Hypothesis:
Set against the rich tapestry of mankind’s evolution on this planet our current era seems increasingly to be characterised (at least through Western eyes) by escalating disquiet on so many different fronts. The scent of suffering and uncertainty hangs eerily in the air - the hint of fragrance perceptible only to those who have become attuned to a gnostic sensitivity informed by cross-cultural meme assimilation.
A feeling that our world is spinning even further out of control is made all the more palpable by three overwhelming factors:
- Asymmetric affluence in the post-industrial world compared to the crushing poverty, inequality and injustice experienced by citizens elsewhere.
- Western petulance and hubris that allows empires in decline to believe it is their exclusive right to resolve all their autogenous problems - even if they had the capacity to do so, which they do not.
- Our willingness to reject serious public discourse in lieu of distracting media commentaries that divert collective attention via a squalid mix of sanitized news, entertaining pap and a seemingly endless parade of celebrities behaving badly.
Linear progress itself has become a dangerous delusion. One has only to reflect on the news headlines that bombard us throughout our waking hours: an unremitting nightmare of horror, corruption, ecological catastrophe and the spiralling costs of even the most basic elements required to sustain life – cheap food, potable water and plentiful energy. In all of this turmoil human empathy has gone missing. Purer intentions have been lost. We are in thrall to materialism; obsessed by economic and political power in ways that could easily wreck our way of life - if the past collapse of previous civilizations is any judge.
The future is indeed grim if we remain adrift in circumstances that threaten to undo everything beneficial, abundant and beautiful we have struggled to establish.
Unknowingly perhaps, but frighteningly real nevertheless, our collective actions have spawned almost perfect conditions for the mass extinction of Homo sapiens. The truly terrifying spectre is that we have developed an awareness to know this is the case as well as the intelligence to do something about it. But is it too late for wisdom to prevail?
Over the coming decades we will need to redesign the material basis of our civilization. We have no collective cognition of how to do this. There are no narratives in the archives of antiquity to which we can refer. There is no process flow chart. No rule book. No training manual. No compass directing us towards more desirable futures.
Nor is there much leadership evident as yet. Indeed the very premise of hierarchical leadership may alienate the impulse required of us to transition. The few rare cases of politicians, bureaucrats and business tycoons who do care appear traumatised by the extent, scale and complexity of the problems facing us. Like rabbits caught in the headlights, their inclination is to wait and to wonder, or to make attempts to be seen to be doing something but with little aligned commitment and action. Astonished by global forces they happily unleashed, particularly their systemic nature and fickle twists and turns, most leaders seem paralysed within the here and now of “business as usual”. Except now there can be no such thing.
As a consequence their reactions are typically confined to an evasion of long-term issues, a denial of the limits imposed by physics and an assumption that we are all witness to the same truths and aspire to similar goals. Denying realities that resist conventional analysis they choose instead to quibble about today’s trivia in a concern to protect national interests, dithering and chattering about matters that are ultimately of little consequence.
But wait. Perhaps we have been looking in the wrong places for workable solutions. Despair, after all, does not loom large in humanity’s chronicles. The human spirit is far too resilient and adventurous for that. Optimism and hope can spread its wings given the chance.
Already an emerging consciousness is evident in certain quarters, particularly among the young who are not weighed down by the gravitational pull of the past and also in parts of the world relatively unsullied by the crushing dominance of the prevailing materialism of the civilizational worldview. This is especially apparent in parts of Asia and across the Global South.
In pockets around the world a cadre of enlightened, purposeful and interconnected individuals is emerging. Many of these people live in places where their voices have been hard to hear above the din of imperially mandated bluster. Their ideas, often transcending discrete cultures, ideologies and history, have been routinely excluded from mainstream debate because of poverty, geography, ostracism and oppression. Which is insane. Their unique experiences can help us comprehend what needs to be done and we need to listen loudly to propositions that offer genuine alternatives to the overbearing Western paradigm that locks us into a cycle of endless economic growth, escalating production and excessive consumption.
But in order for these new voices to be heard, their ideas incorporated into global dialogue and their advice acted upon, we all need to think differently. Innovation has to embed at the level of human purpose and needs to be reflected in society’s institutions. Only then might we create a context that allows us to see differently. And seeing differently is necessary if we are to behave differently.
Releasing us from the shackles of current dogma will not be easy. The way forward cannot be found in finely-tweaked approaches to political convention, competitive states or bullying nations - even less in continuing to dominate nature or ignoring the impact of seven billion people on the Earth’s biosphere. On the contrary it will mostly likely be embodied within yet-to-manifest knowledge – at the interface between past, present and possible, in what I refer to as epistemological foresight.
Epistemological foresight implies reaching back into past patterns as well as forward into future possibilities in more integral and substantive ways. Integral hindsight and integral foresight are warp and weft - part of the same dance: we need both in order to liberate the wisdom that lies within the expanded now of new consciousness.
