Futures Beyond Dystopia: Creating Social Foresight
The following reviews are only available in pdf hence are provided in a different format than most others here.
Booked on the Titanic. A Review of Futures Beyond Dystopia, Ian Lowe, Griffith University, Brisbane, 2004. (To open click here)
New books by leading futurists (Futuring, by Edward Cornish; The Biggest Wake-Up Call in History, by Richard Slaughter), Yvonne Curtis, Futures Trust, New Zealand, 2004. (To open click here)
Futures Beyond Dystopia: Creating Social Foresight. Richard A. Slaughter (Director, Australian Foresight Institute, Swinburne U of Technology, Melbourne). Foreword by Ken Wilber. London & NY: RoutledgeFalmer, Jan 2004/306p/$24.99pb.
Michael Marien, Future Survey, 2004
Recently published essays by the President of the World Futures Studies Federation, who views the affluent world we are living in as founded on illusions, and “entranced by its wealth, its success, and its ever more compelling technological prowess.” It is also “a world that is stripped, mined out, polluted, denuded of non-human life and compromised beyond all hope of repair…the most likely of futures before us are irredeemably dystopian in nature,” as powerfully depicted by the movie, The Matrix (“a compelling metaphor for the condition of humanity in the early 21st century”). There can never be a blueprint that leads to viable human futures, but there are “a series of institutional arrangements, practices, and processes that can support moves in that direction.”
Seventeen chapters are in six groups: 1) Aspects of Futures Enquiry: a 21st century agenda (many ways in which humans can act to develop foresight and steer toward more consciously chosen futures, away from the Western “culture of false solutions”), bringing futures beyond dystopia within reach (a critique of sci-fi and futures methods for failing to address underlying assumptions and being “too one-sidedly rationalistic”), professionalism and quality in futures work (why a coherent set of standards is needed); 2) The Case Against US Hegemony: critique of three “pop futurist texts” (Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock and the two Megatrends books by John Naisbitt), the perils of breadth American style (passive acceptance of the status quo and acquiescence in maintenance of US hegemony), the Millennium Project State of the Future Report as “naïve” futures (“it stands firmly and unashamedly within the dominant American empiricist tradition…a US-centered view of the world…remarkably little original thinking”), The Long Boom by Peter Schwartz et al. (free-market ideology and selective multiculturalism), The Future Survey Super Seventy: Best Books 1996-2000 (“what can happen when definitional power is sequestered in one individual over an extended period of time…the interests of a young discipline were overlooked and even abused…in the light of omissions we can see more clearly just how conservative and limited the Future Survey view has become over the years…a sterile exercise that in effect extinguishes the future”), Jay Ogilvy’s Creating Better Futures (“incapable of ever approaching its declared goal because the subject throughout is the USA”), the Encyclopedia of the Future (“American thinking is projected out upon the world”).
3) Expanding and Deepening a Futures Frame: methods that go beyond the limits of dominant American models, problems of the pop futures world (it tends to be a-cultural and ahistorical), problem-oriented futures work (the central arena of mainstream futures activity), critical and epistemological futures work (utilizing the tools of post-modern analysis to peel away the layers of received opinion), changing methods and approaches in futures studies (emergence of critical futures studies and layered futures work); 4) Futures Studies and the Integral Agenda: transcending flatland (as seen by Ken Wilber), Wilber’s meta-map for a renewed worldview, reframing the central project of futures studies (in a larger, re-enchanted universe that embraces purpose, meaning, and spirit: “the most interesting futures are those in which human and social evolution matches that of scientific and technological development“), a new framework for environmental scanning, the integral approach in futures work (to honor all truths and acknowledge the value of many different ways of knowing); 5) Social Learning through Applied Foresight: how futures studies can be transformed into a widespread operational capability, emergence of futures into the educational mainstream, creating and sustaining second-generation institutions of foresight, why organizational views of the future tend to be wrong (short-term thinking, bounded rationality, unexamined presuppositions and paradigms, mainstream economics), barriers to wider use of foresight (future discounting, the empiricist fallacy, a sense of disempowerment, fear, cost); 6) Strategies and Outlooks: four-quadrant analysis of the great transition thesis of the Global Scenario Group, futures studies as a civilizational catalyst.
[NOTE: A righteous, free-swinging critique from the ivory tower Down Under, driven by high-minded utopianism. Too bad that everyone, especially in the US, cannot be as bright and critical, with a superior toolbox of methods. Until then, the future will be shaped by clashing views of what is probable, possible and preferable, many of them narrow and ill informed.] (critique of US futures studies)
Futures Beyond Dystopia – Creating Social Foresight
Reviewed by Lynn Elen Burton
Slaughter, Richard A. Futures Beyond Dystopia : Creating Social Foresight. RoutledgeFalmer Publishers: New York, 2004.
Abstract
Believing that the motivation to avoid future dangers is matched by the human need to create plans and move forward, futurist Richard Slaughter makes a clarion call to practitioners around the world to move futures studies into a new phase and to stimulate the development of applied foresight. In Futures Beyond Dystopia – Creating Social Foresight, the author challenges anyone involved in futures work to re-examine their assumptions, methodologies, and practices with a view to reinventing futures studies for the ultimate benefit of humankind.
