The Hames Report

Convergence@Speed

A few years ago I started talking about the emergence of a plausible planetary technoculture resulting from the unpredictable conjunction of a few seminal streams of human invention, and the activities related to them. I was particularly fascinated by the effects of information-based technologies on what we currently do and how we do it – especially when divorced from more serious questions related to why we do it.

But now we also need to add the speed of change as an additional defining factor. Outside of its more everyday use as metaphor there is little current appreciation of the speed of change - still less concerning the conditions the speed of change could generate through technological innovation.

There are a number of significant convergences occurring that will transform human cognition and performance. The convergence of biotechnology, nantechnology and robotics, for example, is already radically transforming healthcare, war, security and manufacturing. Similarly the merging of in-memory computing, the Cloud and device mobility is shifting our capability to access knowledge, anywhere, in real-time – impacting how we interact with each other, undertake business transactions, and move to more participative forms of democracy.

Of course there are other more estoeric intersecting epistemologies that are potentially far more interesting than focusing on computer science and informatics (the convergence of quantum science, indigenous wisdom and spirituality, for example, that could well give rise to a new human cosmology) but these are outside the scope of this article.

How these conjunctions evolve, and how they will overturn everything we take for granted, make for a fascinating study for one overwhelming reason: the perceived rate of technological change is exponential. In other words we will arrive in the future much faster than anticipated. This is not a new phenomenon. One only has to review the time it took to decode the human genome or comprehend the illusion of time created by the exponential growth of a toxic weed in a pond, for example[1]. But it is still so often misconstrued and leads to patterns of human behaviour that lack foresight and wise judgement.

For the most part we cannot readily conceive of change at this magnitude because our intuition about the future tends to be commonly expressed as linear extrapolations of the past or the present. Consequently we tend to ignore, misinterpret (or drastically underplay) the impact of exponential change on our lives. This has huge implications for investors, ethicists, designers, engineers, entrepreneurs and government policy makers, as well as technologists themselves.

Let’s spend a few moments considering what exponential change implies vis-a-vis how we currently think about progress and habitually make decisions based upon assumptions derived from more conventional understandings.

The arithmetic of logarithmic (or exponential) functions is easy enough. Essentially it is a simple formula: when relative growth of any kind (e.g. population growth, compounded interest, resource extraction, inflation or consumption) is a constant measured as a percentage over time, the doubling rate of what we are measuring (in other words the time it takes for a quantity to double in size or value) will be 72 divided by the unit of growth. So for example, if the economy grows at an average 7 per cent per annum it will double over the span of ten years. If the growth rate is an average of 10 per cent per annum then the doubling factor will be just 7 years. And so on…

In this context consider what China has achieved since 1980. The Chinese economy has been growing at an annual rate of 10 per cent for the past 30 years. That means the economy has doubled a total of 4 times over that period. Hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty during that time. Many new cities have been built. A modern infrastructure of highways and railways has transformed the landscape, opening up the hinterland and making it far easier to travel to the major cities. In 2010, China had 18 million households with an annual income above USD 16,000. By 2020, this number will be 167 million households. That's almost 400 million people! What is more, Chinese brands are now competing with (and out-performing) the world’s best.

Astonishing economic acceleration of this nature is unprecedented on such a scale. But there are always unintended consequences. For example, if you were motoring on the highway between Zhangjiakou and Beijing in late 2010 it would have taken you many days to reach your final destination. Massive traffic jams regularly clog this highway – occasionally stretching to more than 60 miles. On this occasion thousands of commuters were stuck on the road for days, living off water and food sold to them by vendors wandering through the semi-parked cars. Apart from ongoing construction on this highway and the carriage of illicit coal and other materials from Mongolia, it is the explosive growth in car ownership (Beijing alone is adding cars at an astonishing rate of 1,900 every day) that's the most likely cause of this urban nightmare. It has created a paradoxical situation where the number of drivers on Chinese roads now negates any benefit from travelling in cars.

Back to our exponential function. We can apply the same mathematical logic to population growth. In 1986 there were 5 billion people on the planet. The growth rate was just 1.7 per cent per annum, meaning that by 2027 we would have reached 10 billion people. By 1999 the population had reached 6 billion but the growth rate had slowed to 1.3 per cent per annum, meaning that it will take until 2052 to reach 12 billion. That still means we are growing at a rate of 80 million people a year on a planet unable to provide adequately for 7 billion. Problematically most growth is occurring in undeveloped countries that can least afford large populations and where education hardly exists – nations like Burundi, Niger and Uganda.

But the population problem also exists in economically developed countries. In Australia, the city of Melbourne has experienced 1.88 per cent population growth over the past decade. One might regard that as modest growth, but that is not the case. Indeed if growth continues at that rate Melbourne will overtake Sydney in 2028, when each city will have about 5.6 million people. No other city in Australia has ever experienced growth of this size. It has taken city planners completely by surprise (because they presumably did not do the maths) and strained the city's infrastructure and services - adding to road congestion, overcrowding on public transport, increased waiting times in hospital emergency wards, the demand for energy and water, and a host of other undesirable outcomes. All of this in a relatively affluent country where annual immigration numbers are controlled by the Commonwealth government; the total fertility rate, of 1.78 per woman, is below that normally considered to be the replacement rate for a population; and where the potential impacts of exponential population growth on the city should have been apparent and handled differently in terms of systemic urban design.

Obviously we can also apply the same mathematical logic to the extraction of fossil fuels (like oil, gas and coal) the loss of biodiversity, the rate of global warming – and, of course, the increase in computer processing power.

All of which brings us back to the matter in hand: namely the speed at which technologies are converging and the subsequent role they will play in the future. For the astonishing truth is that it is not simply the rate of change in discrete fields or disciplines to which we should remain alert, but also the rate of change in that convergence. It is this speed of change that led US inventor Raymond Kurzweill to predict that the “singularity” (the year in which artificial intelligence exceeds that of humans) will occur at some stage within the next two decades.

The examples to which I have referred should show us that exponential change demands a far more sophisticated approach to systemic design, taking into account many potential features and points of view, while also pondering deeply the social, moral and ethical dimensions of the futures we are creating. All of which is easier said than done, especially when the subject is rampant, seemingly unstoppable, technological invention.

Kurzweill maintains that by 2030 we will be interacting with technologies that are billions of times more powerful than those available today. While this is correct in terms of logarithmic change I can’t help wondering if this is what we really want.

There are three paramount dilemmas we encounter when considering such possibilities as those anticipated by Kurzweill. The first has to do with distinctions between fate (the inescapable future) and desire (the preferred future). The second concerns the inability of human minds to imagine beyond what is known through experience and to translate these imaginings into a design capability. The third raises the issue of morality. In the end all three dilemmas relate to our intentions – the territory where the most difficult choices must be made.

1. The enigma of fate and desire

Depending upon the culture in which one is literate, the potential for shaping events is taken either to be severely limited (i.e. it is the role of a higher intelligence) or theoretically infinite (i.e. mankind is creator and capable of anything). Most of us occupy a space somewhere in between these two extremes.

For me, as a Buddhist and a practising futurist, the main problem I have with the kind of positivist determinism confidently proclaimed by many scientists and technologists is the irrefutable inevitability accorded most technological expressions of the future. Currently there seems to be a huge disconnect between what convergent technologies can potentially bring to humanity, and what we want those things to be. Nor are there many opportunities to discuss or debate such issues.

The notion of a reinvented species of humanoid with super intelligence in which humans can finally discard their earthbound carcases holds no joy for me. Nor do I believe there is anything inevitable about this evolution.

2. Imagining beyond the event horizon

Envisaging how our lives could be so utterly different from how they currently manifest is problematic for most of us. Other than artists and other visionaries we tend to construct our “probable” futures from linear extrapolations of present circumstances and past memories. This is the “here and now” of our daily experience and it undoubtedly limits our ability to step into a place of infinite possibilities – an “expanded” now compressing all past, present and possible options. One of the reasons Steve Jobs was not interested in asking customers what they wanted from Apple was because they had little idea of what was actually feasible. They did not know what they wanted until they could feel and see it in their hands and play with it. In other words they could not see beyond a particular event horizon.

Apart from those rare individuals who perceive the world from an altogether higher plane of awareness, there are several accepted ways of amplifying human creativity and imagination. Using hallucinatory drugs, for example, or accessing new tools such as virtual reality, allow us to perceive possibilities that would have been previously barred from us. Few people have access to simulation facilities and the immersive experiences these provide, however, as most are still privately-owned or used purely for entertainment purposes.

Perhaps we need to think more seriously about investing in the capability for the expansion of human imagination as a pre-requisit for more sophisticated social designs. Obviously an increased capacity for imaginative cognition may ultimately be provided by the technology itself. But by then it will be too late to influence the design of the technology and many ethical concerns will possibly have been overlooked.

3. The Moral Dimension

The moral issues, including many ethical questions that require resolution and will have a considerable bearing upon the various choices that may need to be made, have incredible consequences and are too important not to be considerd as part of the original impulse for design of any socio-technological ecosystem.

Meanwhile the inexorable tide of technological innovation that sweeps everyting before it gives us little time for any considered thought on these matters. For example, some clusters of transformative technologies could improve the human condition by prolonging life, enabling the human-machine interface, and eliminating disease. One might consider these critical to humanity’s future did they not exacerbate the population problem. It is ironic that most of what we regard as being good for humanity (medicine, peace, sanitation and law and order for example) actually worsen the population problem, while an alternative strategy for resolving the problem, (by promoting conflict and disease and encouraging murder for example) is morally obscene.

 

 

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[1] If a toxic weed doubles every day and covers the entire surface of the pond in 30 days, then it wil only cover half of the pond’s surface on day 29. This, of course, is part of the reason we see so little action to combat climate change. Looking at it today doesn't seem to be so bad. Unfortunately we do not see past the 29th day to tomorrow!

The Next Renaissance

To me, "Personal Democracy" is an oxymoron. Democracy may be a lot of things, but the last thing it should be is "personal." I understand "personal responsibility," such as a family having a recycling bin in which they put their glass and metal every week. But even then, a single recycling bin for a whole building or block would be more efficient and appropriate.

Democracy is not personal, because if it's about anything, it's not about the individual. Democracy is about others. It's about transcending the self and acting collectively. Democracy is people, participating together to make the world a better place.

One of the essays in this conference's proceedings - the book "Rebooting Democracy" - remarks snarkily, "It's the network, stupid." That may go over well with all of us digital folks, but it's not true. It's not the network at all; it's the people. The network is the tool - the new medium that might help us get over the bias of our broadcasting technologies. All those technologies that keep us focused on ourselves as individuals, and away from our reality as a collective.

This focus on the individual, and its false equation with democracy, began back in the Renaissance. The Renaissance brought us wonderful innovations, such as perspective painting, scientific observation, and the printing press. But each of these innovations defined and celebrated individuality. Perspective painting celebrates the perspective of an individual on a scene. Scientific method showed how the real observations of an individual promote rational thought. The printing press gave individuals the opportunity to read, alone, and cogitate. Individuals formed perspectives, made observations, and formed opinions.

The individual we think of today was actually born in the Renaissance. The Vesuvian Man, Da Vinci's great drawing of a man in a perfect square and circle - independent and self-sufficient. This is the Renaissance ideal.

It was the birth of this thinking, individuated person that led to the ethos underlying the Enlightenment. Once we understood ourselves as individuals, we understood ourselves as having rights. The Rights of Man. A right to property. The right to personal freedom.

The Enlightenment - for all its greatness - was still oh, so personal in its conception. The reader alone in his study, contemplating how his vote matters. One man, one vote. We fight revolutions for our individual rights as we understood them. There were mass actions, but these were masses of individuals, fighting for their personal freedoms.

Ironically, with each leap towards individuality there was a corresponding increase in the power of central authorities. Remember, the Renaissance also brought us centralized currencies, chartered corporations, and nation states. As individuals become concerned with their personal plights, their former power as a collective moves to central authorities. Local currencies, investments, and civic institutions dissolve as self-interest increases. The authority associated with them moves to the center and away from all those voting people.

