Tracey Follows is back to put the big questions of identity to FuturePod.
Interviewed by: Peter Hayward
Links
https://www.traceyfollows.com/
Transcript
Peter Hayward: We all have an identity, or so we think we do. It is commonly thought that our sense of identity is stable and enduring. And, a lot is going on around us at the moment to challenge that sense of who I am? What do I mean? What is my sense of personal significance? Fortunately futurists are immune from these types of thoughts. Or are they?
Tracey Follows: My worry is that we are moving into a world of sort of plurality. Rather than, where we can't think of the individual as an authentic self. We have to think of them as many selves possibly. and many of those selves are profiles, they're data profiles, they're not one holistic meat space, if you like. And so we are having to do a paradigm shift into, to the ways in which we re perceive the self, the human, the personal identity. I think people are still using the old models in these new environments and information spaces. And my worry just to cut to it is. That is gonna end up in some real sort of mental, psychological, existential crises.
Peter Hayward: That is my guest on FuturePod today. Tracy Follows, podcaster, speaker, writer. And Tracy is returning for a chat
Welcome back to Future Pod Tracy.
Tracey Follows: Thank you, Peter. Lovely to be with you again.
Peter Hayward: Great to speak, I think couple of years since you were on Future Pod as a guest. Generally speaking, how's the world been for Tracy Follows?
Tracey Follows: Pretty chaotic, same as everybody else's. Probably pretty pretty post-normal, should we call it. I definitely feel like I'm in this limbo time space, but I'm sure I'm not alone in that.
Peter Hayward: That was the theme of Paris, wasn't it?
Tracey Follows: Oh, it was indeed, yes. And yeah, there was more liminality there than I expected. Perhaps
Peter Hayward: So we're gonna have a chat, but very excitingly for me, you've got a suggestion. You're gonna ask me some questions and we're going to use those as prompts for the conversation that we have.
Tracey Follows: We are. The tables have turned. Yes because I was in conversation with you over email about some questions to do with, um, futures and foresight and careers, and I was thinking about the other end of it. Really a lot of people spend a long time thinking about, how do you get into foresight? Where does one start, one's career, but once one is established and even beyond being established and part of the establishment, should we say what is it like and what's happened? But I really wanted to talk to you because of all of your sort of overview of everything that's happening and everything that has happened. About how foresight and Foresight capability, both in terms of organizations and individuals has really evolved over time. And I'd love to get your thoughts on what are the kind of characteristics that you are observing that may have changed or in fact stayed the same.
Peter Hayward: It's a big question and I don't want to give a long answer, I suppose a couple of things, and I'll just use them as kind of small responses back for you to bounce back to me. I think some things haven't changed, so I'll make a point that I think what is continuing and continues to be where a lot of the paid work of our community is delivering that kind of short to medium level business intelligence, market intelligence to organizations that are trying to make decisions in short to medium timeframes in highly volatile environments. I suppose you would probably call it that the Foresight Futures consultant world is still there and probably in demand more than ever. And the second thing that I think is unchanging, Tracy, is if you are doing serious, long-term futures work with large asset systems or Security systems then you are still needing to run empirically based futures work. Large scale. So that hasn't changed.
What I've been surprised at and I still wrestle with this one, Tracy, is when I started doing futures work, one of the principle methods you used to do basic futures work was environmental scanning. Scanning, trend analysis, over the horizon, emerging issues. The meat and drink work of doing futures and foresight work. it was so hard to do because you couldn't get up to date information always working with in information that was way out of date and yet you had to make sense of emerging trends with data that was six to 12 months old. So the thought that here we are now where people can literally get live data on so much, so the data pipeline now would mean that we should be able to do amazing futures and foresight work 'cause there's just so much more data and it's readily available and it's immediate, and yet the paradox. Is that we've actually got seemingly communities that wall themselves off from data and prefer to see the world through bubbles where they seek people who share their view of the world, their view of the future. So at a time when we've got more information about what's changing in the world, we've actually got a social trend of people saying, I actually don't wanna deal with a changing world. I want to hang in with people who think like me and are interested in the things that I'm interested in.
