EP 151: Victor Motti - Alternative Planetary Futures

 
 

A returning chat with Victor Motti, Director of the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF), and founder of a new Think Tank in Washington DC, the Alternative Planetary Futures Institute. WFSF is a UNESCO and UN consultative partner and global NGO with members in over 60 countries.

Interviewed by: Peter Hayward

Peter Hayward: It is widely reported around the world that our global mental health is poor and getting worse. From the young to the old it seems few are spared from the suffering caused by depression, anxiety, and loneliness. You could easily think that the data suggests we are going from bad to worse. But are we?

Victor Motti: It occurred to me that we are actually in the middle of a very big wave or big cycle of awakening in the sense that people are talking about becoming more mature or a level of maturity that is going to be a shift or a jump in the collective consciousness of humanity. If you follow this global trend of rising levels of global sadness or unhappiness, you will see that the conditions are actually ready for a big mental revolution. Because if you look at the history of religions like Islam or Christianity or Judaism, that all of the prophets were actually appealing to the people who had miserable lives. And we are right now in a sense, at the similar moment in the human history.

Peter Hayward: That is today's guest Victor Motti. Victor is the Director of the World Futures Studies Federation and the Director of the planetary think tank, the Alternative Planetary Futures Institute. We also previously spoke to Victor in podcast 51, Wise futures of infinite time?

Welcome back to Future Pod Victor.

Victor Motti: Thank you very much for having me today. I really enjoyed talking to you almost two and a half years ago.

Peter Hayward: Yeah, two and a half years, May, 2020. There was a bit going on in the world at that time. So Victor let's start with updating how the last couple of years have been for you? For all of us they've been dramatic years but I'm gonna suspect that for you those years were even a bit more dramatic than most people.

Victor Motti: Absolutely. Dramatic. Because back then I was based in Turkey and I was taking a temporary escape from my homeland. And actually you mentioned that we were experiencing the lockdowns during the pandemic. And at the same time I was in a sense was forced to leave Turkey, get back to Iran, and because I was waiting for my immigration case to be approved by the US Embassy. And in 2021 after Biden administration took office, we were actually given our visa, the immigration documents, and since August of 2021, we have moved to Washington, DC and we have started a new life here. Migrating to a new country, and I hope that this will be my final destination. I'm not forced to move to another country, but that's that's both a challenge and an opportunity, because at the very least here in the US there are lots of good aspects of being a futurist and being person associated with the International body of futurists. That was not quite easy to do back in the Middle East for me, and I'm quite lucky and fortunate to have been given this opportunity by the US government to immigrate to the United States.

Peter Hayward: Yeah, I've been following it, Victor. The way I would describe it to people, to listeners who don't know you probably as closely as I do. You've been like a kid in the candy store since you got to America. I remember when you got to the Smithsonian and they had the future's exhibition going and you must have posted well over a hundred photos of the exhibition. You were like the ultimate tourist or you are in futures heaven.

 

Victor Motti: The this particular choice for me, I was free to choose any place, any city throughout the United States, but ultimately, after talking to my wife, we decided to move to the, to this area, the capital area. And the good news is that the majority of the very important events are actually organized here, and we are at the very heart of policy and politics and futurist work and et cetera. And that Smithsonian exhibition was quite something big for me to participate. I think the consulting arm for that exhibition was this Institute of the Future based in San Francisco Silicon Valley. And that could be seen from their arrangement throughout exhibition that the signature of their consulting work were actually evident there. But yeah I took my camera on the phone and tried to record every part of the exhibition for our fellow members in the World Future Studies Federation so that they can get a direct experience like me of what is present there. And it was quite a big popular event for many people to participate there.

But of course, from some perspectives that some of our members in the Federation later on shared with us, I should say that it was not quite that kind of pluralistic and integrative futurist exhibition that I had in mind. But anyway it should come later on because the point is that even during the ongoing pandemic, they were able to put together such a big show for people to participate in.

Peter Hayward: And it's important to have conversations about possible futures and open futures, and especially going through a pandemic. While it's important that we focus on the now, you've also gotta lift people's eyes and lift people's hearts to what's possible.