The media of the Renaissance - the printing press - is likewise terrific at myth-making. At branding. Its stories are told to individuals, either through books, or through broadcast media directed at each and every one of us. Its appeals are to self and self-interest.

Consider any commercial for blue jeans. Its target audience is not a confident person who already has a girlfriend. The commercial communicates, "wear these jeans, and you'll get to have sex." Who is the target for that message? An isolated, alienated person who does not have sex. The messaging targets the individual. If it's a mass medium, it targets many many individuals.

Movements, like myths and brands, depend on this quality of top-down, Renaissance-style media. They are not genuinely collective at all, in that there's no promotion of interaction between the people in them. Instead, all the individuals relate to the hero, ideal, or mythology at the top. Movements are abstract - they have to be. They hover above the group, directing all attention towards themselves.

As I listen to people talk here - well-meaning progressives, no doubt - I can't help but hear the romantic, almost desperate desire to become part of a movement. To become part of something famous, like the Obama campaign. Maybe even get a good K-street job out of the connections we make here. It's a fantasy perpetrated by the TV show West Wing. A myth that we want to be part of. But like any myth, it is a fantasy, and one almost entirely prefigured by Renaissance individualism.

The next renaissance (if there is one) - the phenomenon we're talking about or at least around here is not about the individual at all, but about the networked group. The possibility for collective action. The technologies we're using - the biases of these media - cede central authority to decentralized groups. Instead of moving power to the center, they tend to move power to the edges. Instead of creating value from the center, like a centrally issued currency, the network creates value from the periphery.

This means the way to participate is not simply to subscribe to an abstract, already-written myth, but to do real things. To take small actions in real ways. The glory is not in the belief system or the movement, but in the doing. It's not about getting someone elected, it's about removing the obstacles to real people doing what they need to to get the job done. That's the opportunity of the networked, open source era: to drop out of the myths and actually do.

Sadly, we tend to miss the great opportunities offered us by major shifts in media.

The first great renaissance in media, the invention of the alphabet, offered a tremendous leap for participatory democracy. Only priests could read and write hieroglyphs. The invention of the alphabet opened the possibility for people to read or even possibly write, themselves. In Torah myth, Moses goes off with his father-in-law to write the laws by which an enslaved people could now live. Instead of simply accepting legislation and government as a pre-existing condition - the God Pharaoh - people would develop and write down the law as they wanted it. Even the Torah is written in the form of a contract, and God creates the world with a word.

Access to language was to change a world of blind, enslaved rule followers into a civilization of literate people. (This is what is meant when God tells Abraham "you will be a nation of priests." It means they are to be a nation of people who transcend heiro-glyphs or "priestly-writing" to become literate.)

But this isn't what happened. People didn't read Torah—they listened as their leaders read it to them. Hearing was a step up from simply following, but the promise of the new medium had not been seized.

Likewise, the invention of the printing press did not lead to a civilization of writers - it developed a culture of readers. Gentlemen sat reading books, while the printing presses were accessed by those with the money or power to use them. The people remained one step behind the technology. Broadcast radio and television are really just an extension of the printing press: expensive, one-to-many media that promote the mass distribution of the stories and ideas of a small elite.

Computers and networks finally offer us the ability to write. And we do write with them. Everyone is a blogger, now. Citizen bloggers and YouTubers who believe we have now embraced a new "personal" democracy. Personal, because we can sit safely at home with our laptops and type our way to freedom.

But writing is not the capability being offered us by these tools at all. The capability is programming - which almost none of us really know how to do. We simply use the programs that have been made for us, and enter our blog text in the appropriate box on the screen. Nothing against the strides made by citizen bloggers and journalists, but big deal. Let them eat blog.

At the very least on a metaphorical level, the opportunity here is not to write about politics or, more likely, comment on what someone else has said about politics. The opportunity, however, is to rewrite the very rules by which democracy is implemented. The opportunity of a renaissance in programming is to reconfigure the process through which democracy occurs.

If Obama is indeed elected - the first truly Internet-enabled candidate - we should take him at his word. He does not offer himself as the agent of change, but as an advocate of the change that could be enacted by people. It is not for government to create solar power, for example, but to get out of the way of all those people who are ready to implement solar power, themselves. Responding to the willingness of people to act, he can remove regulations developed on behalf of the oil industry to restrict its proliferation.

In an era when people have the ability to reprogram their reality, the job of leaders is to help facilitate this activity by tweaking legislation, or by supporting their efforts through better incentives or access to the necessary tools and capital. Change does not come from the top - but from the periphery. Not from a leader or a myth inspiring individuals to consent to it, but from people working to manifest it together.

Open Source Democracy - which I wrote about a decade ago - is not simply a way to get candidates elected to office. It is a collective reprogramming of the social software, a disengagement from the myths through which we abdicate responsibility, and a reclamation of our role as citizens who participate in the creation of the society in which we want to live.

This is not personal democracy at all, but a collective and participatory democracy where we finally accept our roles as the fully literate and engaged adlts who can make this happen.

The Next Renaissance was Douglas Rushkoff's keynote address at the Personal Democracy Forum that took place June 23-24 in New York City, at Frederick P. Rose Hall. Douglas is an author, lecturer, and social theorist and The Next Renaissance is reprinted here with his permission. His books include Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace, Media Virus! and Coercion: Why We Listen to What "They" Say.

 

 

Ten Big Mistakes People Make in Thinking About the Future

Being a working futurist means that I think a lot about how people think about the future. It also means spending a lot of time with people who are also thinking about their own futures. Typically, this involves a dialogue between three distinct groups:

First, there's usually a small handful of very foresighted people, who are aware of their own blind spots and biases, and who are eager and open about the prospect of soaring into a wild blue sky to gather a lot of exciting new information.

Second, there's a larger group of people who don't usually think at 50,000 feet - but are willing to go there if they're with people they trust. Their wings aren't sturdy, and they are prone to some very common mistakes in thinking, but they're often the most gratifying group to work with. What they want is permission to let go, encouragement to go big, and a watchful eye to keep them out of the rocks and ditches.

And then there's a third small group that's very resistant to the idea that anything could or should change. I've spent a lot of time over the years thinking and writing about that last group, because I'm fascinated by the question of what drives change resisters. What they want from me is safety - the reassurance that if they overcome their natural reticence and try to embrace some constructive thinking about change, they won't end up all alone somewhere terrifyingly unfamiliar.

Of that second group, I've found that there's a fairly short list of common mistakes that they make over and over again - little assumptions that create big obstacles in their ability to see all the potential alternatives clearly. These are the same mistakes most people out on the street and in the media make, too; on any given day, one can open a newspaper to the op-ed page and find three or four of these mistakes, right there in black and white. When pundits and prognosticators are wrong, these assumptions are usually somewhere near the root of why they're wrong.

To the end of helping progressives think more productively about the future we're trying to create, here are ten of the most common mental hiccups that keep people from seeing the bigger picture and planning for it with a full measure of courage and intelligence.

1. The future won't be like the past. And the most likely future isn't. In any group, there's usually a tacit set of assumptions about where the world is headed, and what their future holds. Life has gone on for a certain way for a while - and the longer that trend continues, the more invested they get in the assumption that things will just keep on going that same direction. I always ask people early on to describe their Most Likely Future - the one they and their friends assume will happen if nothing else changes. And I've never met anybody who had to hesitate a minute to fill me in on what that future looks like.

But the gotcha is: research by academic futurists has found that this expected future really isn't the most likely outcome at all. In fact, it only actually comes to pass somewhat less than half the time. Which means that somewhat more than half the time, you're going to be facing something else entirely. And if you're too settled on that vision of what's most likely, odds are that you won't do nearly enough to prepare for those alterative futures in which you are even more likely to actually end up living.

It's good to know what your expected future is. Objectively understanding what that story is and how you arrived at it is half the work. The other half lies in being willing to let go of that cherished vision long enough to figure out and prepare for some of the other things that could (and probably will) happen instead.

2. Trends end. This is related to No: 1 in that the most typical reason the expected future doesn't come is that one or more of the trends supporting it fails. As noted above: the longer a trend has been going on, the more we tend to assume that it will never end. But all trends do end - and, in fact, the longer it's been going on, the more overdue you are for it to change. One of the things I do is map the trends that are creating the current conditions, and figure out which trends are overripe (there are tell-tale signs) and thus most at risk of disrupting the existing circumstances. Imagining how these trends could fail or reverse - what would happen if the opposite thing happened instead? - is a useful way of revealing viable and realistic alternative futures.

3. Avoid group-think. Another reason the Most Likely Future tends to obscure everything else is group-think. Every group has basic assumptions about how the world works - what's realistic, what's plausible, what's nonsense, what can't be discussed. The longer the existing set of operating rules has been in place, the more pressure people feel not to question that - and the crazier you look if you do suggest that other futures are possible.

In fact, it's arguable that when a group that's reached a point where no other futures are even discussable, it's a clear red flag that they are vulnerable to being flattened by some new situation that comes out of the blue - or any of the many other places they're no longer looking out for change. Which brings us to:

4. If it's taboo, it's probably important. The thing you are not discussing (the elephant in the room) has a very high probability of being the very thing that will put an end to the present era, and launch you into the next phase of your future. Worse: the longer you ignore or deny it, the more at its mercy you will ultimately be when the change does come down.

A big part of being a futurist is to gently get people to start thinking and talking about those taboo subjects, the ones that are too scary or painful to think about. The very act of bringing those hard issues out onto the table and beginning to grapple with them, all by itself, has tremendous power to make people more courageous and resilient. The elephant only has power as long as we refuse to talk about it. When we finally confront it, its power becomes ours.

5. Any useful idea about the future should sound ridiculous at first. This rule originated with Dr. Jim Dator, the founder of the graduate program in futures studies at the University of Hawaii. His point was: If you're not coming up with ideas that sound a little crazy on their surface, it's a sure sign that you're stuck in too many conventional assumptions - and are therefore not thinking big enough about just how different the future could be. If things don't look a little weird, you're not reaching far enough.

An example: Six years ago, I wrote about the right-wing's up-and-coming assault on contraception. It sounded completely off-the-wall at the time, and I took a lot of grief for it. But look where we are now.

6. Ask: What stays the same? The world is big, and governed by huge interlocking chaotic systems whose behavior can be impossible to anticipate. But, at the same time, there are also constants - the things that don't change from era to era, or that change so slowly that you can pretty much count on them staying the same even when everything else is going to hell.

Chief among these is human nature. Economies grow and shrink, nations rise and fall, the globe is getting hotter and world is getting smaller, but through it all, we are still Homo sapiens - which means we will always be hungry, greedy, horny, infuriatingly stubborn, astonishingly kind, quick to take up arms against each other, and equally quick to bind each others' wounds. It's just how we are.

Any serious survey of a future landscape includes questions like: What stays the same? What will we carry forward with us? What will follow us, whether we want it to or not? What can we count on? What will we still need to guard against?

7. The other side is not always wrong. Right now, America is assertively separating itself into two vivid, strongly held visions of the future. In these situations, groupthink necessarily runs especially high; we are committed not only to progressive values, but also to a specific set of solutions, policies and outcomes that we believe will best make those values manifest in a world shaped by our vision.

The other side, of course, is equally passionate about their values, vision, solutions, policies, and outcomes. In his new book, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science - and Reality, Chris Mooney points out that one of the defining traits of liberals is that we're far more open to evaluating conservative ideas on their merits, and adopting good ideas wherever we find them. Conservatives, on the other hand, will usually consider the source first. If an idea came from a liberal, it's immediately rejected as unacceptable, regardless of its merits.

This is gross generalization, though. It's plenty easy to find progressives rejecting potentially useful ideas out of hand because they came from sources we don't agree with. But when we're deep in the throes of transforming a country, an economy and a society - long on problems and short on good ideas for fixing them - that kind of narrowness of mind is a luxury we can't afford.