Tracey Follows: Do you think that's a coping mechanism that when we are cognitively overwhelmed with. information, it becomes even harder to find the signal in the noise. And so that we kind of comfort ourselves with the familiarity of a people, of a group, of people who might think like us and behave like us. And that gives us some kind of security in the chaos of a overly informed world.
Peter Hayward: That's your space that I'll defer to you on, but I think . If people have more information of post-normal world, if people get more information of the randomness and chaotic nature of reality, then maybe moving to a comforting way of getting through every day is makes perfect, while it seems crazy, maybe it's actually psychologically quite a rational thing to do.
Tracey Follows: How do you think that sort of overlaps with this move towards in foresight and Mac? wrote an interesting piece the other day about, foresight as activism. And I saw it got a huge amount of support particularly from younger generations. I love his work, but I didn't agree with that piece because I have a problem with foresight as activism in a certain way. I'm more for working out your preferred futures and then aiming for that and using that as a tool to achieve other things and to inform decision making. But my worry is, and you might not share this, but my worry is that we leak to a point of view before we've really researched. It to your point the horizon, the landscape, what is actually going on before we move to, and we had this conversation in our previous chat actually, before we actually move to like now, what ought we to try and move towards and what should be happening? I find it a little bit, I find that the activism quite scary actually.
Peter Hayward: Again I think activism is another one of those areas of futures that hasn't changed. I think futures has always been attractive to activist mindsets, and my simple reason why that is, is if you are associating your perspective with the people who don't have power, then the openness of the future is attractive to you because you use the future to dissolve the status quo. Using alternative futures is the way that you find agency. You dissolve the status quo. And you hold the status quo to account for what is wrong with the world and your preferred future so again, from an agency perspective, and I think, futures is one of the great places for people who want to find their own personal agency. Even taking opposition to something is a good starting point to find your agency. I think what you are saying, but you can come back and tell me, is. opposition to find agency, to find power gets you to the table. But now what is it you actually want to do when you have agency?
Tracey Follows: Yeah, I suppose my worry about the act 'cause I support everything you just said there. I'm quite a contrarian thinker probably anyway, so I'm already ready to not go with the established point of view , I have to really force myself sometimes it's a bit of a problem. But I was think. Some of the worries I have around the activism element is that it's, the activism is pointed towards shoring up the status quo. Shore up the established narrative, and that's what I see all over the place, especially at these sort of supernational levels. So I guess yeah, it's interesting to hear your articulation of that because that's helped me understand it's not activism per se, it's that there's an imbalance in activism for me at the minute where it's, a lot of it is shoring up the establishment rather than taking on an establishment and creating those alternative perspectives that you are mentioning.
Peter Hayward: And I think you've made a very important point there, Tracy, which is this how groups that . Are claiming to be powerless when in fact they have power, how they are claiming to be the minority when they're actually the majority. In other words, the notion of claiming to be on the receiving end of an orthodoxy is a way to find authority and bind your group together. We shouldn't be surprised that people are now sophisticated that understand it is not just the left that can use that argument
Tracey Follows: Yes.
Very clever. Yeah, very smart. Do you think here's a challenging question for you. Do you, how much of foresight and future's work at the moment, and particularly maybe in the trend space is propaganda?
I.
Peter Hayward: I come back to the notion that when you work for organizations that have to constrain their work within certain, so you know, we're here to sell a product, a service to a group of people for the benefit of this group of shareholder beneficiaries.
So they constrain and put boundaries and limits around what they're prepared to fit into reality. Then clearly you have to do a much more attenuated idea of future's work. it is very hard to quote Martin Luther King. It is very hard to talk truth to power. Doesn't mean you can't, but that's also in the business. That can be a career limiting move if you want to get return work. Okay. I don't think as futurist we can change the culture of an organization. I don't think as futurist, we can change the style of leadership in an organization to the extent to which we tailor our work to fit within existing culture and leadership, and how much do we allow it to be, just a little bit different.
So we stretch them, but therein lies the art. The dark art of working for organizations that by their nature are very short term focused.
Tracey Follows: Absolutely. So what do you think are the limits for futures and foresight and futurists then? What would be the limits and the limitations
Peter Hayward: I think Tracy, and again, this is just me, I actually think . We're gonna continue doing the things we do. As I say, we're still gonna be doing, we're still gonna be working for organizations in very attenuated ways. We're gonna be working for large organizations in, in, global scanning work.
