Practicing Hope to Prep for the Future
with Futurist Bob Johansen and Bishop Andy Doyle
When the future feels brittle, how do we find hope?
In this episode of How We Future, Lisa talks with futurist Bob Johansen and Bishop Andy Doyle, co-authors of Disciplines of Hope: Generating Faith in the Future for an Anxious Age, about what it means to build faith in the future when the world feels increasingly uncertain, brittle, and chaotic.
Bob and Andy explore why clarity is more useful than certainty, how we can use hope as a discipline, and why navigating the future requires practicing together.
They also unpack the power of asking discerning questions, and how generative AI might help us stretch our thinking rather than simply make things faster or easier.
In this episode, we explore:
How to navigate a BANI future: brittle, anxious, nonlinear, and incomprehensible
Why faith can be reframed as something we do rather than something we simply have
The Credible Hope Compass and how it can help us navigate uncertainty
What generativity means and why creating a future beyond ourselves matters
How generative AI can extend and challenge human thinking
In a world where we can't know exactly what's coming, perhaps the work is to practice our way toward one we want to be part of creating.
How We Future is hosted by Lisa Kay Solomon, a futurist, educator, and designer who explores how we can shape better tomorrows by changing what we do today.
-
Bob Johansen: Having that positive faith in the future is just so important in terms of creating positive outcomes. Right now, there's so much despair, there's so much cynicism, there's so much lack of faith. It's a very, very troubling time. This is a time where we need to think future back and say, "What do we all have in common? What do we believe in?" Then take that leap of faith together.
[music]
Lisa Kay Solomon: I'm Lisa Kay Solomon, and this is How We Future, where I talk to some of my favorite changemakers about shaping tomorrow, starting today. What helps us stay grounded and move forward when we can't know what's coming next? Season 4 of How We Future is about big ideas, and today's big idea is hope. I'm joined by Bob Johansen and Bishop Andy Doyle, co-authors of Disciplines of Hope: Generating Faith in the Future for an Anxious Age.
Together, they explore why hope is more than wishful thinking or blind optimism. In fact, it's a deliberate practice that helps us lead through complexity, strengthen our communities, and imagine futures worth working towards. In this episode, we unpack why clarity matters more than certainty, what faith can teach us about navigating change, and how each of us can become better ancestors for generations that follow.
Let's get started with Bob and Andy. I am just thrilled that you are here. Thank you so much for joining us. As I shared earlier, this is the first time I'm interviewing a bishop, so Bishop Andy, thank you so much for joining us. Bob, you and I have known each other a long time, and I'm thrilled to be talking about your forthcoming book called Disciplines of Hope: Generating Faith in the Future. What a thrill to be talking. We should say that you have a third author that's not with us today, Jeremy Kirshbaum, who calls himself an AI engineer and poet.
I know you're early on in talking about this book, but I have to say from the beginning, it sets up a little bit like a joke, as you might know. A futurist, a bishop, and an AI engineer walk into a bar. Maybe we'll start there. Bob, what motivated you to write this book? This is your 15th book, I think, on exploring the realm of futures. What motivated you to really lean into the topic of faith?
Bob Johansen: I've been struggling with it for a long time. I've actually wanted to write the book for 20 years or so and have been searching for the right frame, for the right partner, for the right time. This mix of Andy, Jeremy, and these very strange times we're in now, these very chaotic, very despair-oriented times, it just seemed like this was the right time. Getting together with Andy and Jeremy, we were able to create something finally, but this has been a very long time in coming.
Lisa Kay Solomon: In many ways, Bob, I think it's a little full circle for you. My understanding is that your study of religion and world religion is what got you into this many decades career of futures and professional futurism.
Bob Johansen: Yes, it's really true. I went to divinity school before I did my doctorate, and I went to the divinity school Martin Luther King went to, and I was there when Dr. King was killed. I was then selected to be in a program that was taught by some of his original professors to try to recreate the intellectual influences he was under at the time he was in seminary before he did his doctorate. That is what caused me to become a futurist. I never got ordained, but I did get called to the future. [chuckles]
Lisa Kay Solomon: For sure. I have nicknamed you the Minister of Futures Framing, because as we're going to talk about, you are one of the best framers of the futures to make a sense. Bishop Andy, you, I imagine, practice disciplines of hope and generating faith every day in the work that you do.
