Social Visions of Future Sustainable Societies 399Broadening the discourse
Incorporating social visions into the discourse about the future would serve the
purpose of explicitly introducing a number of ignored or neglected elements into
the ‘managing the planet’ discusssion. In the process, it would also open up that
discussion to critique and to much wider participation.
Futurists and their clients have been accused of being motivated by goals of
control and manipulation (e.g. Dublin, 1991); however, a number of more benign
interests – such as concern for children and grandchildren, seeking information on
future impacts in order to guide current actions, simple nosiness or curiosity – may
also motivate the desire to know the future. Some of us want to know what life will
be like after us, and how our time here affects what follows. For others, a deep
spiritual connection with the Earth and its creatures, religious or ethical notions of
stewardship, or a strong sense of responsibility for the Earth and its future, inspire
concern. Still others harbour a deep respect for what has come before – a sense of
history. All of these motives reflect a common desire to know what it would be like
to live in various possible futures.
Whereas such issues as population, energy, food, pollution and the like do tell
us something about the constraints under which society is organized, they shed
little light on the nature of lived human experience. Just as today’s statistics on coal
mining, methane emissions or capital flows fail to capture the experience of most
peoples’ lives, future scenarios limited to such factors constrain human inquiry,
when we should be seeking to liberate and expand it. Whereas some specialists
enter the futures discussion in such topics as material flows, atmospheric gases,
capital investment, species richness, energy-conversion technologies, agricultural
production or demographic profiles, and their results are a needed part of knowl-
edge, such analyses are intrinsically unable to explore the nature of society and the
human condition. How people will live, and how all these phenomena will be
translated through societal institutions into factors affecting daily life and human
dignity, remains opaque and unexplored. Understanding what some future cir-
cumstance might feel like not only provides empathy or human interest but also
makes possible a holistic view, a demonstration of interconnections.
Thus, ‘dispassionate’ social science is not the only, or even the most, valid ele-
ment in the current discourse. In academic terms, a ‘passionate’ social science and
a stronger voice for the humanities are needed. Finding diverse, rich and textured
ways of expressing social visions – through literary or artistic means, for instance –
can make the issues accessible to more people and can contribute to emancipatory
assessment, humanistic orientation and democratic decision processes. The expan-
sion of discourse into the areas of everyday life, tapping our concerns about our
grandchildren and about the impacts of our present lives – and piquing our curios-
ity – can open the possibility of capturing and mobilizing popular attention to
important issues, perhaps even enabling the Habermasian dialogue advocated by
O’Riordan and Timmerman in chapter 14 of Global Environmental Risk (Earths-
can, 2001).