The thing I think that we're gonna, we're gonna move also more into is the work around agency, personal agency in the face of almost unlimited uncertainty. That people while we know people are choosing to wall themselves off from what's going on to, as you say to find comfort, there's also a lot of other people who in fact are opening to the world and allowing in disruption and ideas of disruption.
And there is, as Stuart Candy said in his future pod, there is a psychic burden that we as futurists have learned to manage that. As a futurist, you've often gotta imagine things you'd prefer not to imagine. We've gotta run scenarios that you would prefer not to really ever see. I actually think that ability to spend time in possible futures that we do not wish. In order to prepare for them, plan for them, prevent them, I think is a skill and a capability that more than futurist need. I think it's a, I think it's a more community society level skill for how to do that, to imagine futures such that we work out ways to prevent them.
Tracey Follows: I love that time. It's a place I, a lot of futurists, I'm sure actually feel uncomfortable, but also strangely comfortable because it is, I love having alternatives. And I think I. I think
and I am with you on this, that I am looking already into this move from organizational foresight and futures to personal I. Foresight and futures to instill the capability into an individual, not just an organization. 'cause if you look at all of the trends anyway, we are moving more to being a monetized self a self-employed individual micro businesses, or even just in the coping mechanisms for this information age, in the bio information age one is gonna have to have those capabilities. To be resilient One. I'd just love to hear your point of view on this, whether you are agree in agreement.
Peter Hayward: I think we make a mistake if we think that information of itself creates resilience. I actually think information and adulterated actually creates the opposite of resilience. We actually create brittleness and fragility because people haven't got a structure. A way, a philosophy, a strategy of holding onto ideas. That means they don't annihilate themselves their future and everything else. I'm drawn very much to the podcast with Jawn Lim, where Jawn was talking about Singapore, and he made a point that they're now teaching preschool children futures ideas. And we know that children are natural creative thinkers, and it's not hard. If you sit down with kids and get them to imagine the future, they'll imagine a cow on the moon and everything else. So children are naturally creative. It appears though they haven't been socialized to think the way that they think you want them to think, but that's not necessarily enough to really lean into some of the futures coming down the pipe through climate change, we have to be grown up about the fact that there are some potentially horrible futures. They're here now
Tracey Follows: I'm gonna use you to get a bit of feedback on an area I've been working on, which is the future of identity, which, 'cause we talked about it last time we met, but, this point on agency is really interesting and important at this time. I think as we are moving into this world of personal agents who have agency, the question being, will I end up having more agency than the human being who is in partner with them? Or isn't the word co-piloting with them? Now I've been working on the future of identity and trying to trying to research this from a futures and for foresight point of view. And I did try, I did attempt to present something at Paris, but actually the full presentation is available 'cause I rerecorded didn't put it on video.
But what
Tracey Follows: not just for a few people, 8 billion people with those sorts of that sort of turmoil going on in their inner worlds. That's where I think the real threat of total destruction could come from, because if violence is the quest for identity when you are out on the frontier. To paraphrase, paraphrase, McCluen, when you're out on the frontier. You have no identity. So in order to assert one's identity, one, becomes quite violent And your, to your point about groups actually you are challenging other groups who think differently. And to me this is the real existential threat of the 21st century. But it all comes back to where does personal agency reside. And I would just love to hear any of your thoughts around that really simple question,
Peter Hayward: Yeah. Again, we are, we should not . I ever be surprised by the rise of fundamentalism and I don't care what the fundamentalism is because once again, fundamentalism is another perfectly if you like it, logical response to what you described. The way I deal with that is I'll simply say it's not happening. If it's happening over there, it's not gonna happen here. So the notion that you can bring simple solutions to complex problems is the essence of what fundamentalism tries to do. So we shouldn't be surprised that fundamentalism is rising at the same time as all the things you described are happening.
