Three Tomorrows Pdf
Toney Talbot
Over the past few years, the world community has faced many challenges that have come quite unexpectedly, causing numerous crises in various spheres of socio-cultural life. A clear understanding started to dominate that the focus and nature of the ongoing changes are characterized by incredible speed, scale, scope, and simultaneity, thereby transforming us into a new era of postnormal times (Sardar, 2010). World religions also responded to the shift, making efforts to comfort their adherents during critical trials. Along with the issues related to the impact of religious institutions, beliefs, and practices on the ongoing crisis, specific questions about their futures have emerged. What challenges are coming? How can religious institutions adjust to a new environment? What should be considered perpetual and transitory in religion? Where do the worst threats / the best opportunities to religion come from?
Among the most recent and unexpected changes are the interference of Artificial Intelligence in Transcendent-human relations that historically have been dominated by attempts of human intellect to reach the Divine mind. With the advent of generative AI and large language models in the form of chatbots like ChatGPT, nothing seems to be sacred or untouchable, including religion. The generalized chatbots provide answers to theological questions, write sermons, and give advice by collecting information from countless internet sources (Bhuniyan, 2023). In addition, more specialized religious chatbots have emerged, like HadithGPT, which give advice rooted in Islamic texts, including a collection of 40,000 Hadith, to create new assertions similar to those found in historical Hadith (Ali, 2023). However, little has been studied about the phenomenon with an ambiguous and contradictory nature so typical for postnormal things (Sardar, 2010, pp. 436-437).
Both goals will stand on a specific example of modeling the future roles of imams (Muslim ministers) in Kazakhstan in the post-pandemic context. First, the paper explains the study context and methods and presents the detailed results of two surveys consecutively conducted among Muslim ministers during the pandemic in the Republic. After that, the paper discusses the findings and demonstrates a step-by-step process of scenario building, thus giving a picture of different futures that imams in Kazakhstan can face under certain circumstances. The Three Tomorrows approach serves as a framework for creativity. The paper concludes with a summary.
Furthermore, postnormal times require a prompt reaction to shifts in beliefs and practices occurring in various religions, thus calling to expand methodological means. We suggest the Three Tomorrows as a contribution to the innovation process. Let us briefly introduce it.
The First Tomorrow is called the Extended Present. The basic assumption is that the future will be similar to what we have now, or it can be comparable to our past and present. This is how the modern cognitive process often looks, making us turn to the knowledge from the past, collect the data, and develop and filter some useful information that can help us go through a crisis. The cognitive process that prevails at this stage dominates the current research practice and includes four main characteristics, which can serve as obstacles in the futures modeling process. They are the following (Serra, 2021, pp. 102-104):
1) Linear Thinking, which is based on cause-and-effect relations. At the same time, with their immense complexity and chaos in postnormal times, such an approach might lead to a rise of unjustified expectations and intellectual sluggishness.
2) Induction when an inference about a general category is based on limited observation. However, an insignificant fact can lead to severe changes in the chaotic reality of postnormal times. Therefore, induction based on observation may give a partial picture, and collected facts might be false if you give them a closer look.
3) Dichotomous thinking based on the idea that if something is true or correct, the opposite is false or wrong. Here arises a two-fold problem. Firstly, such a presupposition reduces analytical efforts by half, and secondly, it does not work in the quantum world.
4) Specialization, which is a strict classification and compartmentalization of knowledge. Under these conditions, the analysis is simplified since the objects of study are deconstructed into components and the overall direction is lost (Berendzen, 2017). In addition, in postnormal times, complex systems cannot be recreated by a simple mechanical connection of individual parts. Specialization works perfectly with linear thinking but prevents pondering over alternatives, which is particularly important for building futures options.
Thus, the first Tomorrow is called the Extended Present since its scenarios show great continuity with the present; in other words, as it was so that it will be, but in a slightly different way. This very assumption determines the singleness and unidirectionality of this future perspective in contrast to the next two Tomorrows.
