Future Design as a Metacognitive Intervention for Presentism

Many important problems occur due to the incompatibilities between the interests of the present generation and the welfare of future generations, and thus the preset generation my well be captured by presentism. Drawing on the theoretical framework of metacognition, the present study investigated how presentism is overcome by the Future Design intervention incorporating the imaginary future generation setting. Four participants to the workshops were interviewed and the transcriptions were transcribed. There were two major findings. We identified narratives of the participants suggesting that metacognition was active during the workshops, concerning the two cognitions which were governed by the present and future selves. Second, the narratives identified above were classified into two categories and the two corresponding roles of the metacognition were identified: monitoring & controlling function and harmonizing function. The former is essential for the acquisition of the identity as a future person, and the latter is essential for making it coherent with the identity as a present person. The present study proposes the view that Future Design is a tool of intervention with individuals’ metacognition concerning the choice of the reference point in the time axis from which to view the past, present, and future of the society, rather than a tool to naively motivate individuals to care for future generations.