Liberating the human imagination: futures literacy and the diversification of anticipation

What does it mean to ‘liberate the human imagination’? First, it does not mean, from the point of view of this chapter, somehow inventing wilder or wackier or unique descriptions of the future. Nor is it about more credible forecasts or visions that are so believable they launch a thousand ships. Here, freedom of the imagination emerges from the capacity to understand the different reasons and methods people use to describe situations that are not in the past or the present. The human imagination, like freedom more generally, needs to be exercised to reach its potential. Aptitude is not enough. Potential needs to be realized by taking the opportunity. And such expression can only occur by cultivating, through experience and theory, a deeper understanding of the subject: in this case the attributes and functioning of human anticipatory systems and processes (ASP). To be futures literate, to enable our imagination to wander with confidence, creativity, and openness is to embrace both knowing and not-knowing. In practical terms, from an ASP perspective, this means being able to grasp two fundamental enabling distinctions, the difference between: (a) ‘anticipation-for-the-future’ and ‘anticipation-for-emergence’; and (b) perception and choice. Today’s dominant conventions and habits reduce these four categories into two and as a result inhibit and diminish the ability to sense and make-sense of difference in the present.