CULTURE, VALUES, THEORIES

The Western science paradigm has a tendency to give priority to 'hard' facts, empirical testing of theories against reality and, through testing, to change hypotheses to fit the past or present reality.

However, we need to deal much more adequately with potential reality i.e. the future. It won't do to just extrapolate from the trends we know today because history teaches us that life is full of unexpected events, good as well as bad.

The need to study the future - although it is not here yet, one may say - is part and parcel of TFF's work (and name). True peace is a future project, a project of and for the future.

Science and research are necessary approaches, but we can't do without intuition, imagination, curiosity, creativity, etc. - in short, the arts and other cultural expressions.

Whatever we do this very minute will leave footprints in the future, sometimes very far away in space and time. While the world has grown smaller, time and space have grown larger through the technical power humans have developed. The understanding of everything's inter-connectedness is a fundamentally new paradigm and it, too, compels us to be more humble than before, to see ourselves as one among many species and to, therefore, leave anthropocentrist concepts behind. Empathy is needed where individualism used to reign.



Over the rainbow, skies are blue...

The ways in which we think are part of the culture to which we belong - some call it our world view or cosmology, the deep-seated structures which tell us what is 'natural' and what is 'us' rather than 'them'. You may also say that these are the dimensions of life that most take for granted.

TFF is around to challenge perceptions that do not challenge Western cosmology and to help bring about new ways of thinking about defence, security, development and peace.

Our most important tools for doing that are of course: field work, the internet (website with sub-pages and social media) plus all kinds of university and public education.

Particularly through our "Imagine A Better World" community we hope to engage people of many and different walks of life - in academia, of course, but even more so outside academic circles - in culture, arts, business and future-oriented, constructive social activism.



Articles on these issue can be found at many places in our archives and on the Associates and Themes Blog, but we suggest you begin here.