Polyfuturism vs. Monofuturism - Decolonising Future Studies

Western-centric foresight practice needs to fall to make way for more culturally diverse visions of the future.

When I wrote ‘The Future Starts Now’ back in midst of the pandemic with my good friend, rabble rouser, and fellow futurist, Bronwyn Williams, we both concluded that to tackle something of that magnitude and diversity we would need the input of people of equal magnitude and diversity of thought to deliver something valuable to the reader, and that wasn’t written from a singular point of view as most books on the future are.

It wasn’t until this week that the very act of seeking perspectives from people of various cultural and societal backgrounds and different regions across the World that this was, in fact, an act of polyfuturism, a term I later coined in 2024.

It’s interesting to reflect on this now as I’ve started to speak to more and more futurists in different areas of the globe who are reporting that many are starting to disengage with Western-centric future studies, with their Think Tanks and Institutes, and turning to create their own indigenous methodologies and practices.

It is fair to say that future studies and the foresight field in general could be seen as an example of monofuturism, that is, a very single-minded focus and Western-biased set of methodologies. Despite seeking to define multiple plausible future scenarios, they are examined through a very singular lens. Conversely, the idea of polyfuturism can be seen as a countermeasure to this and a new way forward that is more inclusive of diverse cultural futures.

This is especially so when looking at tackling a supposed polycrisis that we’re all living through right now, according to various quarters.

In John Michael Greer’s essay, ‘The Twilight of the Monofuture’, he defines the monofuture as a “suffocatingly narrow and strictly enforced consensus” about what the future should look like. These future visions are all highly specific and consistent regardless of who, what, and where you are in the World: routine spaceflight, limitless clean energy, flying cars, humanoid robots, and superintelligent AI. We should all be striving to reach for this singular utopian vision.

It all sounds worryingly familiar as the same Silicon Valley rhetoric we are pumped full of day in, day out, and regularly peddled by pop futurists in the form of hopium that we should be addicted to.

Monofuturism, therefore, can be seen as analogous to Western-biased future studies for several reasons:

• A single, enforced narrative: Greer argues that this specific vision has been so dominant in media and culture that many people find it difficult to imagine any other kind of future at all. This reflects how a Western-centric, technologically determinist view can marginalise other cultural perspectives on progress and desirable futures. Richard Slaughter, a prominent futurist, saw this, even warned us, years ago, of the relentless focus on compulsive technological dynamism to determine the future.

• Origin in Western culture: Greer traces the monofuturism’s origins to a specific thread of Western science fiction that eventually became rigidly formulaic. So formulaic that most of Silicon Valley views it as a blueprint for their next startup, with the trope about the ‘Torment Nexus’ commonly thrown around every time some new dystopian app or service is launched. This suggests a culturally specific, rather than universal, set of aspirations that are projected onto the rest of the world as the only plausible path forward.

• Rejection of alternatives: Believers in monofuturism often react with hostility to suggestions that it might not happen, such as the idea that humanity will never colonise other planets. This dogmatism is similar to how a dominant methodology can dismiss indigenous or alternative methods of foresight as unscientific or irrelevant. The progress it values is “narrowly defined; it consists solely of progress toward the Monofuture”, says Greer.

Therefore, it is a fair assertion to view the singular focus and Western-biased methodology of some future studies as a form of monofuturism, which seeks to define plausible futures through a culturally narrow lens.

If you were to go one step further and risk ire from the futurist community at large, most of the field and the enforcing of structured methodologies across other regions and cultures is nothing more than colonialism, seeking to pathologise indigenous futures (or in many cases now, a form of technocolonialism).

Polyfuturism, therefore, seeks to champion a world where multiple, culturally distinct futures coexist. It explicitly advocates for one world, many futures, embracing diverse cultural visions rather than a single dominant and Western narrative. For instance, indigenous futures thinking often conceives of time as cyclical, spiral, or multitemporal, where past, present, and future are not separable but converge into perpetual becoming. This challenges the Western linear view of progress, which has contributed to our current crises by privileging economic growth over sustainability, and where the only answer to a crisis is either to throw more money at the problem or invent a new technology that circumvents it entirely, creating its own set of issues in the process.

In other words, I want to see polyfuturism as a direct counter to the typical techno-authoritarian nihilism we find ourselves surrounded by in abundance today.

I can take this idea a step further by including Leah Zaidi’s essay on polytopias, adding another dimension to this counter-narrative.

