The Dubai Future Forum Key Insights Report 2025 reminds us that the future is not only something to prepare for, but something we can design for and shape with care. At our recent What if Wednesday we focused on Key Insight #7 The Future is Long Lives Lived Well. This insight might have lead to conversations about gene editing, predictive analytics, lab grown organs, personal health data and genomic literacy. We didn’t look at these in depth but our conversations were grounded in purpose, meaning, connection and dignity. What is a long life well lived? We explored this insight using the Seven Provocations developed by Simon Fuglsang Østergaard, Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies. This is a new method for making provocation a structures and standalone foresight practice.
The Background
Ōtautahi Christchurch is a city of curiosity and creativity. On the first Wednesday of each month a small, random group of people connect to the Ōtautahi Futures Collective meets over breakfast to explore futures thinking, signals of change, connections and collisions. It is one way of continuing to exercise our futures muscles and grow futures fluency one conversation at a time.
At our recent What if Wednesday our conversations provoked us to consider the benefits of long lives lived well and how long lives and lives lived well are interconnected. What is the weave of leaving a legacy and simply trying to live longer. As technologies advance rapidly they may enhance our bodies but living well may not be enhanced. As always, our conversations were far reaching, as you will see from this post!
Note that the image used for this post is a photo I took of Kate Sheppard’s headstone in Addington Cemetery. Kate was a key New Zealand suffragist known for organising the 1893 Women’s Suffrage Petition which resulted in New Zealand becomg the first country to establish universal suffrage. A life lived well?
Some Key Insights
Living Well is different for each of us
The Sunscreen Song was offered as a song that anchored much of our discussion: “Life is long and the race is only with yourself.”
A long life lived well isn’t about ticking boxes, or even about the longevity of our time. It’s about hope, connection, and belonging – all points referenced in the Dubai Insights. The conversation kept returning to the fundamentals that matter enormously as we age – human contact, calm, and a sense of place in the world.
Uncomfortable Truths
The Provocation that led to the deepest conversation was The Uncomfortable Truth. Some of the questions that framed our initial conversations were:
#6: THE UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH
Provocation: What uncomfortable or inconvenient “truths” about the future are being consciously or subconsciously avoided?
- What if people live longer but cease to have healthcare provided after 70 years old?
- What if generative AI created viruses wipe out all elders and babies?
- What if all rest homes closed over night?
- Should a person have the right to say, “I’ve had enough”? And if so, who holds that choice?
- “What happens when life stretches long but the connections that give it meaning begin to fall away?
In discussing this last question we discussed whether a long life is desirable, especially without family to hold you dear:
You are a grandmother 101years old. Over time, family members pass away. Friends die. Your partner died 20 years ago. Some friends develop dementia, so even the possibility of real conversation disappears. You become “uncoupled” — no longer on parity with the people who once shared your world. This isn’t a gradual, gentle fading. It is a series of losses that stack up over years, each one narrowing the world a little further. The people who knew you when you were young, who shared your references and your history, are gone. What’s left can be a kind of loneliness. It isn’t just the absence of company, but the absence of being truly known.
Is Ageing Really the Great Leveller?
There’s a common assumption that retirement and old age equalise us so that eventually, we all face the same vulnerabilities regardless of what came before. Is this the reality though?
If you have significant financial assets, you have access to tools, treatments, and environments designed to extend and enrich life. If you’re navigating later years with limited resources, or are among the growing number of women who have separated from partners and are struggling to make ends meet, the experience of ageing looks very different.
Ageing may be universal. But the conditions in which we age are not.
The Power of Imagination and Debate
Recommendations are a starting point — not an endpoint. When they’re treated as must-dos, they can actually discourage people from taking risks and trying new things.
Even vampire mythology and cryogenic sleep entered the discussion. If you lived for 2,000 years, would you eventually grow weary of the world? If you slept for 35 years and woke to find everything changed, what would that do to your sense of meaning?
Recommendation of a book The Measure, where each person receives a piece of string indicating how long they’ll live. Some characters open the envelope. Others don’t. We saw this as an example of provocation #The Flip
#1: THE FLIP
Provocation: What if a key assumption about the future unfolds in a fundamentally different or even opposite direction from what you expect about the future?
Would knowing how long you will live change how you live?
Matauranga: An Eight Provocation
An eighth provocation was provided by Ellie Archer. Elle challenged us to explore a long life lived well through a completely different world view. I love this on so many levels including the challenge to assumptions, the importance of context and acknowledging the huge value that Elle provides in the futures space.
#8: THE MĀTAURANGA [from Elle Archer]
Provocation: What if mātauranga tells us that a ‘long life lived well’ is the wrong measure altogether?
A mātauranga lens might shift the unit of measurement away from the individual altogether, toward whakapapa, contribution, relationship, mauri and what is carried forward. Did the whenua flourish? Did my whānau flourish? Did I strengthen the collective? What knowledge did I receive, grow and transmit? What choices did I make that increased the agency and possibilities available to those coming after me?
In response to the follow up probe: “if this measure grew wings what would the future look like?” Elle commented as follows:
Imagine if that became the measure we designed policy, investment, health, technology and public services around. We might stop optimising systems primarily for individual longevity and short-term outputs, and start designing for intergenerational flourishing.
Maybe the question isn’t ‘Did I live a long life well? Maybe it is ‘Did life flourish because I was here, and will it continue to flourish after I’m gone?’
Using the Provocations
New Zealanders tend to avoid confrontation, but the ability to hold a debate, to argue a position you don’t personally hold, to sit with an uncomfortable truth are skills worth developing.
The Provocations provide a way of stretching our thinking beyond the familiar and they provided a useful springboard to frame our conversations. We didn’t go through them one at a time but used them to ignite curiosity. That is one of the purposes of our What if Wednesdays – what I call #futuresflossing our brains in support of #futuresfluency. In an uncertain world this is a leadership skill we all need to keep developing, while having a bit of fun along the way.
Next Steps
We decided to continue the conversation, with an extra WiW online to explore books, movies etc that relate to each of the provocations. It should be a lot of fun. And we haven’t even started to dig into gene editing, predictive analytics, lab grown organs, personal health data and genomic literacy!
Get in touch if you want to join us or have a book or resource to contribute to the provocations. And likewise if you have ideas to share about a long life lived well please share them with us.
