I have observed these few days leading up to my 73rd birthday by writing. Breaking a self-imposed silence that lasted for several months, and after a torrent of somewhat confessional texts over the past two years, I felt the need for a brief respite - time to mull over ideas, seek some patterns in the themes to which I constantly return, and commit to a clearer, concise account of my outspoken concerns regarding the future of humans on this planet.
This pause was also timed to coincide with another significant inflection point. After three years of working out how best to communicate our vision, trialling a variety of new tools in the incubation of second order change, evolving a novel self-funding business model, and appointing a CEO to succeed me, a much-needed interlude was appropriate at Centre for the Future. This is allowing us to process major lessons learned so as to establish a viable framework for undertaking our mission in the future.
From a personal viewpoint I have reached a stage in life where I am comfortable in my own skin, content with my modest contribution to society’s library of ideas, and largely free of any regrets concerning missed steps in the dance. I count myself as a fortunate soul. But there is always a melancholy thought nagging away in the back of my mind, and it keeps me awake night after night. I find its refrain deeply disturbing as there is no easy answer or convincing riposte to this most fundamental question: Are we wise enough to survive our own success?
This was the focusing question we posed when launching Centre for the Future three years ago. It is not a rhetorical question, nor entirely futile, although I am sure it might appear so to many. After all we can all point to radical changes over the past few decades that brought enormous benefits to society as a whole. What could possibly stall such progress? Industrial digitalisation is just one example of how human innovation persists, seemingly undiminished by socio-political and economic flaws, even in the face of our more predatory habits.
Over the past 200 years, in what has been a period of unprecedented population growth, we have created more prosperity for each other than ever before. Extreme poverty has declined massively, especially in countries like China. Literacy has become the norm. Most people are living healthier, longer lives. Indeed, life expectancy is the highest it has ever been[i]. We can connect with almost anyone on the planet at any time, for any reason. Sustained economic growth has also changed the relationship between people - better clothing, nutritious food, good sanitation, less cramped housing, and vital medical services are all far less scarce. War is becoming less deadly, while wars between states are almost non-existent.
From all of this evidence one might easily concur with the notion that human progress is no longer a grand theory but a fact. Yet personally I feel so deeply conflicted. Is it possible that all is not quite what it seems? Are we kidding ourselves by accepting stories dressed up to make us feel good? Are the facts as stated true, or simply another way those in control can preserve social stability?
On the one hand I stand in awe of some of the new technologies that are already changing so many lives for the better - in medical diagnostics, the use of nano-robotics in non-invasive surgery, organs-on-chips, socially-aware machine intelligence, and metabolic engineering, for example - all the way to autonomous vehicles and, who knows, perhaps the elimination of disease. On the other hand, I remain sceptical that in all the hype we might have missed something really crucial.
I guess if I turn a blind eye to the unending carnage in the Middle East, ignore the fact that the US is in the midst of its longest ever war, with no end in sight, and engaged militarily in nearly half the world’s countries, shrug off the fact that democracies all around the world are in a shambles, plead ignorant to the fact that bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics, that there are more refugees, as well as nearly 30 million slaves,[ii]in the world today, and that the climate is headed for a calamitous meltdown, I might be able to pretend all is well and sleep at nights. But that, frankly, would be burying my head in the sand.
I do not doubt that the blockchain, along with optogenetics, photovoltaic materials, social awareness algorithms, 3D printing, cryptocurrencies, and other such inventions, are symbols of our insatiable curiosity and ingenuity. But what if they are also a distraction? Could our focus on new gadgets be preventing us from directing whatever imaginative capacity we possess in addressing one of the greatest existential threats facing humanity?
I am not referring to global warming, nuclear warfare, artificially intelligent weapons, socio-economic stratification - or even Donald Trump’s tweets! Hidden in full view, the real enemy remains invisible to most of us. I refer to the cognitive, emotional, developmental threshold the human species seems to have reached – a gridlock we are manifestly failing to breach.
