Beyond Fairness: Seeding New Possibilities for Our Future
This article was originally published on the Association of Professional Futurists website on January 6, 2025.
This isn’t a critique, it’s a wonderment—a playful exploration of what might be possible when we think about the future.
The United Nations, Summit of the Future, and subsequent Pact for the Future, (which includes the Declaration on Future Generations) introduced the concept of “intergenerational fairness” (IGF) as a guiding principle—ensuring that our decisions today don’t harm future generations.
It’s a solid foundation, but I can’t help but wonder: Could we aim higher? Could we plant the seeds for something more transformative, even within the often rigid frameworks of institutions such as the UN?
The Power of Language and Frames
As Paulo Freire taught us through popular education, “You read a word, you read the world,” the language we use shapes how we understand the world and, more importantly, what we believe is possible. From the work of the FrameWorks Institute, we know that how we frame an issue directly influences the solutions we imagine.
So when we talk about “fairness,” we might unintentionally limit our thinking to a transactional model—balancing scales, distributing harm, and managing resources. Fairness, as a frame, feels safe. But it’s also static. It doesn’t invite us to question the very systems that created the inequities we’re trying to address.
The emerging field of Possibility Studies offers a provocative counterpoint. Rather than focusing on what is fair within the confines of existing systems, Possibility Studies asks us to stretch our imaginations and explore what could be. It encourages us to see beyond what’s feasible within current structures and to unlock more expansive visions of justice and thriving. What new futures could we envision if we freed ourselves from the transactional language of fairness?
From Fairness to Flourishing: A Relational Shift
Let’s add to this reframing work the insights from Nora Bateson’s practices with warm data, which teach us that the world is not a series of isolated issues, but an intricate web of relationships. Through the practices of the Warm Data Lab (side note, thrilled to be a host!) we learn to “look in other ways so that we might find other species of information and new patterns of connection not visible though current methodologies.”
In this light, fairness begins to feel a bit inadequate, even cold. Fairness assumes that the future is separate from us—a distant entity to whom we must be fair. But what if we viewed future generations as an integral part of an ongoing, dynamic relationship? The future isn’t something we simply hand off like an inheritance; it’s a living system that we are actively co-creating.
Here’s where multisolving comes in—a concept that asks us to see problems and solutions as interwoven, complex, and requiring approaches that solve multiple issues at once. Fairness might get us part of the way there, but it doesn’t fully account for the messy, interconnected reality of the world we live in. To create a future where all can thrive, we need more than a balance of resources or harms—we need a mindset of co-flourishing, where our responsibility is to nurture conditions that allow both the present and the future to thrive together.
Reframing Justice: From Fairness to Belonging
This leads us to the work of the Othering & Belonging Institute. They remind us that justice isn’t just about fairness; it’s about creating the conditions for genuine belonging. In a frame of belonging, we aren’t merely ensuring that future generations get their “fair share”; we’re asking deeper questions, such as: Are we creating systems that allow everyone to flourish, across generations? and, Are we fostering an environment where future generations feel connected, rooted, and empowered by the decisions we make today?
This relational approach to justice goes beyond fairness to embrace something more transformative. It asks us to see ourselves in relation to others—across time, space, and systems. And it calls on us to dismantle the structures that perpetuate harm, rather than just redistribute resources more equitably within those structures.
Playing with Language: Inventing New Possibilities
Here’s where I want to have a little fun. If fairness isn’t enough, what could be? What if we didn’t just stick with the frames we’ve inherited, but instead invited new language that helped us think more expansively?
Possibility Studies gives us permission to experiment with new words and concepts—words that reflect a more generative, creative relationship to the future. Maybe we borrow from symbiogenesis, the biological process where new forms of life are created through cooperation and mutual benefit. Perhaps we invent our own mash-up: flourish-forwarding or recipro-generation. The point isn’t to land on the perfect term right away—it’s to open ourselves up to new ways of thinking, to move beyond the limitations of fairness and explore more creative, regenerative concepts.
Language, as the popular education movement reminds us, is a tool of liberation. When we play with words, we’re playing with possibilities. And when we unlock new possibilities, we open the door to more just and vibrant futures.
Seeding Possibility in Bureaucratic Systems
So, where does this leave us with something like the Summit of the Future’s “intergenerational fairness” concept? I don’t think we need to throw it out, but rather, let’s wonder together: How far can we stretch it? Can we infuse this concept with more dynamism, more relational thinking, and a greater sense of belonging?
Possibility Studies and the work on narrative power mapping from the ReFrame Institute show us that even within bureaucratic systems, there’s room for new ideas to take root. We can reframe fairness not as an end, but as a beginning—a starting point for more radical imagination. And once we reframe it, we can seed more transformative possibilities in how we think about justice for future generations.
This image was generated with the assistance of AI
Moving Toward Flourishing
Fairness is a good place to start, but let’s not stop there. Let’s keep asking: Are we building systems that allow future generations to flourish? Are we fostering belonging? And most importantly, are we daring to imagine something more expansive, more creative, and more alive?
In the end, this isn’t just about fairness; it’s about how we show up in the world today to build the future we want tomorrow. It’s about how we think, how we talk, and how we dream together. And maybe, just maybe, we can plant the seeds for something beyond fairness—something that invites all of us, across generations, into a shared, thriving future.
Image Credits
Image was created with the assistance of DALL·E 2.
MURAL board from Beyond Fairness activity, created by amalia deloney.
Ibid.