Epistemological foresight has rarely been used as an enabler of intentional evolutionary design and it is no accident that the overwhelming narrative in today’s society is one of futile blandness. Foresight as most commonly practiced (with its emphasis on coherent trends and its appropriation by pop science, engineering and technology) oscillates between tedious logic at one extreme and seductive clairvoyance at the other. Too many futuring projects remain prisoners of convention. Why?
For one thing foresight has become just another instructional toolkit. It is no longer transformative, either in form or content. Furthermore it has become paralysed by a cognitive paradox: we seek to understand an indistinct future using patterns and metrics decipherable only from past performance. Our basic tenet, that we are able to discern future signals of consequence, even defining their characteristics, assumes a humility evidenced by few foresight practitioners. Therefore our ability to anticipate significant inflections and signals relies far too heavily on the recognition of past patterns – the antithesis of foresight!
The great French 20th century philosopher Henri Bergson asserted that the tools of the mind become a burden on our imagination when the environment that made them so necessary no longer exists or has morphed into something quite different. I believe we have unwittingly allowed the practice of foresight to fall into that trap.
It follows that the future praxis of strategic foresight offers us a rare opportunity to create unique value through demolishing orthodoxies that are well past their shelf life while liberating new wisdom. Whatever form that might take, and whatever tools are used for that purpose, we must remain mindful that the ultimate goal is (a) to design engaging methods for imagining viable pathways that (b) shed light on how we can make provision for the future needs of humanity (c) in ways that lead to more intelligent, resilient choices and through the demonstration of more coherent, empathetic collaboration than has previously been possible.
Epistemological foresight[i] (a deeply resonant framework for comprehending and reacting to panarchic[ii] relationships at a paradigmatic level in which intuition and reason are interwoven across individual and collective levels of human experience) offers us one such pathway. But only as long as we remain open to the implicit systemic and existential challenges this framework introduces. The most difficult of these challenges is the need to transcend the civilizational worldview to which most of humanity unconsciously subscribes in one way or another.
Epistemological Pathologies
The civilizational worldview is as natural to us as the air we breathe. We are unconscious of any other framework. And while some of us may resist certain facets of this worldview at an instinctive level we still respond autonomically to its general principles - an implicit framework guiding meaning-making and which we assume to be just a normal part of being human. In effect it is the life-condition we discern, experience each day of our lives, and in which we are immersed from birth.
This worldview has endured at least since feudal times and possibly much longer. Along the way it has been reified by sundry beliefs related to human purpose and capability, tested by competing ideologies and sustained by five moral impulses.[iii]
These theories, ideologies and impulses have been progressively moulded into a set of deeply ingrained tenets defining what the majority of humanity believes to be real and consequently incontrovertible truths concerning the human condition:
- A ruling power elite serviced by a cooperative yet subservient underclass of slaves or serfs
- Wealth and power acquired by the elite at the serfs’ expense and protected via (state) political, military or policing mechanisms
- An all-encompassing religious or mythical structure (in which the elite are commonly depicted as representatives of a deity or divine beings) typically used to manufacture consent
- An industrial war machine viewed as a crucial, often principal, driver of the economy and in which all aspects of production are controlled by the elite (through such things as language, access and skills acquisition etc.)
- Sport, entertainment, education and media are used as a social distraction in ways that help maintain compliance within the social order
- Nature and the environment are exploited as a “god given” right
- An irresistible narrative within society based upon competition, indifference and scarcity - rather than cooperation, empathy and abundance.
This set of seven attributes does not imply a universally applicable monist integrity. On the contrary our worldview is a chameleon, changing its tone, color and intensity according to its surroundings or, in a social context, its culture. But the critical thing to appreciate is that this worldview was invented by us. It is a social construction and, as such, can be remodeled - if that is what we want.
Consequently a more profound dimension of the worldview that we must take into account is the variances that occur within and between different cultural mindsets. The fact that we do not take these mindsets into account most of the time is one of the most glaring reasons for transcultural misinterpretation and international follies.
Of course taking cultural mindsets and their associated value systems into account can complicate matters considerably. Let me explain. There are three overriding lenses in our current world-system: these are the Occidental, the Sinic and the Indic mindsets. Each aspires to perceive knowledge accurately yet interprets truth, beauty and goodness in different ways.
The Occidental mindset, for example, overwhelmingly sees reality as a logically explicable system of physical artifacts, calibrations and observable phenomena. This mindset has been dominated by scientific rationalism, in spite of the philosophical outcry cautioning us that this viewpoint only illumines a path to perdition. Indeed the German writer Goethe claims in Urfaustus that putting one’s faith in Newtonian principles is tantamount to selling one’s soul to the devil.
In comparison, the Indic mindset sets far greater store on iterative cycles of internal reflection and spiritual transcendence, the prominence accorded to the relationship of the individual soul to the manifestation of external phenomena amounting almost to an ecological metaphysic. The Sinic mindset is different again, cherishing balance in all things – the feminine yin and the masculine yang preserving a delicate equilibrium between extremes.
