Future's Literacy

In this episode of Conscious Conversations, Riel Miller, futurist, economist, and pioneer of Futures Literacy, joins Mmabatho Montse to explore the ethical, philosophical, and deeply personal dimensions of anticipation. Together, they unpack how coloniality, productivity culture, and structural violence have distorted humanity’s relationship with time, imagination, and learning.The conversation journeys through Miller’s reflections on his global experiences, interrogating the arrogance of certainty and the seductive illusion of mastery over the future. They examine how Futures Literacy is not a technocratic tool but a competency—a practice of humility, openness, and radical unknowing. The dialogue emphasises the importance of imagination as a communal, embodied capacity, not confined to abstract thinking but deeply rooted in relationality, ancestral continuity, and spiritual discernment. Central to this discussion is the interrogation of institutional metrics of success, the commodification of knowledge, and how dominant systems coerce the imagination into predictable, extractive patterns. Mmabatho and Riel reflect on the urgent need to reframe education, development, and leadership as anticipatory, emergent, and deeply ethical practices. This episode is an invitation to decolonise how we imagine, to reclaim the power of play, and to nurture an imagination that is attuned to difference, mystery, and collective becoming. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Riel-Miller