Prosocial Futures

Foresight offers encounters with alternative futures and provides the cognitive and emotional distance necessary for transformative thinking. The prosocial futures praxis asks what happens when we bring a particular orientation to those encounters: a commitment to equity, a grounded belief in human capacity for cooperation, and a practiced habit of locating our own contribution in the futures we imagine.

The praxis rests on three elements: authenticity, hope, and agency. Authenticity involves surfacing the assumptions we carry about the future and bringing them into alignment with our values. Hope is defined as an active, evidence-based orientation toward better, grounded in what we know about human capacity for cooperation and care. Agency is activated by a simple question: how can I be a helper in this future? That question transforms an encounter with a future from an environment to be observed into a world to inhabit and co-create.

At the center of the agency practice is the concept of the self-shaped hole — the unique contribution that only you can make to a preferred future. Each encounter with a futures scenario offers an opportunity to locate that hole in a different context. Repeated practice builds a durable orientation toward prosocial behavior and a practiced path to action that transfers from imagined futures back into the present.