid. If something happened in the recent past or in our immediate vicinity, we assign it much more importance than it deserves. I’m as bad at it as anybody — I tell myself it's just a part of our evolutionary makeup, which is as good an excuse as any. But I’m pretty sure only very serene people can avoid making this mistake.
One mental trick some people use to avoid this fallacy is looking at everything through the lens of “the Lindy effect.” The basic idea is that the influence of an idea, organization, or other cultural phenomenon is likely to continue into the future about as long as it has existed in the past. So according to this hypothesis, we can count on the influence of universities and organized religion much longer than we can count on multinational corporations or gender reveal parties.
I can’t quite fully believe in "the Lindy effect,” but it does help me ask whether the most recent topics on everyone’s mind are really so important. Something like ChatGPT may seem like a big deal now, but it's probably not as important as the development of written language or the public library. Taking this perspective helps us ask, "What would I be thinking about if I weren’t so preoccupied by what’s new?” Now let’s try the same thing for the problem you're working on.
HOW TO DO IT
Honestly appraise the recent past - For this exercise to work, you have to be honest about the recent events on the mind of the people in your organization and other groups working on the problem. This could be anything from an incendiary remark from a politician to a bit of hearsay circulating in your profession. It may be something that is only tangentially related to your problem but that everyone is talking about anyway. Just make a short, honest list of what’s on everybody’s mind. It’s also okay if you want to work with just one recent event.
Reflect on feelings and implications - Now get ready to jot down a few words and phrases for each of your recent events. For each event, first focus on the feelings they inspire in you and the people around you. You don't need to explain or justify these feelings in any way. If you feel jealous about a surprise promotion or donation in your field, just say so. Once that’s done, think of a few possible implications of the events, especially ones that might have you worried. I sometimes call this the “What if?” list — they are the possible outcomes that run around in your head whether they make any sense or not.
Let go of the list - Now it’s time to use whatever mindfulness techniques you have at hand and forget about everything on that list for at least an hour. One of my friends taught me a trick where you imagine a bubble, put all the troublesome thoughts inside, then let it float away. Others may want to physically cross out the feelings and “what ifs” on their list. The point is, get rid of that stuff for a little bit.
Plan for a different future - This is the hard part. You may think that after crossing out that list, you are now in some sort of utopian alternate reality. Nope — you are still fighting your same social problem, you just don’t have those recent events dominating discussions of the future. You still have to deal with all the long-term structural issues you’ve been dealing with for years. Nevertheless, you can mentally delete all the stressful discussions of the recent events or all the meetings that get derailed by those topics. In that world, what would you be planning for instead? What would be on your agenda?
Pick a thing or two to try - It’s almost certain that something you planned for in the alternate world can be accomplished in this one. That’s because as hard as it is to believe it, reality is probably closer to the world you imagined than whatever is being discussed in your group chat or on the nightly news. We human beings are just too short-sighted to see it. So commit to thinking about at least one item from your list on a regular basis, then trying it if you can. That’s the only way you can break free of the hold of recent events.
CAN YOU GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE?
Goodness, there are so many. I’m going to go with Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. Maybe you were never an avid user of “the hellsite,” but most of the journalists and politicos I know have logged on daily for years and years. So the saga of the company going private — and the various changes it has wrought — have dominated discussions of everyone who thinks about how ideas move through the public sphere.
Now I'm not saying the changes at Twitter aren’t important — after all, I quit the site over them. (Hello Mastodon.) But I can only imagine what we would all be working on if we weren’t clicking on every hot take on Musk’s next move.
You’ve got your own hellsite in your life. Let it go for a minute and imagine what you’d be doing.
COOL, SO WHAT MAKES THIS WORK?
This question is an example of how to better understand assumptions about your problem using the future dynamic. It’s one of six innovation dynamics I help people master to improve their critical thinking and build strategies for social change. Reply to this e-mail with your answer to the question and I’ll let you know what I think! Or learn more by visiting http://www.teachingsocialchange.com.