Where do I find hope in that maelstrom is for the people who are born into this world. The world that we're describing is one of fundamental disruption to categories of identity and everything else. For the person who's born into that, that becomes normal . It's not something that they haven't lived with and grown up with. It's not enough to simply say if you immerse enough people in it, they will normalize it. But it's also true that people who start with normal, what we think is abnormal, they will often find ways to make it work. And so one of the things I've seen in futures work through the pulpit of future pod is talking to younger and younger people who are doing futures and foresight work. And people who are not necessarily trained in futures, but they still feel that they can do futures work. And I take real pleasure and confidence that there are people who are young enough to think I can get the resources myself, I can teach myself the way to do it, and I can find a community and a place to work. And they, it's not that they don't need institutional recognition, but they actually, they'll actually go off and do it anyway without it.
Tracey Follows: But power is flowing now in this distributed network world from institutions to individuals, isn't it? So, What one takes on this one isn't asking for permission to be involved. one just does it, one just gets involved and I think that is just, it's a tremendous thing. and it can only be for the better. I wonder on that though given that and this remark you've made about. Institutional help or organizations around foresight, how useful going forward is something, for instance, like futures literacy.
Peter Hayward: Yeah, just had a wonderful future pod with with Riel Miller and and Maree Conway. One of the things that Riel was talking about was we need to change root and branch change to the field of future and foresight to be actually better understanding the way that consciousness deals with the uncertainty of the future.
The inspiration, the symbolic, the spiritual notion, the the intuition of futures. I think literacy is always there, but I think it's literacy is much more than just the words we speak or what we write in the literacy is in the symbols. And that the stories we tell, but also in the internal conversation we have with ourselves as to what we mean. And I think the inner world. of futures work is it's not been ignored by the field, but predominantly we have done futures work aimed outside. So we've done futures of the environment, whether they're market environments or whatever, and that's still necessary. That's the work that's not going away. The future's work on the inside that I think is one of the great areas that Futures is learning its way into. Another thing I've picked up from Future Pod Tracy is that I've talked to more people who don't call themselves futurists, but they come from an arts background. They come from arts activism, installation. I've, I know people that are doing art therapy as part of futures work. Otherwise, there's something about building processes to work on internal capacity. Along with the external futures work,
Tracey Follows: Now this is an interesting tension, I think, because I'm totally down for this and I think this is the most exciting part of futures and foresight, but I always felt that there's a tussle between that and the sort of need for the field to. Prove itself professionally and the accreditation, uh, that is required. And so how does one balance that going forward?
Peter Hayward: Again, as there will always be a demand for external focused futures work, and if I was paying someone . my money, my shareholders' money, my government's money to get futures work done to help us make better decisions in public policy, whatever. Then I want the best person to do it. And I want accreditation systems that to help me choose who are the professional people. So to me, accreditation, professionalism makes perfect sense in those futures that are aimed externally. People who've pivoted to work on the internal. It's not that they're uninterested in that external world. They're just simply saying, but that's not what I'm about. So professionalism's necessary. We need the APF, we need the Federation. We need courses that teach futures and foresight. Yeah, of course we do. At the same time, people are gonna use futures ideas to explore Who am I? Who are we? and I think it's lovely, and I think you get excited by people that pick up the tools, pick up the concepts the myth metaphor of, CLA, and they apply it at a deeply personal level to find inspiration, to find courage, to find agency, to go out and change the world.
Tracey Follows: Oh, I love that. That's one of my favorite tools. That's probably because I come from that sort of background of media and messaging, and I love the sort of narrative, the metaphor. 'cause I think that's, um, that's probably how I interact with the world. So in a way, I expect other people to I don't assume they do, we all have our expectations. But you've mentioned a couple of times there actually younger generations. What do you think is happening to older generations in the field of foresight?
Peter Hayward: It's yes, the, it's a beautiful question. I'm gonna paraphrase Riel Miller on one of his future pods where he talked about what kind of ancestor will I be seen to have been? I think it's a beautiful question. The beautiful thing of getting older and there isn't much beauty in it, but there are some, one of the beauties is you really don't have to care that much. So I'm almost paraphrasing Krishna Murti. If you go back to , the fact that we see it as people get older and they still are engaged in the world, we see people get more and more outrageous 'cause they just don't care. They just have look, what do I care about reputation? What do I care? I don't care. So we see a freedom in people as they get older, and to me it's that freedom that people at my age and even older than me, what I'm now freer to do almost anything in the future space. So what is it I'm doing in the future space? And am I to paraphrase Riel? Being the best ancestor I can be for the people who are gonna come after me.