Andy Doyle: Yes. I have to say that I met Bob first in 2008, and it was inspirational to begin to think differently about how we, as an organization, could even do the work that seemed so normal for us. Yet, as an organization of people, we're so similar to everybody else, which is, at times like this, we need to be reminded of hope that there is a future ahead of us, that there are partnerships to be made.
Sometimes those partnerships are unlikely, and sometimes the future is provocative. Yet, at the same time, this kind of deep tradition of being called forward, being invited into something, these are certainly patterns that I think are recognized not just in the text, but in Bob's and my own relationship and now with Jeremy that really pushed forward or created out of our conversations this book.
Lisa Kay Solomon: This book is truly beautiful. You say very early on, Andy, building on that, this is not a religious book, but draws on religion seriously. It's not a technology book, but takes generative AI seriously as a medium to reshape meaning. Already you're setting up a very interesting tension and aspiration really about: we're going to go deep into faith, and we're not going to shy away from this real thing that's happening called generative AI. Andy, maybe I'll start with you about finding that mix of maybe grounding in religious practice, but making it accessible to all.
Andy Doyle: Sure. I think that a piece of where I find the two enrich, that kind of Venn diagram where there's a shared experience of people across that spectrum really doesn't require any particular type of religion. What we found in our conversations is we kept coming back to this idea that the world is filled with opportunity of hope, creativity, that these were markers on both sides amongst this triduum, this three-part conversation, if you will, where we weren't limited but actually found a conversation that was expansive, hopeful, imaginative, creative.
That there's a piece of both sitting and being present, of being aware that we are not by ourselves in this creation, in this world, that I really think is shared across a religious and humanist spectrum that hopes the very best for all of us and sees flourishing not as an individual practice, but as a communal practice and one where each of us benefits in that way. I think that drives deeply, not just a sense of, "Oh, you have to have a particular faith," but that amongst us, there is a conversation to be had about how we can be better people for the living of life, and not just for the living of my life, but for the living of the community's life.
Lisa Kay Solomon: Yes, and generations to come.
Andy Doyle: Oh, yes.
Lisa Kay Solomon: There's a deep sense of being a good steward of what's to come, even not in this life. I will say, Andy, I appreciate it throughout the book, very much, it weaves in many faiths, not just your faith or Jeremy's faith, or Bob, your faith. It's a very inclusive book for the faith of humanity. I really saw that. Bob, as we talked about earlier, both this idea of pulling on religious practices and what's happening in AI, as you say, elicit a wide range of responses. As you say, this book was written between disgust and awe. Those are pretty extreme. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that.
Bob Johansen: Yes, it's something that emerged as we were writing and beginning with our publisher, Berrett-Koehler, an amazing publisher that I've worked with my last six or seven books. Beginning with them, it made us realize how many people have been wounded by faith and for whom the word faith is a trigger. It's a negative trigger. We knew going in that AI was a trigger. There we were caught between this kind of disgust reaction, which is largely emotional, and it's heartfelt in many cases where people really had bad experiences with religion in particular.
We really struggled with how do we reframe this conversation so we accept the gifts of the traditions of faith, but we reject the harm, because we don't want to write off faith. Faith is so important. If you think of it as a meaningful leap, that's why it's called the leap of faith in the Bible, but it's a meaningful leap that has meaning, but in a highly uncertain, increasingly BANI future, as we call it, drawing from Jamais Cascio's term, brittle, anxious, nonlinear, and incomprehensible. That whole BANI future, it aches. It aches for faith, and yet it's got to be a faith that touches people without turning them off.
Lisa Kay Solomon: I think that's so beautiful. I appreciate that you really name that disgust is a boundary condition. It holds us back. Even though it may be a reaction looking for safety, it doesn't serve us well. Awe is a pull emotion. It's an expansive one. If we allow ourselves to be curious and maybe even creative in the quest, that that can be one that's communal.
Here's just one of the many quotes. You say, "To make better futures, we need new disciplines for hope in action that you perform repeatedly together, not hope or faith that you simply have or don't have." Andy, I want to turn it back to you because one of the big things that strikes me in this book is that faith is not a noun. We think of it like, I have it, I don't have it. You're asking people to reconsider faith as a verb, as a doing.
Andy Doyle: Think about where that harm often comes from. It comes from having it, not having it, telling you you have it, telling you you don't have it, that these are the kind of ways. I would argue too that here is the great divisive debate between science, philosophy, and theology as well. Either you are part of this group or not part of this group. What I'm suggesting, I think all three of us were really enlivened by the conversation that said, "Wait a minute. If we set aside this kind of noun for a moment and begin to say, 'What does it mean to practice? What does it mean to do this work together?" All of a sudden, there's energy in the room about the possibilities of what we can do.
