Revisiting Tomorrow

‘Black swans are large-scale, unpredictable and irregular events of massive consequence …’

– Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Antifragile, 2012, p. 6)

The Institute always endeavours to be in spaces where others are not. We aim to explore, and ideally contribute, in areas that are on the edge, in particular ‘black swan’ events – events that are highly unlikely, but that (if they do occur) have a high impact. We also like the idea of the long conversation, the ability to revisit and review ideas and thoughts from the past and recalibrate for the future. This series aims to draw on the past, learn lessons and reimagine them for the future.

Background
In October 2019, the McGuinness Institute hosted ‘Revisiting Tomorrow’ at Te Papa. It was an opportunity to bring together past staff and authors who represented the New Zealand Planning Council and the Commission for the Future. At the time we had discussed the idea of revisiting some of the earlier work. It was therefore fortuitous that Wren Green, author of New Zealand after Nuclear War (August 1987), was in attendance. We asked Wren if he was interested in revisiting his earlier work (with Tony Cairns and Judith Wright). This led to Discussion Paper 2022/03 – Nuclear War: Are we prepared? (2022), which was published 35 years after the publication of New Zealand after Nuclear War (1987). See our page GlobalConflictNZ.

Interestingly, many of the lessons discussed in Wren’s paper are not only useful in terms of a discussion on nuclear war, but would also strengthen New Zealand’s global position when faced with other global crises (such as pandemics, economic depressions and climate change). It is particularly interesting to us that these commonalities exist, and that together, this type of foresight work can help us prepare for the future.