There are other secondary mindsets that were once considerably more important in locally circumscribed situations than they are today in a global context. The ancient Amerindian, African Ubuntu and various Indigenous mindsets, for example, hold far less sway in today’s world, largely because they signify values, relationships and ideals that do not sit comfortably with our addiction to material wealth and scientific progress. These islands of humanity serve as critically disregarded laboratories where gender, social order, symbiosis and persistent narrative can still inform many of our inquiries. For that very reason we should be paying much more attention to them, specifically in terms of how we might develop a greater consciousness of evolving to a less exploitative worldview where communities can live in harmony with each other and nature. But that may take a radical metanoia on the part of society at large.
Finally, to make things even more complicated, there are subtle hybrids that blur the granular distinctions between mindsets - as in the recent amalgam of the dominant contemporary mindsets across much of Asia, resulting in part from globalization as well as the (intended and unintended) remnants of imperialism.
Thus a multitude of different interpretations and understandings can materialize from societies functioning within differing cultural mindsets – to the extent that extreme behavioural divergence between them is often evident even though the worldview itself, we must always remember, is a shared phenomenon.
So, depending upon our cultural upbringing and mode of induction into the modern world-system, as well as an individual’s developmental stage of consciousness, we will inevitably perceive, translate and respond to any crisis within the civilizational worldview through a distorting lens and with an intensity that differs from one society to the next, reflecting deeply implanted cultural attributes.[iv]
Because of this we also have a tendency to apply differently nuanced operating models (including the language used to express priorities and principles) to policy, governance, organizational and management issues that may give the impression of contradictory interests and needs. This impression is part illusion and part fact. A reality check can be undertaken by comparing such apparently conflicting interests with how the five moral impulses play out in each case. These checks invariably surface basic needs and habits that are universally applicable to the human family, irrespective of other incidental and local factors.
It is only comparatively recently that there has been any rigorous critical appraisal of the civilizational worldview – something almost unattainable from within. But there are now sufficient numbers of highly complex, interconnected, escalating, seemingly irresolvable problems created or nourished by this worldview, that are leading many thoughtful individuals to question how much longer its entropic nature can persist before unraveling into chaos. This is not whimsy but a grave epistemological issue and one best suited to exploration through epistemological foresight.
Given diverse crises facing humanity[v], particularly the perfect storm of intersecting economic, energy and environmental issues, we are reluctantly coming to terms with the proposition that there are indeed fixed limits to orthodox models of growth and development it would be wise not to ignore.
The human condition cries out for an alternative paradigm - an ecology of mind crafted to be intentionally viable and resilient and based upon design criteria that will make provision for the needs of humanity as a whole rather than pandering to a wealthy minority. The case for a new design, together with the process of letting go of stuff we still take for granted, becomes apparent when we look at just one of the many crises facing us. Consider this passage….
A Case in Polarization: The Environment
Eleven of the past fourteen years have been the hottest on record. The Nepalese leadership recently held a cabinet meeting on Mount Everest in order to draw attention to rising temperatures that have dramatically reduced snowfall over the roof of the world. The government of the Maldives held a cabinet meeting underwater to highlight the threat of global warming to the low-lying Indian Ocean nation. In Bolivia, glaciers that hold the nation’s water supplies are rapidly dwindling. The Arctic is melting so fast the ice cap is likely to have disappeared by the end of the century. Even East Antarctica, long stable, is now losing ice.
Elsewhere drought, floods, earthquakes and fires wreak havoc. Deforested peat lands in Indonesia are drying out and burning and the future of the Amazonian rainforest is similarly endangered. In parts of Australia drought and flood, once cyclical, are now considered a permanent condition. Rivers everywhere, including the mighty Ganges, an inextricable part of India’s physical and cultural landscape, are drying up, leaving only desiccated earth and dust bowls. The marshlands between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, fabled site of the Garden of Eden, a land so rich in soil and water that it would quench the needs of its dwellers throughout eternity, emits the unmistakably pungent stench of a dying ecosystem.
Meanwhile the massive floods that killed hundreds of people in the Philippines this past summer are becoming the norm. Nor are such extreme weather events confined to the tropics or the polar regions. Agriculture in the United States was ravaged in 2010 by droughts in Texas and California, heat waves in Louisiana and Nebraska, floods in Minnesota and torrential rains in Illinois.
In Venice, a major trade hub and maritime power in the Middle Ages and still one of the most idyllic cities in the world, the number of permanent residents is hovering at around 60,000, having halved during the past fifty years. Why? Because Venice is sinking into its own foundations. Bangkok too, once romantically referred to as the Venice of the East and my home for the past six years, is sinking into coastal mud at an alarming rate of up to three centimeters each year.
Marine life, too, is being killed indiscriminately. Only 10 per cent of all large fish (both open ocean species including tuna, swordfish, marlin and large ground fish such as cod, halibut, skate and flounder) remain in the sea. Toxins and pollutants combined with current rates of ocean acidification could potentially deprive future generations of all wild seafood. We are now causing species to become extinct faster than they are being replaced.
