The seven habits that will not take us into the Future

Observing yesterday mr. Putin doing his Victory Day speech made me think how far the world has allowed all this to evolve. How is it possible that we continuously let this man run the show even if it is pretty clear that he has broken all the norms of any decent behavior, becoming close to the top of the list of ruthless leaders of all times. This happens in 2022 when the world is supposed to be a dramatically more suitable place to live than in the Second World War, leave alone Dark Ages.

As a futurist, I understand my task is not just to look at any phenomenon but to give a perspective and context that is useful in assessing the future implications of any event. The fundamental question is then: could we have stopped this before it escalated? Could we have saved from all this cruel drama and misery, loss of lives, and children with much less of a future? This answer, I am afraid, is yes. We could have. But we did not, and I like to give you my explanation as to why.

To me, it seems there are some particular habits or patterns of behavior that have produced the situation where we the world have become onlookers of genocide, unthought-of this century. Mind you: this event is actually a system and we in the west are part of its production unit. We would have never come to this moment unless we have not allowed this to happen. It is not only just Putin and his cronies. It is also us.

The first habit we should observe is that the economy fares our world first, always. See Germany's behavior in this crisis, for instance. Chancellor Scholz has refused to touch to most impactful measure the EU possibly has against Russia: to cut off from their oil and particularly gas. This has also led to Germany to delay critical aid to Ukraine, adding to losses of lives and territory. At the same time, Germany had some eight years time, since the events in Crimea, to change its course. Especially since the invasion, Germany could have turned to Norway, for instance, who already provides 30% of their gas, for more supplies. Moreover, Germany could have thought that as a rich country, it can sustain some shortages for a while and seek alternative sources, as Italy did. But German political leadership thought that economy is more important than human lives.

Mind you, this is not just Germany, this is happening all over the world. As a result of 70 years of rapid economic expansion, we have come to think that economy always goes first. It has become the elephant in the living room. If we are to continue this habit, we are going to see a lot more drama like this. And if we are ever able to break this pattern, we should state that economy does NOT come first. Instead, we should have a co-leadership of three key sectors of our society: culture, social, and economy. Culture takes care of the right to human expression (extinct now in Russia as in many other parts of the world), social takes care of equality (also in bad shape in Russia and many other countries) and finally economy builds on partnerships, not exploitation. Only by harmonizing these three fields of society, we can ever think of building a sustainable society

The second bad habit is our over-reliance on the past. What do I mean? Just look at our energy system. Still, some 80% of our energy comes from fossil fuels, This is the stark reality after all the talk about transitioning to green energy and saving our planet from escalating climate change. As it seems, we seem to grow more, not less, path-dependent, dragging our past with us in a way that causes us enormous harm. The habit of leaning too much toward the past not only will cost us destroying our beautiful planet, but also prevents us from opening up to new exciting possibilities offered by innovations propelled by new scientific discoveries and emerging new technologies. Moreover, even if we have become much more connected globally, we still are way behind the day when we have a truly global governance system that is powerful enough to help to deal with issues we have at hand: Pandemics, wars, climate change and so many more. We desperately need an update to the global governance system and that means, among other things that United Nations has to be reinvented, to be more suitable for our times.

The third habit we should shy away from is populist nationalism. Wherever we see this very self-centered political ideology spreading, we see people who don't accept we are living in a fundamentally interconnected world, where collaboration and contribution to others should form our ethos. Unfortunately, during the last 15 years or so, populist nationalism has been widely spreading throughout the world, particularly in the western hemisphere. The reasons are, again, built in the system: in this case, our inability to create fair and equitable economies. There is a load of evidence suggesting our economies, on the contrary, have become more polarized and unjust. Thus, our economic models simply need to be reinvented in order to keep unhealthy nationalism at bay.

The fourth unhealthy habit is lean on authoritarian regimes and dictators. Still today, believe it or not, over half of the world's population leave in countries led by regimes that do not enjoy strong democratic structures but something quite the opposite. Ironically, in the early days of ancient Rome, dictators were sometimes called for to bring back peace and go back after that. However, our last century saw the rise of really mean dictators, such as Stalin and Hitler, and thereafter many other regimes, who have suppressed the voice of people and the absolute power has been handed over, pathetically, to one man only. Nowhere is this more clearly happening than in today's Russia, where Putin has created a true kleptocracy, an organized way to steal the wealth of people to the hands of the few. Authoritarian rule, by definition, always produces backwardness and resistance to creativity and self-expression.

The fifth habit we should get rid of is collective procrastination: we tend to stay in our comfort zone, and we are not willing to take steps when it asks us for some courage. We replace observations about reality with wishful thinking. We leave things in the last moment as we hope that we are somehow saved from the reality we perceive. Why could we not see the true nature of Putin's regime, even if we could read clear signs of megalomania, paranoia, and highly biased reading of history? Same with pandemic: for many countries, also such "advanced" ones as USA and UK, it took painfully long for them to realize how notorious the covid19 virus actually is. Lesson: In this time of abundant information, we should learn from new information quickly and change fast our behavior accordingly.

The sixth habit we should abandon is the idea that big is beautiful. Putin's regime believed they could crush the Ukrainian army simply by the sheer force of its size. Nothing could be further away from reality. As we are moving towards much more decentralized systems - the abundance of information and communication allows this - we are going to live in a world where the smaller units will be much more capable to adapt and transform. We see already now how more advanced and usually small countries, such as Nordic countries, Switzerland, New Zealand, and Costa Rica are the ones showing the way to the future and where the population is the happiest. My own country, Finland, is the happiest country in the world for five times in a row. Even if you are big, you can still organize yourself in a decentralized and agile manner, but this is, of course, nothing that Putin could do, at this stage.

The last seventh habit we should leave behind is the cruel materialism that spread around the world during fast decades of wealth creation. There are some that have shown this to be a worldwide phenomenon even if we are slowly getting out of it. This has left us to look for meaning in our lives. If life's purpose really cannot be found in creating material wealth for yourself, something else needs to appear. The loss of meaning has become a real health issue for our times and it seems we have to believe in something bigger to be able to recognize the spiritual in others. Obviously, the type of worldview represented in Putin's invasion of Ukraine with absolutely no empathy or human kindness tells a lot about where materialism can lead us. The same cruelty can, of course, be seen among some religious fundamental movements.

Summarizing, these are the seven habits that keeps us from future, which is different to what we have today. Future, I would like to mind you, is always different. If our habits keep us in the past, we simply don't hear the invitation of the future. Then, as mr. Putin now, we have no choice but to repeat our mistakes. And this, as we are bound to see, will not take us to the future.

For us, this is a cruel wake-up call to understand the consequences of our actions. Every day, through our own habits and actions, we are essentially creating our future. It is hard to break from our habit, but sometimes we just need to make the leap.