When time travel is good for us all: What history can teach us about the future

MANY of us have spent lifetimes listening to the same repetitive growth-oriented stories: the rise of empires; the American dream; the gospel of prosperity. Each of these points to a dominant narrative that we are all on an upward trajectory that will lead us to greater happiness.

Yet, in this moment of great disruption in which the pandemic, inequality, and climate crises continue to expose deep-rooted fault lines in the way we currently live, work and interact, we are becoming very aware that this set of stories and frameworks quite simply no longer serves.

As a futurist, when I work with groups on visioning for the future, I often start with discussing present-day systems that seem as if they have existed forever. Systemic and cyclical inequality, diminishing biodiversity and disposable, high-waste consumer culture and more all seem an inevitable part of growth.

Yet a look backwards shows us that not only are these relatively new developments in human history, but that we believed in them because of larger structural forces that arguably continue to shape the way we think and act within the world. Most importantly, thinking about these flawed systems as historical human constructs - created by a subgroup of people for specific aims - can help us understand and change them.

Just as our actions and decisions shaped the past, so too will they impact the future. We have a moral imperative to stop passively experiencing the future, and to deeply understand it so that we can better act. To be able to create a better future together, we need to start with examining who we are and how we got to the crises we are currently in.

That is why the Future of Sustainability series is set to look back: armed with lessons learned and candid ownership of where we have previously succeeded, failed and why, we can better prepare and upskill ourselves to make more informed decisions about what is really needed.

To quote the writer and philosopher George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." A terrifying prospect, given that more than 3 decades of institutionalised sustainability efforts have not taken us to where we need to be. It is important that we not only remember the past, but as futures thinkers search for patterns and examine alternative worldviews. It is becoming increasingly clear that we cannot solve current and future challenges with systems unquestioningly inherited.

Exploring past lessons - good and bad - is how we learn, and learn quickly. After all, time is not on our side if we are to tackle multifaceted challenges from escalating climate and biodiversity issues to growing inequality, a global health crisis, and an urgent need for economic reform. A global system that relentlessly pursues profit, at the cost of living creatures and our beloved planet Earth, cannot continue indefinitely. Our societies, technologies, cultures, ideologies - the very systems we are trying to change - have all been shaped by history. Appreciating what has and has not worked is vital as we look to innovate, inspire and drive change.

To explore this further and to better understand the ways in which we shape and are shaped by the past and future, I sat down with 2 time travellers: Nandini Pandey, associate professor of classics at Johns Hopkins University; and Nour Batyne, creative producer, facilitator and artist whose work lies at the intersection of immersive storytelling, futures thinking and social innovation.

While Nandini studies the ancient past and Nour tells stories about the near future, both think about the entanglement of different temporalities and the ways that diverse stories help us understand how to be and act today.

Considering the future as 'historia'

Having spoken with Nour and Nandini, I have been left with a radical thought: how can we think about our past and future as 'historia' - a place of living inquiry? Understanding both past and future requires perpetual talking and questioning. We are not headed down a fixed path. We have the potential to unearth new stories, ones that make room for multiple layered futures, that are able to hold different and diverse perspectives at the same time, and that repeat, regenerate, and renew.

The past is an intriguing place full of lessons for all of us - not just in respect to discrete events, but in the systems, worldviews and cultures that have emerged from the way our ancestors saw and shaped our world. It is now time for us to deliberately examine where we are right now, where we have been - and where we are heading if we are to fulfil our duty to future generations.

This transition must revive traditional practices while also discovering new ways of being. It must shift away from systems that no longer serve our fragile planet and the people who call it home.

We need to fundamentally move from being a consumptive species to, as Tyson Yunkaporta so beautifully captures, a "custodial" one - and in doing so, intentionally leave no one behind. Why not start sharing your lessons right now?

Highlights from our conversation on Nov 3, 2021:

Alisha Bhagat: Most depictions of the future in the media are of dystopias and extreme collapse. Given our fears of the future and anxiety around the present, why look to the past?

Nandini Pandey: The past is all around us. It shapes the institutions that we work in, and the language that we use to conceptualise our problems. The past is part of who we are and how we understand the present and future that we face. I often start my syllabi with a quote from Cicero that says: "To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child." Because if we deprived ourselves of the benefit of the experience of our billions of ancestors across the world, we would be so poverty-stricken. And we can see patterns and solutions more clearly when we look at the past. It is harder to understand problems when you are stuck in the middle of them.

Nour Batyne: I have realised that the mess we are currently in is because of our inability to truly acknowledge the past and to stop the unfortunate events in history that occur over and over and over again. I have learned, from spending a lot of time imagining alternative futures, that there is so much work to do in uncovering the past and challenging the narratives we are told about it so that we can move forwards.

Bhagat: So perhaps we need to reclaim our own past so that we can better understand and shape our future?

Pandey: Yes! I think we need to tell better stories about the past that are centred around diverse people and that different people can own and take forward. We cannot be full protagonists in the story unless we understand the memories that shape our identity and the set of experiences that shaped the people who brought us into the world, whether you want to take that literally or metaphorically. So I think that the idea of 'narrative' actually gives us another organising concept when it comes to thinking about the future.

Batyne: I would love to also explore how storytelling can be part of the way that those studying history and engaging with it as students can take agency over the way these stories are told.

Bhagat: The time machine has to be able to go in both directions. So we cannot really travel forwards if we don't know how to travel backwards - and both need the same kind of skills. The ancient Greeks might think of both as ways of understanding causality. There is always a push, a purpose that puts any character, agent or futurist into motion and that pushes a problem that was made by the past into the present.

• The writer is futures lead at Forum for the Future. This article first appeared in Forum for the Future's Future of Sustainability: Looking Back to Go Forward opinion and commentary series. Forum is an international non-profit, which for 25 years has been working in partnership with business, governments and civil society to accelerate the transformation towards a just and regenerative future.