Insights of a 90-Year Old Futurist
Every now and then, an experience opens your mind so that nothing looks or feels the same again. This is true of my meeting with Myra Harpham, 90-year old futurist, feminist, scientist, activist, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. Myra was the co-director of the Commission for the Future (CFF), New Zealand’s first and only central government futuring organisation, which operated from 1976 till 1982 and had the broad mandate to explore future possibilities for New Zealand’s society and economy. I was lucky enough to visit Myra and her husband Perce in their retirement village near Wellington and share lunch and conversations over two afternoons. What I learnt has shifted my perspective profoundly. Myra and I in her home June 2021 Learning for the Future Myra is clearly brilliant academically, but it was another aspect of her intelligence that inspired me most - an ability to see beneath the surface level of events and personalities to identify the ideas, beliefs and values ...