Each one of us brings necessary boundaried ourselves, boundaried lives, but boundaried traditions, whether it's the scientific technology or faithful community. Each of us has places that are going to be edges for us. Our hope is that in practicing it together, those edges become transformative for us. In the leaning together, what we do is we actually begin to create community. Just as I'd never worked with Jeremy before, but I would suggest that Jeremy and Bob and I are now this kind of mini-practicing community of the very thing that we offer in the book.
Lisa Kay Solomon: It's one of the gifts of the book, the fact that you're modeling working together across a variety of differences towards a common goal, which is clearly belief in humanity and belief in others. There's one thing to teach about it. We obviously hear a lot about the polarities of what's happening today, the political divisiveness. It's another thing to do. I think this book is a model of the exact practice that you're trying to further.
Bob, you had mentioned BANI framework. You and I, for years, were on the VUCA worlds, filled with volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, and I know with Jamais, you have been moving to BANI. It's one of those frameworks, as I said, a gift of yours. You're a sensemaker, you're a pattern recognizer, and then you're a communicator, into having a more accurate language to just name what's going on, and ever the, I think you call yourself a humble optimist. You have another side to each one of those. I wonder if we could just pause for a minute and talk about the BANI framework and maybe what working with Andy and Jeremy helped you think differently about around how to turn those into positive.
Bob Johansen: Sure. Framing the future is so important. One of the big lessons we've learned over the years at Institute for the Future-- We're now the longest-running futures think tank around. One of the things we've learned is if you frame the future accurately, it draws you toward the future. If you get it wrong, if you frame the future incorrectly, or if you just don't think about it, you're just not as future-ready. You're not able to pursue the preferred future that you actually want.
Jamais convinced me, and then we ended up writing a book together with Angela Williams, the CEO of United Way, called Navigating the Age of Chaos. That deep understanding of this new frame that Jamais has brought to us, this new frame is so important. It really, again, calls out for this need for more positive images of the future and having a confidence, or in the book, we actually use the word faith interchangeably with the word "hope."
I know there's trade-offs there, but we're trying to draw from the gifts, and again, avoid the harm. We interchange hope and faith. What we're realizing is that having that kind of positive faith in the future is just so important in terms of creating positive outcomes. Right now, there's so much despair, there's so much cynicism, there's so much lack of faith, there's so much questioning what's true, what can you believe? It's a very, very troubling time.
What we all feel is that this is a time where we need to think future back and say, "What do we all have in common? What do we believe in?" Then take that kind of leap of faith together. We're hoping this book gives people the frameworks and the disciplines and the suggestions. We're not telling you what to believe. We're not telling you what to have faith in. We're giving you the tools and the framework and the media to help you create your own discipline of faith.
Lisa Kay Solomon: It's so powerful. It can't be said enough: the power of envisioning a future you want to be a part of. Without that, as our dear friend Ahmed Best, another brilliant futurist, says, "Don't let people future all over you." Who are you outsourcing your future to if you don't pause to think about, as you said, the frame in which? We can't predict the future, as we know, and your many books remind us, but we can have a belief about it. We can be intentional about the direction that we want to bring forward.
I will say that is exactly why I started How We Future, exactly that: that we didn't have enough models of people that were being agentic in a world that feels out of control in the most accessible ways. I hope "agentic" is the most jargony word I use.
[laughter]
Lisa Kay Solomon: I have athletes, and I have coaches and now have religious leaders. It's all about reminding us that we have so much more control around the questions we ask, the micro-actions that we take, the beliefs that we have. I think your book gives people rounding from which to say, "Oh, I don't need to make this up by myself. This is not only a productive way, this is a durable way. This is a resilient way."
Bob, if I could have a nickel for every time I quote you when you say, "The future will reward clarity, but will punish certainty," I would have a lot of money to build community. This really speaks to that first principle that you talk about around this brittle world that we're in. You advocate for us to make it more bendable, but not bendable, as you say, Gumby style, bendable within clarity of direction. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that first one that is so foundational.
Bob Johansen: Yes, for sure. It's something I've been saying and realizing for a long time now, and it probably is the most memorable thing I've ever written that I get feedback about that almost every day. I think in this kind of world, in this BANI future, you need to be very clear about direction, and you can be clear about direction even with all this chaos. You want find that clarity, and that's where thinking future back can help you find it.
