Back in the mid-1990s, Scott Adams of Dilbert fame was bitterly funny. Then for some reason he became mostly just bitter. In 1997 he wrote a book called The Dilbert Future
which made some tongue-in-cheek predictions, some of which were silly
and some of which were wrong, but some were remarkably prescient:
- He
predicted that, thanks to stupid users, the Network Computer, a 'dumb
terminal' with no custom software and little or no personal content,
would prevail over the Personal Computer. He was right, except that
instead of calling it a Network Computer we call it a PDA.
- He
predicted that the day would come when people would no longer laugh
when they heard the term ISDN. There was about a 6-month window when
they stopped laughing, and then they started again, at the new name for
ISDN -- "high speed lite".
- He predicted that outsourcing would lead to declines in the salaries of the middle class.
- He
predicted, before blogs, that in the future "everyone would be a news
reporter" and that "people will actively ignore the news because it's
irrelevant".
- He predicted, before Enron, that in the future "the most important corporate skill will be a lack of ethics."
Pretty perceptive guy. He concludes The Dilbert Future with a serious chapter on affirmations and the power of positive thinking. I've written
once before on this subject. Adams believes that believing can actually
alter reality, change the course of history. I'm not sure that I would
go that far. I've also written
about David Cooperrider's practice of Appreciative Inquiry, the
re-framing of negative 'problems' in terms of the realization of some
positive goal through discovery, vision and design.
What got me thinking about this today was a scene between a father and son in a TV program called Everwood
that my wife likes to watch. Some viewer has actually transcribed the
entire script (it's a rerun from last year), and though the transcript
has disappeared from the website, an archive is still available on
Google. So here's the passage:
EPHRAM: I
appreciate the crazy Dad cheering section. It’s just I get so stressed
out sometimes, I forget why I’m even doing this. The truth is on my
end, I don’t know where I see myself in four years.
DR. BROWN: Well, then try it.
EPHRAM: What?
DR. BROWN: Close your eyes. Try to visualize it.
EPHRAM: (sarcastically) Yeah.
DR. BROWN: What’s the matter, too cool to visualize with your father? Come on, picture it. Close your eyes.
[Ephram takes a deep breath and leans back in his desk chair and closes his eyes.]
DR. BROWN: You graduate. You move ahead. You’re happy. What are you doing? Where are you?
EPHRAM: I’m playing in Juilliard.
DR. BROWN: Then that’s what we’ll go for. That’s where we’ll get you.
It
was actually a pretty moving scene for a silly teen soap opera. It was
written by Michael Green, who also had a hand in writing the wonderful
but short-lived series Cupid.
I think Adams and Cooperrider have it wrong in stressing affirmation and appreciation. The magic of this process is imagination. As I've said before, it is only imaginative poverty that prevents us from seeing what we need to do to make the world a better place. If we can imagine, we can't not do anything -- we have to act.
The
same applies, I would argue, in making our own lives more complete,
happier, more fulfilling and more meaningful. We need to be less
analytical in deciding what our purpose is, and more imaginative. Close
your eyes for a moment and think of yourself five years or ten years
from now, under the best possible imaginable circumstances. You move ahead. You're happy. What are you doing? Where are you?
When
I do this, I suddenly start to see possibilities that I could never see
from the vantage point of where I am now, what my current skills and
passions are and how they dovetail with what the world needs today.
Today, this 'present', is like a terrible anchor rooting me to continue
doing tomorrow what I did yesterday. When I close my eyes and imagine
myself in the future, I am freed from the constraints and shackles of
today, freed from the sense of immediate responsibility for the deep
and urgent needs of our society right now, freed from the limitations
of what I think I can do and should do this moment, this hour, this
day, this year.
What I imagine is myself in action
-- showing people, teaching people (outdoors, not in classrooms),
coaching people in essential life skills that most of us today lack, so
that they are self-sufficient and not dependent on employers and
governments for their livelihood and welfare. I imagine that my novel
about a future world living in balance with nature, built around
intentional communities and natural enterprise, is not a novel at all,
but a screenplay for a movie that has transformed the thinking and
sparked the imagination and courage of millions about what could be,
and which has become a catalyst for a movement that is taking flight,
and now carries me along with it, as a simple advisor. I imagine that
the framework for learning and discovery I have been developing in AHA!
has turned out to be a new and astonishingly different way by which
almost all people in this imagined future learn and make decisions --
and that my contribution to it is unrecognizable but that does not
matter, because in this imagined future learning takes place outside, through observation and practice, not inside
through reading and abstract thought, and because in this imagined
future decisions on what to do emerge from collective wisdom rather
than being made ignorantly by those with the wealth and power to
purchase the right to make those decisions for everyone else. I imagine
that this learning and awareness have brought about the end of factory
farming, military adventures, pollution, waste, and the political and
economic oppression that preys on ignorance and fear. I imagine that
the Internet has forced the news media to focus on what's important and
what's actionable, and that people now go online or engage the media
not for distraction or useless 'news' but to inform them with the
capability to know what to do next, and how to do it.
