The job of the artist is to deepen the mystery.
Francis Bacon
[A reminder to readers: these are not meant to be fully thought out self-contained essays, more like snippets of insights or stream of consciousness musings and reflections about the future and the emerging new civilization.]
I think the voice of the artists and poets should always be brought into conversations about the future. One artist who has done so for decades is Brian Eno, who was involved in the Global Business Network and more recently the Long Now Foundation. So I was intrigued when I saw that he write a short article in the Economist at the end of last year.
He had just come back form an event in Barcelona called ‘Fixing the Future’. He was inspired by the organisations and people attending who were re-imagining the future.
“Right now we are living through the emergence of a movement of unprecedented scale and scope—the biggest movement in human history, facing up to the biggest challenge in human history. Let’s call it the “climate-change movement”, but then let’s acknowledge that it is not just about climate change but impinges on every hot topic of the moment: the rethinking of democracy, electoral systems, economics, migration, inequality, agriculture, women’s rights, resource extraction, common ownership and personal lifestyle choices, to name a few.”
And he makes the same observation as I do about the disconnect in the mainstream media between what is unfolding in reality and what is actually being reported. I was just telling some people again yesterday how inspiring it was to meet and break bread with activists, entrepreneurs, corporate leaders, UN employee, youth leaders and indigenous elders who are all working on initiatives to build our new, more advanced civilization.
Elsewhere Brian Eno has spoken and written about a phenomenon he coined ‘scenius’ the intelligence of groups of people operating in an ecology.
“Like all art students, I was encouraged to believe that there were a few great figures like Picasso and Kandinsky, Rembrandt and Giotto and so on who sort-of appeared out of nowhere and produced artistic revolution…”
“As I looked at art more and more, I discovered that that wasn’t really a true picture. What really happened was that there were sometimes very fertile scenes involving lots and lots of people – some of them artists, some of them collectors, some of them curators, thinkers, theorists, people who were fashionable and knew what the hip things were – all sorts of people who created a kind of ecology of talent. And out of that ecology arose some wonderful work.
“So I came up with this word ‘scenius’ – the intelligence of a whole operation or group of people. I think that’s a more useful way to think about culture. Let’s forget the idea of ‘genius’ for a little while, let’s think about the whole ecology of ideas that give rise to good new thoughts and good new work.”
I think this scenius is operating now at local levels but also now because of technology a global level.
Then after all these inspiring conversations in Egypt, and seeing ‘scenius’ at work there, I read a report in a newspaper the next day and its all doom and gloom because they primarily report on the politicians and what is being done at the national level. Eno goes on to say in the Economist:
“You may wonder why this planet-wide conversation about the future is not bigger news. The problem is that it is good news, which, as everybody knows, does not sell newspapers or drive clicks. Only the spectacular parts of the climate news (floods and fires) are dramatic enough to make it onto television, so we get to see only the bad news. Underneath the news, though, slow and deep, is a movement of long horizons and structural rethinking, not attracting much attention until it gets angry. But a rich and robust root system is growing, and its first green shoots are starting to break the surface.”
And in any global movement, the artists are important. I would say that artists - or summoning our inner artist - is so critical for at least three reasons: foresight, imagination and inspiration,
Foresight
In my personal experience of grappling with the future for 34 years, the artist or at least the artistic side of an individual, is often best suited for discerning the bigger patterns and currents, and thus the ability to foresee things about the future.
Much of the success I have personally had in terms of foresight - as both an investor and futurist - has largely come from my more artistic and intuitive side. Of course, there was a place for garnering empirical ‘facts’ and analysis. But the real edge was not the rational mind. Quite remarkably there has also been a trend where artists have even foreseen future breakthroughs in science. This is documented in a fascinating book Art and Physics by Leonard Shlain:
“From the classical Greek sculptors to Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns, and from Aristotle to Einstein, aritsts have foreshadowed the discoveries of scientists, such as when Money and Cezanne intuited the coming upheaval in physics that Einstein would initiate. In this lively and colorful narrative, Leonard Shlain explores how artistic breakthroughs could have prefigured the visionary insights of physicists on so many occasions throughtout history.Provacative and original, Art & Physics is a seamless integration of the romance of art and the drama of science...and exhilarating history of ideas.”
Imagination
Imagination is key to seeing a different future: its the major tenet of the book upon which I am working. In fact, most of human technologies and the greatest contributions to our civilization come from our imagination. Often futurists help people imagine alternative futures - or scenario - then decide which is the trajectory they want to take. Brian Eno notes how many artists have been involved in this global movement he has identified:
“Why? Art is where we go to experience things safely. In art we can allow ourselves to experience strong feelings. We can always shut the book. We can immerse ourselves in other worlds and the feelings they arouse without risking our lives or our health. Children do this when they learn through play to see how things work. Adults play through art. Reading George Orwell’s “1984” gives you the chance to live in a totalitarian society and see what you feel about it, without actually going to one.”
Inspiration
Artistry and the act of creation, can inspire a reverence towards life and the universe and the energy to move into action. I know for me that the great poets, writers and musicians inspire me to look at the world in a more mystical and reverential way. Go and read the more philosophical comments by the great scientists and they are often stirred by the mysteries of the cosmos and a feeling that we still know so little. I love this quote by Isaac Newton:
“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
Finally we need the artists to help us communicate the new civilization that we have collectively imagined and inspire us into action. A government 10 point plan won’t do it! We need the story tellers, poets and artists to provide images and inspiring narrative about the world to which we are heading, no creating. This is exactly why Im striving to write a book about our future which is both non fiction and a story, to evoke the creative mind and soul.
Last week Liv Torc and Chris Redmund, the Hot Poets, came over to see me at my home in Hampshire. They have been gathering fellow poets to create verses about a desirable future instead of much of the doom and gloom one frequently hears, especially on the news and the movies in Hollywood about the ecological crisis. I met them through the UN Resilience Frontiers group with which I have been involved since 2019 - and they were really popular at COP27 in Egypt.
Yes some sense of urgency might be good along with pertinent facts, but not to the extent that it causes extreme anxiety and paralysis. Far better to tell stories and create poems about regenerative actions and an ecological future civilization.
As Chris says below:
“Earth is abundant if we let it be.
Perhaps we just need to look differently?
All the keys are here.
Imagine a future we love,
rather than one we fear.”