Short-Termism
Short-Termism is an interesting concept for a futurist. Basically, the vast majority of people alive today live with a short-term perspective on life. Days, weeks and months are the time horizons for most people. Now, in January the view forward has extended to 2023, to the new year with all our resolutions and intentions.
As a futurist, I focus on the trend lines present in the NOW to look into the rest of the 2020s and the decades beyond. My talks and writings are about the collective future of humanity and my audiences and readers are caught up with the short-termism of this week, this month, this quarter, this year, and this news cycle. A line I have said often at the top of a keynote or any presentation is “I want you to suspend what you think reality is so that you can be open to what will be. Reality is mutable, not fixed, and this presentation is about potential realities this decade and beyond.”
The entire mainstream media – MSM- is all about short-termism. “Breaking news” “this just in” “we just learned” ‘we can’t yet confirm” and “in a developing story” are phrases to keep us watching so that we don’t miss anything. What seems so important at this moment will be forgotten or rendered irrelevant soon.
In an archived column that I wrote in 2020 in the aftermath of the first lockdown, and then updated in 2022 about short-termism The title of the column was “American Has Become a One Marshmallow Country”
Yet, this inability to see long-term is exactly why I have value as a futurist. In a world of widespread short-term thinking, one who gets people to think about the future has value. In a world of sickness, a doctor has value.