Delusional, yet all the time believing we are creative, we blindly recycle ideas drawn from the catacombs of history. Abetted by the free rein of social media, fantasy is an alternative to the truth. Capitalism is predatory - a harlot adorned as an empress. Politics has long played clown in the court of the elite. Mainstream economics is lifeless, its rotting corpse embraced by rent-seekers, corrupt politicians, and organised crime. Excessive surveillance by the state has all but eliminated personal privacy. Meanwhile education is little more than a cruel hoax for memorising tasks best done by a machine.
In all of this society seems to have lost its way. Social cohesion is fracturing while collective purpose, meaning and identity have fallen into a catatonic state, a kind of stupor where we tread water - amusing ourselves to death yet persisting with structures and conditions that confound and exhaust us. We are all busy ignoring the fact that old systems are no longer working. Why would they? They were designed for a different era. But we have somehow convinced ourselves that patching up the present, often by surrendering to what seemed to work in the past, can still be transformative. In reality, this obsessive editing of the present is more likely to become an impasse preventing civilisational adaptation and renewal. But if this is the case, does it really matter when set against the many benefits we enjoy today?
I believe so. A pact with the devil is never a good idea.
Our incapacity to break free from old archetypes, and the models we casually use to think about fundamental concepts like the human condition, coupled with our inability to institute profound, second order change in order to tackle the intractable problems we ourselves are still causing, is today etched deeply into our practises and psyche. We feel this helplessness as a numb ache, a yearning for something lost but long forgotten. Regrettably we no longer seem to have the collective impulse needed to do the work that could negate such feelings. We have become too apathetic perhaps; too attuned to minding our own business.
Because of this we seem more and more content to leave an existential problem like climate change for future generations to deal with. This is morally inexcusable unless, of course, we refrain from stealing the resources that would otherwise make environmental renewal viable. But that is not the case. Each year we use more ecological reserves and services than nature can regenerate - through overfishing, deforestation, and emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than ecosystems can possibly absorb. Each year this “overreach” gets worse. But that is just one of many such wicked problems ahead of us.
I have always worn the mantle of futurist with some misgiving. Given that my entire identity is tied up with making better sense of what is happening today I was never sure what that particular title really implied. Besides, for me the deep past, present moment and deep future occur as a single, entangled whole – an expanded now of infinite potential. To split them, or to compartmentalise their impacts, is really to miss the point. It is a reductionist ploy. One that I do not much care for. So it is within the context of this expanded now that I ponder here a few key ideas that should be central to our inquiry as a society, yet remain only on the periphery of community awareness - and totally off the radar in terms of those elected or appointed to lead. Keep in mind that these are all inextricably entangled, even though they are necessarily presented sequentially here.
The first of these is the set of ingrained, implicit tenets - episteme or worldview - that is a shared phenomenon within and across different societies. The worldview is only a mental model. But it shapes our physical reality - the palpable world-system of constructed objects, transactions, customs and events - informing what we do, in addition to what we believe can and should be done, or not done. Thus, the potency of the worldview can never be taken lightly.
It is worth noting that the worldview differs from the mindset we all develop as individuals which, rooted in our cultural heritage, upbringing, and a range of nuanced social factors, we access constantly, both consciously and intuitively, to interpret the prevailing worldview. This mindset is part of our individual identity. Its nature is fractal, affiliating with similar mindsets within a social or cultural set, it cannot be completely shared with anyone unless, of course, you happen to be a conjoined twin with a single brain. What is important to appreciate from our point of view is the constant synergetic flow of ideas, feelings and actions connecting individual mindsets and the shared prevalent worldview.
Throughout history, every civilisation has given life to a dominant worldview - with its own unique boundaries and dichotomies, drivers, values, and distinctive stages of development. In every case, from the first nations to Ubuntu, Aztec and Indic societies, including those that still prevail, the arc of evolution appears to be both emergent and consistent: higher stages of development include and transcend previous stages in direct response to greater levels of contextual complexity. Eventually the worldview either collapses into a previous state, most often caused by an inability to solve the most difficult challenges facing the society, or takes an ontological leap into more advanced forms. At that point the worldview is thought to replicate its previous developmental cycle, only from a higher level of consciousness.[iii]
Although no longer as dominant as it was in the era of empires, seemingly depleted and worn out, and with the rapid rise of the contemporary Sinic paradigm snapping at its heels, the Occidental worldview still retains immense influence. In a world of 7.6 billion inhabitants, possibly one third still adhere, or aspire to, this episteme. As one might expect, within that population the developmental gamut is vast. So, for example, Nordic economies appear to be far more advanced than in most South East Asian countries, most evidently in terms of their approach to social issues such as homelessness, unemployment, crime, corrections, substance abuse, health and education, for example, while economies in sub-Saharan Africa are even less enlightened. Yet all three societies legitimately see themselves upholding the modern Western principles and worldview.
