Futures thinking

the default network consists of regions that, in the absence of exteroceptive [externally oriented] attention or narrowly focused mental effort, support self-directed concerns, immersion in one’s inner life (e.g., daydreaming) or imagining the inner life of others (Theory of Mind)

While it’s tempting to play with scenario planning and leave it at the implications, we must not hide behind the data, deck or titles of our roles, protecting us from the vulnerability of getting out there and doing the messy work: making the futures we wish to see.

Those of us who recognize that we’ve been here before are the ones who have to call attention to where we are heading.

Digital feedback loops are helping us see that our media, technology, culture, economy, and natural world all have at least as much of a cyclical character as a linear one.

It’s not a matter of banishing linearity and progress

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Thus, it remains an open question as to whether the hippocampus is necessary for future simulation.

Whatever action I take, walking, eating and excreting, incurs a cost to other lives, whether by killing and eating them directly, or by eating foods that they could otherwise have lived on. The most extreme impact my life has on other species is extinction, not just of their physical presence, but also of their memories, both those acquired within... See more

the imagination is a neurological reality, that it is lodged in specific parts of the brain, that it consists of an identifiable set of components and processes, that these components and processes have adaptive functions, and that in fulfilling its functions imagination has been a major causal factor in making Homo sapiens the dominant species on... See more

Research has shown a staggering number of health benefits associated with dispositional optimism, from improvements in cardiovascular health, to how quickly wounds heal, to slower disease progression.

“Work-related Resilience, Engagement and Wellbeing Among Music Industry Workers During the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Multiwave Model of Mindfulness and Hope”