Victor Motti: The Smithsonian has a very high reputation of providing lots of different experiences for people interested in the museums and scientific and technological advancements and thinking about the future and the possible futures is actually one of the key differentiating aspect of this particular institution. Traditionally involve in museums, or history, and the mere fact that they are right now shifting to towards a combination of history and futurist thinking is actually quite impressive. And I should mention that when I was touring around that exhibit, I saw that there was many places in the exhibition that were combining parts of the history with the present and of course the future. It was not exclusively about the future. For example, there were some sections about the colonial past of the Western countries when they were dealing with countries in for example in Asia and or Africa. And it showed that over the course of 50 or 100 years, you can see that a big amount of change occurring throughout the world and it should somehow surprise you to see that how values are shifting, not only technologies.

Peter Hayward: And of course the fact that a lot of museums now bring a real social criticism to their pasts and the hope if there's a course that we actually bring a similarly critical function to the futures as to whether we want or we don't want them.

Victor Motti: That was exactly my point in the Smithsonian exhibit. And of course when I was looking for neighborhoods in Washington, DC I actually decided to settle down in this neighborhood, which is called the Think Tank Row, or a neighborhood, which if you look at, look it up on the internet, you that many of the leading American Think tanks are located here close to White House, and it is full of Policy Analysis Institutions or Think Tanks. And I would say that the fact that I am the Director of the Federation was quite relevant in this choice because very quickly I helped to establish two different organizations or initiatives related to the Futures, and of course, related to Policy Analysis. I might be able to talk more about this too later on.

Peter Hayward: You are well and truly inside the Beltway .

Victor Motti: The city is Washington DC is you like it or you dislike it. Anyway, it's very political. And right before we came here, there was big riot against the US Congress after the January sixth. And yeah, it's a highly political place and guess what? The majority of people here are calling themself Consultant and who knows what they consult about .

Peter Hayward: Lobbyist and consultants and influencers. It must be an exciting place. So you've established yourself. You've moved yourself and your family to Washington, but you haven't rested on your laurels. What do you do now? Because when you move, if I call you a refugee, it's what you are. You basically come to a country and then you've gotta become established and you obviously gotta get, a kind of foundation as to what you do. So how's that gone?

Victor Motti: If you remember well during our past conversation during this podcast series I was talking about the Planetary Futures or Alternative Planetary Futures and the book that I wrote and very quickly after I arrived, I met Jerome Glenn from the Millennium Project, and I proposed the idea of establishing a newt Think Tank, a Planetary Think Tank, that could complement what Jerry has already achieved in his Millennium Project with lots of different nodes across the world. And based on the ideas in that book and of course our talk together in the past podcast, we were able to actually establish this new Think Tank, a Nonprofit organization, which is called the Alternative Planetary Futures Institute. And it's primarily a institution which is going to focus exclusively on the idea of planetary consciousness. And the interesting fact is when we established this institute, this nonprofit, or the new Think Tank in this Think Tank Row I actually were able to meet other futurists who are based in the area like Claire Nelson and William Halal and talk to Clem Bezold and lots of other Futurists who are based in the area. And of course I also met or paid a visit to Tom Lombardo in Arizona in during the Thanksgiving of 2021. And the interesting thing is that the majority of these Futurists are independently talking about the planetary consciousness or the global consciousness as Dr. William Halal would like to call it in his book Beyond Knowledge. And this was quite a very fulfilling experience for me to see that some of the other leading futurists that I know about them are talking about the importance of obtaining this global consciousness, or as I would like to call it, Planetary Consciousness.

This is about of course the non-profit activity that I'm establishing here and try to keep the website updated about this topic by monitoring and reporting back from other sources that are also dealing with Planetary Consciousness and another initiative that we established with the help of training services company based in Silver Spring, Maryland is establishment of a Foresight Academy. This is not nonprofit, of course. This is a company and I try to introduce my contacts throughout the Federation and of course from other networks who were already teaching or offering courses on Future Studies or Foresight to provide a new platform. And for offering customized workshops and seminars for the US Government and other governments throughout the world. And if you'd like to later obtain more information you can look it up on the internet. DMS Academy. And that is also the work, my full-time job. Right now as the Executive Director of this academy and this academy is supposed to provide customized workshops and offerings for people from the public sector mostly who are interested to were interested to obtain a good quality world class training on Strategic Foresight for the specific agency needs.

