Good morning. This is part three of how to think about the future, where I'm going to talk about how to build a systems terrain map of the various pathways to various

futures. I keep making the series longer because as most of you tuning in here feel, we're

approaching a really serious juncture in our global economic situation and our culture.

And I really want more people to be able to visualize, discuss, and engage with all the

unknowns steering towards life and continuity and away from dystopia.

Though some dystopian things are probably now baked in, indeed are happening now.

So a quick recap so far.

In part one, we talked about how to hold the future as a landscape of possibilities.

Coupled systems and phase shifts and shortfall risks. In part two, we built four grids of variables that will be core components in shaping the future.

Economic direction, up or down, power and distribution, geopolitics, and earth systems.

And we highlighted why technology is neither good nor bad, but an amplifier of whatever system it sits inside.

In part four, the next video, I'm going to combine sections of those four grids into

composite worlds, specific futures descriptive enough that you can feel the difference between

what it might be for us to live inside one versus another.

But before I do that, I decided to add one more conceptual tool. Because

those composites I'm going to build are not only just a list of possible futures sitting

side by side with equal likelihood. They all will reside in a landscape. And the shape of that landscape,

which valleys are deep and which ridges are steep and hard to cross, and which directions

flow downhill or uphill from where we stand right now, I think matters enormously to understand

which futures we're most likely to arrive at if we do nothing and what it will take to climb

towards the futures we want.

So all these concepts come from biology and ecology and are, in my opinion, pretty useful for thinking about where human civilization might be headed.

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