FUTURE MATTERS
Claire A. Nelson, Editor-At-Large
Greetings and Salutations. Here
at Human Futures we are glori-
ously ‘futurious’! (futurious ~ad-
jective: full of all things future).
Why? WFSF as the leading global
network for the ‘futurati’ (those
interested in studying and learn-
ing about the future) is passionate
more futures literacy. But why
study the future? The theme of
the 2019 Annual WFSF Conference
is ‘Uses of the Future’. We need a
better understanding of how we
use the concept of the future to
design the lives we live now on the
road to the future we are becom-
ing if we are to shape the future
we want.
Several studies support the hy-
pothesis that animals have a con-
ception of the future and are able
to perform mental time travel in
similar ways to humans. One type
of study observes how animals
modify how much they eat of one
type of food when they know that
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HUMAN FUTURES
a different type of food will be available at a future time.
Another type of study observes how animals choose
between options that lead to different future outcomes
(one option leads to a small reward received immedi-
ately whereas the other option leads to a larger reward
received at a later time). A third type of study discussed
involves animals who move food from one place to an-
other. A 2011 study observed that Tayras (a type of wea-
sel) in Costa Rica would eat ripe plantains immediately
but would store unripe plantains in trees and come
back to eat them later when they were ripe, indicating
that the Tayras were aware that at some future time, the
plantains would become ripe enough to eat. Another
study observed a chimpanzee from a zoo in Sweden
storing stones to throw at human visitors later in the day
when the humans came by. The chimpanzee only used
the stones for this purpose, and moreover, did not store
them during the off-season while the zoo was closed
to visitors. This implied that the chimpanzee was using
foresight and planning when storing the stones. One
might even argue that this was the chimp’s attempt to
demonstrate its injury with respect to the insult of its
captivity.
But while we see ‘human’ behaviors in our closest rel-
atives -- chimpanzees and bonobos-- we are the only
ones who study them and write tomes about such re-
search. Humans are the only species that conceptualize
life beyond their own life span, as observed in life prac-
tices as well as funerary rites in religions and cultures
the world over. Over 2000 years ago Aristotle noted “we
are rational animals pursuing knowledge for its own
sake.” Research on brain imaging at Washington Uni-
versity in St. Louis found that the human mind taps into
the same parts of the brain while imagining the future
as it does when remembering the past. This means that
HUMAN FUTURES
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