8. Be aware of different change theories. Everybody has their pet theories about how change happens. Almost all of these theories can be sorted into one of about 10 basic buckets, which are described here. Most of us have two or three of these buckets that we think explain just a whole lot about the world, and another one or two that make us very uneasy. And it's usually true that the people we disagree with most are working off of some fundamentally different assumptions about how change happens. Understanding which theories you're drawn to and which you tend to reject can go a long way toward helping you notice your own blind spots, and also form strategies to deal with places that your pet theories collide with those of other groups.

9. Don't think in five or 10 years. Think in 100 or 500 years. A lot of Wall Streeters didn't see the 2008 meltdown coming because economic forecasters typically work with historical data that's anywhere from two to five years old. In 2008, that means that their models didn't include so much as the possibility of a financial disaster on the scale of 1989, let alone 1929. They were thinking on a scale of five years, not 50. And certainly not 100.

While we know abstractly that bad things happened to the generations before us, we seldom believe that anything that bad could actually happen to us. America is safe and stable, and has been for a long time. We're comfortable thinking that there's no way we could face famine or drought, epidemic or genocide, or other catastrophes on that kind of culture-changing scale.

This is a common blind spot. Anything that's happened to humans before is quite likely to happen at some point again. And there's always the possibility that it could happen to us. Simply recognizing our true vulnerabilities, however unlikely those catastrophes may seem, and giving them their due in our future planning enables us to become stronger and more robust, even if the full catastrophe never arrives.

10. Don't assume it will be hard. Don't assume it will be easy. Better yet: don't assume anything, ever. Most of the above cautions are aimed at a final big one: Be acutely aware of every assumption you're making, and don't leave any of them unexamined.

Clear thinking about the future is all about carefully choosing which assumptions you're going to work off of. Often, futurists' main role is to point out and re-examine assumptions that everybody else just accepts as gospel. Someone will say, "Oh, we can't do that; it's too hard." And my job - made easier, because I'm an outsider - is to ask them why that's just assumed. As they explain the obstacles, we can unpack each piece of that assumption together - about how this person won't go along, or how that agency's rules work, or why the time frame just won't allow for it.

This exercise is worth doing because, frequently enough, the assessment that something's just not possible (or, conversely, will be trivially easy - one should question those, too) falls apart when you take a second, deeper look at things. Maybe that assessment was true when you last visited this question six months ago. But maybe things have changed since then - and now, your options are different. Or maybe it turns out that that old assessment is still true, after all. In that case, revisiting it increases your confidence that you can still trust it, though it doesn't exempt you from continually poking at your assumptions, every time you revisit them, to make sure they're still true.

Whether the assumption changes or not, the exercise is worth doing because basing your assumptions about the future on outdated information that already belongs to the past isn't useful. The future is ambiguous enough when you start working from the baseline of the present. You only increase that ambiguity when you put yourself several steps back of that line - especially when you don't have to.

In a time when the stakes are so high, and the margin of error so thin, it's more important than ever that we make the right decisions about the future the first time. Being mindful of these 10 mistakes can go a long way toward increasing the quality of our strategy and planning, and improve the choices we make about our future.

This piece was written by Sara Robinson and is reprinted here with the author's permission. Sara is a social futurist and the editor of AlterNet's Vision page. Follow her on Twitter, or subscribe to AlterNet's Vision newsletter for weekly updates. © 2012 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/154773/

Greek Mythology

A strategic foresight practitioner like myself cannot help but be mesmerized by the extent of disruption being caused today by the breakdown of the competitive, machine-like, model of human enterprise - especially when, even in its death throes, it still traps us in paralytic fear of alternative, more humane, possibilities.

The endgame of the industrial paradigm, typified by linear thinking, exhausted systems and wasteful practices, is rapidly giving way to a networked society. Here abundance will have ousted scarcity, distributed knowledge (shared in peer-to-peer networks and used collaboratively) will have liberated innovation far more effectively than the clumsy legal frameworks of the past, and a new literacy, networked intelligence, will have helped us surmount most of the limitations inherent within the old model.

Yet many of us, including elected leaders and their King Canute-like courts, vainly cling to a myth: namely that the industrial model of “free market” capitalism, braced by certain democratic principles, is the definitive peak of human achievement. In other words that better options are impossible to imagine and that we must therefore do everything in our power to prevent a collapse of the old order. Of course this is to deny the inevitability of evolution as well as the rules of nature.

Although I am no financial expert we can find a good example of predictable collapse in the way economic theory, typically favouring either “free” market principles or centralised government control, is applied. Regardless of the politics, what remain constant in today’s world are:

• a monetary scheme founded on compounded debt
• an economic orthodoxy increasingly driven by selfishness that limits the nature of value (and the value of nature) to mere utility while ignoring some costs as being relatively unimportant
• a global reserve fixed on a single currency thereby biasing the system in favour of that currency
• a limited range of fiscal responses nations are able to adopt in order to out-compete each other while maintaining social cohesion (through security, employment, education & welfare for example)
• a banking system overtly manipulating regulatory mechanisms to generate wealth for a surprisingly small number of individuals and corporations.

This is just one example of why systems that are supposed to support humanity are failing us. It is clearly unsustainable. Any structure with such intrinsic constraints is ultimately going to fail. We are witness to that inevitabilty right now in Greece. As the grand experiment we call the European Union staggers from one crisis to another, with past mistakes rationalised rather than resolved, the Greek economy is being allowed to fall into even more of a chaotic mess. Greece will run out of money in six weeks. So what is actually going on?

In early 2010, we discovered that successive Greek governments had been consistently and calculatingly misreporting the country's official economic statistics so as to keep within the EU's guidelines. Subterfuge had enabled Greek governments to spend well beyond their means, while hiding the actual deficit from Brussels. In May of that year the deficit was estimated to be 13.6 per cent for the year, which was one of the highest in the world relative to GDP. Total public debt was forecast to hit 120 per cent of GDP during 2010, again one of the highest rates in the world.

Now, after two bailouts (totalling €240 billion) Greece is indebted to other nations, mostly France, Germany and the UK, to the tune of €0.45 trillion. This is small in comparison to some European economies, and direct damage of it defaulting on its debts could probably be absorbed by the eurozone. However, the fear is that an Athenian default could trigger a financial catastrophe for other, larger economies, such as Italy. The ripples will be felt around the world.

Actually a default (accompanied by Greece's exit from the EU) is probably just a matter of time. There are good reasons for this, not least of which is Greece’s history in such matters. Whatever happens, the current debt (as well as some of the irresponsible commentary accompanying it) is causing a deep cultural malaise in Greek society and overwhelming the ability of other systems to cope. Unemployment figures are stuck at 21.7 per cent, including an incredible 50 per cent of all young people. Over the past two years public service salaries have plunged by 40 per cent and suicides have risen by 22 per cent. In Athens alone there are over 13,000 homeless people. The health system is in turmoil since there is no cash to pay pharmacies for prescriptions. Corruption is rife, the bureaucracy is bloated, competitiveness is poor and evasion of tax is estimated at 47 per cent. If all of that wasn’t crippling enough the country now faces increasing political turmoil and parliamentary dysfunctionality afer an inconclusive general election in which both mainstream pro-Europe parties saw a dramatic colllapse in support. It is highly likely fresh elections will have to be called.

As always there is an upside to be considered. After the most recent bailout the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund all insisted Greece find ways to make its economy more competitive - principally by cutting the cost of doing business in the country. That is undoubtedly a sensible call as it should attract overseas investment and international visitors. Since the early 1990s until fairly recently the nation’s growth has been higher than the EU average. In terms of economic complexity the nation is strong with a diverse range of embedded productive knowledge. Nor can the Greek work ethic be criticised: the labor force, which totals approximately 5 million, works the second highest number of hours per year on average among OECD countries.

If the drachma was still a valid currency this situation might not have arisen. Or at least, if it did, it would be within Greece’s jurisdiction to introduce measures to deal with the problem. Over the past century the Greek economy has often owed more than it produces. But now Greece is being intimidated by its European partners to repay loans faster than it can possibly manage and with no amnesty being offered.

At this point austerity measures, it is claimed, are vital. Austerity (the cutting of public spending to the bone) is the new global economic medicine prescribed for dealing with sovereign debt. Proclaimed with frenzied zeal by almost all the world’s leading financial institutions, austerity is being demanded of Greece by its eurozone partners, as if it were the panacea to everything. This is quite a dangerous strategy – not least because the chances of Greece defaulting are already quite high and more pain might simply push the country over the edge.

The logic of austerity is being driven by the custodians of the old industrial system - in whose opinion productive efficiency matters far more than social wellbeing or commonsense. Austerity means people suffer because many essential public services are reduced, or eliminated altogether. This undermines self-reliance and unravels the fabric of society still further. Economic shock therapy of this kind does not work because it destroys cultural cohesion. We have seen that before in pre-revolutionary Chile and in Cuba - where it was the US weapon of choice – as well as in Thatcher’s Britain and Reagan’s US - where it was a doctrine of faith. Yet we still blindly insist that it must work in Europe for there are no other “economically rational” solutions.

And here my economic naivety comes to the fore as I cannot for the life of me see the rationality in such partial, linear solutions. Of course economic austerity makes sense in theory, especially in terms of trimming what has become a bloated and inefficient public sector. But to rely just on austerity measures to save Greece is to wilfully ignore morale, motivation and empathy within the community – the very things that breathe vitality and meaning into innovation and entrepreneurship.

Greece actually has all the resources needed to be a thriving and prosperous nation. Unfortunately ordinary men and women in Greece are not sufficiently connected and their politicians, bullied by France and Germany, are mere slaves to their European partners. So while trimming the fat from government spending is wise, enduring solutions are going to come from elsewhere. But where should we be looking?

Once more an appreciation of context is important. As the world transitions to a more openly transparent, networked world, and systemic failures caused by the industrial paradigm continue to crop up, almost on a daily basis, the acquisition of new literacies becomes a critical factor in society’s renewal. Paradoxically the disruptive conditions enveloping Greece are now inviting an incomparable opportunity to seize the future by creating and adopting new literacies, and new values, that are already re-casting the basic patterns of human production and consumption.

Because a renewal strategy of such a wide-ranging nature will need to be multidimensional, strategically relevant and systemically viable, it will require imagination, foresight, courage and a commitment to the extraordinary cultural ethos for invention that Greece bequeathed the Western world ages ago – qualities that appear to have gone missing from today’s political leadership scene.

But if this leadership were to emerge, phoenix-like from the current disorder, what might a viable strategy for the future of Greece actually comprise? If the design challenge is to create the greatest benefit for the greatest numbers of people then the following points would at least need to be seriously considered:

1. People have lost faith in brand politics and celebrity politicians – particularly the three major families that have dominated politics in Greece for decades. Here is an opportunity to instigate far–reaching reforms to the system of political governance by adopting diversity and inclusion within an overtly egalitarian society. Greece, once the cradle of democracy could actually reconceive what demos means in an age of online interconnectedness. Greater participation from citizens, even in the form of new political coalitions and governance models, might also do a great deal to stamp out the nepotism and corruption that still haunts political life in Greece.

2. Governments cannot create wealth. But they are responsible for generating the conditions wherein wealth can be generated and shared. As we transition from the failed mode of fossil-fuelled industrial economism to a cleaner, more sustainable world of global business ecosystems, enabled by digital and bio-technologies and featuring community collaboration, open-source design and peer-to-peer relationships, new purpose and new wealth will be created by people being given encouragement to trade and use their talents and natural resources more effectively. Four things are evident in this context. Greece must:    

• invest in a reliable and speedy online infrastructure that allows all citizens to connect at any time and for any reason – or risk innovation being smothered
• increase economic complexity by supporting knowledge economy ventures and cleantech startups as well as providing targeted support for traditional industries such as tourism, merchant shipping, agriculture and fisheries
• encourage companies to grow around community - acquiring new knowledge and capabilities for the way goods and services are made, shared and consumed
• optimise an abundance of assets that are being ignored in the current context – assets such as sunshine, ancient sites, beautiful islands, good food and wine, etc.