Far more than “a conventional reading of the latest trends”, Slaughter’s model requires a depth of understanding of the present, and a new balance between the inner and outer dimensions of reality. This new approach to futures studies is intended not only to avoid the dangers indicated in many current trends, but also “to set goals, dream dreams, create visions, make designs; in short, to project upon the future a wide range of purposes and intentions.” According to American philosopher Ken Wilber, this 306 page book provides “an extraordinary opportunity to be on the ground floor of an historic shift in human understanding [and] Richard Slaughter has done a superb job in conveying the essentials of an integral map and its application to Futures Studies [which] promises to change profoundly the nature of the discipline.”
Keywords
Futures Studies, Foresight, Applied Foresight, Social Foresight, Forward thinking, Higher Education, Humanity, Critical Issues; Science, Technology, and Society; social action, integral agenda, futures, futures methods, knowledge creation, civil society, worldview, citizenship, personal responsibility, global network, civilization catalyst, socially excluded, management of change, societal responsibility.
At the time this book was written, Richard Slaughter was the Director of the Australian Foresight Institute and the President of the World Futures Studies Federation with a global membership of around 500 members[1]. In Futures Beyond Dystopia: Creating Social Foresight, Dr. Slaughter has created a watershed guide for the future of Futures Studies – one that builds on the past, understands the possibilities in the present, and is guided by the depth of the human spirit to imagine and act on our inclusive visions for tomorrow. He says that while there is not, and can never be, a blueprint that leads to viable human futures, “there are a series of institutional arrangements, practices, and processes that can support movement in that direction.”
But achieving our preferred results will not be easy. The author challenges the status quo and states that, “a great deal of mainstream futures work has been solidly embedded in the traps and limitations of ‘flatland’ thinking… [Futurists] have sought to offer guidance, but on the basis of radically limited maps and of a single privileged (Western) way of knowing overshadowed by instrumental reason.” Believing that the motivation to avoid future dangers is matched by the human need to create plans and move forward, Slaughter makes a clarion call to practitioners around the world to move futures studies into a new phase and to stimulate the development of applied foresight.
Recognising the risks of being caught in the morass of politics, economics, trade, and finance, Slaughter steers away from these areas in Futures Beyond Dystopia – Creating Social Foresight and consciously focuses on reinventing futures studies and developing social learning strategies. He calls not for a minor adjustment in course, or even a series of them. But rather he sees the main goal of Social Foresight as helping “to clarify viable pathways to a livable future.” This includes reasserting limits, and understanding that some technological possibilities should not be pursued. It includes marshalling the control that human beings have to use their reflexive powers to view the world with fresh eyes and fashion a workable inclusive future. Through our “‘speculative imagination’ that gives us other, often divergent, images, options, areas of possibility that lie beyond reason and instrumental analysis,” (p 30) and an ‘installed organisational capacity’ such as a global network of Institutions of Foresight (p.12), we can create desirable images of the future. Applied Social Foresight rests on “the human brain/mind system…and the use of futures concepts that permit the emergence of a distinctly futures oriented discourse.” (p.17).
In an article in Futures[2](1998), the author set out the three unifying themes for Futures Beyond Dystopia – Creating Social Foresight. The first theme is a critique of the ‘American empirical tradition’ for futures studies which the author claims lacks sufficient depth to deal with the complex realities of modern times. The second theme shows ‘the integral paradigm’ as an alternative way forward and an approach to reestablish the discipline of futures studies on a more secure basis. And the third unifying theme is that of challenging futurists to collaborate in the development of applied social foresight and a global network. He sees “the old conflicts between inner and outer, and between (for example) empiricism and hermeneutics,”[3] resolved in favour of a much expanded, broader and deeper framework of social foresight and its applications.
As Dr. Slaughter begins the book, he is not optimistic about the current state of the world, indicating that without serious remediation the long standing drift towards ways that actively work against the long-term survival of humanity can only end in oblivion. He cites John Ralston Saul’s (1997) warning of “an overarching corporatist ideology at work in the world which seeks opportunity and profit but which has become detached from the ecological foundations of the world and, indeed, has no real interest in the future.” [4]
Further to this, he posits a preliminary set of propositions about aspects of the current context that worry him:
To develop a more integral futures inquiry, Slaughter emphasises two necessary components. He says that while ‘pop futures’ and ‘problem oriented futures’ both have their uses, they are limited in their ‘critical and applied power.’ He sees the first phase in reinventing futures studies as a shift from conventional futures thinking towards what he calls a ‘critical paradigm’ – “an approach to futures based on ‘probing beneath the surface’, ie., looking beyond empirical surfaces to linguistic, cultural and symbolic dimensions where meanings and assumptions are actively shaped.”[5]
The second phase in achieving that which American philosopher, Ken Wilber calls the ‘first word on a new approach to futures studies’ is a shift from instrumental thinking to full engagement with the integral paradigm, “a theory that is critical of the present state of affairs in light of a more encompassing and desirable state, both in the individual and the culture at large.” [6] This integral approach focuses not only on the individual and collective, but also on the exterior and interior of each – the subjective, the objective, the intersubjective, and the interobjective – the individual ‘I’ and ‘it’, the collective ‘we’ and ‘it’. As Slaughter uses the integral paradigm “to understand the foundations of the next civilisation”[7], he invites “all practicing futurists and intending practitioners’ to join him “in the further development of this fascinating discipline or domain of enquiry.”[8]
In his chapter on ‘Changing methods and approaches in Futures Studies’, the author makes the case for forecasting, scenario building, and critical Futures Studies, but also argues that, with the integral work of Ken Wilber as a guide to our thinking, we need layered futures work to reach a level of emancipation heretofore undelivered. According to Slaughter, “depth, resonance, significance and meaning are not available through technology, or at least only marginally so. They are available through the progressive refinement of the instrument of knowing itself, that is, through each individual person.” (p. 124). Authors such as Columbia University Emeritus Professor, Jack Mezirow[9] would concur, calling for critical reflection as a necessary precursor to fuller understanding.
