PROPHETS, FUTURISTS...OR BEHAVIORAL PSYCHOLOGISTS?

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

PROPHETS, FUTURISTS...OR BEHAVIORAL PSYCHOLOGISTS?

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PROPHETS, FUTURISTS...OR BEHAVIORAL PSYCHOLOGISTS?
Dear Friends, Colleagues, TNNWC Members, Future Leaders and Global Futurists:

Certain historical figures (aside from the Nostradamus, who was a mystic and a poet; aside from the Mayans as a race, who had technologies and other gifts at their disposal which remained largely unexplained; and aside from the amazing Edgar Cayce, who had the ability to "see" at great distances, and to "feel" and diagnose various health and life problems -- an almost preternatural gift which he used altruistically) have had a certain "knack" for prescience -- the ability to predict the future, or to foresee future events -- which I believe I am just beginning to understand.

Those I speak of are Aldous Huxley, Ray Bradbury, George Orwell...perhaps even John of the New Testament, whose hands wrote what later became known as the Book Of Revelations while in the solitude of his prison cell.

Were these men prophets? While they did not predict immediate events in the shorter timeframe with any degree of exactitude, they did forecast many larger things which have come to pass over longer spans of time at a racial or global level (i.e., planetary, involving a major portion of Humankind). These particular gentlemen were futurists, each in his own right. How were they able to see the direction in which Humankind was headed?

My belief is that they had two things in common, aside from their inordinate intelligence and dedication to expression: 1) they were each and all devoted students of the Human condition; and 2) they were each and all, whether trained or intuitively, BEHAVIORAL PSYCHOLOGISTS. This is neither to discredit them nor to even diminish their greatness.

I believe that some of these celebrated prophets or Futurists were, in fact, predominantly powerfully intuitive behavioral scientists who merely extrapolated Human propensities and patterns to their most logical conclusion.

Futurists come from the fields of history, economics, archaeology, anthropology, to name just a few. But regardless of their academic and professional training, I believe the most powerful gift that one must possess in order to be an effective Futurist is the ability to understand Human behavior -- the conduct of indivduals, the behavior of mobs... the flow and ebb of social movements at a macroscopic level.

Yes - there are elements of art and science to prediciting the future...but there is also the uncanny ability to undertand how people behave, especially when reacting to certain socio-economic stressors.

To be a Global Futurist and to engage in prediction, you must study the waves, patterns and cycles of the history of our species, as well as the key fundamentals about the workings of the Human Mind. These are first and foremost. The thing that makes this less challenging than it might otherwise be is that as a species, we have advanced technologically far more rapidly and significantly than we have evolved spiritually, philosophically and cerebrally.

Every good Futurist is, either consciously, or unconsciously, a student of Human behvioral science.

The part that saddens me is that we Humans, as a species, are so easily predictable in our simple stimulus-response patterns that have ensnared us from true advancement since the dawning of this arrangement which we refer to as "civilization." This predictability, this shortness of memory and adherence to unproductive patterns of conduct are what make us so predictable.

If we wish to change the future, we must consciously work to change the present.

Faithfully,

Douglas Castle
THE GLOBAL FUTURIST - http://theglobalfuturist.blogspot.com/