1 Why is the future still a “missing dimension?” (2007)

1. Introduction

Some four decades have passed since several futures journals and the two main organisations – the World Future Society (WFS) and the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF) began. So a number of questions arise. For example: how is the field developing? What progress have key organisations made and what remains to be done? Do we have greater clarity about the global predicament than before? Are we any closer to resolving it? Where do we look for depth insight and the most effective methods? What results can futurists and foresight practitioners claim to have achieved? What are some of the next steps in the development of disciplined futures enquiry and effective professional practice?

2. Context and approach

Before attempting answers to such questions, it’s useful to begin with a contextualising piece that sets the scene, as it were, for what follows. Hence in this paper looks broadly at why, despite all these efforts, ‘the future’ remains an elusive subject when considered from the point of view of conventional politics, business, education and so on. Clearly this is not about seeking technical explanations but cultural ones, and specifically those affected by the dominance and power (as well as the blind spots and oversights) of Western culture. The point is not that the latter is the only framework of significance. Rather, that depth understanding will be vital if we are to move beyond currently dysfunctional status quo. Hence, the paper begins with an overview of the global context before moving on to questions of psychology and culture, market ideology, the denial of limits, worldview assumptions, the issue of truthfulness vs loyalty, responding to contradictions and, finally, ways of re-defining the problem and ‘moving on’.

As we look ahead from the first decade of the 21st century, one thing is abundantly clear. Humankind is facing a time that will challenge it as never before and, in the process, re-shape both the species and its world. The working out of a series of technical and cultural revolutions has brought us to a new stage of development for which there are few, if any, historical precedents. We are challenged not only to learn how to live together in peace but also to manage this small planet on a completely different basis. Age-old social problems of violence, misery and starvation remain present. But they are joined and exacerbated by the emergence of quite new factors including:

• further technical revolutions providing God-like powers to individuals, groups and nations that manifestly lack the God-like (robust, appropriate) ethics to use them wisely;
• the rise of post-modern cultures that have questioned ancient verities and severed many of the links between human beings and the natural systems upon which their existence depends;
• the parallel rise of market-oriented ideologies that have sponsored forms of development that, in many respects, work against the long-term interests of humanity as a whole;
• the rise of new forms of conflict within and between nations; and overall,
• the steady progression of the global system away from sustainable use toward ‘overshoot and collapse’ futures. (Meadows, 2005; Steffen, 2004)

Most people are, at some level, aware of these threats and, in some cases, even of the corresponding opportunities within them. Yet age-old protective mechanisms of denial, avoidance and repression are in remarkably wide use even – perhaps especially – at the highest levels. On the whole, humankind appears to be proceeding along business-as-usual lines, as through its collective prospects remained open and unthreatened. It’s been suggested, therefore, that we are, on the whole, still ‘sleep-walking’ our way into the future.

In attempting to shed light on this rather bizzare phenomenon one thing is clear at the outset: attempts at explanation, at viable, progressive, policy-making and appropriate action must go beyond conventional everyday thinking – the kind of thinking that implicitly views the world in a unitary, one-dimensional way. They will necessarily challenge conventional assumptions, encompass a number of ‘ways of knowing’ and involve several layers, or levels, of understanding.

3. Psychology, culture and market ideology

At the level of human psychology, it’s no surprise that most people, rich and poor, seem to be preoccupied with their immediate lives in the here-and-now. There are solid evolutionary reasons why the not-here and the not-now are glimpsed only vaguely, if at all: very short time frames were indeed normal during much of pre-history. Indeed, the practice of time-discounting is regarded by some as a ‘hard wired’ feature of the human psyche. (Wilson, 2003)  If that’s correct then human civilisation is more vulnerable than is generally realised because future dangers are consistently under-regarded. Equally, however, explanations that deal only with ‘exterior’ phenomena (such as technology or the ‘wiring’ of the human brain-mind system) overlook other equally vital shaping factors, to which we will return below.

The human tendency to concentrate on the here-and-now is also reinforced by cultural factors. In Australia, for example, the laid-back lifestyle typified by phrases such as ‘no worries’ and ‘she’ll be right’ clearly carries subliminal messages such as ‘enjoy now, forget the future’ or, more commonly, ‘don’t worry, be happy’. On the whole, high standards of material living have encouraged affluent city dwellers everywhere, themselves a dominant cultural force, to pay little heed to what is happening beyond the urban boundary. (On the other hand, those living and working close to the land, with its inherent instabilities and associated costs, clearly have very different experiences and views.) These tendencies alone give cause for concern. But they are also reinforced by another historically recent factor – the pervasive commercial culture that developed as a consequence of economic liberalism, originating in the USA and wielding enormous symbolic power around the world. This new ‘driver’ within the global economy has had some successes (eg, cheap, mass produced products) and also exerted a truly vast range of costs, especially on the poor, the exploited and those perceived to be ‘on the margins’. In addition, it has successfully marketed the symbols and products of affluence that reinforce a focus on short term immediacy and self gratification. Given the outlook facing humanity, this is profoundly dysfunctional. Currently, global commerce is driving wealth into chronic over-consumption (with no increase in human happiness) instead of using this same wealth to re-design the system in order to reduce inequality and help humanity adapt to new global conditions.