And our hope is that initially we will be able to work with the US federal agencies. Most of them are of course, located in Washington, DC and of course, later on, expand towards other governments, even for the international organization like the United Nations, if you follow what Jerome Glenn is doing with the Millennium Project and Our Common Agenda with the United Nations. It seems that we are right now in the very important stage of foresight promotion, and training and education. And of course there are many options for people, for example, to enroll in university programs to obtain a degree, a PhD, like people in the Federation. But we saw a good demand among the Federal agencies, among the people from the governments across the world to get customized training on foresight. And that is right now my day job. And I'm doing that as my day job and also I try to focus on this non-profit or the Think Tank that we mentioned today.

Peter Hayward: That's good. I will take this moment to encourage you to use the Future Pod podcasts as part of your offerings because one of the nice things that's happened with Future Pod, now we're going for four years, it's now getting picked up and used in education. .

Victor Motti: As a matter of fact, we have developed an a learning experience platform, which parts of it is actually free to use. It's a freemium section of the platform. Anybody who goes to the website of the DMS Academy can sign up for a user and get some access to our library of free online courses on education about foresight, and of course a list of relevant books or books titles. And of course, I'm going to add the huge resource that you have developed very professionally so far in this podcast series. It's absolutely relevant for many people from the government, federal agencies to get a quick and curated access to top quality content in the format of audios, and of course, videos and books, et cetera.

Peter Hayward: I was having a look at the APFI.us website and the library section, that is an impressive work when you see that total of books that so many authors have produced. When you look at the corpus of that collection of thinking, it is powerful when you imagine, as you say, these people have been often, beavering away by themselves, but when you assemble it in that way, it's, you go, wow, there, while it's not necessarily completely integrated there is so much information there and so much ideas.

Victor Motti: I sometimes mention this to our colleagues and friends saying that a typical futurist is as often monitoring and scanning and looking around for the information throughout different sources to make sense of the trends or scenarios or uncertainties. But I have developed this habit of monitoring the futurist impulse. In the sense that I'm trying to provide a foresight that could lead the other foresight. When I refer to this today, that I saw that when we look at the titles of books and reports by futurists themselves, you can aggregate them together and make it another meta coherent picture of what is going to happen. And surprisingly, I saw that all of them are not simply talking about the next technological developments, but also about the next mental or spiritual or consciousness related big revolution on the horizon, including people like Dr. William Halal or even Claire Nelson and even Jerome Glenn.

And very recently we even published a PowerPoint with the volume of almost 130 pages, focussed entirely on the idea of collective awakening at the planetary scale. And it's something very informative, at least for me, to see that many leading futurists from across the different sectors and from cultures, countries, from France, from Australia, Asia, from Latin America, from Africa, from the North America. Almost every place are independently talking about the future of the planets or the planetary consciousness. And even today, if you look at the monitoring page on the ApFi.us website, that one of the leading think tanks, those political think tanks that are often interested in international relations has also published a very important report about planetary politics. Talking about the need for thinking about the ecology and the earth as a whole. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. If you look at their website and our website, that they are also talking or working in that direction. Raising awareness about this importance, collective awakening about the planet and the planetary thinking and this topic, these kind of topics.

Peter Hayward: I'm gonna bring up Zurvan and I'm gonna bring up the whole dialectic philosophical foundation part of what we talked about last time because when you talk about planetary consciousness, there clearly is, I remember Barbara Marx Hubbard, and that was all the thing that she talked about and then there's so many other people are almost continuing the work that Barbara was doing. And so there's that going on but at the same time, if you look at the world, there is of course, the other mind, the Angry mind, that actually says no, we actually need to go back to fundamental values. We need to become more as we were not as we are becoming. And so it is a contest. It, this is going to be a contest of ideas. There is no logical trend. There will be a fought battle for the mind and for the values that go forward.