The main difference of the Second Tomorrow, also called the Familiar Future(s), is the study of more destructive situations without trying to connect the future with the present. The starting point, in this case, is the assumption that the future will differ from the present in some way, but we do not know in which direction the changes will go and what impact they will make. Nothing can be taken for granted, including sources of information and their characteristics. These conditions urge us to apply an interdisciplinary approach to research since, for example, particular behavior can be inexplicable from an economic point of view but quite understandable from a religious or cultural one. However, we may encounter situations that are so unusual and new that we simply do not have previous experience and knowledge to interpret them. Then, building the future, we have to ignite speculative reasoning, putting forward assumptions about futures developments.
Therefore, the Second Tomorrow bases its options not (only) on familiar empirical data and statistics but the insights, intuition, knowledge, and images sparkling from science fiction novels, games, movies, or TV shows. Such expansion of disciplinary limitation helps to re-adjust our thinking, and our cognitive system becomes more open and perceptive to new, unusual data and horizons.
The research uses the qualitative and quantitative approaches as its methodology because they help get rich and detailed perspective for future scenarios, especially in complex situations with high levels of uncertainty and the data difficult to quantify (van Notten et al., 2003).
The empirical foundation for building futures options for the Three Tomorrows scenarios were the results of online surveys conducted among Kazakhstani imams in two stages: (1) from April 15 to May 13, 2020, and (2) from February 5 to 15, 2021. The first stage was reconnaissance and descriptive and aimed at identifying the difficulties that the imams faced during the first wave of quarantine in Kazakhstan (Muzykina & Aljanova, 2022). The second stage focused on changes in the changes themselves, which logically were expected in ten months that Kazakhstan lived under restrictions and isolation. Minding the postnormal nature of the COVID-19 pandemic itself (Jones, Serra & Liam, 2021), such changes should have happened. Therefore, seeing their dynamics, scale, and driving forces were essential.
The interviewers were ministers from the mosques in Almaty, Almaty region, and Shymkent, Southern Kazakhstan. After transcribing the interviews and segmenting their parts, the following list of problems emerged (Table 6). The questions and answers are condensed to deliver the core meaning of them.
The decreasing level of religious education of ummahsThe data shows that the interviewers identified the same categories during the discussion. Therefore, following the nature of the questions that focused on the forthcoming or little-discussed things, we can highlight emerging issues that correspond to the chosen drivers. The first group relates to the social-economic situation, e.g., the growing financial stratification. The second group refers to technical-ideological context, e.g., the Internet, as a tool to form a new mindset. Finally, the answers also led to unthought futures prompted by changes in political system and technological achievements.
The Three Tomorrows can offer a variety of methods for each one and within each Tomorrow. Thus, the First Tomorrow (Extended Present) mainly operates with information about the present and past; therefore, the apparent instrument will be the trend analysis that has a long-standing tradition in foresight (Bell, 1997; Masini, 1993; Bishop, Hines & Collins, 2007). To refine the obtained results, some other tools can be used, for example, 22 Matrix (Rhydderch, 2017) that helps to consider two critical trends and come up with four possible versions of scenarios. For more variables, researchers can utilize other methods, like morphological analysis (Duczynski, 2017), impact analysis (Helmer, 1981) or structural analysis (Godet, 1986). All in all, any method will highlight that the future is a projection of the present.
The Second Tomorrow (Familiar Futures) uses the received information to promote a broader and more profound outcome of changes in action. Therefore, among methods, emerging issues identification (Dator, 2018) can accompany trend analysis; futures wheel (Glenn & Gordon, 2009) can help recognize novelties and consequences of changes; archetypes developed by Jim Dator within the Manoa School (Dator, 2009) can provide an easy way to formulate alternatives to the First Tomorrow. The mentioned above 22 Matrix can also be applied to analyze disruptive developments.
The Third Tomorrow (Unthought Futures) deals with the preference mechanisms integral to our cognitive systems. To overcome our cognitive biases and explore possibilities for the emergence of postnormality in the present and future, we can use such an instrument as the Menagerie of Postnormal Times (Postnormal Times. Essentials). This tool consists of three creatures allowing us to study accelerating changes (Sardar & Sweeney, 2016, p. 9):
c80f0f1006