And that might very well be the crux for my unease. You see, after a quarter of a century working at the interface between organisations and society I have a feeling that those of us who have been socialised into the orthodox occidental paradigm, are now trapped in an extractionist world-system that, for the most part, is falling far short of servicing our needs and has even begun to undermine human progress at a global level.
Perhaps Scandinavian countries are closer to ontological transcendence than the rest of the West. If so, we should watch closely for clues as to how collapse might be avoided, our most harmful hubris corrected, and the most existential threats resolved peacefully and fruitfully.
Meanwhile, those societies with markedly differing worldview(s), such as China and the Sinic diaspora, should be encouraged to uphold and evolve their unique character rather than deferring to the lowest common denominators of the Western worldview – at least in its current uncertain state. This particular case is not without its geo-political risks of course, especially if the Sinic model transits a developmental arc that nudges it further away from the Western worldview, rather than closer to it.
As in any worldview, the source models within the Western episteme, though few in number, reinforce each other. Western cosmology, scientific realism, Cartesian logic, as well as the authority and role of the individual when enshrined within capitalist exchange mechanisms, generate a coherent and compelling field effect. From childhood, people under the influence of the Western worldview learn to venerate these archetypes, and their interplay within the law, to such an extent that they encourage us to objectify literally everything.
Although this might be useful for economic theorists, reducing men and women to the status of mere objects that can be owned, traded, and interchanged with other objects, has resulted in social structures in which censorship, selfishness, and greed can logically take precedence over moral conscience or virtuous behaviour. This is precisely the anomaly we find between adherence to black letter law, and real justice.
Objectification also tricks us into believing we are smart enough - and wise enough - to find a technological solution for all our woes. This is deluded of course. But what recourse do we really have? When we remove ourselves from the centre of everything we become insecure and anxious. The human ego is far more fragile than we care to admit. Nor is an appeal to exceptionalism the answer. In fact, by habitually reverting to any supposed superiority over others, states like the US and Australia, in the way they treat asylum seekers for example, may already be losing the essence of what it means to be human.
Next there is the complexity of the human condition to consider. Part of that condition is the desire to reduce life’s elements to stuff that can be easily understood and controlled. This is the reason so many contemporary governments feel compelled to standardise every aspect of their citizens’ lives in their efforts to reduce variation and enforce compliance with the established order.
Sadly, the closer we get to tolerating the almost incestuous monoculture that has arisen through the globalisation of trade and finance, and the more we accept the depreciation of our diverse mindsets, with all their cultural richness, the less capacity we will have to solve the existential problems facing us. We will find even the ability to adapt and to coevolve consciously more overwhelming.
Then there is the burden of knowledge - how it is created, and used, and why. If we think of the totality of what we know in the Western tradition as being on the inside of a circle, and what we do not know yet, or is presently invisible to us, is on the outside of the circle, then the challenge, as well as the opportunity no doubt, is the corresponding increase in what we do not know as our circle of knowledge increases.
In addition, we must accept that the rest of the world, incorporating all knowledge traditions across the chronicles of time, have known, and know, far more about the world than those of us inhabiting the Western worldview. We do not always act with the humility validating the incontestability of such truths.
So here is our dilemma. When the volume of what we do not know increases, we invariably substitute opinions for evidence in an attempt to lessen any doubts we might have, and in order to bolster our ego. But then the likelihood of discovering fresh insights is diminished by all the prejudice, fear and apprehension, generated particularly by those who are called leaders but are at a loss as to what they should do next. In our preferred echo chambers, we then focus on creating an ethos where beliefs and opinions are an acceptable substitute for facts and knowledge, while genuine insights are treated with scepticism. We all do it. But it has become rampant, and even acceptable, of late.
