Beyond Survival

This feels like a moment of truth. For many years people have been warning that we live in extraordinary times, a change of age not just an age of change. International Futures Forum (IFF) has been amongst them - quietly advocating the need for radically different approaches to intractable problems in a world where we are off our familiar charts. ​Many have said of the 2020 pandemic, as they said of the 2008 financial crash before it, that crisis also brings opportunity. But wishing will not make it so. Just as before, the old order remains remarkably resilient, has not left the field, and may well come back stronger and more sure of its worldview than ever. How can we best work to ensure that things turn out differently this time around? These four essays explore the resources we need to draw on in this as in any other crisis if we are to bend the arc of history “toward the hope of a better day”. The first is survival, then insight, perseverance, and hope – without which we cannot even start the journey. Raymond Williams wrote that our task is “to make hope possible rather than despair convincing”. But for Graham Leicester, hope is always possible and grounded in action. The real challenge is to make it convincing. Then we might attract the resources to match our ambitions and practical hope might frame the invigorating spirit of the next phase – recovery and renewal.