Pervasive commercial influence supports the self-protective devices mentioned above and helps to generate on a vast scale what I’ve termed ‘the great forgetting’. What I mean by this is a social amnesia where the immersion of humanity in nature, our full and complete dependence upon natural process, has been obscured behind the screen of constructed fantasies, comforting images and products. The effect is so powerful that it has, over time, diverted whole populations away from understanding where fundamental natural laws (eg, that ‘the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the ecology’) and processes stand in the overall scheme of things. Commercial interests operating in what have been misnamed as ‘open markets’ have, as noted, become a dominant force. They’ve promulgated false and untenable beliefs about people (constructing them as consumers and customers rather than citizens and agents) and about their world. In so doing they undermine the viability of future generations by driving processes that simplify the Earth’s life support systems and steadily remove from play many of the options, choices and experiences enjoyed by previous generations. What has been called ‘the sixth extinction’ has been well under way for some time. (Leakey & Lewin, 1995) New Zealand, for example, is by no means the only country that no longer enjoys the once rich and varied dawn chorus that characterised vanished native birds. Australia stands to lose much, if not all, of its Great Barrier Reef over the coming decades. Everyone knows what is happening in the Brazilian rain forest, but few know how to stop it. The Faustian bargain has incalculable costs throughout the world for this and all future generations. That is why James Lovelock, the UK scientist who coined the ‘Gaia Hypothesis’, came right out of the closet with his dramatic announcement that ‘before this century is over, billions of us will die, and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable’. (Lovelock, 2006)

Unfortunately such statements seldom do more than send a temporary frisson of uncertainty and insecurity through an already stressed world. Like Paul Ehrlich’s earlier pronouncements on population, the message is too hard to hear. The common response seems to be ‘it’s better to ‘live for now’ and enjoy the fruits of civilised life while we can’.

Although it can be hard to pin down in daily life, behind the slick marketing gloss lies a dysfunctional corporatist ideology that distorts our collective priorities and obscures the realities of our situation. As John Saul noted, it has no interest whatever in the future of society nor the well-being of its citizens. (Saul, 2006, p. 162) It is an abstract ideology framed and driven, in part, by the drive for money, power and privilege. What is commonly overlooked, however, is that a point is never reached when this type of compulsive accumulation is satisfied. Abstract goals are pursued ‘forever’, without acknowledgement of limits and without being informed by notions of social desirability or need. While a series of high profile corporate scandals has revealed in detail some of the deceptions played out here, and while civil oversight has, in some cases, been improved, the penny has still not dropped in other ways. Untold numbers of quite transparent falsehoods continue to be promulgated daily through all the many channels and devices adopted by advertising and marketing. Contradictions multiply. A typical example would be the popular weekend tabloid TV program that ran a segment on global warming only to cut immediately to ads extolling the ‘virtues’ of large four-wheel-drive off-road vehicles!

4. Assumptions, practices and the Western worldview

The unrestrained operation of commercial imperatives is reinforced by other factors operating at a still deeper level: that of other perspectives and practices that have become welded into structures of great instrumental and symbolic power. One such is mainstream economics. Unlike advertisements that flutter and intrude at the edge of awareness every day, the latter is more elusive. Yet its influence is pervasive, particularly in politics and business. This abstract and defective system of understandings and practice is long due for replacement by a more humanly viable, life-oriented, system that some have called ‘the economics of permanence’. It is one of a number of redundant formations that need to be re-thought and replaced. (Schumacher, 1974) Others include:

• new or renewed meanings for ‘education’, ‘defence’, ‘health’ etc in a fragile and interconnected world;
• the growth paradigm and its implications;
• the flight of mass media from promoting reflection and understanding to chronic reality avoidance;
• human beings, organisations and societies viewed as privileged ‘masters of nature’ and
• science, technology and knowledge in general for abstract ends disconnected from ecological realities and social needs.

The point to stress here is that in naïve and conventional views, including ‘pop futures’ (for entertainment) and even in ‘problem oriented futures’ (working with conventional practices and perceptions) such concerns are and remain invisible. Then, as is well known, ‘out of sight’ equals ‘out of mind’. Publications, policies, debates and, poorly-grounded futures work that originates in the broad shallow territory of conventional thinking cannot be other than ‘part of the problem’ and therefore endlessly disappointing. On the other hand, work in any of these domains that draws on depth understandings of interior and exterior realities not only helps to explain current dysfunctions, it  provides improved capacity to negotiate new dimensions of hazard and uncertainty.

