Suggested Topics

Thematic Issue Series

"Cultural Influences and Perspectives on the Future"

partial list of topics

1. What lessons useful for meeting the challenges of the future can be learned from your nation, culture, or people?
2. Which lifestyles and cultural values are likely to survive in 2025 and which ones will become marginalized or extinct? A partial list of cultural descriptors is available to provide a starting point for your thoughts.
3. What aspects of everyday life taken for granted in some nations or cultures (for example, the alarm clock based lifestyle, or notions of prosperity or identity) are not taken for granted in your own nation or culture?
4. Which people will be most highly valued in 2025? The young or the elderly? Gifted, creative people or others – and which gifts? Introverts or extroverts (and consider the other Myers-Briggs or equivalent personality descriptors)? Which professions? Who will be the "celebrities"?
5. What is the future of “future” in different culture? How does “the future” – or the anticipation of it – impact people’s thoughts and actions in the present? What are the differing assumptions about the future, and the mindsets, that different cultures bring into inter-cultural dialog?
6. What is the future of cultural diversity itself? Will cultural plurality be maintained, or is a monolithic "one-size-fits-all" world more likely to emerge?
7. How do people from different cultures define differences and similarities – and are they re-defining them?
8. To what extent does one’s culture shape his/her sense of identity? How will people’s senses of identity change if the world changes?
9. What long-term issues that are important to your nation or culture are not being addressed in international in mainstream dialog?
10. How will people's everyday lives change if another culture becomes dominant in 2025?
11. What new countercultures will arise in your part of the world or elsewhere?
12. What are your nation’s or culture’s general perspectives on the future?

This list is not exhaustive. We welcome other theme-consistent topics. Send your articles to articles@futuretakes.org.