Futures Day 2025: The shared journey of humanity and nature
Finland will celebrate Futures Day on March 7, 2025. This national theme day annually encourages all Finns to contemplate the future actively in March. This year's theme is peace in its many forms—including world peace, peace of mind, peace at work, peace with nature, or any personally chosen perspective on peace. In this blog, I will examine peace with nature and ponder long-term futures spanning a million years.
Antinranta: Soiva Tuleva 2024 artwork
Longtermism: A Look to the Future
In his book "What We Owe the Future," William MacAskill introduces the concept of longtermism. It emphasizes that we are only at the beginning of humanity's developmental journey. If we – Homo Sapiens – survive as a species as long as a typical mammal species, which is about a million years, we are still in the early stages of our species evolution. You and I are the "ancients" whose decisions and essence future humans will evaluate from their world perspective.
MacAskill warns us against locking in our current values as guidelines for the future and reminds us of the plasticity of the present. Longtermism encourages us to think long-term and delay the end of civilization as far as possible. I would like to see longtermism as a step away from anthropocentrism and appreciate the natural ecosystem as a whole. We should delay the end of the nature we know as much as possible—humans are just one piece of this puzzle.
Peace with Nature: Connection to the environment
Peace with nature is one way to examine our relationship with it. It emphasizes nature's importance for our well-being: spending time in nature lowers blood pressure, reduces stress, and improves overall well-being. While walking on asphalt surfaces in the densely built urban core during the summer heat, the thought arises: if only a green area were here to cool down and relax. When discussing urban nature, we use the term "biotope" – a habitat type. Such an urban biotope could be, for example, a forest or a traffic area influenced by humans. Did you know that the most common biotope for example in Tampere's urban core was, at least in 2007, the roadside slope? (Tuomisto, T. 2007).
When the world is stormy and the morning news brings tears, we creatures of nature seek solace in things that remain constant. We can gaze at the stars in the sky or find peace in the forest; some turn to the church. We can be relatively sure that the stars will still be in the sky tomorrow, whereas signs of biodiversity loss are measurable and visible all around us. We should be concerned.
Imagining the future: Prototypes of peace
The goal of Futures Day 2025 is to collect and share online 1,001 future prototypes of peace. This theme day encourages us to imagine and experiment with the future as we would like to see it. Together, we can create a vision of a future where peace and coexistence are central. I view the future from the perspective of active hope: there is hope as long as there is action – on a large scale, results come when enough people take action.
I invite you to create your prototype of peace and share it on social media. On Futures Day, I will also publish my prototype of peace with nature. I have previously pondered my personal relationship with nature, for example, in my work "Soiva Tuleva," which concretizes future natural landscapes through sound. The sense of not belonging and the disconnection from one's natural source are significant root causes underlying other problems. A strong connection to nature grounds strengthens and purifies, and it should be sought and cherished amidst the chaos of the modern world.
Participate in Futures Day 2025!
Peace is not merely the absence of war but harmony, understanding, and coexistence. On March 7, 2025, the national theme day Tulevaisuuspäivä —Futures Day in Finland—offers an opportunity to reflect on how we can promote these values in our society.
I invite you to participate in Futures Day and share your own perspective on peace. The Futures Day tip list offers different ways to participate in the day's activities (in Finnish).
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'Auri' Annina Antinranta, a future artist and service designer specializing in environmental sustainability, co-founded the Finnish Futures Day. She makes future visions visible through various art methods and designs services for companies and organizations according to sustainable development principles.
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Sources:
William MacAskill: What We Owe the Future – A Million-Year View.