Standing behind the phenomena outlined here lies the Western world view itself – that peculiar combination of ‘ways of knowing’ that emerged from a long historical process filled with contingent events, discoveries and turning points, the consequences of which underlie and mediate every aspect of our present world. It follows that one of the most significant things that futurists and foresight practitioners can do is to look back and understand why it is that we live in this particular world, and not the multitude of others that were once possible. If one of the most dysfunctional features the current worldview is seen to be its tacit support for short-term thinking, then self-aware human beings are not helpless. They can reclaim the initiative. Such ‘cultural habits’ are not immutable, not set in marble. Short-termism makes complete sense in many contexts where immediacy is required and will be functional for many purposes in any future that we can imagine. As an unthinking presupposition, however, it can be seen as a long-standing ‘perceptual defect’, a social construction that became contradictory but that can now be critiqued and transcended. The underlying point is the need to consciously employ different time frame for different purposes.

Overall therefore, the general lack of interest in ‘the future’ can be accounted for, in part, by layered explanations of this kind that consider factors at at least four levels: that of evolution and human psychology, of  organisations and dominant ideologies, of social perceptions and underlying worldview commitments. The overall effect of all these working together is to privilege certain forms of knowledge at the expense of others and, as a direct result, to drain ‘the future’ of much of the significance it undoubtedly has for the conduct of life now and in the years to come. On the other hand, a clear understanding of these issues returns the initiative back to people and organisations within their social and cultural contexts. We can see how some of these dynamics play out in relation to truthfulness and loyalty.

5. Truthfulness versus loyalty

I mentioned above what I’ve called ‘the great forgetting’ –  the way that the complete dependence of human societies and their economies on the world’s living systems has been repressed and put out of sight. A key reason for this is revealed and clarified in a book by Sonia Shah called Crude – The Story of Oil. (Shah, 2005). Here she identifies a fundamental stumbling block for many of those currently in positions of power and responsibility. After noting that ‘the oil industry is under no obligation to sate global desires for crude’, she goes on to say that as long as consumers don’t cotton on to the fact that the oil supply they depend on is in permanent decline and prudently decide to wean themselves off it, the crossover between supply and demand could trigger many lucrative years of high oil prices.

She then comes to the nub of the issue:

‘Some within the industry perhaps genuinely believe the economists, who argue that higher prices will always lead to more resources and so resource depletion can never be a genuine problem. Others, however, must have realised that their future livelihoods depend on the obscurity of the coming peak. If the industry wanted to stay in business for another century and beyond, it would do well not to let on that the world’s favourite fuel is anything less than perpetually abundant’.  (Emphases added.) (Shah, 2005, p. 137)

Taken together, these comments bring further clarity to understanding why the sleepers fail to awake. Shah’s perceptive insight tells us why those running businesses, governments, government departments and the like cannot ‘come clean’ about the deteriorating human prospect. To do so, especially in commercial contexts, would not only be disloyal. It would also amount to a denial of the very system that provides them with income, privilege and power. It would compromise ‘confidence’ in themselves and their organisation, damage share values and be seen as ‘biting the hand that feeds’. In other words it is almost impossible to tell the truth from within the conventional ambit of profit and power. Those who attempt to do so (such as Australian Andrew Wilkie who ‘blew the whistle’ on the government’s manipulation of intelligence regarding the Iraq war) risk paying a heavy price. In Western democracies whistle blowers can be readily dismissed and their careers destroyed, while in other places they are jailed or simply killed.

What this shows is that questioning existing socially legitimated beliefs and practices is a very serious matter indeed. Equally, challenging and changing them is not for the weak-hearted or the poorly equipped. The wider point is that critiques of market-oriented ideologies eliminate any remaining confidence that we might have that markets can, by themselves, help humanity move toward viable futures. For markets to work ‘properly’ requires intelligent, informed and far-sighted governance.

6. Acknowledging and responding to contradictions

It’s clear from everyday experience, as well as from the above, that a variety of barriers and constraints prevent essential signals about ‘the true state of the world’ from having much effect. Conventional thinking is complicit in this process and, moreover, it is helpless when confronted with perceived contradictions. It either must deny them or find strategies for avoiding or limiting them. But contradictions emerge precisely because there are serious mis-matches between an underlying reality and the perceptual resources currently deployed in response. This being so, a more productive use of contradictions is to use them to sensitise us to new possibilities. In an article dealing with the London tube bombings of July 2005, John Hinkson responded to Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone’s, defence of what he called ‘the global city’. After pointing out some of the unacknowledged costs of such cities (including new forms of social exclusion, dependence and dysfunction) Hinkson drew out four unresolved contradictions, as follows.