On every continent desperate nomads are migrating further and further from traditional homelands, many of them inhabiting the vast urban metropolises which are now home to over 50 per cent of the world’s population. As many as 200 million people are destined to become climate migrants by 2050, destabilizing the global economy in a process that will inevitably result in escalating poverty, inequality and conflict.
As far as we can tell, this précis of accelerating climate change is not hyperbole but, on the contrary, a fairly measured evaluation of the contemporary predicament. When filtered through the rational lens of Newtonian physics and Darwinian evolution we observe a cataclysmic canvas. What is not commonly understood, and even less frequently stated, is that all these visible symptoms of a society and a planet in a state of distress are the predictable consequences of how we have deliberately designed things. They are a result of the civilizational worldview working as it was intended.
But is this the only truth? And, if so, is it adequate to comprehensively explain what is happening to the human species and to Earth? Is this depiction of an environment in stress the only possible interpretation? Let us examine the evidence more deeply through the lenses of different cultural mindsets.
1. The Occidental Lens: Environment in Crisis
To any reasonable witness schooled in the scientific method and Cartesian logic, no other reading can be put on the evidence. Pure reason demands that we construe the testimony as a crisis out there – a crisis located within the environment. That is what we know. All else is of little consequence.
But what if this is an inadequate or even an inaccurate image of reality? Could we be overlooking something significant by focusing only on what can be observed? Might there be vital information hidden within the collective gestalt for example? Much depends on where we choose to look - and through which lens.
At face value we interpret the evidence as a disturbing account of an environment in an acute state of collapse. Moreover, the causes look suspiciously anthropocentric. However, the subcutaneous code reveals an even more alarming prospect; namely the advancement of a morbid pathology where nature is perceived to be the problem to which we must urgently respond. But what should the nature of that response be? What treatment could possibly be effective in the circumstances?
The rational Occidental mind reacts instinctively in the belief that if technological thinking caused this problem then technology can also solve it. As a consequence we get caught up in predictable attempts to achieve a universal consensus through international legislation: laws, rules and processes designed to mitigate perceived threats by cutting the consumption of natural resources, slowing pollution from fossil fuels and adapting infrastructure. Is that a sufficient or even a sane response given that these attempts, too, seem to be failing? Or is such an impulse to regain control over nature merely hastening our self-destruction?
If our most basic hypotheses about how the universe works are correct then the various courses of action we see all around us, especially from governments as well as organizations like the UN, are probably sensible. If, however, our assumptions are categorically wrong (and there is a growing body of opinion that this is the case) nothing less than a fundamental change of mind concerning how we perceive reality is required. For without such a deep-seated metanoia it is highly improbable that more epistemologically appropriate solutions will emerge.
Let me be clear. The data contained within the statement we are examining are not untruths, although sometimes the hypothesis as conveyed may seem propaganda-like, especially to climate change cynics. On the contrary, the passage actually uses visible events to express a crisis in precisely the terms one might expect from the Occidental mindset: a series of observations with associated metrics, calibrations, statistics and analysis, all trying to make sense of the most subtle of changes in the external environment. My anxiety is threefold:
- Surveillance stops short at a critical juncture between sensing (what is going on) and making sense - in other words the opportunity to bring fresh insights from alternative epistemologies and different stages of consciousness into strategic prominence is ignored
- We impatiently disregard information hidden below the surface of our perceptions even though the process of meaning-making can be far more profound at the levels of cognition and emotion
- No attempt is made to integrate information from our individual and collective inner worlds – all attention is focused on the external world.
Also of concern is the content and tone of messages that play into the dominant media meme[vi] vis-à-vis climate change - one that is increasingly projected onto such subject matter through alarmist, at times almost hysterical articles, opinion pieces, websites, television news, cinematic fiction, summits and conferences. Containing a range of disconcerting details, statistics taken out of context and dumbed-down opinion, the green meme of impending human catastrophe has become the dominant global narrative within the context of our relationship to the environment and, not surprisingly, it is generating anxiety and paralysis within communities. Indeed it is a first-rate example of what happens when awareness of any situation is amplified but without any prior thought being given to the consequences of such raised awareness in the collective psyche.
Not surprisingly this meme underpins many of the scenarios saturating our waking hours - choking optimism and playing to our fears, doubts and superstitions in ways that abandon any sense of a better future. Scenarios depicting positive outcomes are scorned or considered irresponsible by the merchants of doom and gloom.
In this psychotic state almost everything about the past (including, of course, the socio-economic platform that gave rise to affluence and to modern lifestyles) takes on a romantic perspective, while almost everything about the future is couched in depressing terms. Regrettably our nostalgia for the past is a seductive lie. It merely engenders apathy. Instead of aspiring to fresh goals we do everything in our power not to lose that which we once had. Energy dissipates right there!
As a consequence zero-sum games remain the actuality. Entangled in a transition we never intended and hardly thought possible, one that threatens to depose some of our most fundamental tenets and over which we have seemingly less control by the day, we are traumatized by an ominous sense of foreboding and the ennui of uncertainty.