Tracey Follows: So what are you going to do?
Peter Hayward: I think once again, I think obviously future pod's part of it. The other part that's always been is the chance to just simply mentor, support and encourage people who aren't in the field as to how they can get into it to support the people. That are doing the future's work Teach the Future with, with their future entrepreneurs stuff.
So again it's, I am leaning into those spaces. Others maybe doubling down their efforts to get the best they can outta the institutions. I. I think it's hard to be an institutional anything at the moment because everything is moving. I feel so not sorry, but yeah. I really respect people who try to ride institutions through the turmoil that we are going.
Simply saying it's, we want an institution that continues beyond, we can't do everything as a startup. We need memory, we need history. . We need a, we need all those elements that belong in Sohail's futures triangle and the in the weight of the past. 'cause the weight of the past is not all burden. There's a lot of lessons, there's a lot of, important stories that we have to remember. And I, as I said really hard yards trying to keep institutions both up with change and also keeping them true to their institutional roots. And I dare say there are people who, as they move out of the practice space, they then may lean in and do more volunteer work in things like APF, Federation and that kind of stuff. I don't know how you ever retire from doing futures thinking. If anything else, as you get closer and closer to your own demise, I think you become a better future thinker, , as you realize your own time is running out.
Tracey Follows: That's a very profound thought about that. You are a better futurist. The more you realize that you've got less time or you are Mean more towards the end than the beginning. 'cause I think there's a supposition that younger people are somehow more curious and therefore more open to lots of different alternative futures, ways of doing things, but also ways of seeing things. And that's maybe not necessarily the case, is it? And also it has to be balanced with This immense wisdom that one who has seen it all, practiced it all learn one or two things. So how do we mix up, mix, arrange, rearrange the generations so that they are working? so the generations, there's not tension between them, although maybe that's a good thing. But there's a choreography to enable all of the generations to work together towards, futures and foresight and improvements. There are.
Peter Hayward: I think we're doing a pretty good job. As I say, I've at one level, as I would look at it, just from Future Pod and the people I'm speaking to, they're not waiting for us. They're not expecting anything from my generation. They're basically on it anyway. If we are prepared to give 'em some support, give 'em some encouragement, help them out they're happy for that. If we are not actively involved in supporting it, then we just get outta their way. At the same time, there's a point when young people don't think they need institutions, they can do it by themselves. They've got the beauty of being young and they haven't had, then, good on 'em. Go for it. The people who are doing the work that, yeah, you, you mightn't think. It's really important. We have an accreditation program for teaching futures courses. You might say I, what's that got to do with me? But there'll come a time where you realize, , that was actually a valuable contribution. So people who play the long game, and I, as I say, I put people who work in institutions, they're playing the long game. They're playing the, their, that lovely metaphor of the person who was building the cathedral that will never see it built. So you just build a good wall. You build a good wall in the cathedral.
Tracey Follows: Do you think futures and foresight will exist by, I don't know, 20, I don't know. I don't know, 50, 70 years from now? Will it be so integrated into how we think and what we do, that it won't be a separate thing called futures or foresight? Will it just be a capability that we have or do you think it would still be a field of study as such?
Peter Hayward: I think it will in the sense that the capabilities that people need now, they possibly haven't got at the level of individual cultural, societal, so the real resilience, I. But that resilience will be found either through the school of hard knocks or wise education and that kind of thing. But PE people will get resilience. So in the future, there will be another status quo, probably radically different to this status quo. So if there is a status quo in the future, which I believe there will be, then by its nature, there will be a challenging future that is not the status quo . So maybe it won't be called futures and foresight, but the notion, the contrarian, the disruptive I think there is always that and futures and foresight, while it's called futures.
And foresight to me has always been that essence of contrarianism. And also . If I quote, I'll do a little bit of German philosophy if I quote Habermas. So Habermas talked about the technical interest, which I would regard as external futures work, trying to get the future accurate, measurable, that kind of thing.