Victor Motti: You Absolutely right. When I was talking about this new report the Future of Collective Awakening that actually began when we were starting the report by the 2100 Foundation based in France. I was talking about this centuries of the spirit or centuries of the mind. It occurred to me that we are actually in the middle of a very big wave or big cycle of awakening in the sense that people are talking about becoming more mature or a level of maturity that is going to be a shift or a jump in the collective consciousness of humanity. And you are absolutely right because there are some other forces and or some other movements that might try to drag down or provide a sort of bad consciousness as opposed or less wise consciousness as opposed to more mature or wise consciousness that we are talking about them. But sometimes there are critics who say that we are not supposed to do only normative futures work. And we are supposed to also to provide explorative or objective analysis of what is going on in the environment or in the in information is sphere of human activity. But there are of course some objective trends and measures that are talking about the importance of this major shift.

And I'm just going to review two of these objective measurements. The first one is about the recent Gallup survey which has been widely reported in the media about the rise of the global sadness, or the global unhappiness and it is a global phenomenon related to mental health and people are suffering in many countries. And it's not simply something subjective it is actually making an impact on their objective or material life. And in addition to that, if you follow this global trend of rising levels of global sadness or unhappiness, you will see that the conditions are actually ready for a big mental revolution. Because if you look at the history of religions like Islam or Christianity or Judaism, that all of the prophets were actually appealing to the people who had miserable lives. And we are right now in a sense, at the similar moment in the human history. And in addition to that, if you follow the news about the automization and loss of jobs to technological progress in particular AI or Artificial Intelligence, you would see that people will have very soon, a lot of free time if they are laid off from work. And the only good estimate or speculation about what people will do when they have a lot of free time and are not required to have nine to five worked hours is they will try to reconsider their values, their ethical considerations, and that is also another objective indicators of what is going on.

And what is expected to happen, people will begin to ponder or reflect upon their values, upon what should be their new sets of ethics or their identity? If you have seen this recent book by Jim Dator it's also about becoming or the issue of identity. When people are not too much busy doing their business or having to do a lot of work to just survive. The obvious option for them, for getting themselves busy in a sense or become active, is to actually join the non-profits or join a particular cause in their life. And here in Washington, DC there are many many Associations and nonprofits from every type, from people who are advocating for human rights, for people helping each other to end poverty or racial discriminations or equity, et cetera. And of course there are people very much focused on the saving the planet or environmentalist activists and I suspect that in the near future when assuming that many people are not required to do works that have already been taken away from them by robots or ai, the majority of people will find a good way to contribute to the society by joining this kind of non-profit organizations or NGOs. And that is also going to be a huge shift in the distribution of the labor in a society away from commercial activity to non-commercial and humanitarian or non-profit sector.

Peter Hayward: Yeah. I just published the latest podcast with Andy Hines about his upcoming book called After Capitalism. And Andy, of course, was looking at the future economically particularly from the incredible inequalities of income. And so one of the things that Andy was saying was that capitalism will continue, but it will have to change. Because societies will not have never, history tells us that societies will not tolerate significant imbalances, inequality of income without causing problems. And the demagogues and conservatives and the angry minds who want to control and go back to a better time. Physical inequality is one of those raw materials that feed anger and feed those movements. And clearly what you are talking about is if people have free time, then they will reflect. Kind of what happened during Covid when a lot of people had guaranteed incomes didn't have to go into work and they reexamined their jobs and reexamined what they did. And when they finally got a chance to go back to work, a lot of 'em said, I'm not gonna go back to that crappy job I had. I'm gonna go and do something else. But surely one of the key factors during Covid that allowed people to do the reflection was the fact there was actually a supplement or there was a support being provided to them that gave them the freedom to explore the things that you talked about. But we're not seeing those continue. Now that Covid's coming to the end, are we?

