What does thinking about futures have to do with ethics?

Futures help us understand the present, negotiate societal values and open up spaces of possibility, which brings them close to normative and ethical reflection (van Leeuwen, 2016). Choosing which future is desirable is a moral question.

Three functions of futures:

1. They help us understand the present: every picture of the future reveals today's hopes, fears and assumptions.
2. They negotiate societal values: arguing about which future we want is arguing about what we value, such as fairness, freedom, sustainability and security.
3. They open spaces of possibility: they show that things could be otherwise, which is the precondition for any "ought".

The conclusions:

• the future is a space of possibility, not fate;
• we can work towards a desirable future, and doing so is part of acting self-determinedly, because it gives us a standard to evaluate our own actions and to weigh moral considerations;
• negotiating futures together is how a society determines what is desirable and acts ethically.

Hence the aim: create desirable futures in order to be able to act today.

Go deeper:

• Joseph Voros: The Futures Cone — where the normative "preferable" futures sit among the possible ones.