You look back in time for patterns, and then you have to figure out: what's the clarity of direction? What's the resilient clarity story? It must be told as a story. Futurists have to be great storytellers. Leaders have to be great storytellers. That resilient clarity is the kind of framing of your bendability. We all have to be flexible, but you want to be clear, you can't be certain.
I learned the VUCA term from my teaching at the Army War College. I'm not a military guy, but I still teach there. I get the new three-star generals on their first week in Washington, and I get them five at a time. They're reading the Navigating the Future book now. They'll be reading the new Disciplines of Hope book when it comes out this fall. I've learned so much from them because they have their whole language around this. They call it commander's intent or mission command.
The best militaries in the world now are no longer command and control. Command and control just doesn't work. Even though there's a temptation for certainty and so many people want certainty, it isn't sustainable in this kind of world, and we have to learn that. We can have clarity, but certainty is dangerous.
Lisa Kay Solomon: Yes. I think it's what you said leads to that brittleness. I think the other piece that it was so powerful as a visual for me as I read it is that you say when it's brittle, it doesn't just break, it really disintegrates, it shatters that image of the bridge, or even as democracies, these structures that we think are solid are really so much more vulnerable in part because maybe we're over-indexing on that certainty versus the clarity, what it all stands for.
Andy, there's another incredible line in here where you say, "The BANI future will bleed faith and hope, yet humans need some kind of faith or hope, whatever you call it, in the future to operate confidently in the present." I imagine and would love to hear from you how that shows up in your community. What are some of the things that you do to foster that sense of collective faith and practicing together to really be more resilient and more hopeful amid all of this change?
Andy Doyle: I think part of it is to claim a hold of being addressed or beckoned by that which is ahead of us, the sense that we're being pulled, and then to focus, I think, on the goodness of that shared positive future. I was thinking a little bit while you all were talking that when you write a book and if it's a narrative or you're telling a story, or if you're working on a piece of art, whether it's a sculpture or 2D film, whatever it is, that there is this language that the artist, whether author, painter, begins to partake in whereby the item that you set out to create is not something of certainty, but begins a conversation with you and pulls you into the actual work itself.
I think Jeremy, to represent a little bit, would say that that's part of the capacity that we have together and that we're learning in terms of best practices with AI, in fact, is that it's not to seek certainty from AI, but rather to do what ancient traditions and my tradition has been practicing for a really long time, which is leaning into the future with others, having conversation together whereby people are pulling the very best of each other forward.
Now, does that mean that Christianity and other religions haven't also pulled the worst of each other? Of course, it does because we're human beings and that happens everywhere. It's not just something that a religious community is, but when we see communities doing their very best, they imagine and can hope for a different future.
I'll give you just one quick example. We had a health system, and the health system really needed some specialized leadership that we didn't feel like we could provide. This was at the moment where we were going to electronic records, just massive changes we were headed into. The Bush presidency had been very clear, as the presidency before that, healthcare change was going to manifest over the next several decades in ways that we as a church, because we own the organization, weren't going to be able to deliver.
Actually, looking at the crisis and trying to figure out, how can we imagine a hopeful future for the city of Houston where the hospital doesn't go away, where the nurses and doctors can still work, where they have the cash influx that they need, where the Diocese of Texas, as a religious community, might actually figure out how to deliver health, not healthcare, to the community in which it finds itself, chose to transition that health system, whereby the city of Houston got billions of dollars of influx from its new owner and continued its work growing the capacity of that health system today to where it is.
We're able to press health, not healthcare, into rural and urban communities that we never could have imagined before. We did that by leaning together, listening, hoping, having conversation, believing that the best was out there for the health system, for the city of Houston, and for the people we serve. It's just a good example, practical one, that I think answers your question of where have I seen it in my community.
Lisa Kay Solomon: I think that's such a phenomenal example of exactly what, Bob, you and Jamais explore in the BANI framework. To me, that was a great one around the anxiety part. There's a big change coming. It's going to affect a lot of people. It is heightening anxiety about what might be. You talk about anxiety as a future fear. Then, Andy, you and your colleagues and partners within the community leaning into that awareness piece to say, what might happen, and how do we get ahead of it? Bob, maybe a future back. Again, that borrowing of future back framing to say, this is about health, not just healthcare. This is something broader. How do we make it inclusive?