1. In addition to the inequalities of class there is now also a radical marginalising process that places growing numbers of people outside of society as such. These inequalities … reflect the fact that high technology has the potential to eliminate work in the economy as never before.
2. The new freedom requires, as a matter of necessity, institutions of surveillance (such that) familiar social structures that relied upon individuals being present with each other are now being supplanted by a social order composed of mediating (high) technologies.
3. (There is) a crisis of meaning that typifies our world today. … In this city there is plenty of consumption and movement, but little purpose.
4. The fourth area of contradiction that challenges this global surge to urban life is the crisis of the environment. (He adds) ‘there is nothing quite so destabilising as the practical coming apart of deep environmental assumptions of a society.’ (Hinkson, 2005, p. 33)

Then, finally, referring back to the root source of the bombings, Hinkson suggests that:

‘standing behind the secular political strategy (of the terrorists) and the openness to terror as a strategy, is a deeper motivating force – the tensions, frustrations and profound inadequacies associated with a social order that is sweeping the world and can only offer superficial meaning to its members’. (Hinkson, 2005, p. 34)

Such remarks are directly relevant in the present context for several reasons. First, there appears to be no solution to the challenges facing the world unless we are prepared to look freshly on embedded assumptions and tackle deep-seated social, political and economic dysfunctions. Another way of putting this is to say that there is no way forward without intelligent critique (which is, of course, not news to those use, and see the value in, critical futures methods). Second, conventional thinking is not merely inadequate, it ‘tunes out signals’ and casts a pall of forgetting, of ‘not knowing’, across the realities of our situation. This confuses the public, keeps them from questioning too deeply, and allows the currently powerful to evade accountability for their systematic lack of care. Third, the blockages to understanding and action are, generally speaking, not primarily external (technologies, infrastructures etc) but rather within people, their ‘ways of knowing’ their habits, values, predispositions and so on. Again it is confirmed that futures / foresight work needs to be able to access and understand these interior realities if it is going to have any long-term effect. Finally, we are reminded of the crisis of deep meaning and purpose that stands at the heart of all these issues. Futures workers who do not, or cannot, deal with the world in these ways need to re-assess their modus operandi.

7. Re-defining ‘the problem’, moving on

It is now clear why conventional approaches to futures for humanity are unconvincing and incapable of sustaining any sort of meaningful debate or generating effective action. They quickly become frustrating and get nowhere. They lead to  ‘dead conversations’ that reflect ‘old thinking’ and re-hash old ideas that have lost energy and salience. This is one reason for the failure of Australia’s first formal futures organisation, the Commission for the Future. (Slaughter, 1999) It is also reflected in much mainstream work, including high profile projects such as the National Intelligence Council’s report on Mapping the Global Future which, in spite of casting a broad net geographically, demonstrated a profound lack of awareness of the newer futures methods. (Slaughter, 2005) To make real progress we need to re-define the problem, bring more insightful methods to bear and develop new strategies for moving beyond the blockages and confusions outlined here. Some of the essential steps for regaining the initiative include:

• looking for layered explanations (ie, multiple layers of causation, not merely one);
• understanding the nature and operation of social ideologies and interests;
• being highly sceptical about technical ‘solutions’, including new waves of technological innovation;
• drawing on the depth methods available through advanced futures practice; and
• using the full range of available tools and methodologies that address both inner and outer realities.

In this column I have tried to outline a view of the global context and some of the more promising approaches toward understanding and dealing with what I call the ‘civilisational challenge’. In the next one I will look back at over 20 years of dealing with the largest futures organisation anywhere, the world future society, in the light of two-key questions: how well is it going? And, how could it better serve humanity at this critical time?

References

Hinkson, J. (2005). After the London bombings: An exercise in avoiding the truth. Arena Magazine (78)

Leakey, R. & Lewin, R. (1995). The Sixth Extinction. Weidenfield & Nicolson

Lovelock, J. (2006, January 16). We are past the point of no return.

Meadows, D. (2005).  The limits to growth: The 30 year update. Earthscan

Saul, J.R. (1997). The unconscious civilization. Penguin

Schumaker, E.F. (1974). Small is beautiful. Abacus

Shah, S. (2005). Crude: The story of oil. Allen & Unwin

Steffen, W. (2004). Global change and the Earth system: A planet under pressure. Springer-Verlag

Slaughter, R (1999). Australia’s commission for the future; learning from a social innovation. In R. Slaughter, Futures for the third millennium (pp. 165-180).

Slaughter, R (2005). Mapping the global future [Review]. Futures, 37, 1185-1192

Wilson, E.O. (2003). The future of life. Abacus