This has a long history but I am taking it more seriously. In the standard scenario analysis, the focus is on getting from the present to the future. It seemed to me like the runner on the block waiting for the gun to go off. All future. But good planning is more like the surf-boarder sitting on the board, watching the wave come, riding it up, letting it go, and watching for the next. After a while the dynamics of the waves is clarified and good choice can be made as to which wave to ride.

So it led me to want to have three large graphics in a room where strategy is being discussed.

• A mess map of the present difficulties
• A time line on how we got here (starting perhaps in the bronze age..
• Several plausible scenarios, not comprehensive, but suggestive.

These three remain on the walls throughout the conversation.

Here are some preliminary considerations for each.

The Present.Where are we? Current map of intractable issues

• Population
• War
• Inequaity
• Climate
• Quality of life
• Loss of culture
• technology
• governance
• media
• land

The Past. How did we get here?

• Primate evolution
• Mutations
• Cooking
• Speech
• Symbolism
• Settlements
• Cattle
• Villages
• Empires
• East west divide?
• Agriculture
• Technology
• Metals
• Feudalism
• Crafts
• Trade
• Colonialism
• Religious-tech conflict
• Nation state; Westphalia
• Individualism – democracy
• Steam electricity
• Chemicals
• Post ww2 superheated economy
• Slow decline
• Elites take over economy
• Entropy

The Future.What can happen?

• Authoritarian
• Breakdown,  mafias
• Gardenwotld
• Bourgeois  hegemony

on the walls it might look like