3. There is no denying the Greek bureacracy has become bloated, costly and inefficient. But it needs to be trimmed slowly (through natural attrition and the suspension of obsolete programs, for example) in order to avoid an even bigger crisis. Unfortunately, institutions that sell credit are generally impatient. Not giving Greece the time it needs to repay and rebuild could result in an upsurge of corruption that quickly spins out of control – as occurred in Russia when Mikhail Gorbachev was denied adequate time to develop a post-soviet economy by the World Bank and IMF.

4. As adaptiveness to contextual volatilility becomes essential for investors, entrepreneurs, corporate strategists and government policy makers alike, we need to use new information and communications technologies, including the new social media, to speed up the learning metabolism within society. As proven by Stafford Beer in pre-revolutionary Chile, but mostly forgotten today, equality and responsiveness to shifting realities can be transformed through instituting an "electronic nervous system" that links voters, workplaces and agencies in a single interactive national communications network. Such an investment would serve Greece well at this juncture as well as providing a prototype for Europe as a whole.

5. Liberating the untapped wealth of the people while avoiding unnecessary hardship must be part of any strategy going forward. That probably required Brussels and other creditors to give Greece some slack, including allowing extra time for the debt to be repaid. If Europe declines then Greece should simply default and find new trading partners. As my colleague Ivor Kellock recently reminded me - there are always people willing to do deals….

 

Dichotomies

Recently I was drawn into an intriguing and entirely amicable exchange of ideas relating to the fiscal position of the US relative to the state of the global economy.

Three points were being made by an online trader who chooses to characterise himself as a right-wing libertarian on his blog. I will refer to him simply as Alan. Although I would never think to classify myself in that manner I found myself agreeing, at least in part, with Alan's initial claims about the decline of “Brand America”.

Alan’s first claim described the US economy as one burdened by unsustainable debt, a worsening in living standards and an inability to compete internationally. The second declared the US dollar, being the global reserve currency, a two-edged sword within that specific context: in other words it uniquely permits the US government to print money which, especially after the financial crisis of 2008, has extended its liabilities to the point of insolvency. The third indicated the critical role innovation must play (especially as a universally-recognized value in US culture) in restoring the American economy to its former vitality.

Differences only became evident when Alan began to insist there is only one way to go about the latter task. That way, according to him, is to give people the freedom to create enterprise, relying on individual entrepreneurs to generate wealth for society and allowing markets to self-regulate, with little or no interference from the state. He then started to deride countries like China where a communitarian ethos, nuanced by a relatively short period of communism, has since resulted in a society where, he contends, creativity does not exist and most people live under a yoke of oppression.

I am on the record as having been highly critical of many of China's approaches to its problems - especially environmental and human rights issues. But I always attempt to put such criticism in perspective - to appreciate the conditions under which Chinese leaders have brought millions of people out of poverty, while making adequate provisions for the needs of the new middle classes, recovering from the worst excesses of Mao's cultural revolution, and dealing with the soul-destroying impacts of massive environmental degradation, all at the same time. This is unprecedented. No other nation in history has been faced with such dilemmas on such a scale. I happen to think they are not doing a bad job of it. Furthermore they have not been distracted by deliberately and systematically initiating conflict and societal disruption around the world – unlike some who claim to be purer than pure. 

Alan's views endorse the popular, though thoroughly discredited, monetarist notions of Milton Friedman - especially in the form of the economic "shock therapy" he advised should be used in pre-revolutionary Chile and Cuba to effect regime change. Basically Friedman believed that an individual’s right to generate wealth should supersede community interest – a view similarly expressed by Friedrich Hayek.

And so it was that I was reproached by Alan for being a socialist. This contention apparently arose from his hypothesis that if my thinking did not explicitly accord with his own interpretation of “an individual’s liberty and rights” then I must inevitably advocate collectivism - which would then brand me as a socialist or, even worse, a communist.

The fact that I neither advocate collectivism as a panacea, nor belittle individual rights, is neither here nor there, though the sloppy use of language in assuming socialism to be synonymous with collectivism irks me somewhat. My real irritation arises from the fact that so many people are still taught to think in this generalised manner – divorced from any ethical taxonomy of ideas and readily accepting theoretical abstractions they often do not understand, and are even less inclined to contest, in which to frame their beliefs.

But perhaps all of that is about to change. As communities around the world rise up against unfairness and injustice, awakening from their lethargy to confront the more obvious inequities in our current systems of production, governance and consumption, many subtle distinctions for expressing and organising ideas are starting to populate the language. Labels we may have happily used to represent an idea in the past are mostly inadequate for describing the variety of opinions, feelings and desires emancipated into our world today. Far greater precision and granularity is needed. Resorting to orthodox classifications such as collectivism and individualism in order to portray the differences between highly sophisticated, multilayered agendas and ideologies, especially when that is done merely to discount or deny a pivotal idea, is either laziness or sheer mischief. In either case it is inexcusable. And if emotionally charged statistics are triggers to this sloppy way of thinking, let us remember that the Soviet experiment with communism taught us far more, and ultimately damaged far fewer lives, than the US's imperialistic, neverending (yet ultimately futile) war on terror.

But back to my main point. A new panarchical language is evolving - its vocabulary a developmental technology enabling the human family, connected to each other and embedded within nature, to remain individually and collectively inventive, but also ensuring altruistic qualities such as empathy and wisdom are fundamental design criteria for shaping progress on this planet. This is a language that includes and transcends obsolete generalisations and abstractions in order that original ideas and motivations can evolve and take flight - but within a rewnewed shared purpose.

Let us take the concept of the market as an example. Markets are vital to our future. But markets are only one economic contractual mode, another being barter for example. There is certainly no reason for markets as currently constructed to apply to everything we produce, transact and consume. Nor are markets free - a delusion supported by nice theoretical statements and perpetuated by yet another sloppy use of language. It is just that the costs are hidden from view. Indeed in their current highly politicised form (driven by a toxic mix of competitive business interests and the maintenance of power – usually in the form of rich countries wanting to ensure adequate supplies of essential resources like oil, for example) many markets have become surrogates used to distort reality and fortify old industries and regimes. Unregulated, markets simply cannot be trusted to provide adequately for humanity as a whole.

I readily concede that is not the view shared by most conservatives. If we look at recent history, especially the way Milton Friedman and his Chicago disciples wreaked havoc in Chile and Cuba (and, by implication, in Thatcher’s UK and Reagan’s US) by applying "free market" principles as a weapon of choice to reduce potentially viable economies to a near state of feudalism and class warfare, we might be forgiven for thinking that money is all that matters and should be used purely to keep the rich wealthy by humiliating and destroying the poor and degrading the environment.

But if we are at all concerned for the wellbeing of future generations and the need to sustain the abundance of life on Earth, it is obvious that economies and markets must be designed differently – with a revitalized purpose that serves the majority, social architectures reflecting current and future priorities, and an autopoietic capability to maintain relevance and viability.

This is precisely why I am arguing for a better balance between individual wealth (generated by individuals through entrepreneurship) and the wealth of the commons (generated by nature and communities). The way capitalism is currently utilised is destructive because it rampages over the needs of the majority. But disaster capitalism is like a zombie in that it refuses to die. At least soviet communism had the good grace to admit defeat!

So a major problem still is in our thinking and in the language we use to explain that thinking. In the West we continue to construct reality in past heroic terms and are unwilling (or unable) to include and transcend orthodox economic mechanisms that have brought some of us so much wealth and comfort, even though they are no longer sufficient for our collective needs.

In Greek philosophy nomos (laws and customs) is used in the service of logos (knowledge and purpose). A more pertinent way of expessing this idea is to accept that economies should be implanted within (i.e. be of service to) social and natural ecologies. Since the early 20^th century when escalating production and consumption, aided and abetted by corporate public relations and advertising, became the engulfing credo throughout the developed world, we have succeeded in turning that moral genesis on its head – exclusively pursuing growth and affluence to the detriment of our peace of mind and sense of communal wellbeing and, in the process, damaging our vital connection to nature, upon which we rely for life’s essentials.

Unlike Alan, my overriding contention is that the future design of viable socio-economic systems must surpass any historical ideas - especially the Occidental mindset of free market economics – at least as this is currently construed, practised and regulated. If we are not able to do that it is probably because the thinking and the language we still use is so embedded in the ideological assumptions of past centuries – a reality based upon scarcity, competition and “every man for himself” – that it has become almost impossible to extract ourselves from this dominant worldview.

I am not that pessimistic however. I do not doubt new forms of empathic capitalism will emerge to displace disaster capitalism - where economies are embedded in ecologies and not vice versa. And I believe they will flourish because of that. That does not make me a socialist or a capitalist - or anything else for that matter! Nor does it in any way imply that individuals and entrepreneurship are of secondary importance to society’s collective aspirations. Indeed to fall into the trap of trading one off for the other is intellectually negligent.

The key to civilizational advancement is surely to find ways of accommodating both within socio-economic structures that are distributed, agnostic, and do not just favour a wealthy minority who sit back and trade on the misfortunes of others.

The (Other) World Game

1. A Single Worldview

Over the past few years I have given considerable thought to the notion of the civilizational worldview as a shared construct. I believe this paradigm insinuates its way into our beliefs and attitudes towards each other and towards the Earth on which we rely for energy, sustenance and inspiration.

The grand visions and moral imperatives of this source model trace the most improbable story of the human project on planet Earth. An exultant story of astonishing adventures, passionate social movements and political revolutions. A romantic story of virtuosic creativity. A story that has fashioned great works of art, assembled complex urban environments, spawned incredible technologies, and produced massive wealth.

These accomplishments are all the more remarkable in that they have arisen via discoveries made within relatively bounded domains of knowledge and have been primarily driven by our curiosity and willingness to investigate discrete disciplines - initially theology, later philosophy and the humanities and, most recently, science. Such is human ingenuity and persistence.

If, or when, it occurs to us at all, we assume this civilizational worldview to be a constant element – the bedrock underlying everything we do and the means by which we can express our most fundamental nature. It is the life-condition we discern, experience each day of our life, and in which we are immersed from birth. It matters little whether we were raised in the parched deserts of Sudan, the chic urban landscape of Chicago, the dense rainforsts of Borneo, or the overcrowded slums of Mumbai. Regardless of where and how we live, what we earn, the particular skills we have acquired, or our social status, the civilizational worldview is as natural to us (and as mystifying) as the air we breathe.

This same civilizational worldview has fortified our world-system for at least the past 2,000 years. Along the way it has been nourished by a stream of varying sentiments about human purpose and capability, tested in a cauldron of competing ideologies, and shaped by common moral impulses. All these have progressively wrought our worldview into a deeply congruent and ingrained credo defining what we faithfully believe to be an indisputable truth describing humanity. Rising above any specific value set connating good or bad and right or wrong; transcending philosophy, history and geography; this credo implies eight tenets:

1. A ruling power “elite” serviced by a compliant underclass of “serfs”[1]
2. Wealth and power acquired by the elite at the serfs’ expense and protected via state political, military or policing mechanisms
3. An all-encompassing ethereal or superstitious dogma (where the elite may be depicted as representatives of a deity or divine beings) typically used to manufacture consent
4. An industrial war machine viewed as a crucial component of the economy and held up as validating the inherently combative nature of humans
5. Most aspects of production and consumption controlled by the elite - through ownership, language, access to services and skills, etc.
6. Games, entertainment and mass media used as a social distraction in ways that help maintain compliance within the social order
7. Economies (nomos or rules) accorded a higher status than ecologies (logos or purpose) - thus nature is logically exploited as a human right
8. An irresistible narrative within society based upon competition, labour, scarcity and difference.

This set of eight tenets does not imply a universally applicable monist integrity. On the contrary our worldview is something of a chameleon, changing its tone, color and intensity over time according to its changing surroundings and cultural maturity. But the critical thing to note is that the civilizational worldview was instituted, shaped and given legitimacy by us. As a social construction it can be rejected, remodeled or transcended - if that is what we want.

