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Chapter 14 | Donna Cardinal (continued) I return now to my primary question: to consider the roles of memory and of future possibility in culture-making in smaller societies in a context of globalization. The following observations have emerged from practice as I have coached citizens working together to describe their concerns with the present (that which they do not want to pass on to their grandchildren) and to image a future in which those concerns have been well addressed (a world they do want to bequeath to the next generations). “Future” in this work functions as a metaphor for the human imagination, for what is possible, for our worthiest aspirations, for what we stand for and seek to create. Future is understood in this work as the domain of action, not of knowledge. The claims we make on behalf of the future are not about what will or must happen, but about what could happen, what we intend. These are offerings to our fellow citizens, starting points for the difficult work of discovering what we have in common and what we can come to share in order to take action together rather than alone. Future possibility functions as a lens through which to view the present. When we have glimpsed our purposes, our intentions, we know what aspects of the present are intimations of the future, however awkward and half-expressed. We know what to give attention to in the present, what to build on, affirm and encourage, and what we don’t have to bother with. Images of the future, or of possibility and intent, serve as the basis for discovering people with whom we might take joint action. Often community processes group people who hold similar concerns. In this process, groupings form around shared images of the future, of what is possible. The data of individual images is collected and categorized, not by a researcher or even by a facilitator, but by the citizens themselves. There is creative and necessary tension here between the intended future imagined by individuals and the shared vision, or scenario, gradually taking shape as a group of people image collectively. How do we move from one to the other if not by the intervention of a single mind discerning the patterns? By a difficult and messy process we refer to as “raw democracy,” wherein people seek out those whose images connect to their own and agree to work together on a scenario of a future they can share. If done with fidelity to one’s own images, a compelling shared vision of the future emerges from the imaginations of the imagers, one rooted in their intentions, that is, a vision on behalf of which they cannot not take action. This brings me to a fourth function of future possibility in the creation of culture. Satisfying individual and collective images of the future release energy in the imager, energy needed for moving from vision to action. One can feel that energy present in a group of people, or a room full of groups, when, with their eyes shining and frequent bursts of laughter, they tell stories in the present tense — the future present moment — of what it is like when they dwell in the new place they have imaged together. Or when they enact for one another the futures they have envisioned and someone says, “I’d like to live in your future!” Or when the moment of truth comes as people recognize that only they can take action on their images, and they self-assign to take the action steps they have identified. Or when the action taking gets tough and people persevere, not by forcing but by a process of continuous imaging and enacting in response to the evolving present. This aspect of imaging is so important that it constitutes one of the criteria of a sound goal: that the imaging of it releases more energy than it consumes. As one participant said in the context of a personal envisioning, when I consider the future from the vantage of the present, I have no energy for what needs to be done, but when I consider the present from the vantage of the future, I have all the energy I need. I have been describing the functions of future possibility when groups of citizens in a given locale gather to address shared concerns. Are there some parallels we might draw to culture making in smaller societies? In Canada outside of Québec we often give as justification for protectionist cultural policies the need for our particular stories to be told on the world stage. Our stories are unique and if they are not heard, the world’s story bank will be diminished. When we say this, we probably mean stories of things that have already happened, that is, stories of the past. Could we also mean our stories of the future we intend? Our small society could offer its stories of the future, its future possibilities, as stances we are prepared to take in the world. Continuing the parallels, would we find other smaller societies, even perhaps Québec, who stand for similar futures and work together in discovering and enacting our shared vision for the world. From these stories of what is possible and desired, we would know what to give our attention to, and would find the energy to attempt it against all odds, including the odds of a suffocating global monoculture. It is interesting that with regard to the FTAA negotiations, it is not our governments but our civil society organizations who have functioned in this way to articulate an alternative possibility to the global order, to find alliances with other countries’ civil society organizations, and to find in the shared vision the energy to seek to bring it about. In the early protests organized in Québec City (at the start of April), the process of protest was clearly holographic of the world envisioned by those offering alternative future possibilities. It was peaceful, it sought to inform, it held out alternatives, participation was equitable, and so on. |
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