Instead of embracing an energizing potential for renewal, especially the possibility of attending to inequities generated by increasingly predatory forms of capitalism, we descend prematurely into melancholy, grieving for the sacrifice to come and striving to avoid the pain of disassociation. In most cases that just means carrying on with life, turning a blind eye to worsening forecasts and devastating events, doing what we can to protect our own parochial interests, and all the while putting our trust in promises of further economic expansion and growth when that is clearly the root cause of our current mess. How absurd!
In these circumstance is it really any wonder vast numbers of citizens just switch off, get angry, or try to deny the limits inherent in nature that stare us in the face? Why should it surprise us when individuals search for ways to evade discomfort and to conserve, or even improve, their present life-style? Why should we all not join those climate prosperity advocates who fearlessly seek to create even greater wealth from this crisis without so much as questioning the flawed foundations underpinning the notion of endless growth? Should we continue to belittle and censure those who simply hanker for the conspiracy theorists to be correct and the scientists wrong? Is it not human nature that we should turn our backs on a future seemingly devoid of any optimism or joy?
2. The Sinic Lens: Environment in Discord
Realizing that an existential ideal is harmonious existence, we observe that the course of industrial linearity (the extraction of resources, the industrial fabrication of consumables and the single-use throw-away mentality inherent in modern notions of consumption) is dissonant with phenomenology in the natural order.
For those systems long starved of methane and carbon dioxide, the thinning ice-sheets are breathing life back into organisms that humanity has misunderstood or ignored in terms of their role and consequence. Algae, viruses and bacteria bloom in a world filled with chemicals released by unconsidered acts.
Our response can be dual. On the one hand, we can see the emergence of these reinvigorated terrestrial forms as symbians with whom interaction can be positive. It is conceivable that the structure and energy of these dynamic agents can align with ours in abundant cohabitation. On the other hand, we can view these energies as alien intruders and choose to oppose their emergence. While evolution cautions that the second path is unlikely to prevail in the long view, rallying around a common defense is a timeliness component of species-evident values and, as a result, may serve as an impulse to aggregate in community.
Beyond duality we can choose a more transformational pathway, embracing the role of imprudent acts which triggered this dissonance but seeking pathways to re-establish harmony. This may mean remediating our unconsidered acts, having acknowledged them as such, as well as our complicity in their invention. It may also mean uniting in acts of reconciliation that connect us more aptly in our eleventh-hour efforts to develop a considered response to our unconsidered, collective neglect.
One can see this view in conflict in the past decade of economic and social activity in the People’s Republic of China. In the wake of the Kyoto Protocol discussions, China attempted to bridge its growing role as a world power with the post-imperialist concessions afforded in the aging paradigm under the moniker of developing nation. In response to perceived need for power, industrial scale agriculture, and projected evidence of achievement, the Three Rivers Gorge scheme became a “coming of age” project. Sold simultaneously as ecological (non-polluting) energy as well as evidence of engineering mastery, China chose an iconic symbol of power explicitly from nature – in this case, a river.
However, discord challenged the project from the outset. Irreplaceable cultural heritage was flooded. Communities were displaced. Technology to harness power was largely supplied by foreign entities. Scant attention was paid towards the environmental cost of production (entailing vast concrete and steel consumption) or utilization (a toxification of vital waterways threatening the health of millions).
Against the pollution of the waterways, however, has emerged a concerted effort by Chinese scientists to derive biofuel options from the various algaes that now blight the coastal waterways. Developments on algal agriculture, bacterial biodigesters and the like have emerged as centers of excellence in a country that seeks to balance Occidental metered growth with Sinic scaled engagement.
3. The Indic Lens: Environment in Dharmic Cycle
The world is as it is and we learn from our experiences. Humanity has come to the concluding stages of a process of awakening and passage through this dark stage is necessary if we are to reawaken with a new sense of being at a higher level of consciousness than before.
Prior to the industrial period we were not given the opportunity to acquire the value of reflective stewardship. Thus our understanding was compromised. Instead, our experiments with violence and with conflict (often amounting to trivial aggression over resources and territories and dominated by an imperial desire to kill, maim and impoverish for the selective opulence of a few) have come to mete lessons on those who saw themselves as beneficiaries of unconsidered systems.
These lessons must be embraced, instilled with the energy we previously released in callous and abusive behaviour, but in ways that express new models of engagement and relationship. Such is the path to enlightenment.
Those intoxicated by possessions and trapped within the current manifestation of reckless consumption will perish. But, in an awakened state, humanity will emerge more aware.
Perishing (should we embrace the process) will manifest as the eclipsing of those behaviors and memes that have dishonored matter, energy and spirit and the emergence of a refined engagement of the same in a new fashion. Perishing (should we enter into conflict with the process) will manifest as a violent retribution from matter, energy, and spirit abuse where the elements themselves will persist in destroying that which is triggering the immune response.
There is no path that does not involve destruction and there is no path that will not give rise to rebirth.
Many countries across Asia and the Global South are demonstrating collective responses that evidence the patterns emerging from the Indic mindset. In India itself, the retrofitting of compressed natural gas (CNG) in public transport vehicles in Delhi and throughout metropolitan centers has led to an immediate improvement in air quality the likes of which have occurred in few other places.