Until now it is explicitly what we have not wanted - nor even anticipated as being necessary. I cannot find evidence of any serious or persistent critique that comes close to challenging the veracity of this worldview. Indeed across the sweep of history, in every culture, architects of the bloodiest upheavals and entrepreneurs behind the most compassionate enterprises alike, have all assumed the validity of the civilizational credo. So it is fair to presume either that the civilizational worldview is the preferred epistemological framework for Homo sapiens, or that we have not yet been motivated to discover surrogates. Not to be searching for viable alternatives must surely mean either:

• that the current civilizational worldview has served our needs well - and
• those benefitting from this worldview (in other words those who have most to lose - the elite) want it to endure, or
• the thought of renewal or reinvention is simply too confronting, or
• an embodied sense of “worldview” as an implicit social construction is way beyond our collective consciousness to such an extent that reasons for alternatives are outside our capability to know.

Personally I deem a combination of the first and second of these possibilities to be most likely. There can be no doubting the civilisational worldview has brought great affluence, health and well-being to many millions. The reservation I have is whether it can do the same for the burgeoning billions of the world’s inhabitants who are starving, have no security, shelter, income or education, and are victims of injustice and discrimination.

The elite in all contemporary societies (i.e. essentially those who control the flow of money, resources and ideas - including elected and self-appointed leaders, the priesthood, public intellectuals, high wealth industrialists, bankers, politicians and their advisers, royalty, business corporations and industry lobbyists) put most of their efforts and resources into preserving and reinforcing the existing order because they have a vested interest in keeping things the way they are. Nor is embracing the existing state of affairs and safeguarding venerable institutions necessarily a bad thing. Indeed it can be stabilising and comforting – something most of us yearn for at some stage. But occasionally, betrayed by hubris and distracted by the very means that have been constructed to maintain consent, the old-guard fail to heed the all-too-obvious signs of impending disaster.

Arrogant leadership, inadequate or flawed information, and decisions driven by vanity rather than wisdom have instigated almost every contemporary tragedy - from the sinking of the Titanic to the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger and even the collapse of Enron and Lehman Brothers. Now it seems, with climate change, we may be heading into a situation that threatens humanity itself. Yet we continue to ignore warning signs, convinced of our invulnerability and oblivious to the damage already being wreaked by our “lock-in” to the civilizational worldview.

The elite are unlikely to change their ways until they feel pain, which is unlikely as wealth can quarantine us from the worst of adversities. In practical terms we know that if climate change turns out to be as disruptive to our way of life as scientists now predict, it is the poor, the disadvantaged and those who remain trapped by circumstances, who will suffer most. The elite can still sleep easily in their beds.  

2. A Cultural Cornucopia

A more profound facet of the worldview, and one that is more immediately recognisable, is the countless mindsets applied by people in differing cultures to help them interpret the worldview. Although the terms worldview and mindset are often used interchangeably, they are actually distinct. In my context a cultural mindset is a set of ingrained assumptions that reinforces social identity and purpose within a community. As powerful inducements for continuing to accept prior behaviours, choices and technologies, cultural mindsets invariably reflect and accentuate one or more features of the prevalent worldview.

But whereas the worldview is a single phenomenon, the shared backdrop to our collective experience, an abundance of cultural mindsets are extant. Continuously breathing life and relevance into the worldview, they are the social filters we acquire, transmit from one generation to the next, and overtly employ to sculpt the civilizational worldview to local conditions, such that it retains intrinsic meaning for us.

Each cultural mindset is exceptional in its semiotic palette. For example, each aspires to perceive knowledge accurately - yet translates truth and beauty and goodness in dissimilar ways. Each has its own sense of place, sophisticated ways of knowing, implicit biocultural associations, language, ethics and customs. And each affords unique answers to that most fundamental of questions: What does it mean to be human and to be living together on this planet?

In the distant past there seem to have been significant differences between one cultural mindset and another. But when the urge to discover and explore new lands accelerated during the 15^th century, and new colonial settlements started to blend with native mindsets, entirely novel hybrids formed. The fusion created through the collision of the Indic, Sinic and Occidental cultural mindsets, for example, shaped a fertile interface for trade and commerce along the Silk Road.

Unfortunately that is all changing. One of the repeatedly ignored downsides to globalization is the pall of homogeneity that erodes heritable knowledge and distinctive cultural attributes. Take the indigenous cultural mindset of native Australians, for example. At the time of white settlement there were at least 270 discrete Aboriginal languages and possibly 600 or more dialects. Half have been lost and only 18 are spoken today by around 500 individuals. This represents a huge loss of knowledge, much of it irreplaceable.

Sadly this trend is also reflected in our consumption patterns. Our addiction to luxury goods, for example, means global brands are to be seen in shopping malls in every large city and international airport with tedious inevitability. Meanwhile distinctive local trades, crafts, customs and markets are an endangered species – increasingly known only to a small and contracting clientele and a few scholarly anthropologists.

Even the purest and most precious of cultural mindsets are surrendering to this overwhelming assault as an incessant stream of corporate advertising infects our minds with the banal, the trivial and the frivolous. Large multinationals now dominate the food chain, the industrial war machine, global finance, the energy industry and the political agenda. They are happy with the status quo and see little reason to amend their ways.

The fact that we do not generally take these granular cultural predilections into account is one of the most glaring reasons for transcultural misinterpretation and international follies. It is also giving rise to a global monoculture in which western industrialised capitalism (the Occidental mindset in its most vibrant and compelling modern form) is given precedence over all other expressions of what it means to be alive and human. This particular cultural mindset overwhelmingly views reality as a logically explicable system of physical artifacts, calibrations and observable phenomena. It is a mindset dominated by scientific rationalism, in spite of the philosophical outcry cautioning us that such a 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.

As intimated there are other mindsets in existence 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 inform many of our inquiries. For that very reason we should be paying 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, I suspect will take a radical metanoia on the part of society at large.

Finally, to make things even more complicated, there are subtle inflections of multiple mindsets - as in the recent amalgam of contemporary mindsets across 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 operating from within differing cultural mindsets – to the extent that extreme behavioural divergence between them is often evident even though the civilizational worldview itself remains a shared and immutable phenomenon.

So, depending upon our cultural upbringing and mode of social initiation into the modern world-system, we will inevitably perceive, translate and respond to any crisis within the civilizational worldview through a distorting filter and with an intensity that differs from one society to the next, reflecting deeply implanted cultural attributes.

Because of this we also have a tendency to apply differently nuanced operating models and technologies (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 our moral impulses play out in each case. These checks invariably surface basic needs and expectations that are universally applicable to the entire human family - irrespective of other incidental local factors.

The loss of each cultural mindset, as well as the congealing of the remainder under the intensity of Western orthodoxies, is leading to a monoculture and must be resisted at all costs. The ideal of a global monoculture, that is implicit in the cult of progress and technological positivism, impoverishes our humanity. As the great poet Octavio Paz said: Every view of the world that becomes extinct, every culture that disappears, diminishes a possibility of life. That there are now far fewer extant cultural mindsets should concern us, particularly as biocultural diversity, considered by many scientists to be essential for the survival of our species, cannot be replaced.

3. Rebooting Civilization

So within the current world game we have two structurally-embedded elements that are discrete and yet intimately interwoven:

• A prevailing civilizational worldview, dominated by conventions that fly in the face of what 99 per cent of the population deems acceptable today and exemplified by an old industrialised capitalist paradigm that is failing us on a number of levels
• A diminishing number of richly diverse cultural mindsets that, while potentially containing genetic material for metamorphosis of the worldview, are simply discounted as being of less consequence to present endeavours and future outcomes.

Only comparatively recently has there been any rigorous critical appraisal of the civilizational worldview – something nigh impossible from within its defensive walls. But there are now plenty of examples of seemingly irresolvable problems caused or aggravated by this worldview that leads us to question how much longer its entropic nature can persist before totally unraveling. This is not whimsy, as some might wish, but a grave epistemological issue.

The human project is in a state of disruptive transition. Indeed I believe we are rapidly reaching a developmental crisis point that necessitates a total rethink of how we interpret and value progress. Given the major crises facing humanity, particularly the storm of intersecting environmental, economic, food, water and energy meltdowns, we must rapidly come to terms with the old proposition that there are indeed fixed limits to growth. Naturally much depends upon how much pain we are prepared to take before the adoption of a new paradigm becomes the preferred option. And whilst we cannot go back and reinvent the past, the future paradigm remain very much ours to configure.

Furthermore the socio-economic volatility and community awakening we are currently witnessing offers an exceptional opportunity for us to shift to a higher plane of consciousness in facilitating a different ethos underlying relationships we have with each other and our environment. We just need to be able to see the promise of an “appreciative” society with greater clarity and conviction.

Ironically, transformation of the civilizational worldview can help us by opening our minds to alternative possibilities. Enshrined within the rigid chrysalis of the present worldview is a source of hope – the imaginal cells of a worldview crafted to be intentionally viable, resilient, and based upon the fundamental premise of provisioning for humanity as a whole rather than continued pandering to a wealthy minority.

That is what we can achieve if, initially, we are able to envisage an appreciative worldview as a recasting of the eight tenets underpinning the old civilizational paradigm – a doppelganger with a decidedly different moral credo. Namely:

1. Open source governance – primarily as the interaction of the commons (at a global and many local levels) with elected regional representatives
2. Wealth (as in access to food, health, employment, learning, happiness, wellbeing and security) distributed without favour and protected by appropriate officials, effective monitoring councils and the justice system
3. An all-encompassing humanitarian mechanism for ensuring that cultural diversity is protected and fostered
4. The elimination of conflict through the dismantling of the industrial war machine and its relationship to "disaster" capitalism, (as famously articulated by the "shock doctrine" economist Milton Friedman) alongside the promotion of cooperative structures and multicultural enterprises
5. Most aspects of production and consumption controlled by the commons with open access to ownership, language, services and skills
6. Games, entertainment and the mass media used as a social distraction and openly acknowledged as just that
7. Economies (nomos) are lodged within ecologies (logos) - thus nature is protected for future generations and ecocide is a crime
8. A diversity of cultural mindsets and compelling narratives within a society unified through cooperation, empathy, intelligence and abundance.

But what of role should our cultural mindsets play? An understanding of context becomes particularly critical when so many of the ideas and institutions defining civilization seem to be in a state of collapse. This is the case today. It is the ideal time to be learning from other cultural traditions as an alternative to blind insistence on the superior nature of the Occidental mindset.

Possibly the most profound transition in history, one that has taken literally 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 matters. This shift required discarding deeply imprinted fears and fallacies. Unsurprisingly it led to the modern obsession with material goods and the acquisition of personal wealth. But evolution cannot just stop there…

We must now move beyond even our current 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, interconnected, ecosystem. The transition towards a new society instilled with such a basic 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 or more people still lag far behind conceptions.

In the past, our inability or unwillingness to engage with really big issues (e.g. endemic poverty, environmental degradation or the alienation of young people) in any meaningful or constructive manner has been hampered by the fact that we have not allowed for diversity. We have been seeking a universal panacea. It is unlikely to appear and, if it does, will not be of much use.

Our inclination to delegate important decisions to others, for example (whether to dictators, monarchs, professional managers or elected representatives) was deemed pragmatic. Our unwillingness to understand our experience through an “others” perspective allowed us to live unconsidered lives. This epitomized a disquieting social apathy – a deeply ingrained passivity that has been extremely difficult to overcome. 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 concerns, wielding power in ways that were previously out of the question. Governments and dictators 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 commentators argue the case that it is increasingly impossible to remain quarantined from such participation, given the potency and insidious nature of new social media. Furthermore, new social networks help create the collective consciousness we so urgently need to reboot civilization.

As far as I am concerned 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, I believe the greater threat to our social wellbeing is that we act without wisdom.