I just think that is such a beautiful example of anticipating what might happen, imagining your preferred future, then perhaps being more expansive in the kinds of partnerships and relationships. We shouldn't probably overlook the fact that it's built, Andy, I'm sure, on the trust that you have built in your community by probably how you've shown up week after week, moment after moment, so that you had a community that was willing to lean into this possibility with you.
Andy Doyle: And by invitation. Again, not certain, not control, invitation to participate, continuing to listen, to reflect, to move forward together, to choose to stay at the table, even when we might not agree. Those are pieces. I think for the leader who wants to practice a discipline of hope, you actually have to own this yourself.
In the organization, but as I think the Institute for the Future and Bob will tell you, what we've learned over the years, what I've learned from their own teaching, is that it only works with the people in the organization doing it, that you can't just do, a consultant comes in, tells you what to do, and so we're going to control this. It really has to do with this communal way of working together.
Lisa Kay Solomon: Yes. What I also hear in that is that it's a living practice. Bob, you and I have been in the futures world for a long time, I think since COVID, futures and futures disciplines having a meteoric rise. One of my worries is exactly, Andy, what you're saying, is that we're getting into that mode of, "Let's just do a futures boot camp. Now I'm future-ready." That's not what it's about. It's really about expanding the conversation, expanding our worldview, our mindsets in an ongoing way. It's not one and done where you check, "I'm ready now."
It's a great segue to a huge part that I love in the book, which is the Credible Hope Compass that you created. As I was reading, and I'm just showing here for those on video, my very chicken-scratch interpretation of the compass that I then, honoring the invitation of the book, turned to my friend Gemini to say, "Hey, can you make it a little bit more legible?"
Now I'm holding up a slightly more legible but still handwritten Credible Hope Compass, which you call, and I love this, sanctuary for social imagination. Again, an invitation. It's not a map, but Bob, maybe we can continue chatting a little bit about the compass. How did you come up with the compass, and maybe talk through some of the elements of it?
Bob Johansen: Sure. This phrase, "the sanctuary for imagination," that's an Alvin Toffler. It's kind of a hat tip to his wonderful book, Future Shock, that goes all the way back to 1966 and 1970 was when the book came out. That whole idea of the social imagination, we need that, but we need a compass to get us through that. It's, again, a navigation metaphor, and what are the ways of thinking about that navigation? It always begins with outcome. What's your outcome that you're seeking? That's the clarity. That's the clarity.
Then it involves community, and how do you sort that through? Of course, there's ethics that's involved, and there's evidence. To me, it links to one of the most amazing traditions in the Episcopal faith and Andy's faith that I've found as I've learned about it is this notion of discerning questions and discernment. We're very interested in it at Institute for the Future in this idea of discerning. I like that concept better than discernment because it's never really over. It's discerning. Andy, maybe you could jump in here and start from this notion of discerning questions and how the compass is a way of not necessarily answering, but figuring out how do you navigate your way forward in the face of all this uncertainty.
Andy Doyle: I think that's where the provocation also lands squarely in the midst of the cycle, so that the cycle and the compass, they all reflect one another in different ways of looking, but at different icons, if you will, of something that isn't set. If you're going to imagine a future, you know that we're heading in a direction, but what we're truly trying to do is aim in the same direction together, and that with boundaries that the compass offers, it allows us to have the edges, but to imagine together, to discern together, to invite questions.
I've sat with leaders so many times and to say, "Okay, that's one scenario, but let's back up for a second." What are some other questions we might have? For instance, this is a great piece right now. We've had the Pope just recently speak out about AI. The response has been pretty strong against AI, but AI is not going anywhere. It's already integrated into most everything that we do, whether we know that or don't know that.
The question isn't really about that. That's a fear-based question about the future rather than to back up and say, and I think this is where Jeremy really helps us tease, "What are the discerning questions about how this gets used?" The Archbishop of Canterbury just addressed the House of Lords, leading and leaning into the question about AI. She asked very clearly, "How does this make us better humans?" These are really fascinating questions. How does it make us better communities, community members?
Certainly we can battle the same things we've always battled, which is greed and abuse and harm that humans tend to do to each other, but that's not the only question. Can we discern some positive questions? Are there boundaries that we as a people may hold together? That's where the ethics come in: this sense that we're going to hold each other accountable, seeking not to harm, but do our very best for each other. What are those discerning questions that come up? Can we sit with them and not--
Again, we're going to leap towards certainty, but could we instead hold a little longer, as Daniel Kahneman says, get to the second, third, fourth thought, and seek better clarity. That's the opportunity the compass holds for us, and then to come back. We tried that and not to see, "Oh, we missed the certain future." No, we tried something, we created something, and we have to learn. Harvard Business School, I think, has been at us forever to try and learn from our mistakes, so this opportunity to see that as a moment to redo the forecast thinking.
