Mary Martin

Many of the predictions that structure human experience concern our own internal physiological states. For example, we experience thirst and hunger in ways that are deeply anticipatory, allowing us to remedy looming shortfalls in advance, so as to stay within the correct zone for bodily integrity and survival. This means that we exist in a world... See more

Individuals can exert influence over the future but they exist in larger fields that condition their choices: epistemological, ontological, economic and cultural or class, gender, varna, civilization type, dynasty, cultural personality or ways of knowing the real. Futurists, in general, tend to focus on the individual’s ability to create the future... See more

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.

The sleeping giant is one name for the public; when it wakes up, when we wake up, we are no longer only the public: we are civil society, the superpower whose nonviolent means are sometimes, for a shining moment, more powerful than violence, more powerful than regimes and armies.