The most urgent issues for humanity no longer focus on discrete events and their immediate impact but on how we can adapt to evolving conditions in ways that lessen the damage wherever we can, exploit those opportunities that are bound to emerge, and delay more serious consequences to give us more time. There are three philosophical questions we must answer:

1. How can we tread more lightly on this planet?
2. How can we buy more time to do what must be done?
3. How can we preserve for future generations that which is uniquely rare, beautiful and inherently natural about our world?

Somewhere within the solution we will need to active steps to preserve the various cultural mindsets that still exist, while using their knowledge to fashion a new world game rich in diversity, strategically relevant to our collective purpose and shared aspirations, yet systemically viable in the face of nature’s wakeup call. Jeremy Rifkin call this the empathic civilization. Now there’s a thought….

This is a reframing and expanded version of a previous article in which I mentioned the dual concept of worldview and mindset. I hope the distinctions made between these concepts - which is really the focus of this piece - act as a convincing argument for the intentional metamorphosis of the civilizational worldview, together with the preservation, celebration and, wherever possible restoration, of unique cultural mindsets and their stores of invaluable heritable knowledge. 

 

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[1] In alleging differences between a ruling elite and a compliant underclass I am not inferring the existence of any organised collective conspiracy (by the elite) and certainly not any global cabal intent on world domination. Nor am I even suggesting that any directed cause-and-effect relationship exists. Rather I acknowledge the greater likelihood of spontaneous emergence of divisions arising within society that are then exploited by individuals and groups according to their circumstances (though always in concurrence with the other tenets) through the assertion of power in various forms - including ruthless domination over others, ownership of property and other assets, networks of relationships, etc. 

 

The Veiled Impediment

Consider if you will three situations in which different groups of people have been tasked with changing the status quo in various ways (each according to a specific context) in order to deliver “better outcomes”. The first is enacted at a local community level, the second at a corporate level (which may or may not have international ramifications) and the third at a global level. 

Case 1. The Government Taskforce

Somewhere on the planet this week a government will appoint a taskforce or establish a Royal Commission to enquire into a matter of grave concern to the local community. The issue might be one of police corruption, the decriminalisation of drugs, food security, or the welfare of indigenous youth - but investigations will generally follow a similar path:

• Terms of reference will be set by bureaucrats in such a way as to circumscribe the investigation, and thence relevant evidence to be collected, while validating present assumptions (about the nature of the problem and its resolution)
• Designated experts will be dutifully summoned to repeat opinions already on the public record
• A panel will be convened to hear “new” evidence
• The community will be consulted - in at least one of two favoured ways:
  • Town Hall meetings may be organised to allow locals to vent their collective feelings - though these gatherings usually serve only to inflame previously known attitudes
  • Individuals will be invited to respond to a survey containing a number of predictable, tick-the-box, questions in which pre-ordained expressions of the problem are implicit.
• More likely than not the findings will avoid advocating substantial change, recognising governments' reticence in this regard, and merely reinforce current notions regarding what should be done.

Sometimes considerable public funds (the item most likely to attract the ire of talk-back radio hosts and the tabloid press) will be spent on these enquiries. Meanwhile relevant Ministers will be hoping to pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat by confirming novel, more effective, solutions for addressing the matter in question. The community's trust in government policy and decision-making is at stake. Reprisals for failure will be discernible via the ballot box at the next election.

Case 2. The Executive Leadership Team

As predictable as the annual migration of Pacific salmon, in at least one week every year, thousands of executive teams will seek prolonged sanctuary in their Boardrooms. Those from more profitable enterprises will probably zoom off to more exotic locations. The task ahead of them? To recast their strategy for the coming year.

Almost certainly they will be hoping to arrive at distinctive ways for increasing profits, strengthening their brands or driving alignment around a new operating model. Any strategic imperatives will have been decided in advance by the CEO - with appropriate input from the leadership team. Quite possibly they will be following advice from consultants who will have been asked to provide economic and industry forecasts for the next three years. These same advisers may also be facilitating the retreat using a generic process their associates developed for this purpose.

Over the course of two or three days participants will examine current results and productivity targets relative to their competitive position in the market, receive briefings on new products in the pipeline, and review any mergers or acquisitions in the offing. Other items, fitted in between social and sporting activities, may include, for example, talent management and customer satisfaction polls.

Following the retreat these business leaders will return to the more familiar routine of running their divisions - invigorated by their collegial commitment to the new plan and equally buoyed by the realisation that their strategic responsibilities are over for yet another year. At risk is the company's future performance, financial results and reputation, as well as shareholder value. Reprisals for failure (reflected in the marketplace and the stockmarket) could result in the sacking of the CEO and the replacement of key executives.

Case 3. The United Nations Summit

Towards the end of June, twenty years after the original Earth Summit, thousands of delegates from national governments, the private sector, NGOs and community groups will descend upon Rio de Janeiro once again for the UN’s Conference on Sustainable Development. Official discussions will focus on two main themes: How to build a green economy to achieve sustainable development (and lift people out of poverty) and how to improve international coordination for sustainable development.

Representatives at Rio+20 will be hoping to come away with renewed commitments as to how we can work together more effectively to reduce poverty, advance social equity and ensure environmental protection on an increasingly crowded planet.

On the Rio+20 website there is a noticeboard where messages of hope for successful outcomes from the summit have been put. These posts come from all over the world and from all sectors of society. They resonate as a collective cry of anguish - pleading as one for commonsense to prevail. Imploring far fewer words in favour of more urgent action, demanding a more courageous commitment to change, expressing unity as a species and concerns for future generations, these notes, many just brief epigrams, are a poignant reminder of how much faith we put in our elected leaders to know what to do in times of trouble and to put into action what needs doing.

In this instance risk is both extreme and existential - in that we are running out of time to make fundamental changes to ingrained patterns of industrial production and consumption. Failure in this context is too terrible to contemplate. It might mean we have forgone one of the best opportunities to tackle climate change and poverty. Reprisals for failure will be taken by nature. We might complain about the lack of political will. But ultimately the game will be out of our hands... 

The Veiled Impediment

In all three examples it is highly probable we will regard almost any achievement as limited and disappointing, or at least much less than most of us would have wanted and expected. There are good reasons for this. Most importantly there is an obstacle in the way that inhibits more effective and enduring change. It is hidden from view - which is why I call it the "veiled impediment".

But first I want to dismiss some of the more fallacious charges we are prone to use when reprimanding others. Especially an increasing tendency to blame people for less than satisfactory outcomes. I learned long ago from the great W. Edwards Deming that the majority of problems we encounter result from what statisticians refer to as common-causes rather than special-causes. Common-causes are the normal, historical, predictable and quantifiable variations in a system, whereas special-causes are unusual, not previously observed, non-quantifiable variations. In other words it is reasonable to suppose there is something inherently flawed about the processes we use, rather than any overt individual incompetence or negative interference.

For the most part the intentions of taskforce panels, executive teams and UN summit delegates are honourable - their aspirations similar to our own. They are upholding their values and fighting for what they believe to be true and fair. Appreciating this, and the significance of common-cause variation, compels a fundamental reframe as it shifts emphasis away from personalities to the issue of design.

So what is it about contemporary process design that is so defective? I believe the unchallenged culprit is habit. We generally comprehend a given situation using knowledge previously acquired and tested. It is actually quite rare for us to deliberately create new knowledge or fabricate new tools to deal with new problems. But that means we can only ever know what worked before and only ever use tools and techniques ordinarily available. We then rationalise these habits as "best practice". And who in their right mind would opt for second-best?

In the case of our protagonists almost all the information they acquire will point to them being on the right track. Even against the odds they probably anticipate success – otherwise why would they embark upon such ambitious endeavors in the first place?

But here’s the rub: in each of my three cases the level of deeper awareness (of integral consciousness) from which they are viewing their issues, the individual knowledge and collective understanding they bring to these matters, and the language and methods they are using to make sense of the information being thrown at them from all quarters, are utterly inadequate given the profound complexity of the matters with which they are dealing.

Worse still, they do not realise this. In fact it is highly probable they have convinced themselves the job they are doing is entirely acceptable, if not exceptional. This would be comic if it were not for the fact that literally billions of people’s lives depend on a new vision for humanity out of the UN summit; thousands of people will be impacted by any discrete strategic plan that lacks resilience in the face of change; and the community at large will suffer if a government taskforce or Royal Commission fails in its mission. 

Designing Better Outcomes

Much depends on what we mean by “better outcomes” of course and context is vitally important in this regard. Personally I interpret “better outcomes” to refer to three ostensibly discrete yet intimately related factors. Depending upon the depth of enquiry and the intensity of integral interrogation:

1. Better outcomes at level 1 means that enduring solutions (socially beneficial, culturally empathic, ethically apposite and economically feasible) can be found and applied to our most obdurate problems today

2. Better outcomes at level 2 means that upgraded means of sensing and making sense of the human condition are continuously incorporated into learning and enquiry processes - thereby leading to a situation where fewer problems of the type we are witnessing today are likely to re-occur in the future

3. Better outcomes at level 3 means that individual and collective epistemologies evolve onto higher planes of appreciation such that optimal expressions of what it means to be human (creativity, compassion and courage) find congruence in a new wisdom of panarchic communion that touches us all.

The implications are profound. Thinking-as-usual is a veiled impediment to progress. Like rats trapped on a treadmill it will get us nowhere and achieve little but for exhaustion and frustration.

Instead, we need to incorporate new ways of perceiving, clarifying, interpreting, conversing and responding to a myriad, continuously mutating, features within our many cogent constructions of the human story. And we need our design charrettes to evolve in alignment with this new consciousness.

In other words genuine progress (in government enquiries, corporate strategy development and international symposia alike) depends upon our ability to:

• discover more sophisticated ways of expressing what we are seeing, thinking, and feeling
• ensure tacit assumptions underpinning individual expressions of reality are transparent to others
• create more inventive and accurate methods for synthesising and liberating wisdom (including advanced pattern-finding techniques)
• imagine more inspiring futures that provide emotional continuity with our past yet liberate the human spirit and draw upon our innate desire for empathy, cooperation and unity in diversity
• expand and improve our use of real-time, granular, broadband intelligence from multiple sources
• compose a new vernacular for interweaving deeper reflection with collaborative action as well as the past with the present and the possible.

At a minimum there are ten principles we must incorporate and embed into our routine practices when planning and implementing change:

1. Design charrettes that include and connect all salient features - even when these are considered to be nominally beyond the scope of our enquiry as defined by others
2. Questions deliberately crafted to probe our innermost values, beliefs and assumptions in order to reveal and open up entirely fresh options and alternative pathways
3. Dialogical cycles that recursively and iteratively explore our individual and collective interiors (psychologies and cultures) as well as the more palpable exteriors (of the built environment, human behaviours, technologies and systems) we erroneously believe we can control
4. Immersive decision theatre facilities in which the most intricate scenarios can be visualised and played out in ways that surface a range of future strategic options
5. Analytical methods (quantitative and qualitative) that purposefully trawl across the “expanded now” of our total life experience (a compaction of past, present and possible future states of the natural or business ecosystems that concern us) in order to “include and transcend” potential pitfalls, flawed routines, outmoded stratagems, etc.
6. Mechanisms for accelerating our individual and collective learning metabolisms while institutionalising these to effect faster yet more considered trajectories for intentional evolution
7. Procedures to enable our attention density to remain constantly attuned to new or unanticipated developments in the broader world-system
8. Methodologies for using real-time intelligence to navigate changing conditions so that strategy becomes a continuous process of resilient design, review and recalibration
9. Shared narratives for portraying a range of possible futures and for guiding collective action within preferred futures
10. Tools and vocabulary that can be used to develop a mature capability for strategic leaning - rather than the contemporary bias for an immediate response when our senses warn us of an impending situation that needs our attention.

