Futuring and World Peace

Call me a dreamer, but since early 1966 when I was developing a plan for what was to become the World Future Society, I have believed that the Society might someday become an effective force for world peace.

This thought occurred to me suddenly and unexpectedly while I was waiting to cross Seventeenth Street in Washington, D.C., on the way back to my office. I remember the location because the idea caught me by surprise when it burst up from my subconscious.

This eureka moment, which I think of as an epiphany, was based on my sudden realization that an organization focused on the future and providing a neutral forum where people from around the world could share their ideas about the future would provide a new basis for international collaboration and the building of a more peaceful and prosperous future world.

So, in my six-page prospectus for a “Society for the Future,” I cautiously suggested that “The study of the future might help the cause of world peace. … Perhaps the ‘conquest of the future’ may provide what William James called ‘a moral equivalent for war.’”

I don’t believe I ever discussed this thought with my colleagues on the organizing committee because I felt the idea would distract people from the vision of the proposed Society as a scientific and educational association. It was essential, I felt, that our group not be viewed as a club for starry-eyed dreamers or “peace-mongers.”

My model for what was to become the World Future Society had been and remained Britain’s Royal Society, which was founded in 1660 by a group of men interested in what was then known as “natural philosophy.” People laughed at the Royal Society for doing such crazy things as trying to weigh air, but that small group of enthusiasts and amateurs transformed natural philosophy into what we now know as science.

The Royal Society quickly proved its value. Only a few years after its founding, it began receiving letters from a humble Dutchman named Anton van Leeuwenhoek, who had begun making microscopes. Leeuwenhoek claimed that he had seen “invisible creatures” by means of the glass lenses that he ground. The Royal Society’s members were skeptical, but a few decided to have a look for themselves and, to everyone’s astonishment, found that Leeuwenhoek was right: The “invisible creatures” — which we now know as microbes or “germs” — really did exist. This discovery proved to be a milestone in the history of medicine.

The Royal Society demonstrated the power of an organized group to accomplish something beyond the power of a single individual. Without the Royal Society, Leeuwenhoek would probably have been dismissed as a crank and his momentous discovery gone unrecognized. Furthermore, Leeuwenhoek demonstrated that a person lacking credentials or money or power can make an extraordinary contribution to human progress. For this reason, I argued strongly that the World Future Society should have no prerequisites for membership, and the majority of my colleagues on the organizing committee eventually agreed. So, from the beginning, the Society has welcomed as members anyone willing to pay our modest dues.

We also have remained true to our vision of a scientific and educational association that would provide a neutral clearinghouse and forum for our members’ views of future possibilities, and we have tried to present conflicting views of what the future actually will be like or should be like. Neutrality on political and social issues is critically important to our mission — and it is one of the reasons that the Society is a force for peace, though peace is not our special purpose.