Designing a World that Works for Everyone: An Evening with Futurist Richard David Hames

Once in a while we have the opportunity to present a speaker with an extraordinary scale of accomplishment and involvement in world affairs.

So it is with much excitement and enthusiasm we announce an evening event with renowned futurist, Richard David Hames on Wednesday, March 8.

Richard actually prefers the term “foresight practitioner” to futurist, and in many respects it’s an apt moniker. In 2005 he described to a group of Wall Street bankers the patterns that would lead to a global financial crisis just three years later. He correctly foresaw the circumstances that led to the impeachment of President Dilma Rouseff in Brazil and the release of Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma. He also predicted the socio-political conditions that eventually led to Brexit in the UK and the election of Donald Trump in the US.

And in his presentation with BAI he’ll explain why he is now anticipating the collapse of the global monetary system as we know it, and a sequence of events he expects to threaten the sovereignty of the EU while revitalizing China’s aspirations.
But Richard is not a doomsayer and most of his work these days is focused on the Centre for the Future, a unique global, multi-generation enterprise curating a 100 year Mindful Uprising on behalf of our species.

In this evening program, Richard will explore how it might be possible to design a world that works for everyone. How do we react with wisdom to political events when they seem to be spinning out of our control? How do we begin to sort fact from fiction (and legitimate concerns from off the wall conspiracy theories) when the means for doing so have been buried by a corporate media intent on blurring such distinctions and saturating the news with celebrities behaving badly? How might it be possible to use profound knowledge to trigger community activism at a time when even the laws of nature are assailed by myopic self-interest? And how do we begin to interpret and respond to such ignorance, particularly where it is worn as a badge of honor, in ways that neutralize fear and reinvigorate hope in the minds of those who have lost faith in any kind of a viable future for sapiens?

These were the questions that led to the establishment of Centre for the Future. The heart of its agenda is the reinvention of the shared civilizational worldview and the incubation of projects aimed at redesigning our most life-critical systems. During his presentation Richard will:

• Explain the unique qualities of the Centre’s philosophy, including the various elements that combine to generate a “deep design” capacity for whole-system reinvention
• He then uses mivote.org.au, the first project in the Power & Governance theatre – to describe how this philosophy works in practice.
• Discuss what can be achieved by applying the principles of a Mindful Uprising to wicked problems related to economic equality, injustice, conflict and climate.

And just for his American audience, Richard will devote time to the recent US Presidential election, a segment he calls:

Making America Great Again & All That Jazz

We’ll engage Richard and each other in an extended strategic reflection about America’s future role in the world; trends and patterns that could so easily lead to societal confrontation and collapse; and possible resolution of the issues that currently divide the US as an imagined construct.

Richard will use a fast-track version of the Centre for the Future’s Transformational Narrative dialogical method to set an expanded context, explore fresh insights, and propose possible accommodation of the key issues with us. A conversation not to be missed!

This is a rare opportunity to delve into global issues with a highly respected thought leader. Don’t miss it!