In the space of two years, pragmatism and public investment aligned to improve the air quality and living conditions of all as evidence of a notion of shared stewardship of the air. In post-Apartheid South Africa, resource management (including metals, gems, and energy) became the fulcrum for re-engagement of a national dialogue on resource stewardship and, through this context, social reconciliation was integrated into economic engagement. In Fiji rejection of colonial influences led to the provocative realignment of social order and systems.
Ironically, modern expressions of Indic philosophy include stark post-colonial reflexive social challenges in almost every incidence. However, as one examines these and other cases, what emerges is a clear prioritization on community and family accountability, in stark contrast to the abdication of such priorities for some apathetic caretaker state. This by no means suggests that bureaucracies are not flourishing and grossly ineffective in these states. But it is important to perceive the growing recognition of the role of the community unit rather than the collective apathy of displaced responsibility.
Intentional Evolution:
And so it seems there are far more inspiring alternatives to the enervating cynicism, uncertainties and increasingly shrill revelations of impending disaster that flood the Occidental mind daily. Stories that offer hope and intentions that chronicle a brighter future for all.
Human civilization is certainly in a state of transition. Indeed we may have reached a developmental crisis point, one that necessitates a redefinition of what we interpret to be progress. Yet while we can only analyze past transitions, the future paradigm still remains ours to invent. Along with technological revolutions, socio-economic crises offer exceptional opportunities to move to higher levels of evolution. We just need to be able to see the promise of societal renewal with greater clarity and conviction, which is why epistemology (the framework of understanding within which we make meaning) becomes so vital.
Contextual dynamics both establish and reflect dominant belief systems in the culture. An appreciation of context becomes particularly critical when so many of the ideas and institutions defining Western culture appear to be breaking down. This is the case today. It is the ideal time to be learning from diverse cultural traditions as an alternative to insisting upon the validity of a superior Occidental mindset, which is simply a delusion.
The Sinic and Indic traditions, as well as the various indigenous mindsets, enable an entirely different quality of reaction to the environmental crisis than that afforded through the Occidental lens.
Possibly the most profound transition in history, one that has taken hundreds of years so far and is still far from completion was the move away from pious notions of an infallible maker (or supreme being) to the concept of scientific materialism. Here it is the physical world that really counts. This shift required an across-the-board abandoning of deeply imprinted fears and fallacies. Predictably it led to the modern obsession with material goods and the acquisition of personal wealth. But evolution cannot stop there. We must move beyond even that phase of understanding.
Among the most vital of contemporary principles is the rejection of the idea of the world as a machine and the adoption of the world as a living system. The transition towards a new society instilled with such a fundamental ontological shift appears most likely to lead to a new holistic consciousness that integrates both science and spirit. Yet the practical realities of governing a global population of seven billion people still lag far behind conceptions.
In the past at least part of the problem was our inability or unwillingness to engage with really big issues (such as environmental degradation or property ownership) in any meaningful or constructive manner. Our inclination to delegate vital decisions to others (whether to dictators, monarchs, professional managers or councils of elected representatives) was deemed pragmatic. And our intransigent aversion to experience reality through an others perspective allowed us to live unconsidered lives. In reality this represented a disquieting social apathy – an ingrained passivity that is extremely difficult to overcome today. What is more it often allowed corruption, misconduct and oppression to thrive, to which we then turned a blind eye for fear of attracting still further repression. Many communities still suffer from that indifference today.
With the advent of today’s sophisticated communications systems and online social media, however, there can be no excuse. People are able to speak out and air their grievances, wielding power in ways that were previously out of the question. Dictators and governments fall at the hands of people power. Today, the voice of every citizen can be heard. Individuals can contribute to a global community of mind (a collective intelligence for change) should they wish to do so. Indeed some pundits argue the case that it is impossible to remain quarantined from such participation, given the potency and insidious nature of new social media. Furthermore, social networks help create the collective consciousness we so urgently need to reboot civilization.
In attempting to address the inevitable impacts of our hot over-crowded planet on individual lifestyles the application of such crowd-sourced intelligence, supported by all the innate wisdom and expertise we can muster, is vital. But whereas collective intelligence urges the immediate deployment of smart technologies, a shift to clean energy and the rapid phasing out of toxic products and practices, sagacity entreats us to pause, to shift the conversation, to pose uncommon questions that are missing from the current dialogue.
Some of the more important questions we should be pondering are not even on the agenda. While the greatest threats to humanity and to our environment seem to be that nothing is done, that the wrong things are done too quickly, or that too little is done too late, the greatest threat to our social well-being is that we act without wisdom.
The most urgent questions for humanity no longer focus on discrete issues and their impact but on how we can adapt and evolve to changing conditions, lessening the damage wherever we can and exploiting opportunities that are bound to emerge and delaying more serious consequences. There are two philosophical questions we need to answer: how can we tread more lightly on this planet and how can we preserve for future generations what is uniquely beautiful and inherently precious about our world?