Victor Motti: Who knows if it is coming to an end, because right now there are protests in all over China against the lockdown . The great pause that began by the Covid was actually very helpful for many countries to reconsider their business as usual. And I'm sure that even though some of the companies will require, people even here in Washington, DC will require people to get back to office. Many people will simply refuse to do that. They are because they are already tasting the freedom of working from home in cases of course. And of course, I would say that about the Capitalism and the ideas by Andy Hines, of course they are very relevant. I believe there is a big criticism against the United States for following the sort of Neoliberal capitalism. And when you compare it with the situation in other countries, like in Europe for example, that there are very large differences. I well remember that a couple of months ago when I was in a bus commuting to a meeting. Two Americans were sitting in the bus talking to each other. One of them just arrived from a visit to Europe and that gentleman was sharing his experience with the other passengers in the bus, telling them that you won't believe it.

How the health system, education system, and the the public transportation is totally different in Europe if compared with the United States in the sense that the education is much, much cheaper and you are not forced to finish it up, like in Germany, you are not finish going to finish up very soon and you are allowed actually to extend your study for many years if you are, for example looking to have a family and a children. And of course about the health coverage or insurance and the transportation. There are lots of different policies in place and there are lots of big gaps. If you compare even Western countries, Europe and the US. And the good thing is that the the pandemic helped many people to at least shuffle or reconsider their old assumptions about how the health system, how the education and the transportation should work, and just this tiny invisible virus was able to provide such dramatic shifts in radical changes in our design or new design for our society. And I'm sure that people are experimenting with lots of different alternatives or options right now. And the good thing from my point of view is that we are not going back to normal. The previous normal, anything that is going happen should be some level of more sophistication or evolved. A situation that is going to emerge and we need to embrace this new world that is emerging and not trying to stick to the false idea that we can resurrect the already died order of the world.

Peter Hayward: And we are looking at it, it's playing out live in Europe tragically at the moment where you. Effectively, there's a mindset that says, we believe that you are Russian, we believe that you don't have this new identity. And then you've got a group of people simply saying, no, we actually aren't, and then I suppose the most interesting thing from the tragedy of the war in Ukraine, but how it has galvanized a lot of the world governments to simply take a side on something. It's had a galvanizing force on public and private and individual and political that you need to stand for something. It hasn't been universal, there's still significant parts of the world that aren't taking a stand directly, but it's getting harder and harder to not take a stand, isn't it?

Victor Motti: Yeah, of course. The major impact of the unfortunate war in Ukraine is that there was also a big momentum for the shift away from the fossil fuels in the sense that Europe is reconsidering its reliance on energy that is coming from Russia. If you want to take that stand, it will have a cost for you. It will have a big cost for you. And I would say that it is somehow contributing as an accelerator to this major shift from fossil fuels, the same way that the Covid virus contributed as a accelerator or a catalyst to digital transformation. I would say that taking that stand against Russian agression against Ukraine is helping many people to think about creatively, think about how to shift away from the fossil fuel and consider that kind of transformation in their lives and in their economies. And if you look at one, that Russia or China or Iran are not are not just few examples. That there is a moment for many corporations to take a sign about the conscience of humanity.

A few days ago I was reading a report by a colleague who has a Think Tank in Germany. It was a very long report, very informative and talking about the importance of even considering of decoupling between economic interests of corporations, for example, in Germany and regulations related to sanction against China or Russia or Iran. And one of the basic premises of that argument was that we are not supposed to impose our Western cultural values on non-Western countries. But they tended to disagree at least partially with this assumption in the sense, I can agree that there are some Western values like extreme individualism or direct democracy or even protection of gay rights. But there are some values that should be considered as Universal. It should be considered as related to the conscience of humanity. And we should think about not even dynamics between corporations or governments regulating or talking to each other. For example corporations will do their best to seek their profit and governments will do their best to regulate them, put them on a sanction list or put a heavy fine on them. But there is a third element, which is also related to the topic that I mentioned today, and that is the civil society.

