What mood dominates public talk about the future today, and why is that a problem for acting on it?

Fear and uncertainty: headlines frame the future as a threat that will happen to us, and surveys show few people expect the next generation to be better off. That framing makes people feel powerless instead of showing them room to act.

Typical headlines read like warnings: "300 million jobs will be lost" (Goldman Sachs on AI and automation), "I don't know if we can survive AI" (Yuval Harari), "humanity threatened". Surveys back the mood up:

• Edelman Trust Barometer 2026: only 32 % of people across 28 countries believe the next generation will be better off than today (down 4 points on the year before).
• UBS Worry Barometer 2024 (Switzerland, gfs.bern): 65 % say possible large geopolitical changes concern them strongly (14 %) or rather strongly (51 %).

The problem is not that the worries are wrong, but that they present one future as fixed and arriving from outside. If the future is something that simply happens to us, there is nothing to decide. The point of futures thinking is the opposite: to see the room for action (Handlungsräume) that still exists and so increase our ability to act (Handlungsfähigkeit).

Go deeper:

• UBS Worry Barometer 2024 — the Swiss survey behind the geopolitical-worry figures (German).