At the same time, because of increasing complexity in our universe and the overwhelming amounts of data available for us to access, we not only find wisdom much harder to come by, but often impossible to distinguish from the banality enveloping us.
Without new insights it is most unlikely we will see any other option than to continue with our obsessive editing of the present - by surrendering to what seemed to work in the past. Without wisdom we will meekly follow them is guided dogma of a technocratic elite and a few intellectually impoverished economists. What is good or vital for the human family in terms of our evolutionary development will either be disregarded or disparaged.
If that is the inevitable future we must face, we must accept now that the quest for constant novelty will demand our attention, while nostalgia for the past will become the single, most frustrating, source of our distraction.
We will go on treating the most putative challenges of our time, from nuclear proliferation to religious fundamentalism, endemic poverty and the impacts of climate breakdown, quite separately, with a caution bordering on paranoia. We cannot expect a sense of urgency to suddenly kick in - only a reckless misunderstanding of the complexity, and the cost of that complexity. We will fail to see that these challenges are only the visible signs of a far deeper malaise - one that is already threatening the Western worldview. Or perhaps even human civilisation as we know it today.
Whether we are talking about the rapid disintegration of the Gupta, Maya, Han, Hittite, Khmer or Roman empires, there are a number of factors that seem to appear each time a civilisation is headed for disaster. In each case we know that the adaptive capacity of the society is reduced. There is no valid reason we should regard our global civilisation any differently. When increasing complexity generates conditions in which the society finds it almost impossible to think of viable alternatives to the status quo and, as a consequence, defers action indefinitely, we invariably face the possibility of societal collapse.
These days, every day, I see evidence indicating our incapability of thinking our way out of the grave emergencies facing us.
Incumbent leaders, progressively out of their depth and slow to act, are the main actors in the gridlock I mentioned previously. Meanwhile new technologies have become a raison-d’etre, a panacea, rather than an aid to conscious coevolution. As fear, inertia and apathy embed as the real enemy, there is no other solution than to turn to adaptiveness. Not just physical recalibration, you understand, but cognitive renewal - the capacity to design and adapt to alternative mental models, different epistemes, and unfamiliar practices.
I believe our aim should be a transformation of our prevailing worldviews and the design of genuinely pluralistic, regenerative cultures, where the extraordinary characteristics of the human species do not require us to put ourselves at the centre of everything but, rather, perceive ourselves as a sacred part of Earth’s ecology.
Starting with the reframing of human purpose, cooperative interactions arising from a sense of abundance, empathy and inclusion, need to be designed into every aspect of our lives – from the exercise of power, business and the economy, to governance, learning, production, social cohesion and community advancement.
Ultimately the primary task of organisations like Centre for the Future is to turn what is fast becoming a toxic global monoculture, driven by the prevailing mindsets of competition, scarcity, extraction and debt, into virtuous cycles of cooperation and abundance, that benefit humanity as a whole, and to help new narratives evolve that reify these virtuous cycles. That is no easy task. It requires us to reframe the future of the human family, find a common purpose, and identify one or more systemic acupuncture points that will enable a transformational leap into higher levels of being.
By putting the sun at the centre of his heavenly model Copernicus turned the prevailing astronomical paradigm inside out. In the process he threatened the established order. But the world came closer to the truth. It is time for us, too, to turn the prevailing paradigm inside out. By interrupting the current trajectory of technological positivism, particularly in the West, we can challenge many orthodox views and peek into the shadows of what should be rather than the rather bleak inevitability of what is.
[i]The sole exception in the developed world is a recent decline in the US, fuelled almost entirely by a staggering 21 per cent rise in deaths from drug overdoses.
[ii]In 2016, according to the Walk Free Foundation, there could be anywhere up to 46 million people worldwide enslaved in the form of "human trafficking, forced labour, bondage from indebtedness, forced or servile marriage or commercial sexual exploitation", with an estimated 18 million of those in India.
[iii]This paragraph is my own summarised understanding of the pioneering work undertaken by Dr Clare Graves whose emergent, cyclical theory of development remains a landmark in the social systems literature.
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