A Critical Role:
So far our response to these questions has been depressingly inadequate. On deeper, more spiritual issues, such as how we can accelerate our capacity to adapt to the laws of physics in ways that enable more sustainable relationships, with each other and with the Earth, there has been a deafening silence. It is within this context that the role of foresight becomes critical. But the field itself will need to evolve in the following ways:
1. Foresight practitioners must awaken to their role as curators of authentic integral experiences. Active self-reflection in the quest towards self-mastery has to be a pre-requisite for evolving foresight theory and praxis. It is only when mastery is fully understood that “higher altitude” questions around deep design can surface and be transparently explored. If an important part of our work is to facilitate the intentional evolution of society we need first to engage in that project at a deeply intimate and personal level. Viewing self as a mechanism for transition needs to be part of the process of bringing greater clarity, depth and rigor to the field and its efforts.
2. We must also ensure that foresight invites the possibility for identifying the true nature of individual and collective pathologies as well as putting forward solutions that are systemically viable and strategically resilient in a context that is morphing by the minute. The former demands integral intelligence, uncompromised by filtering and compartmentalized thinking. The latter requires a genuine blend of systemic consciousness and imagination coupled with commercial pragmatism and entrepreneurial flair.
3. Foresight must shift from its obsession with technology and uncomplicated issues to encompass a broader mix of higher altitude observations concerning the purpose of humanity, the provisioning of resources to accommodate the needs of an escalating global population, design criteria for social change, disparities between affluent and less privileged individuals and communities, and the rules and conventions that exacerbate division, competition and conflict within society.
4. Tools and methods must arise from philosophy, embracing both collective insights and expert opinion in an attempt to transcend obsolete knowledge in the co-design of new wisdom. This will take an expansive process of collaborative inquiry blended with curated transformational narratives that probe far more deeply into our inner belief systems and collective cultural traits than has hitherto been considered relevant.
5. The facilitation of foresight must move from conventional spaces into immersive environments. These decision theatres must be capable of (i) vividly visualizing dynamically complex patterns and data (ii) mapping the intended and unintended consequences of decisions (iii) simulating and modeling alternative solutions, and (iv) prototyping and stress-testing systemic designs.
6. Whole-system, collaborative inquiry and design conversations must take pre-eminence over other misused and increasingly hackneyed foresight methods. This is critical if we are to really engage a broader clientele in understanding that emergent patterns in our systems are simply the product of the way the system has been designed to function. Reframing symptoms (as frequently occurs during the crafting of scenarios) is a distraction, inadvertently shifting attention away from fundamental causes. Redesigning whole systems however (and, more importantly, the intentions informing that design) and we begin to solve the actual issues and dilemmas we are trying to grapple with on the surface – in addition, quite possibly, to resolving many other related concerns.
In a similar vein, scenarists must develop the capability for curating experiences in real time. They will need access to a range of relevant models and theories-in-play in order to guide, provoke and compose a seamless dialogue that includes and transcends prior knowledge.
It is also worth noting that when we are preoccupied with discrete technical issues and observable trends (as typically happens, for example, when scenario methods and technology roadmaps are adopted) our tendency is to converge around explicit goals we want to achieve or explicit futures we want to avoid.[vii] This is a mind-trap. Being overly attached to a particular outcome, especially one linked to a so-called focusing question, can deceive us into believing that the goal itself is of greater import than the desired end-state. As evidenced by the fact there is so much insipid and uninspired strategic thinking in corporate life today, this attachment can drag us further away from any deeper intentions we might long to embed in the system.
7. Foresight can no longer simply be about the future. It must pull information from past and future states into an expanded now of new consciousness. In this way the field of strategic foresight itself can be expanded, becoming genuinely transformative and therefore more strategically significant. This is the emerging field of epistemological foresight.
Future Pathways:
An elemental distinction between societies is whether they accentuate the spiritual or the physical realm. Within pre-literate communities these were (indeed are) identical. Throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries, emboldened by globalized trade and technological innovation, others eagerly embraced the Occidental mindset. Today we sense a less-fractured world, united by a common purpose, edging towards a more unified, all-encompassing mindset in which science and spirituality, as well as our internal and external worlds, strive to fuse once again.
What is evolving today, however, is not the individual but the composite organism of humanity. Even so, until we fully comprehend we are all part of a single living ecosystem, that we are all intimately connected to the Gaian biosphere that gives us life, and that cooperation and not competition is the key to our future existence, we will most likely continue to butcher each other and despoil the planet.
When a society accepts specific answers to recurrent questions from a particular body of knowledge, they commonly turn to that same source for other truths about reality. In the Middle Ages people asked the local priest or to the Church to help them resolve problems in their daily lives. Prior to that it was the village shaman or the witch doctor. When science eclipsed religion we turned to technologists for the answers. Now it is time to turn to the custodians of integral foresight and to more holistic, integrated and authentically human states of being. Epistemological foresight is the key to a deeper, more intentional design, of a unified society living in harmony with its environment.
