by Khai Seng Hong
Hope is a key emotion and mood that provides the fuel for people to imagine multiple futures.
As Fred Polak said in his book, The Image of the Future, “The rise and fall of images of the future precedes or accompanies the rise and fall of cultures. As long as a society's image is positive and flourishing, the flower of culture is in full bloom. Once the image begins to decay and lose its vitality, however, the culture does not long survive.”
Without hope, you and I can sag under the weight of dystopian images of the future, making it a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In recent times in the midst of dystopian realities such as climate change, the mental wellbeing crisis and two localised wars, Hopium has become a popular word in internet culture. A portmanteau of the words "hope" and "opium", Urban Dictionary describes Hopium as “the metaphorical substance that causes people to believe in a false hope which represents the belief that the situation will someday improve.” Hopium gives you a (1) vague goal of a better future, (2) one "pathway" to get there, and (3) the belief that an external force will move things forward along that path to help you get there.
When you try to cope with challenging or complex situations using Hopium, you inevitably give up your own personal agency and futures literacy skills for blind hope and the belief that things will get better. While hope itself is an expansive mood, Hopium numbs you and closes off possibilities and explorations of the future. It can feel freeing on the surface, yet it traps you.
Thankfully, the practice of Futures can be a great way to re-sensitive you to a more transformative sense of hope, using structured processes and rigorous habits of mind to achieve agency:
Instead of a vague goal of a better future, Futures Thinking creates opportunities to have clear images of better, plausible futures through the process of envisioning multiple scenarios.
Instead of one “pathway” to get you to a vague future, seeing how different time horizons create futures (e.g. 3 Horizons, Ride 2 curves or S curves) helps you to establish multiple "pathways" to get there.
Instead of waiting for an external force to move things forward, techniques like backcasting and personal Causal Layered Analysis exercises enable personal choice and strategies to bring your own futures to fruition.
While you may not be addicted to Hopium, many people around you might be relying on such beliefs to cope with life. My hope is that the many Futures communities, like the APF, will continue to expand and create a broader awareness of Futures Thinking processes and mindsets in the public domain. The impact of engaging the public with futures thinking and foresight gives people back agency and control of their futures, as well as energising their imaginative capacities.
This democratisation of futures through your advocacy will then be an antidote to the Hopium. In time to come, those people that numb themselves with the seemingly unsurmountable challenges in the worlds we live in today will become agents of change that don’t just dream, but create new and hopeful worlds that allow all of us to flourish.
© Hong Khai Seng, 2024
KhaiSeng started Studio Dojo in Singapore to explore the intersection between Design, Futures, Organisation Development and Leadership Development. He is deeply invested in helping people, teams and organisations to become more adaptive and healthy through training, coaching and community engagement. Khai Seng thinks Futures is a great avenue to examine how the human and social condition is affected by our understanding and skill in the use of our pasts, present and futures.