And during our age of very easy access to digital tools like your your camera on your phone or social media. You can sometimes see that there is a viral video showing that despite the sanctions, for example, a German company is actually doing business with some of these key violators of human rights, basic human rights. And they cannot allow to a couple of apologies to whitewash atrocities committed by these aggressors that you mentioned Russia, for example, and I'm very positive about the fact that the dynamics of the driving forces of change over the horizon is preparing our societies to see a major shift of labor. Or labor distribution from the commercial sector to the noncommercial to non-profit, to those people who are trying to think about creatively and freely. Andy Hines about the Postcapitalism because Andy Hines is a professor at the University of Houston. He can have a lot good resources and enough expertise and time. Think about creatively about these scenarios for the points capitalist world. But imagine an ordinary person who is having a tough time paying the bills or live on paycheck by paycheck and doesn't have enough attention or focus on those kind of co-curation of the future. Imagine that in the future we provide some kind of space for all of the people to contribute to such a discourse, such a discussion that will be a huge democratic, participatory, global initiative and I'm very positive about that third element that is going to play a decisive role in addition to governments and the corporations.

If given the opportunity, for example, good civic education for people, they will become much more interested to positively contribute to such discussions. Politicians or companies, CEOs, they might not have enough good access to high quality education or training. But the new reality is that anybody with access to, for example, YouTube can educate themselves to learn more about politics, and by the way, in most democracies right now, the only way for people to participate in the democratic process is through the election cycles during the election season. We had these midterm elections in the US couple of weeks ago, and that is a very rare opportunity for people just to cast the vote. But the future is going to be totally different because not only some politicians or companies have the exclusive ability or resources or time to make their impact on the policy making process. But as a matter of fact, the society at large, because when you allow people to have, for example, a universal basic income or other sorts of way to give them the the minimum amount of support or resources for survival. Then why not? They can contribute not only through the election cycles, but throughout the year.

In the US they also have a very good tradition of citizen shaped associations because of the particular design from the very beginning in the US Constitution, that people are free to assemble, make associations, and choose whatever cause they would like to advocate and advocacy here, at least in Washington DC, is the the job of many of the people here. And guess what? When I was in Turkey, or even in Iran or other countries in the Middle East I'm sure that I had to apply and obtain a permission for establishing a new institution. But here in the US there is actually no big permission required. The only thing, of course, from the point of the view of the US government is that whether are you going to be tax exempt or not? Are you going to pay your taxes if you are collecting big donations from big donors? Other than that you are totally free to do whatever you like to do. And I was even mentioning this to my friends and family members that my basic and the most important criteria, or the reason that I enjoy moving to Washington, DC or the United States is the first Amendment in the US Constitution, which is about the freedom of expression. And unlike my very harsh experience of coming from a religious dictatorship in the Middle East, there is no religion official or state religion in the US. There is no requirement for people to apply for permission to do anything. As far as you are a good taxpayer, you are good to do anything.

Peter Hayward: Yes. The First Amendment allows people to assemble and express ideas that we don't agree with. And they have the freedom to do that. To assemble and express ideas that others in society find offensive oppressive. It is a very live and important conversation for all of us.

Victor Motti: In addition to that Smithsonian exhibit, I also visited lots of different tourist attractions throughout the DC area, and one of them was actually the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, and that was a big quotation from him. I'm not sure what was the exact words, but it was about the fact that he's going to stand or resist throughout his lifetime, any kinds of dictatorship or tyranny against human mind. And that is a very powerful message from one of the Founding fathers of the US.

Peter Hayward: Yeah. Victor, it's been wonderful to catch up again. Congratulations on the Alternative Planetary Futures Institute. I hope it goes well. And also I hope that you have great success with the education corporation providing Yeah. The DMS Academy. Yeah. But thanks. Great to catch up. We'll do it again.

Victor Motti: My pleasure. I really enjoyed talking to you, and hopefully we will get positive feedback from your audience about this talk today.

Peter Hayward: Thanks, Victor.

 I hope you enjoyed Victor's story of finding a new home for himself and his family alongside his view that humanity is at the verge of developing a planetary consciousness. Futurepod is a not-for-profit venture. We exist through the generosity of our supporters. If you would like to support the Pod then please check out our Patreon which you'll find a link to on the website. I'm Peter Hayward saying goodbye for now