Lisa Kay Solomon: I will say, as Andy was talking, Bob, I was really thinking about the nonlinear to neuroflexible axes that you talk about. I think Andy is really describing a world that will not unfold in a linear way. Even if the Pope comes out against AI, it's not like AI goes away. It's going to be a huge part. We don't exactly know, but this idea that we can experiment our way forward using the compass. I will say, I love the compass metaphor.
You may recall that in the book that I wrote about designing strategic conversations, we used a compass as well, realizing that many people were taught to have conversations about the future with an intended outcome or answer on the other side that felt more like going for a bullseye, a single right answer versus an exploratory tool. Did we get closer to the outcomes? Did we really honor the community? Did we honor our ethics? How do we know? What is the evidence?
My humble hope is that a lot of educators will pick up this book, whether they're teaching in a religious school or not, hopefully not, to give our students a sense of resilience and tools that they can use to check in with themselves and also check in with their peers and where their community is. I think it's a conversation tool as well.
Bob Johansen: Yes, definitely. Jeremy brought to the book this idea of using generative AI in a way that actually creates positive friction and allows us to repeat again and again, because repetition is so important to learning. We tend to discount that, and particularly our coping methods psychologically with the BANI future, they require things like mindfulness and meditation and various spiritual practices just to keep ourselves together. Those require repetition.
They require friction, where so much of the early application of AI is, oh, let's make it faster, let's make it more efficient. That's fine, but that's not the big story. The big story is, Tom Malone at MIT says, it's humans and computers doing things together that have never been done before. That's the big story. That actually requires useful friction to make it work, to have a way of learning.
Lisa Kay Solomon: Yes. We invited Bob Sutton on How We Future-
Bob Johansen: Oh, nice.
Lisa Kay Solomon: -and his latest work is called The Friction Project. We went deep into this exact question about how do we remove unnecessary friction, but also ensure that we have productive friction so that we make the bad things harder and the good things easier.
Bob Johansen: Yes, Bob's work is so important here.
Lisa Kay Solomon: Oh, it's so important. I think he was one of the first to name, not all friction is bad. Of course, this won't surprise you, being a design nerd that I am, I think of that as design.
Bob Johansen: Yes, of course.
Lisa Kay Solomon: What are the affordances that you're putting into place? Again, Andy, I think the beauty of having, I think it's over 72,000 members of your broader community in Texas, the number of touchpoints that you can have to have people experience what does a beautiful experience look like. They didn't have the unnecessary friction, whether it's praying together, being alongside of each other on a regular cadence. All of that is very helpful in building that trust and getting us to that pull point of wanting to do it together, versus if it were very difficult to do all of that.
Andy Doyle: You could think about the fact that every week these people come together on a regular basis to calm themselves, to be together, to worship, to pray together, to hope for the future. This is actually what they're doing, is getting strength for the rest of the week, in which we hope they will be practicing what they're learning. We only make up less than a quarter of a percent of the people who live in our diocese, but we impact positively today over 20% of the people who live in our diocese.
We're working on a new project to actually do better measurement, but that's engaging the friction of a church and a neighborhood, the conversations of what the neighborhood needs. These are some things that I learned from Peter Block, which is you actually have to be in the neighborhood. You have to be willing to listen to what the neighborhood needs, and you have to bring your very best selves into that conversation and not play this idea of an us and them. That friction actually is not a good friction. It has to be dissolved and set aside so that we can figure out, here's a problem. What's the part I bring to that? Those kind of questions that he has that are really powerful.
In some way, it's not any different than skateboarding, surfing, and sailing. As a design person, you know those things require friction to work. They don't work without the friction pushing against them. The wind and the wave, the spaceship and the air, the power, all of these things are all part of the way we make our way in the world. I think that the human sense, and probably comes out of our basic instincts, those first instincts that come to mind, are to stop that friction from [crosstalk].
Lisa Kay Solomon: Especially you think about some of the messages, again, we tell our young people and what they've experienced, which is like, "Oh, I don't want you to feel hurt or upset," versus, "This is hard." That's part of it. You're going to learn about yourself, and you're going to learn about the process.