I imagine the great challenge for each person in this future is
striking a balance between doing a million things generously and
reciprocally for others, out there in the real world, versus learning
how to increase one's capabilities so that one can do even more. I imagine a world in which I am, and everyone else is, never passive, never merely consuming, never just putting in time, but instead always out there doing meaningful
stuff, always moving, making the world a better place in remarkable and
tangible ways, connected and networked with everyone else in common
cause.
This imagining, unlike most 'self-help' methodologies,
does not start from introspection, a mulling over of one's purpose and
meaning and value and capabilities, here and now, but starts instead
with what's outside, in the frame of the whole universe, in which one
suddenly imagines oneself dropped, naive, ten years in the future, and
landing doing what one imagines, without constraints, one should be
doing, must be doing, then. Gary Paul Nabhan in Cultures of Habitat writes:
Walking
along, my restlessness increased as I considered the premise put forth
in the meeting room: that the shortest road to wisdom and peace with
the world is the one that turns inward, away from direct sensory
contact with other creatures. I will not assert that meditation,
psychotherapy, and philosophical introspection are unproductive, but I
simply can't accept that inward is the only or best way for everyone to
turn. The more disciplined practitioners of contemplative traditions
can turn inward and still get beyond the self, but many others simply
become swamped by self-indulgence. There are far too many people living
in our society who forget daily that other creatures--five kingdoms'
worth of them--are cohabiting the planet with us.
Over half a
century ago, Robinson Jeffers suggested that it may be just as valid to
turn outward: "The whole human race spends too much emotion on itself.
The happiest and freest man is the scientist investigating nature or
the artist admiring it, the person who is interested in things that are
not human. Or if he is interested in human beings, let him regard them
objectively as a small part of the great music."
I finished my
walk on the forest's edge, where the great music of crashing waves
flooded into the tide pools, where wind ruffled devil's club leaves,
and hermit thrushes sang. I reminded myself that the wisest, most
inspired people I knew had all taken this second path, heading for what
I call the Far Outside. It is the path found when one falls into "the
naturalist's trance," the hunter's pursuit of wild game, the
curandera's search for hidden roots, the fisherman's casting of the net
into the current, the water witcher's trust of the forked willow
branch, the rock climber's fixation on the slightest details of a cliff
face. Why is it that when we are hanging from the cliff--beyond the
reach of civilization's safety net, rather than in it--we are most
likely to gain the deepest sense of what it is to be alive? Arctic
writer-ethnographer Hugh Brody has brooded over this question while
working in the most remote human communities and wildest places he can
find. There, he admits, "at the periphery is where I can come to
understand the central issues of living."
I think
that, like walking in wilderness, imagining is a way to jump out of
civilization's horrifying limits, to this Far Outside. In imagining we
are not constrained by today's laws and today's suffocating realities
and today's learned helplessness and all the things we're told, every
day, in a million different ways, we cannot do, that are impossible.
It is only then that one is brought back to Earth with the terrible question that always puts us back in our place: What is the point in such imagining if there is no conceivable way to get there? But this question is a trick, a trap: If you can imagine yourself in such a future you have already conceived of its possibility. You have already started
the process in motion. Rather than falling back you must continue to
imagine, continue the process. You don't need a plan. If what you have
imagined is your true purpose, your destination, you will find your way
there -- everything you do will start being informed by this new objective, this new intention. The key is to let it drive you, to haunt you, and not sedate yourself with the lie of its impossibility. It is what Feith Stuart calls 'Acting in Accordance':
This
is the most difficult step. You’re going to find yourself arguing with
yourself like a loony. Fake it until you make it in this case. Whenever
you start doubting yourself, shift your focus. Start thinking about
something else entirely. Focus on the fact that the process is already
underway. And then do something, one thing, that will lead to your
intention.
You think perhaps you don't have the
courage to do this, to keep it up until you're suddenly there, having
realized your intention? Read this remarkable woman's story and be inspired by her courage. Courage is realizing you don't have any other choice but to be brave, and then doing it. You don't have any other choice. This is your intention. This is why you're here.
Close your eyes, and imagine. Five years, ten years from now. What are you doing? Who are you?
|
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