Then he talks about the hermeneutic or the communication aspect of future's work, and then ultimately, of course, theological the notion of . Almost spiritual, the notion of, what do you imagine you want the future to be when you can't find anything like it in the past? And so to me, futures might be called that, but those, the reaching for the, not now, not yet, but still wanted will be part of the future, the same as it's part of us now.
Tracey Follows: Yeah. So my penultimate question to you is, 'cause one of my worries is with the rise of technocracy, that actually futures becomes hijacked and then becomes forecasting if you like, forecasting and probability and moves away from the uncertainty and all of this consciousness and this disruption that you quite rightly explain there or evoke in fact and more towards there's only one future possible. " cause we can predict all of this."
We stuff in all this data to our algorithms. And guess what? It turns out, this is the future and there are no other possible futures or, You are being you are being naive to think that, and, and this is like the techno technic legalization of the future into this sort of very narrow forecasting is a worry for me, especially when we think about individuals having their own sort of personal ai.
Peter Hayward: Again I think we shouldn't be surprised that people will try to bring certainty to the external world. I think it's foolish, but hey, I'm not surprised that a person says, I'll make better decisions, better handle finances, yada, yada y If I can have a certain niche future. But Tracy, that's the external, that's to me is not all that Futures and Foresight is. The notion of what's going on inside us. The stories we're telling ourselves. That is the meat and drink. That is the art, the spirit, the soul. Now, I'm not gonna say to you that I understand what the future of art, and spirit and soul's gonna be in the future. And are we gonna be in some sort of fused form where artificial intelligence silicons have an interior world? Maybe they do. I don't know. But to me, I don't fear externalizing certainty. That people have still got . Unlimited individual agency. Now, therein lies a wonderful dilemma.
I heard, I just heard a podcast before I came on with you and they were saying that in 2024, it's going to be over 4 billion people on the planet are gonna vote In democracies, they're saying it's probably the biggest democratic year the planet's ever seen. Now, I'm not gonna say the outcomes are gonna be good necessarily but it's also quite important that a good chunk of the planet believe they have agency at the level of politics. And I think those things are important. I believe, strongly in, in the individual, in inspiration. But I also fully understand why people want the external world to be as calm as it can possibly be. I just don't believe they'll ever get it.
Tracey Follows: yeah, no, that's really fascinating. That is also very interesting about the democracy because I would that a lot of areas we think are operating as democracies are actually SHAMocracies. Because that's why I asked you about propaganda actually.
Because I think, that is a real, but again, it stands to the individual, isn't it? To try and uncover the different perspectives and points of view and not rely on one stream of information, if you like, one channel, um, because one has to try and get as broader, as broad a view as possible.
Peter Hayward: As soon as any group assume control and give the single future I. Then the undermining of that starts immediately. And we know it's subversion through art, story, writing, poetry, music. There's many ways that individuals subvert dominant orthodoxies.
It doesn't always work. And orthodoxy if they if they've got enough guns and enough power will hang on for a while, but that's never stopped human beings. Never stopped them. They just get more creative.
Tracey Follows: You mentioned an interesting thing there about writing. Do you think writing is gonna survive? Because we feel like there's very certain, the whole idea of literacy actually is moving towards like the pre-modern again, where it's, very oral storytelling. It's, yeah. Narrative building, not necessarily the sort of rational written word. Or do you think it will just survive and be one of many modes of communication, but not necessarily the primary one anymore?
Peter Hayward: I think it's the latter.
I think once again I'm not surprised that we've, that we turned writing into predominantly an industrial education model.
Tracey Follows: Yeah.
Peter Hayward: Not the wrong thing to do, just what you do. I think when you free the education system up. And make writing able to be what people want to write and what people wanna read.
Then I think there are always people who wanna write the same way. There are always people who wanna paint and there are always people who wanna sing, and there are always people who wanna bang a drum. And as long as if there are people who wanna write, then there are people that wanna read. And I'm old. I'm old Tracy. I love reading. Not for the quality of the words on the paper that I'm reading, but for the places I go to on my, on the inside when I read,
Tracey Follows: Oh totally. Just the smell of physical books anyway. Just I just love it Reminds me of the old world of libraries, and that's really quite a powerful thing. A
nostalgic thing that helps me en enjoy reading. 'cause I remember when I first began to read and I was always at the library, my mom would take me all the time.