We have been watching with increasing dismay the tragic events unfolding in Japan and Libya. As witness to these events who can doubt we are poised on the cusp of fundamental change? This moment in world history is unique. Exceptional times call for exceptional responses and not simply more of the same. Yet uniqueness of the type now warranted only emanates from higher levels of intentionality - a collective consciousness intensely focused on integrating and transcending past paradigms and poles of thought.
Many argue that foresight methods have played a critical role in the development of modernist thinking - especially in encouraging us to imagine and rehearse what we would do should future realities turn out not to match our best-informed guesses. And they are correct. But we still remain trapped in prisons of our own invention, which is why these same foresight methods require radical philosophical and operational upgrades if they are to remain strategically relevant. The future of foresight is at stake.
Without valid foresight we put in jeopardy both the highly sophisticated nature of our society as well as its more pragmatic capacity to produce and distribute life’s necessities. One might perceive this threat as a potential collision between fate and desire. In that context, risks appear to have emerged as a direct result of the way we think - about our needs, our rights, our aspirations and our interactions, particularly relative to each other and to the planet.
Now we must think again. And differently this time. Not only through different lenses but also from a variety of altitudes. Epistemological foresight can help us move beyond the civilizational worldview by integrating and transcending current ways of thinking and doing as we re-imagine our collective state of being.
Over the past few centuries our world-system has advanced incredibly and in so many different ways. Today, those fortunate enough to be living in the developed world enjoy levels of material wellbeing that was unimaginable even a few years ago. At the same time much of what was once fresh and beautiful about humankind has ossified into a rigid shell - homogenous, pitiless, seemingly devoid of empathy, wonder or love. Bloated from excessive consumption, exhausted by pointless conflict, we await an emergency that will cause the blueprint of a new society to emerge from the imaginal cells of our deepest communion - like the metamorphosis of a chrysalis into a butterfly.
Perhaps global heating is that emergency - or will swiftly become so if government inaction persists. Yet all crises offer us a plethora of possible ways forward. Some paths lead to a better future for humanity as a whole. Others, and I fear these are the pathways we are intent on pursuing, chart a course that lock-in current divisions and convictions – especially the paradigmatic impulse linking progress to continuous economic growth and development.
We know that broadly defining a better future, one that is healthier, sustainable and more abundant than present actualities, is critical to human progress. But what do we imagine when we speak of better futures? What do we find inspiring? And how does a better future stack up with what we already have and what we believe we may be about to lose? These are critical questions to ponder as we take the first tentative steps within a new consciousness of possibilities.
In the past we have frequently quashed or undermined our capacity to substitute imprinted assumptions and beliefs for something far more viable and compelling. But we cannot wait any longer. It is time to open new windows onto new worlds.
There can be little doubt that the transcendence of the civilizational worldview, with its prejudicial constraints, exploitative traits and profound injustices, is the most vitally compelling yet audacious key towards unlocking such new windows. Impending societal collapse demands alternative options, visualizations, memes and strategies. And that is precisely the opportunity offered by epistemological foresight.
[i] Epistemological foresight in this context is the all-encompassing domain of human consciousness, experience and knowledge. It includes the various ‘integral’ theories put forward by contemporary scholars like Ken Wilber, Rudolf Steiner, Sri Aurobindo and Ervin Laszlo as well as those in other, more ancient traditions but also goes beyond these by stepping into alternative ways of knowing that are not constrained by orthodox technological rationalism
[ii] Panarchy is the framework in which systems, including those of nature (such as forests and oceans) and of humans (such as capitalism and governance) as well as combined human-natural systems (such as institutions that govern the use of natural resources) are interlinked in continual adaptive cycles of growth, accumulation, restructuring, and renewal.
[iii] These five foundational moral impulses are best depicted as (i) it is wrong to hurt people (ii) justice and fairness are good qualities (iii) allegiance, loyalty and patriotism are virtues (iv) people should respect social hierarchy (v) purity and sanctity are good while contamination and pollution (and their associated character traits of greed and lust) are bad. Note that different cultures and groups bring different weightings to these shared five moral imperatives.
[iv] Extensive empirical research in the field of developmental psychology has shown that our ability to step into new epistemologies and to view reality through multiple lenses, perspectives and cultural mindsets, unfolds through nested stages. One of the reasons we struggle to see and appreciate alternative points of view is that we may be in an arrested state of awareness that literally prevents us from seeing and understanding more. The dance between our individual developmental stages and the evolution of a civilizational worldview with its various cultural mindsets further advances the need for integral foresight, especially as it starts to draw attention to the interplay between intentional evolution at the level of both individual and collective levels of consciousness
[v] The four major crises facing humanity are crises of consciousness, behaviours, cultures and systems
[vi] An idea originally proposed by Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene, a meme acts as a vehicle for conveying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Memes can be regarded as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate mutate and respond to selective pressures.
[vii] I am using the term “outcome” as applying to a number of resulting changes we wish to experience within a system rather than that experience in its totality which I prefer to define as a “desired state”
