Overcoming the Cassandra syndrome: limits to and conditions of anticipatory governance

This chapter elaborates on an original 17 plus-year-long empirical practice of documented anticipation applied to the observation of EU evolutions and “the Global Systemic Crisis” by think-tanks Europe 2020 and LEAP, trying to draw useful lessons as regards to the articulation between anticipation and decision. It establishes the difficulties, seen from LEAP, to influence policy-makers whatever the quality of the foresight and the potency of lobbying strategies. To the point of questionning the relevence of futures studies as a whole as well as the feasibility of anticipatory governance. Eager to provide elements of solution to this existential question, the chapter defends a concept of education to the future aimed at providing the conditions for agile societies, collectively intelligent of the future. As today’s global system is the most complex system humanity has ever known, inducing change requires the involvement of the entire society. Hence, a democratic and educational leap is necessary. They must endow themselves with enhanced future-oriented radars enabling them to spot upcoming changes early enough to efficiently act. It is these anticipatory skills that must be distributed, beyond governing bodies only, towards the entire society to create the conditions for a “rational collective intelligence of the future” that appears to LEAP as the only way towards an “organically adaptative” society.