Futuring and History - The Same Process

Erik, thank you. In fact, history and futuring are "joined at the hip." Here is why. The past is gone; the future is not here yet. Therefore, historians - based on factual records - imagine, recreate the past. History in the final analysis is an exercise in imagination, grounded in fact. Fantasy in contrast does not required any basis in fact. Fantasy allows you to image whatever you want. Do not however confuse it with history. Futuring like history imagine the future based on evidence, facts today. Futuring is like science fiction. Science fiction takes a fact and imagines how it might unfold in the future. Again, to be credible, science fictioin must relate, have its roots in concrete facts today. Both futuring and history require imagination based on facts. One uses facts, e.g. historical documents, to reconstruct, imagine the past. The other uses facts, e.g. the aging demographics in most industrial countries, to project, imagine the future, e.g. inter-generational warfare. As a rule, people are stunned when you explain this connection to them, for it is natural to see the past, history, as over there, and the future as over here. The process of contructing both however rests on imagination that extrapolates from know facts, records now. It has been a natural progress from your humble servant here to migrate from his love of history (B.A. British, Wisconsin, and M.A. Canadian, Toronto, plus one year as a special student in history at the University of Dublin) to his love of futuring. Moreoveer, as futurist point out, what has happened in the past can provide feasible models to help us weigh what may happen in the future. For instance, the hyper-inflation of Germany after World War I serves as a model, warning for us today about the possibilities, probabilities of what could happen here due to the coming hyper-inflation here as the Wall Street and Washington gangsters print money left and right to finance their robberies. In fact, I have proposed a session on this very topic, a comparison of the German Great Depression with the probabilities for our future as we enter another Great Depression, for the 2013 World Future Society in Chicago. I will base the model on a 1932 book (The German Crisis) by a chap named Knickerbocker from New York City , who spent the entire year of 1932 in Germany observing first-hand the devastation of hyper-inflation that caused the economy to collapse. It is sobering reading. In the last chapter, Knickerbocker, in fact, no joke, has a private interview with Hitler, himself, who is not yet Chancellor (dictator) of Germany. What happened then, there serves as a warning, model for what might occur here, although the names of the players and methods would differ, but the creation of a dictatorship is possible, but is it probable? Time will tell. We shall, sadly, soon see.