Institute For The Future

Can Futures Thinking Aid Conflict Resolution?

“Why is it so hard to break out of cycles of violence?” This is the question Tessa has been thinking about since she was a child. While it may seem woefully naive for many of us, Tessa is motivated by a desire to get back to the fundamental issues, and begin to look for real solutions.

When she temporarily left IFTF to go to Fordham University for graduate school, Tessa began to think critically about the role that futures thinking might play in trying to answer this question. The Journal of Futures Studies recently published her article, Future Peace: Breaking Cycles of Violence through Futures Thinking, which explores this question.

Two pivotal angles ...

What Tessa found were two pivotal angles that highlighted a systematic need for futures thinking within conflict resolution. The first angle paints a practical approach. People in violence—be it physical or structural—are not able to think about the future due to a hierarchy of needs. But perhaps more importantly, humans are generally not able to think about a future different from their past. Recent neuroscience research even indicates that the brain is wired to generate images of the future based only on what it has observed in the past. People who live in violent conflict are potentially not capable, neurologically, of imagining a peaceful future without the specific platform to do so. We need to provide that platform. This need spans the entire landscape of conflict resolution, from the grassroots to the leaders sitting in mediation.

The second pivotal angle—which is closely drawn from work by Elise and Kenneth Boulding—focuses on a global perspective. The world plans for peace through war. From arms races to bio-weapons and cyber-warfare, nations think in terms of building more sophisticated weaponry to outsmart and outwit criminals and perpetrators of violence. But this is not strategizing for peace. As a human race we lack the skill, and the imagery to do so.  

How can we build a road to a destination we cannot yet see?

Futures thinking can play a critical role in building these new-found, realistic, and internally consistent images of peaceful futures that may eventually guide us to that space.

For more information ...

• Read Tessa's full article, Future Peace: Breaking Cycles of Violence through Futures Thinking

• Interested in chatting further about this topic? Contact Tessa at [email protected]