The Singapore Futurist's Open Letter to Fellow Futurists: Our Environmental & Human Obligation

Greetings Fellow Futurist!

I will get straight to the point. We are humans first, Futurists thereafter. We human beings only have a future, if we, as the human species, continue, to exist. The number of comas employed in the preceding sentence, are deliberate. Yet the emphasis cannot be enough.

It is important and exciting to talk about the Future of Work, the Future of Organisations, the Future of Technology, the Future of Banking, the Future of Medicine, the Future of Construction, the Future of Transportation and much more. It is also absolutely necessary. Both for our own income, and for our relevance to others, whether individuals or organisations. Our place in the world depends on such conversations. That place for us will only remain though, if the world remains inhabitable, for the human kind.

By no means am I suggesting that we abandon our niches, specialities, or interest areas, whether in tech, economics, HR, commerce, particular industries and whatnot. By no means am I suggesting, that each and every one of us becomes a single issue person. By no means am I suggesting, that we all change our life tracks and become environmental activists. Environmental Salvation however, has become that single issue indeed, that requires dominance, in focus, for everyone, everywhere. As Futurists, we are not immune to that or insulated from it. Note, that I articulate "Environmental Salvation".

Regardless of our respective interest areas, industry knowledge, specialisation or methodology, we need to include in our conversations, in our work, thoroughly and sincerely, focus and emphasis, on the need to salvage and preserve, the future of us as a human species, through securing the inhabitable nature of our planet. Whoever we are blessed or successful in having for audience, we need to encourage, rally, marshal, direct and point towards action to that end.

Even if there is another planet that is inhabitable for us out in space, we are realistically out of reach to relocate our kind there foreseeably. And it is up to us who are in the profession of studying possibilities and probabilities of tomorrow, to realistically lead real conversations, on the reality, that there may be no tomorrow for us to begin with, and this is too rapidly becoming a real probability, that none should afford to gamble with. If you have at all been honest about being a Futurist and about your work, it is impossible for you, till now, to have overlooked the compelling evidence, pointing towards the possibility of our end, at our own hands.

Talk for the past half a century has left us with North America looking like a picture out of Roland Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow, in January 2019, with our Polar Ice Caps fast disappearing and our impact having done more damage to the eco-system in the past two decades alone than everything else cumulatively put together, throughout the human story preceding. The time is for action. And the time is right now. We may not be able to initiate that action ourselves or execute it, but our audiences can. And we must work, to convince and compel them to. We must work hard for this. We must work fast for this.

I am writing this open letter to remind you, that you too are human. And while tomorrow morning we will still need to go down to that grocery store to get that milk, that cheese and those vegetables, we cannot afford to forget, that our grandchildren will not wake up to such mornings, for they may not wake up at all, if we do not take matters into our hands today. Matters that we can take into our hands. Aligning the focus of everyone we communicate with, to prioritise, keeping earth inhabitable for us. The reiteration cannot be enough.

Even if you have no children of your own, you have a responsibility to the children and grandchildren of others around you, who have made your life as it is, what it is for you. You remain and will remain indebted and you need to give your all to at least attempt to repay that debt.

My intention here is not to preach a model or a narrative for you to take up, in your work as a Professional Futurist, to direct people towards the prioritisation of our survival. I leave that to you, as I should, rather respectfully, humbly. My intention is to tell or remind you, that you need to develop that model or narrative for engagement, to herd our race towards the much needed, urgent salvation, starting immediately.

We collectively as a human race are responsible for the greatest threat to our existence today. We as a human race need to engage in collective efforts of salvaging and reversing the situation. We Futurists, need to rally, herd, humanity, towards those collective efforts, today, rather than tomorrow, right now, rather than an hour later.

We all want to make a living. We all want our positions. We all want our legacies. We all want credit and recognition. I get that. I absolutely get that, give me that much credit. Nothing, absolutely nothing, has value without the existence of humanity. So take that ego, and make today the day, when you actually are that objective rational Professional Futurist, by flushing that ego down your toilet.

By all means promote yourself. By all means compete against your fellow Futurists for those Keynote slots, including myself. Do not let your ego, and self, be impediments, to the proper ordering of your priorities and responsibilities however. Let this be our common cause; 7.5 billion people need to be saving the planet, and every Futurist on hand in unison needs to be dedicated towards directing traffic as necessary for that. So no politics. No ideologies. No ambitions. No personalities. Planet Earth. Continued humanity. Please, get this straight. Everything else will only then be worthwhile.

The call is simple. Continue talking about future products, future societies, future cities, and whatever else you are best placed to talk about. At the center, emphasise, that all of that will matter only, if we are, and acknowledge, again with emphasis, that we may not be anymore, if adequate action is not carried out now, for our Environmental Salvation.

I thank you for reading this. I pray for your kind, thoughtful and responsible action that is appropriate.

With humble respects and regards, Harish "The Singapore Futurist" Shah