It was such an important. Part of my young life. I think, the the exploration, the imagination, all of that. Final
Peter Hayward: Oh you've asked me far too much. I'll just turn this one back on you. Richard Slaughter, when he taught me futures and foresight always talked about where do you find inspiration and hope? And that's one of the cores in our business. So once again, I'll come back to it. This is one of the things Yeah, we have to think of, we have to analyze and be critical and imagine trends and look at the dark futures that are possible. Okay. And then we pivot to find inspiration and hope. Where's Tracy finding inspiration and hope?
Tracey Follows: Thank God. That's a good question and you caught me at a time actually where I am flip flopping between this is just hopeless and Oh, there's a little light and Right. I'm energized again. I'm in a very place with that, and it can literally pivot on the day. Um, so where am I finding hope? I'm, I think I'm quite a resilient character. I won't go into all of that but I think I literally, I've always thought about the future. I always have, and part of the reason for that is I think because I was bullied at school and so I never really used to think about the day itself. I used to think about the day after, because that was A way of coping with what was going on in the moment. And I think I'm still like that. And I think so there are some dark forces and some difficult times that we are in. And as you mentioned, definitely ahead, it's gonna get worse before it gets worse. obviously but I am just trying to think, I am using the future to, so I'm not looking for hope or finding it.
I am literally using my abilities to To perceive the future or have that have that mindset and using that to create hope in my every day, if So I'm literally, in a way, so you I do you use it as a crutch as much as using it as a, a professional tool to help decision making. But I know that things will be better at some point and fixated on that. And I'm also. I think the more I talk to people about, your points about, the inside, the human inside, what makes us human. The consciousness, yes. But also the emotion, the artistry, the creativity, all of that in this rising technological state, and state in all of its forms, um, the more one probes and discusses and converses about that, the more hopeful I feel actually.
We, we can read a lot and see a lot of crap on social media and it can encourage us to just react rather than respond. And suddenly we are in that sort of, where we just are like reaction machines. And I think to step away from that one can rediscover all of this humanity. And in conversations like this and others, and you go away from that feeling much more hopeful than, sitting in front of your computer. Being advertised to about some doism future. So that's a very long-winded answer. But yeah, I think it's a complex thing about hope at the minute. I do think it's complex.
Peter Hayward: Yeah. Yeah. I look at, and it is the world we are in. As I said we can't show away from the randomness and chaotic nature of the world because with 8 billion people on a single planet that . , we are probably overshooting it and all the consequential impacts that's gonna throw at us. And at the same time as we're doing that, we've also got people rapidly trying to save the planet and save bits of the planet and save single species on the planet.
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Tracey Follows: I think at that point I'm trying to expose as much as the like thinking I'm going through as well as I'm doing this work on identity. Where we are going, as understanding ourselves and the effects that technology are having on our own personal identity and rather and just trying to explore and uncover that and just trying to share as much of that as possible. That's why I do the podcast. That's why I record these videos. I've just made a hundred charts presentation I just put out. I just threw it out and thought people can just tell me what they think and we can, So I'm trying to just shove out as much content on it as possible because I think if we can get that into the. The domain I dunno, thousands of people have read it and they've come back to me with really interesting stuff I hadn't thought about or avenues to now take it down. And I suppose that also keeps me hopeful because I think I. There are other people thinking the same thing as me and wanting to explore it in in a similar way. And I think this is it what it comes back to, isn't it? What am I saying? I'm really saying it's reconnection and connection with humans thinking about what it means to be human, and that is a hopeful thing.
Peter Hayward: It's been wonderful to reconnect with you. Thanks for finding some time to spend with the FuturePod community Tracy, it's been it's been good.
Tracey Follows: Always a pleasure, Peter. Thank you for having me. I hope we can speak again soon. Cheers.
Peter Hayward: I hope you enjoyed my chat with Tracy. Her idea to have her start the conversation by asking me questions was interesting. I probably prefer if the guest does most of the talking, but Tracy got me out of that preference. I hope that other returning guests don't take a shine on to turning the tables on me too.
Futurepod is a not for profit venture. We exist through the generosity of our supporters. If you would like to support the Pod, please check out the Patreon link on the website. I'm Peter Hayward. Thanks for joining us today.