Bob, you may not know, for the last few years, I've been working very closely with athletes at the collegiate level specifically to infuse civic engagement into their experience as athletes because they're already doing so much of the work of working across difference, coming back from setbacks, having a common purpose, and to not utilize their influence on campus to be a better image of the future, to be a better flexor, as you say, of civic faith, I think is such a missed opportunity. That's been my moodlighting project to do that.
Andy really speaks to this idea that the practice is a critical element. Bob, I think you and I are big believers: better to rehearse the future than be blindsided by the present. The time to practice is not the crisis. That's not the moment. It's all of that improv and experimentation that you do ahead of time, which is, of course, the work we try to do at the d.school.
Andy, one more thing that I heard in that is you have this beautiful chapter on a new concept to me that I think was first coined by Erik Erikson: generativity. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that. As you were describing it, that's what came to mind: this kind of interconnected, fulfilling human purpose, but through others of different ages and backgrounds. Maybe you could speak a little bit about that.
Andy Doyle: Bob's the one who introduced the word to us, and yet it taps deeply into what the very best of humanism, the very best of science, the very best of religious traditions hold, which is together we actually hold in our gifts, in our relationships, in our discerning questions and our capacity to work together, the very best of the whole of humanity in this sense, the very best of who we could become. It doesn't come without the darkness or the edge of that and the capacity to do real harm.
Also, in there is something amazing and beautiful that calls us forward into a, we might call it co-creation, mutual creation. We would use creative words, but I really like the generativity language because it moves beyond, what do you think about creation? We can actually lean in in a word that's not owned by anybody in particular, but we also understand.
I would say, I'll turn it over to you, Bob, right after this, is that I think Jeremy would say this is the very best of what AI can do. Bob and I use, as does Jeremy, AI in a way of conversation, generating our better thoughts, and then we bring that together, and all three of us would bring that together, working on this text. That's where that generativity enabled us to really cooperate on a project.
I would suggest, too, that as the three of us are talking, thinking about what a living book looks like, how do we create the opportunity that this just isn't a book that you read and then you take your notes and all that, but how could we actually engage in a new way of thinking about how AI and this book could generate even more so that you didn't have to have Andy, Bob, and Jeremy in the room with you. That's a new way of thinking, and that's something that AI brings us that's a hopeful part of bringing clarity and future thinking to us in literally every opportunity, and that we can set: will this be better for us?
You can set those boundaries into AI to challenge us to see that, for instance, that we all know that there's a power issue, literally a power issue around AI development, et cetera. Let's solve that, as opposed to feeling like it's just a block that we're going to either just have to take our money and walk away, but we could actually do something different together.
Bob Johansen: To go back to this notion of framing the future, one of the challenges we had as we were writing the book is how do we frame the human side of this process? We discovered a coincidence, which is in 1950, a psychologist named Erik Erikson coined the term "generativity." He was studying the stages of life, and he referred to the most important adult learning task, developmental task, which he called generativity, which is basically generating a future beyond yourself, that up to that stage in life, it's all about ourselves and getting ourselves safe and established and all that.
Certainly, for those of us who have children, that plays a role, but he said, "With generativity, it's what do you pass on?" What's your sense beyond your isolated self? There's a really interesting coincidence here because he published this book in 1950. 1956, at the famous Dartmouth Conference, the term "artificial intelligence" was coined. To me, as a futurist, "artificial intelligence" is the worst term to describe an emerging technology I've ever studied.
It created all these stories, some of which are true, that are challenging us about how computers may replace humans. There's real risk there, yes, but the framing was really unfortunate. Generative AI is much, much better. It's still not perfect, but it's much, much better. We use that framing for how do we extend the human, enhance the human, stretch. My agent is nicknamed Stretch because I use it to stretch my thinking, and we talk about that in the book.
This notion of generativity, I think, is so important, and it links to faith because it's really every faith tradition I know of always involves the question of what's beyond yourself. What's beyond yourself? That's the basic of faith is what's beyond yourself, and there's different answers to that, but we found that this notion of generativity is so powerful. We have two chapters in there about how you can actually use generative AI to expand yourself, to extend yourself, to bring in this notion of faith or hope in the future.
Andy Doyle: This has been part of our social conversation in the US for quite some time, too. Robert Bly, for instance, has this whole idea that we have to get out of the adolescent society, but we can go way back to an ancient Christian source, Athanasius, who said, "One of the problems is that we haven't ever grown up." This idea of generativity becomes this practice that I think we've tried to capture in the book and give it some sense of connection to the faith, the hope compass, the disciplines of hope, this work. I felt like we've done a pretty good job of seeing this as a positive next step for us to try and do together versus just on my own.
