I first encountered futures thinking in 2023 while working with Forum for the Future. It was interesting then, though in hindsight, I did not fully understand it until much later. It was at a Rogue Futures workshop (with Krizna Gomez) when I saw it differently and, in doing so, restored a sense of agency.
It’s been hard for me to articulate, but thankfully I don’t need to, because Johannes Kleske’s piece (linked below) brought the words, the feelings, and the arc.
Kleske writes that being asked whether one is an optimist or a pessimist about the future is a trap since both positions share the assumption that the future is already decided. Their disposition determines the outcome in advance, regardless of what is actually happening and in doing so, makes action irrelevant.
But the future is not settled, as the philosopher Armin Grunwald reminds us: futures are constructs that exist only in the present, linguistic expressions composed of knowledge, assumptions, values, and interests.
Open. Contested. Shapeable.
The piece then introduces a concept from Isabella Hermann’s work that I don’t want to name because the full piece deserves to be read. And re-read. concept of anti-dystopia. Decouple catastrophe from resignation, since the link between the two is a choice and not a law of nature. And accept that the work is inherently imperfect. There is no endpoint, no blueprint, no guarantee. The work is contradictory, incomplete, and continuous.
Two more lines that absolutely cooked:
The first is from Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, where a student asks the protagonist what the answer is. She replies that there isn’t one. There are thousands of answers, at least, and you can be one of them if you choose to be.
The second is Kim Stanley Robinson’s revision of Martin Luther King’s famous line. The original says the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. Robinson’s version says the arc of history is long, but we can bend it toward justice. “We can” identifies and locates agency.
The work we do is neither optimistic nor pessimistic. It is the slow, contradictory, incomplete, ongoing process of trying to bend the arc, knowing the bending will not be enough, doing it anyway.
Kleske closes with the line that I think is the point: of course, it will not be enough. That is the point. Do it anyway.
Worth your time reading this. Anti-Dystopia, Johannes Kleske →
Originally written for LinkedIn on 11 May 2026. View original →