The word polytopia means “many places”. Unlike dystopias and utopias — which begin or end on the precipice of change — polytopias show the change from one state to another. They are stories that depict many people, many places, at many times. They demonstrate the incremental steps required to shift a system and how those systems interact with people along the way. Polytopias aim to capture the complexity and nuances of change itself.

A polytopia, meaning many places, focuses on the complex process of change itself, showing how systems evolve through incremental steps. This approach moves beyond the static, idealised endpoint of a monofuture and instead focuses on the messy, nuanced reality of creating change. This directly opposes monofuturism, which presents a final destination without a realistic roadmap.

Even when futurists use methods like backcasting, this may not be enough to rid themselves of their own monocultural view of the future. If the desirable future is defined narrowly, without broad, multicultural input, the process simply becomes a logistical exercise in achieving a preconceived monofuture (and we’re back to Greer’s beef with the typical view of what that future should look like). It risks creating a rigid, prescriptive path that ignores the complexity and nuances of change that Zaidi argues are essential to capture. Polytopia aligns with iterative planning and acknowledges the coexistence of multiple plausible futures, stressing diverse cultural stakeholder experiences over a singular, best future vision.

And without polyfuturism, any attempts to even consider what a desirable future looks like fails at the first hurdle.

But we’re not finished yet. We have another poly to discuss, and it’s not a parrot. We’re in the perfect storm now to talk about the polycrisis we find ourselves in.

A polycrisis is a situation of multiple, interconnected crises that amplify each other’s negative impacts, making them more complex and difficult to manage. Researchers frequently use terms such as global problematique, a civilisational challenge, a metaproblem, a set of wicked problems, and a VUCA world (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) to describe this very condition. This context requires new ways of thinking and action, moving beyond the business as usual attitudes of the dominant, Western-thinking futurologists.

In this context, where multiple global crises like climate change, inequality, and institutional distrust intersect and compound and multiply the effects of each other, the limitations of a monofuturistic approach become abundantly clear, and the need for polyfuturism becomes urgent.

Complex problems need diverse solutions, not monolithic, monofuturistic and technologically deterministic visions. Polyfuturism and Polytopia thrive in this complexity by encouraging the exploration of multiple possibilities that aren’t driven by Western monofuturism.

In a polycrisis, there is a “lack of confidence about our ability to solve major problems” and a sense of “powerlessness”, according to Slaughter. Polyfuturism, particularly Indigenous Futurisms and Afrofuturism, offers tools for “radical imagination and inclusion” by giving voices to the previously marginalised. In their Guardian essay, ‘How Afrofuturism can help us imagine better futures worth living in’, both writers Lonny Avi Brooks and Reynaldo Anderson assert that “another world is not only possible but already being built” and that “Afrofuturism provides tools to envision alternative futures ethically grounded in the Black experience.”

And yet, Western visions of how to deal with a polycrisis ignore any cultural input. And when they do, it’s typically at the hands of a Western institution or futurist think tank as a token of inclusion for a piece of research, not as the predominant cultural influence.

Even the UNESCO publication, “Local Knowledge, Global Goals”, recognises that indigenous and local knowledge is vital for understanding, mitigating, and adapting in the face of a polycrisis such as climate change, environmental degradation, and biodiversity loss all at the same time. These knowledge systems, developed through long histories of interaction with natural surroundings, inform decision-making about daily life and are integral to cultural practices, and as such, should be front and centre of any future studies methodology, not just a token inclusion at the expense of Western-centric ideas.

Acknowledging the need to incorporate diverse cultural visions rather than a single dominant Western narrative is critical now. Each variant, such as Afrofuturism, Indigenous futurisms, Queer futurism, Latinx futurism, Sinofuturism, and Polynesian futurism, offers distinctive themes and can enrich policy and participatory foresight strategies but need to be held with equal, if not greater regard, when considering future scenarios.

At the risk of repeating myself, I’m going to end here. I’ve come to realise that rather than being continually annoyed at the futurist community for being how they are and ranting about it, I need to focus on something else instead. I need to unlearn almost 15 years of foresight practice and industry analysis, keynote speaking, and writing, and build on the concepts of polyfuturism and engage and learn more with and from others at the coal face in their regions and indigenous communities who practice futurism their way.

As a white male, based in the United Kingdom, and from an Italian immigrant background, it’s going to be an interesting challenge indeed to detach from Western-conceived notions and visions of science fiction and the future I’ve read about all my life but frankly, I need this and I dare say, so does the rest of the profession if it’s ever to grow and be taken seriously again.