Schlagwort-Archive: Future

The look into the future

Our utterances are naturally limited to what we can express with words, images and other means. The resulting signs are accessible to everybody in different ways. And although we know that there are people who lack certain sensory channels, for example when they are blind or deaf, we can hardly imagine that we lack other channels. Thus, Rudolf Steiner speaks of the ability to perceive in the spiritual world – which is not granted to everybody, we do not allow ourselves or because we simply do not notice it. Like there is spiritual blindness, some lack the ability of looking into the future. And if someone has this gift, then he gets advised: If you have visions, you should go to the doctor. A look into the future is a basic prerequisite for designing the present so that you arrive in the desired future.

For all those, who lack the practice of anticipating the future, we have a look at different forms of foresight.

  • Vision
    The vision is the visualized impression of a future picture. It offers a snapshot of the introduced prospective conditions – next year, in ten years or even further ahead. Conditions are disseminated in a way that someone expects or fears that are utopias or dystopias. The aim is to inspire or frighten people. The target group completes the missing descriptions of these emotional futures with its own details. This creates a profound effect on them which, eventually, engulfs them emotionally – downwards in a negative vicious circle or self-reinforcing in a positive upward spiral.
    In order to achieve this effect, a meaningful sentence is needed that tells those affected, what to do, for whom and when.
  • Scenario
    The various outlines are elaborated visions with more content. For this purpose the political, economical, social, technological, ecological or legal influences are determined and combined into various drafts with different characteristics. The result should be clearly distinguishable extremes – the best possible and the worst possible. For the individual outlines, appropriate supporting and counteractive measures are developed subsequently.
    Effective scenarios have no limitations on how strongly the individual variables of the influences can evolve.
  • Strategy
    The scheme for the future is developed taking into account a preferred vision of the future. Here you find further details of the vision, mission, common basic understanding, strategic direction, goals and core. It uses a roadmap to connect the present with the introduced future. Ongoing activities are kept on track by orienting annual scheduling accordingly.
    The quality of the route into the day after tomorrow is reflected in its progress, i.e. the continuous approaching to the desired state.
  • Story
    Storytelling is so popular because it provides a target-group-oriented narrative. In the story, the feelings of the vision mingle with the detailed picture of the scenarios and the timeline of the strategy. The aim is to inspire the audience and encourage them to participate.
    The story draws its strength from the common thread that remains in the memory and is carried by word of mouth, without additional marketing measures, from one to the other. This transmission preserves the original message, even if it continues to evolve through new subtleties. At the same time, it can be easily linked to one’s own reality, which means that it is reused more often.

Bottom line: It is impossible to know the future, as the forthcoming influencing factors are unknown in advance. A good example is the Internet, which has brought such a surprising shift in reality to the whole of humanity. What we can master, however, is to anticipate the future and then actively strive for it with actions. Most things emerge covertly, as can be seen with Ludwig Kapeller, who described the concept of immersion as early as 1926, just when the first electronic mass media came into being. Less than a hundred years later, many people regularly dive into the virtual reality of their computer.
It is up to you, whether and how you look ahead: with a vision, with scenarios, the defined strategy or a well told story. It is crucial to allow oneself this view into the future. This is the only way to MAKE it real.

Today’s system-relevant addictions

Shortly after the crash of the Wall Street in New York (1929) Bertolt Brecht found the right words in the Three penny Opera: “What is robbing a bank compared to founding one?” Thus, he demonstrated visionary instinct. Because of the government debt, every Germans have a calculated debt with the financial system of more than 29,000 €; every US citizen even more than $ 57,000 – inclusive all babies and retirees. At the same time, some people call the classical financial institutes as system-relevant and support therefore the banks. As a result, their losses are continuously socialized and profits privatized. With it the moment is reached to take a look at today’s grown system-relevant addictions.

Just as a drug dealer makes the junkie slowly addicted to the drug, the banks have built up over a long time the following system. The result is the same as in a casino – the bank always wins.

  • Pay little interest and take lots of interest
    Already the easy-to-understand idea of charging interest rates for lending money required early on the regulation of the money business in order to prevent usury – sometimes better, sometimes worse. At the same time the banks took over the service of securely storing the money that one did not need, paid for it a certain interest rate and lent the money for a higher interest rate to borrowers, who needed money. The differences created the profits of the bank. The management of this exchange is systemically relevant – the neutral broker creates more occasions.
  • Encourage consumption on tick
    Loans served to finance kingdoms, states, and eventually businesses. With the emergence of the consumer society, there discovered also the consumer loans: for housebuilding, car purchasing, and holiday trips and meanwhile for all areas of consumption. By enabling such loans, the banks encouraged the economy that in turn created jobs. This offer of consumer loans has system relevancy- at least in a world of consumption.
  • Fees on everything (account, credit cards, balance, transactions)
    In addition to the interest rates, the banks eventually discovered the approach of getting paid for any service. An overseas transfer has always cost a lot (additionally to the rate of the currency exchange). In the meantime, the banks start charging all areas: for all kinds of money cards as well as account, transfer fees inclusively for personal transfers at a bank counter. Particularly clever is the idea to offer customers a membership card that provides some of the old services for free – of course with some pre-requisites beneficial for the bank. Since regular payments (like the rent, the telephone bill, and loans) are transacted via the own bank account, the bank strengthens as a middleman its system relevancy.
  • Reduce and possibly eliminate cash
    Since banks offer less and less “physical” services, it becomes important to close the back door of an account, the cash. For this purpose it will be abolished successively. Without cash, the values only exist in the banks’ data storages. Thus, after the abandonment of the gold standard, we reach the zenith of the virtualization of the financial values. Our wealth is now subject to fluctuating courses, which are constantly changing. So, if the cash itself has no more material value, you can also get rid of it. As soon as only the data storages of the banks represent our monetary possessions, the last person should be clear about the system relevancy of banks.
  • What is still to come?
    In the future, ALL money actions will be chargeable. The highest fees will be asked by those banks that can not change themselves as fast as the other players. The Internet enables new business models – from Linden Dollars, Bitcoins to microfinancing, crowdfunding or private loans. These transformations mean the end for classical financial institutes, which believe that they can finance themselves through excessive fees and do not adapt to the new circumstances. The last convulsions will demand a lot of the system. This means for the customers to find a way out of the systematically defined dependency from the banks – the account, the saving interests, the standing orders, the transfers, the money investments, etc. The insistence on the apparent system relevancy will shift the system – away from the classical financial institutions.

Bottom line: For millennia’s, the economy worked without system-relevant banks. Today, the banks are in a deadlock. The current efforts to find new income sources will exploit the meanwhile established dependencies, until the customers get broken. The credit system, the consumption, the services, the cash, and all that is called system-relevant, will be replaced by new providers with new business models, like microfinancing, crowdfunding or private loans. The basis of the economy, the money that is only based on faith, will be replaced by new means of payment – no matter how, main thing is getting out of the system-relevant addictions of today.