From Input to Interbeing
If regenerative participation is to become a meaningful part of foresight, we must expand our understanding of what foresight practitioners do—and how we show up.
We are not extractors of insights or deliverers of predetermined scenarios. We are gardeners, composters, and stewards of living processes. Our work is less about directing movement and more about cultivating the conditions for emergence, belonging, and transformation.
From Input to Interbeing
Despite good intentions, many public engagement processes remain transactional, time-bound, and symbolic. They ask people to show up, speak up, and then move on. These forms of participation tend to reinforce the illusion that listening has occurred, while leaving little space for transformation or relationship.
A Call to Action: Building a Public Interest Futures Brigade
When it comes to futures thinking — the ability to anticipate, imagine, and shape long-term possibilities — there is no public interest pathway. Foresight careers are still largely confined to corporate strategy departments, government agencies, public policy think tanks, management consulting firms, and military strategy departments. Meanwhile, communities on the frontlines of social, economic, and environmental change are left reacting to futures they did not design.
Beyond Fairness: Seeding New Possibilities for Our Future
…when we talk about “fairness,” we might unintentionally limit our thinking to a transactional model—balancing scales, distributing harm, and managing resources. Fairness, as a frame, feels safe. But it’s also static. It doesn’t invite us to question the very systems that created the inequities we’re trying to address.