Reflecting on the times we live in, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby had this to say in his 2021 Christmas sermon: “We all face uncertainty, uncontrollability and unpredictability, from huge companies to those sleeping rough.” That is one of the principal themes of the book Thinking the Future, coauthored by Mitch Ilbury and myself and published by Penguin Random House in July last year.
In response to the challenge posed by these factors, we offer the following advice in the book: “The essence of thinking the future is to understand the pattern of forces propelling the present into the future and to see where those forces can lead.” In other words, don’t try to forecast what is un-forecastable. Rather identify the forces changing the game, paint different narratives or scenarios of how the game can play out, pick the best flags to watch and weigh up the probabilities of the different outcomes as the future unfolds. That is as good as it gets.
As for uncontrollability, we devote a whole chapter to the Stoic philosophers in Ancient Greece who distinguished between what lies beyond your control and what lies within it. One of them named Epictetus said: “Where do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own.” Stoics believe that you can improve the chances of a good future by concentrating on your own range of options, but only once you have surveyed the alterations taking place in your immediate surroundings.
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