Future Think: How to Think Clearly in a Time of Change

Chapter 16. Self-Defeating and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

You are now fully aware that if we don't escape the mental baggage that traps us, the human tendency is to project the known present into the future. The result generally, as Mark Twain wrote, is that we get “wholesale returns of conjecture out of a trifling investment of fact.” But some people can envision a different future. What often happens with them, depending on how effectively they communicate their visions, is that their prophecies become either self-fulfilling or self-defeating. They can actually change the future; they can make it happen, or they can prevent it from happening.

Example #1: Orwell and Gates

George Orwell gives us a perfect example of the self-defeating prophecy. ...