Self-Fulfilling Futures

“What ends up happening in the world, on a very, very large level, has a lot to do with what people believe will happen. Because these things are self-fulfilling — when enough people start to believe in a certain future outcome, their subconscious ends up acting on their behaviors, and that outcome ends up kind of happening. And so I think it’s so important to put forth beautiful, and also believable, visions of how things can be in the future, because then many people will believe in these things, and then those things will begin to come true.

And, conversely, this is why it’s so dangerous to do this kind of fear-mongering, cynical hopelessness you see every time you turn on the cable news or open up a newspaper — because if people are exposed to that enough, that’s what they will believe the future is going to be like, and they’ll start to act accordingly, and that’s what we’ll get.”

– Cowbird founder Jonathan Harris.