Lisa Kay Solomon: Yes. You have a whole chapter that's really dedicated to leadership and how they can take some of these concepts, and a whole separate chapter dedicated to the personal practice. As you said, Bob and Andy, a living book, a living invitation for us. I cannot wait for it to come out. I'm flagging already that I am going to order a copy for every one of my colleagues, and I'm going to make it one of those learning books that we come back to and that we interrogate from our different lenses and have discerning questions because I think it is so powerful.
This idea of generativity, I love that you are reclaiming, or I guess it is reclaiming since it was coined in the '50s, but really bringing forward another concept that's not so laden with that baggage, as you said, to invite us to think, as another earlier guest talked about, Roman Krznaric being good ancestors and how we think about that.
Certainly, in my religious faith, which is about tikkun olam in the Jewish faith, one of the core concepts that we talk about just very personally in my family is the l'dor v'dor, the passing on from generation to generation. That doesn't happen in your KPI or OKR or whatever business plan. It happens in the beautiful kinds of connections, Andy, that I imagine happen within your community and churches, within the conversations we build with our neighbors, and the kind of connections that we need time for, that we need to give attention to in that way.
Andy Doyle: That's a great example, though, too, of the whole piece. From your own tradition, and I only see it from outside and with friends, but whenever I'm invited, it's around a table. When my friends invite me over, we remind ourselves that there was no way the candles were going to stay lit, no way, but they did. There was no way we were going to be removed from our oppressors, but at this table tonight, we will remember that our oppressors did not win.
That happens at a table in which people take their spaces and their roles, and that we sing together, you eat together. We do the same thing in different ways. There are other meals across traditions. There's ways of contemplating and meditating together, where then you share what you found in this time of silence. It happens around a table.
I think that this is one of the great gifts of the book, won't be the book, but exactly what you're describing in your own office with your own peers, with your own people, that if you could do this together and bring your very best selves. Then regardless of where the book is, when you bump into each other in the hallway, and you say, "Man, it's not working," you can remind each other, but we've been here before. We've hit a block before. We've gotten over that block.
There's a piece of the Disciplines of Hope Compass that I think just brings back, can we use that positive sense of the past where our ancestors were delivered? Can we show the generations in the future that they too can look back at us and remember hard times that we faced, even the end of our creation and our earth? No, we would not be stopped, and we were good ancestors to them. We were able to pass off not just a hopeful future, not just a bunch of stuff that we did, but, as to Bob's point, a story where we discerned the future and stepped into it and brought about something amazing that's worth remembering.
Lisa Kay Solomon: Maybe an opportunity to, again, share a practice that you talk about in the book that we believe strongly in How We Future, which is one of gratitude. Maybe I'll just close with some final words that you have in the book where you say, "This book closes with this instruction: do not try to feel hopeful, try to practice trustworthiness. Do not try to win, try to repair. Do not seek frictionless certainty, seek practices that cost you something."
Bob Johansen: [chuckles] Yes.
Lisa Kay Solomon: Thank you so much. It's just a true honor to continue to learn with you, from you, and to be able to share this work with a wider audience.
Bob Johansen: Thank you. It's such a delight to be here. Another thing I'll share just at the end: the book just went on pre-order on Amazon. One of the facts of life about book publishing now is that pre-orders either help a book or kill a book. Pre-orders are so important, way more important than my earlier books. If you're moved by this conversation, I hope you'll be moved to pre-order.
Lisa Kay Solomon: Yes. I will definitely do my part to-
Bob Johansen: [laughs] Thank you.
Lisa Kay Solomon: -pump the pipeline of pre-orders because it's really important work.
[music]
Bob Johansen: Thank you so much, Lisa.
Lisa Kay Solomon: Thanks so much for listening to this conversation about hope. Remember that hope can look like asking better questions, investing in your community, or choosing curiosity over certainty. It really is the small repeated actions that shape the future over time. If this episode sparked a new perspective, we'd love to hear from you. What's one practice that helps you stay grounded and hopeful when the future feels uncertain? Leave us a comment and join the conversation. If you know someone who's wrestling with change or looking for a little more optimism right now, send this episode their way. Thanks for listening to How We Future. We'll see you next time.
-
Links from the episode:
Navigating the Age of Chaos by Bob Johansen, Jamais Cascio, and Angela F. Williams
The Friction Project by Bob Sutton and Huggy Rao
Future shock by Alvin Toffler