Unintended consequences

It seems to me that these ten design criteria must be critical attributes of any learning system intended to ensure that what we are doing and how we are doing it, today and into the future, is sustainable and relevant. Yet these design criteria are precisely what the protagonists in my three cases lack. It is also the reason I know not to expect “better outcomes” from their activities – irrespective of any extravagant promises made to the contrary - however much I hope that is not the case.

The sad truth is the final result from most strategy retreats, government taskforces and globally-sponsored summits, are predictable for their triteness, absence of imagination, the esteem accorded banal generalities, and a seemingly infinite recycling of clichéd aims and objectives dressed up in novel slogans.

Because of this inadequate systemic and self-awareness, the inability of current modes of enquiry to include and transcend such astonishing variety, the lack of an inclusive language for depicting complex patterns, and the impoverished methods we habitually use in place of thoughtfully designed, bespoke architectures, the pace of change towards an intentionally empathic future for humanity is incredibly and frustratingly slow.

The gradual awakening of citizens to various forms of oppression and injustice we are witnessing today in so many different forums and events around the world, especially in terms of how we deal more effectively with embedded corruption, political dictatorships, terrorists, peak oil, a rampaging banking sector, food security, climate change and the like are now mirrored in a similar prerequisite for transcending orthodoxies concerned with how we perceive, interpret, talk to each other and act upon such matters.

Without transformation of the principal means we use to comprehend the truth of our situation at any moment we may simply fall into the trap of assuming we know what is best and of reproducing what has already failed. If we do that for too much longer we should not be surprised if the collective voice of humanity rises up against those in authority to threaten a terrible retribution.

The Third Industrial Revolution

Our industrial civilization is at a crossroads. Oil and the other fossil fuel energies that make up the industrial way of life are sunsetting, and the technologies made from and propelled by these energies are antiquated. The entire industrial infrastructure built off of fossil fuels is aging and in disrepair. The result is that unemployment is rising to dangerous levels all over the world. Governments, businesses and consumers are awash in debt and living standards are declining everywhere. A record one billion human beings - nearly one seventh of the human race - face hunger and starvation. Worse, climate change from fossil fuel-based industrial activity looms on the horizon, imperiling our own species’ very ability to survive.

Since the beginning of the Great Recession in the summer of 2008, governments, the business community, and civil society have been embroiled in a fierce debate over how to restart the global economy. While austerity measures and fiscal, labor, and market reforms will all be necessary, they are not sufficient to re-grow the economy. Let me explain by way of an anecdote. Just months after arriving in office, the new Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, asked me to come to Berlin to help her administration address the question of how to create new jobs and grow the German economy in the twenty-first century. I began my remarks by asking the chancellor, “How do you grow the German economy, the EU economy, or, for that matter, the global economy, in the last stages of a great energy era and an industrial revolution built on it?”

It is becoming increasingly clear that the Second Industrial Revolution is dying and that industrial induced CO2 emissions are threatening the viability of life on Earth. What we need now is a bold new economic narrative that can take us into a sustainable post-carbon future. Finding that new vision requires an understanding of the technological forces that precipitate the profound transformations in society.

A New Economic Narrative

The great economic revolutions in history occur when new communication technologies converge with new energy systems. New energy revolutions make possible more expansive and integrated trade. Accompanying communication revolutions manage the new complex commercial activities made possible by the new energy flows. In the 19th century, cheap steam powered print technology and the introduction of public schools gave rise to a print-literate work force with the communication skills to manage the increased flow of commercial activity made possible by coal and steam power technology, ushering in the First Industrial Revolution. In the 20th century, centralized electricity communication - the telephone, and later radio and television - became the communication medium to manage a more complex and dispersed oil, auto, and suburban era, and the mass consumer culture of the Second Industrial Revolution.

Today, Internet technology and renewable energies are beginning to merge to create a new infrastructure for a Third Industrial Revolution (TIR) that will change the way power is distributed in the 21st century. In the coming era, hundreds of millions of people will produce their own renewable energy in their homes, offices, and factories and share green electricity with each other in an “Energy Internet” just like we now generate and share information online.

The establishment of a Third Industrial Revolution [TIR] infrastructure will create thousands of new businesses and millions of jobs and lay the basis for a sustainable global economy in the 21st century. However, let me add a cautionary note. Like every other communication and energy infrastructure in history, the various pillars of a Third Industrial Revolution must be laid down simultaneously or the foundation will not hold. That’s because each pillar can only function in relationship to the others.

The five pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution are (1) shifting to renewable energy; (2) transforming the building stock of every continent into micro–power plants to collect renewable energies on-site; (3) deploying hydrogen and other storage technologies in every building and throughout the infrastructure to store intermittent energies; (4) using Internet technology to transform the power grid of every continent into an energy internet that acts just like the Internet (when millions of buildings are generating a small amount of renewable energy locally, on-site, they can sell surplus green electricity back to the grid and share it with their continental neighbors); and (5) transitioning the transport fleet to electric plug-in and fuel cell vehicles that can buy and sell green electricity on a smart, continental, interactive power grid.

The creation of a renewable energy regime, loaded by buildings, partially stored in the form of hydrogen, distributed via a green electricity Internet, and connected to plug-in, zero-emission transport, opens the door to a Third Industrial Revolution. The entire system is interactive, integrated, and seamless. When these five pillars come together, they make up an indivisible technological platform—an emergent system whose properties and functions are qualitatively different from the sum of its parts. In other words, the synergies between the pillars create a new economic paradigm that can transform the world.

The public/private financing of the Third Industrial Revolution infrastructure build-out across the world will be at the very top of the agenda for the international banking and financial community in the first half of the 21st century.

The Shift To Lateral Power

The Third Industrial Revolution is the last of the great Industrial Revolutions and will lay the foundational infrastructure for an emerging collaborative age. Its completion will signal the end of a two-hundred-year commercial saga characterized by industrious thinking, entrepreneurial markets, and mass labor workforces and the beginning of a new era marked by collaborative behavior, social networks and professional and technical workforces. In the coming half century, the conventional, centralized business operations of the First and Second Industrial Revolutions will increasingly be subsumed by the distributed business practices of the Third Industrial Revolution; and the traditional, hierarchical organization of economic and political power will give way to lateral power organized nodally across society.

Lateral power is a new force in the world. Steve Jobs and the other innovators of his generation took us from expensive centralized main-frame computers, owned and controlled by a handful of global companies, to cheap desktop computers and cell phones, allowing billions of people to connect up with one another in peer-to-peer networks in the social spaces of the internet. The democratization of communications has enabled nearly one third of the human population on earth to share music, knowledge, news and social life on an open playing field, marking one of the great evolutionary advances in the history of our species.

But as impressive as this accomplishment is, it is only half of the story. The new, green energy industries are improving performance and reducing costs at an ever accelerating rate. And just as the generation and distribution of information is becoming nearly free, renewable energies will also. The sun, wind, biomass, geothermal heat and hydropower are available to everyone and, like information, are never used up.

When Internet communications manage green energy, every human being on earth becomes his or her own source of power, both literally and figuratively. Billions of human beings sharing their renewable energy laterally on a continental green electricity internet creates the foundation for the democratization of the global economy and a more just society.

Distributed Capitalism

Energy regimes shape the nature of civilizations - how they are organized, how the fruits of commerce and trade are distributed, how political power is exercised, and how social relations are conducted. To understand how the new Third Industrial Revolution infrastructure is likely to dramatically change the distribution of economic power in the twenty-first century, it is helpful to step back and examine how the fossil fuel–based First and Second Industrial Revolutions reordered power relations over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Fossil fuels - coal, oil, and natural gas - are elite energies for the simple reason that they are found only in select places. They require a significant military investment to secure their access and continual geopolitical management to assure their availability. They also require top down command and control systems and massive concentrations of capital to move them from underground to the end users. The ability to centralize production and distribution - the essence of modern capitalism - is critical to the effective performance of the system as a whole. The centralized energy infrastructure, in turn, sets the conditions for the rest of the economy, encouraging similar business models across every sector.

Virtually all of the other critical industries that emerged from the oil culture - modern finance, telecommunications, automotive, power and utilities, and commercial construction - and that feed off of the fossil fuel spigot were similarly predisposed to bigness in order to achieve their own economies of scale. And, like the oil industry, they require huge sums of capital to operate and are organized in a centralized fashion.

Three of the four largest companies in the world today are oil companies - Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil, and BP. Underneath these giant energy companies are some five hundred global companies representing every sector and industry - with a combined revenue of $22.5 trillion, which is the equivalent of one-third of the world’s $62 trillion GDP - that are inseparably connected to and dependent on fossil fuels for their very survival.

The emerging Third Industrial Revolution, by contrast, is organized around distributed renewable energies that are found everywhere and are, for the most part, free - sun, wind, hydro, geothermal heat, biomass, and ocean waves and tides. These dispersed energies will be collected at millions of local sites and then bundled and shared with others over a continental green electricity internet to achieve optimum energy levels and maintain a high-performing, sustainable economy. The distributed nature of renewable energies necessitates collaborative rather than hierarchical command and control mechanisms.

This new lateral energy regime establishes the organizational model for the countless economic activities that multiply from it. A more distributed and collaborative industrial revolution, in turn, invariably leads to a more distributed sharing of the wealth generated.

The extraordinary capital costs of owning and operating giant centralized telephone, radio, and television communications technology and fossil fuel and nuclear power plants in markets is giving way to the new “distributed capitalism,” in which the low entry costs in lateral networks make it possible for virtually everyone to become a potential entrepreneur and collaborator, creating and sharing information and energy in open commons. Witness twenty something young men creating Google, Facebook, and other global information networks, literally in their college dorm rooms and thousands of small businesses converting their buildings to green micro power plants and connecting with one another in regional electricity networks.

What I am describing is a fundamental change in the way capitalism functions that is now unfolding across the economy and reshaping how companies conduct business. The shrinking of transaction costs in the music business and publishing field with the emergence of file sharing of music, eBooks, and news blogs, is wreaking havoc on these traditional industries. We can expect similar disruptive impacts as the diminishing transaction costs of green energy allow manufacturers, service industries, and retailers to produce and share goods and services in vast economic networks with very little outlay of financial capital.

Democratizing Manufacturing

For example, consider manufacturing. Nothing is more suggestive of the industrial way of life than highly capitalized, giant, centralized factories equipped with heavy machines and attended by blue-collar workforces, churning out mass-produced products on assembly lines. But what if millions of people could manufacture batches or even single manufactured items in their own homes or businesses, cheaper, quicker, and with the same quality control as the most advanced state-of the-art factories on earth?

While the TIR economy allows millions of people to produce their own virtual information and energy, a new digital manufacturing revolution now opens up the possibility of following suit in the production of durable goods. In the new era, everyone can potentially be their own manufacturer as well as their own internet site and power company. The process is called 3-D printing; and although it sounds like science fiction, it is already coming online, and promises to change the entire way we think of industrial production. Think about pushing the print button on your computer and sending a digital file to an inkjet printer, except, with 3-D printing, the machine runs off a three-dimensional product. Using computer aided design, software directs the 3-D printer to build successive layers of the product using powder, molten plastic, or metals to create the material scaffolding. The 3-D printer can produce multiple copies just like a photocopy machine. All sorts of goods, from jewelry to mobile phones, auto and aircraft parts, medical implants, and batteries are being “printed out” in what is being termed “additive manufacturing,” distinguishing it from the “subtractive manufacturing,” which involves cutting down and pairing off materials and then attaching them together.

3-D entrepreneurs are particularly bullish about additive manufacturing, because the process requires as little as 10 percent of the raw material expended in traditional manufacturing and uses less energy than conventional factory production, thus greatly reducing the cost.

In the same way that the Internet radically reduced entry costs in generating and disseminating information, giving rise to new businesses like Google and Facebook, additive manufacturing has the potential to greatly reduce the cost of producing hard goods, making entry costs sufficiently lower to encourage hundreds of thousands of mini manufacturers—small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) - to challenge and potentially outcompete the giant manufacturing companies that were at the center of the First and Second Industrial Revolution economies.

Already, a spate of new start-up companies are entering the 3-D printing market with names like Within Technologies, Digital Forming, Shape Ways, Rapid Quality Manufacturing, Stratasys, Bespoke Innovations, 3D Systems, MakerBot Industries, Freedom of Creation, LGM, and Contour Crafting and are determined to reinvent the very idea of manufacturing in the Third Industrial era.

The energy saved at every step of the digital manufacturing process, from reduction in materials used, to less energy expended in making the product, when applied across the global economy, adds up to a qualitative increase in energy efficiency beyond anything imaginable in the First and Second Industrial Revolutions. When the energy used to power the production process is renewable and also generated on site, the full impact of a lateral Third Industrial Revolution becomes strikingly apparent. Since approximately 84 percent of the productivity gains in the manufacturing and service industries are attributable to increases in thermodynamic efficiencies - only 14 percent of productivity gains are the result of capital invested per worker - we begin to grasp the significance of the enormous surge in productivity that will accompany the Third Industrial Revolution and what it will mean for society.

Near Zero Cost Marketing and Logistics

The democratization of manufacturing is being accompanied by the tumbling costs of marketing. Because of the centralized nature of the communication technologies of the first and second industrial revolutions - newspapers, magazines, radio, and television - marketing costs were high and favored giant firms who could afford to devote substantial funds to market their products and services. The internet has transformed marketing from a significant expense to a negligible cost, allowing start ups and small and medium size enterprises to market their goods and services on internet sites that stretch over virtual space, enabling them to compete and even out compete many of the giant business enterprises of the 21st century.

Consider Etsy, a brash, web start-up company that has taken off in the past seven years. Etsy was founded by a young New York University graduate, Rob Kalin, who made furniture in his apartment. Frustrated that he had no way to connect with potential buyers interested in hand-crafted furniture, Kalin teamed up with a few friends and put up a website designed to bring individual craftsmen of all kinds, from around the world, together with prospective buyers. The site has become a global virtual showroom, where millions of buyers and thousands of sellers from more than fifty countries are connecting, breathing new life into craft production—an art that had largely disappeared with the advent of modern industrial capitalism.

Connecting multitudes of sellers and buyers in virtual space is almost free. By replacing all of the middlemen - from wholesalers to retailers - with a distributed virtual network of sellers and buyers and eliminating the transaction costs that are marked up at every stage in the marketing process, Etsy has created a new global craft bazaar that scales laterally rather than hierarchically, and markets goods collaboratively rather than top-down.

Etsy brings another dimension to the market - the personalization of relationships between seller and buyer. The website hosts chat rooms, coordinates online craft shows, and conducts seminars, allowing sellers and buyers to interact, exchange ideas, customize products, and create social bonds that can last a lifetime. Giant, global companies mass-producing standardized products on assembly lines operated by anonymous workforces can’t compete with the kind of intimate one-to-one relationship between artisan and patron.

Although still in its infancy, Etsy is a quickly growing enterprise. In 2011, Etsy’s sales topped nearly $500 million. In a recent conversation, Kalin told me that his mission is to help foster “empathic consciousness” in the global economic arena and lay the foundation for a more inclusive society. His vision of connecting up “millions of local living economies that will create a sense of community in the economy again” is the essence of the Third Industrial Revolution model. Etsy is only one of hundreds of global Internet companies that are bringing together producers and consumers in virtual marketing spaces and, in the process, democratizing marketing costs across the global economy.

As the new 3-D technology becomes more widespread, on site, just in time customized manufacturing of products will also reduce logistics costs with the possibility of huge energy savings. The cost of transporting products will plummet in the coming decades because an increasing array of goods will be produced locally in thousands of micro-manufacturing plants and transported regionally by trucks powered by green electricity and hydrogen generated on site.

The lateral scaling of the Third Industrial Revolution allows small and medium size enterprises to flourish. Still, global companies will not disappear. Rather, they will increasingly metamorphose from primary producers and distributers to aggregators. In the new economic era, their role will be to coordinate and manage the multiple networks that move commerce and trade across the value chain.

New Business Models and Jobs in the 21st Century

Germany is leading the way into the new economic era. The Federal Government has teamed up with six regions across Germany to test the introduction of an energy internet that will allow tens of thousands of German businesses and millions of home owners to collect renewable energies on site, store them in the form of hydrogen, and share green electricity across Germany in a smart energy internet. Entire communities are transforming their commercial and residential buildings into green micro-power plants. To date, more than 1 million buildings in Germany have been converted into partial green micro power plants. Companies like Siemens, Bosch and Daimler are creating sophisticated new IT software, hardware, appliances and vehicles, that will merge distributed Internet communication with distributed energy, to create smart buildings, infrastructure, and green mobility for the cities of the future.

The transition to the Third Industrial Revolution will require a wholesale reconfiguration of the entire economic infrastructure of each country, creating millions of jobs and countless new goods and services. Nations will need to invest in renewable energy technology on a massive scale; convert millions of buildings into green micro power plants; embed hydrogen and other storage technology throughout the national infrastructure; lay down a green energy internet; and transform the automobile from the internal combustion engine to electric plug-in and fuel cell cars.

The remaking of each nation’s infrastructure and the retooling of industries is going to require a massive retraining of workers on a scale matching the professional and vocational training at the onset of the First and Second Industrial Revolutions. The new high tech workforce of the Third Industrial Revolution will need to be skilled in renewable energy technologies, green construction, IT and embedded computing, nanotechnology, sustainable chemistry, fuel-cell development, digital power grid management, hybrid electric and hydrogen-powered transport and hundreds of other technical fields.

Entrepreneurs and managers will need to be educated to take advantage of cutting edge business models, including distributed and collaborative research and development strategies, open source and networked commerce, performance contracting, shared savings agreements, and sustainable low-carbon logistics and supply chain management. The skill levels and managerial styles of the Third Industrial Revolution workforce will be qualitatively different from those of the workforce of the Second Industrial Revolution.

The lateral scaling of the Third Industrial Revolution shifts the fulcrum of power from centralized global companies to distributed small and medium size enterprise networks. The rapid decline in transaction costs brought on by The Third Industrial Revolution are leading to the democratization of information, energy, manufacturing, marketing, and logistics, and the ushering in of a new era of distributed capitalism that is likely to change the very way we think of commercial life. The Third Industrial Revolution offers the hope that we can arrive at a sustainable post-carbon era by mid-century. We have the science, the technology, and the game plan to make it happen. Now it is a question of whether we will recognize the economic possibilities that lie ahead and muster the will to get there in time.

This article was written by Jeremy Rifkin and is reprinted here with his permission. Jeremy is the author of The New York Times best selling book, The Third Industrial Revolution, How Lateral Power is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World. He is an adviser to the European Union and to heads of state around the world. He is a senior lecturer at the Wharton School’s Executive Education Program at the University of Pennsylvania and the president of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington, D.C.

A Man Stood in a Metro Station

A man stood in a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule. A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk. A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the top musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written,with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars. Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100.

This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?

TRUE STORY
by: Vahdet Yilmaz

The Self-Attribution Fallacy

If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1 per cent make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren’t responsible. Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes.

The findings of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize, are devastating to the beliefs that financial high-fliers entertain about themselves. He discovered that their apparent success is a cognitive illusion. For example, he studied the results achieved by 25 wealth advisers, across eight years. He found that the consistency of their performance was zero. The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill. Those who received the biggest bonuses had simply got lucky.

Such results have been widely replicated. They show that traders and fund managers across Wall Street receive their massive remuneration for doing no better than would a chimpanzee flipping a coin. When Kahneman tried to point this out they blanked him. The illusion of skill … is deeply ingrained in their culture.

 So much for the financial sector and its super-educated analysts. As for other kinds of business, you tell me. Is your boss possessed of judgement, vision and management skills superior to those of anyone else in the firm, or did he or she get there through bluff, bullshit and bullying?

In a study published by the journal Psychology, Crime and Law, Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon tested 39 senior managers and chief executives from leading British businesses. They compared the results to the same tests on patients at Broadmoor special hospital, where people who have been convicted of serious crimes are incarcerated. On certain indicators of psychopathy, the bosses’s scores either matched or exceeded those of the patients. In fact on these criteria they beat even the subset of patients who had been diagnosed with psychopathic personality disorders.

The psychopathic traits on which the bosses scored so highly, Board and Fritzon point out, closely resemble the characteristics that companies look for. Those who have these traits often possess great skill in flattering and manipulating powerful people. Egocentricity, a strong sense of entitlement, a readiness to exploit others and a lack of empathy and conscience are also unlikely to damage their prospects in many corporations.

In their book Snakes in Suits, Paul Babiak and Robert Hare point out that as the old corporate bureaucracies have been replaced by flexible, ever-changing structures, and as team players are deemed less valuable than competitive risk-takers, psychopathic traits are more likely to be selected and rewarded. Reading their work, it seems to me that if you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a poor family you’re likely to go to prison. If you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a rich family you’re likely to go to business school.

This is not to suggest that all executives are psychopaths. It is to suggest that the economy has been rewarding the wrong skills. As the bosses have shaken off the trade unions and captured both regulators and tax authorities, the distinction between the productive and rentier upper classes has broken down. CEOs now behave like dukes, extracting from their financial estates sums out of all proportion to the work they do or the value they generate, sums that sometimes exhaust the businesses they parasitise. They are no more deserving of the share of wealth they’ve captured than oil sheikhs.

The rest of us are invited, by governments and by fawning interviews in the press, to subscribe to their myth of election: the belief that they are the chosen ones, possessed of superhuman talents. The very rich are often described as wealth creators. But they have preyed upon the earth’s natural wealth and their workers’ labour and creativity, impoverishing both people and planet. Now they have almost bankrupted us. The wealth creators of neoliberal mythology are some of the most effective wealth destroyers the world has ever seen.

What has happened over the past 30 years is the capture of the world’s common treasury by a handful of people, assisted by neoliberal policies which were first imposed on rich nations by Thatcher and Reagan. I am now going to bombard you with figures. I’m sorry about that, but these numbers need to be tattoed on our minds. Between 1947 and 1979, productivity in the US rose by 119 per cent, while the income of the bottom fifth of the population rose by 122 per cent. But between 1979 and 2009, productivity rose by 80 per cent, while the income of the bottom fifth fell by 4 per cent. In roughly the same period, the income of the top 1 per cent rose by 270 per cent.

In the UK, the money earned by the poorest tenth fell by 12 per cent between 1999 and 2009, while the money made by the richest 10 per cent rose by 37 per cent. The Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality, climbed in this country from 26 in 1979 to 40 in 2009.

In his book The Haves and the Have Nots, Branko Milanovic tries to discover who was the richest person who has ever lived. Beginning with the loaded Roman triumvir Marcus Crassus, he measures wealth according to the quantity of his compatriots’ labour a rich man could buy. It appears that the richest man to have lived in the past 2000 years is alive today. Carlos Slim could buy the labour of 440,000 average Mexicans. This makes him 14 times as rich as Crassus, nine times as rich as Carnegie and four times as rich as Rockefeller.

Until recently, we were mesmerised by the bosses’ self-attribution. Their acolytes, in academia, the media, think tanks and government, created an extensive infrastructure of junk economics and flattery to justify their seizure of other people’s wealth. So immersed in this nonsense did we become that we seldom challenged its veracity.

This is now changing. On Sunday evening I witnessed a remarkable thing: a debate on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral between Stuart Fraser, chairman of the Corporation of the City of London, another official from the Corporation, the turbulent priest Father William Taylor, John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network and the people of Occupy London. It had something of the flavour of the Putney debates of 1647. For the first time in decades – and all credit to the Corporation officials for turning up – financial power was obliged to answer directly to the people.

It felt like history being made. The undeserving rich are now in the frame, and the rest of us want our money back.

This article was written by George Monbiot and reproduced here with his permission. The Self-Attribution Fallacy was first published in The Guardian on 7th November 2011 (see www.guardian.co.uk). George's blogs are online at www.monbiot.com