Slaughter goes on to say, “one of the distinguishing features of high quality futures work is that it routinely ignores borders and moves across many different domains.” He reinforces broader access to the field through what Wendy Schultz has termed ‘futures literacy.’ Reinforcing this notion, Burton (1992) says, “The only constant in the emerging world is change – and the accelerating rate of that change. Hierarchical corporate structures under the old economic order are being replaced by a spider web of activity whose strands reach all over the world…The traditional 3Rs of reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic must merge with the 4Rs of the future – reasoning, relating, reflecting, and redefining.” Rather than a focus on the external and instrumental ‘it’ of the future, Slaughter makes us all (‘I’ and ‘we’) integral and the stewards of our collective future. Our children’s children depend on us.
Achieving this end requires recognising both the strengths and the weaknesses of the four main traditions of Futures enquiry – the empirical tradition based largely in the United States; a series of culturally based European traditions; the International Multicultural tradition; and the Integral approach which values many ways of knowing across all significant fields. After discussing each of the preceding approaches, Slaughter successfully attempts to provide a more integral modus operandi, which could support a broader, more inclusive, transdisciplinary frame of inquiry.
The author notes that “it is one thing to articulate futures issues and problems and to enter into productive futures-related discourses with other similarly equipped people. But it is quite another to operationalise the insights so gained… Discourse alone is not action-oriented and cannot deal adequately with many broader or more complex futures concerns” (p. 179).
Slaughter presents a strong rationale for widespread futures education practice, but also concludes that “if teachers and schools are to stand any chance of integrating futures perspectives into their work, they need much more durable structures of support than anything that has been provided hitherto”(p. 191). He then goes on to devote chapter 14 in Futures Beyond Dystopia : Creating Social Foresight to ‘creating and sustaining [a global network] of second generation Institutions of Foresight’ for which “an international program of study and research is urgently needed.” (p. 200)
Based on an international survey several years ago, the author further posits the following functions for these Institutes of Foresight:
The author goes on to say that successful Foresight programmes recognise the need for futures work, have a champion in the start-up phase, are responsive to client needs, involve the stakeholders in the process, and experience a legitimising process. They also define core purposes, and have secure funding to become operational.
While Richard Slaughter eschews the blueprint label for Futures Beyond Dystopia : Creating Social Foresight, he has in fact created a strong beginning for reinventing futures studies. Recognising that “the depth within the practitioner … determines how well any particular approach or methodology will be used,” it is now incumbent upon futures studies leaders to reach beyond proprietary thinking and become the professors of foresight envisaged by esteemed futurist Herbert George Wells over seventy-five years ago.[10] Creating an Applied Foresight Network and ‘an International Program of study and research’ needs imaginative solutions and durable structures of support.
In conclusion, the author of Futures Beyond Dystopia: Creating Social Foresight hopes that by using “the rich store of intellectual and practical knowledge” (p.228) gained through over almost half a century of futures studies, we will help to fashion a sustainable and desirable future buttressed by the new values attributed to a ‘civil society.’ “Essentially the task is about letting go of industrial models, values, priorities and structures across the board and opening to the processes of transformation available through the perennial wisdom of humankind.” (p. 255)
About the reviewer
Dr. Lynn Elen Burton teaches Futures Studies and is Chair of the Humanities Department at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. Prior to this, she was Dean of University Extension at California State University, Los Angeles, and at SFU. She also served as the first ever Director of Environmental Education at Environment Canada and was Senior Advisor to the National Advisory Board on Science and Technology, chaired by the Prime Minister of Canada.
Published in Futures 38, 9, November 2006 1125-31.
[1] Marien, Michael. Futures Studies in the 21st Century: A Reality-Based View, in Futures, vol. 34, issues 3-4. Elsevier Science: April 2002.
[2] Z. Sardar (ed). Elsevier Sociology. 2005. “Futures® is an international, refereed, multidisciplinary journal concerned with medium and long-term futures of cultures and societies, science and technology, economics and politics, environment and the planet and individuals and humanity. Covering methods and practices of futures studies, the journal seeks to examine possible and alternative futures of all human endeavours. Futures® seeks to promote divergent and pluralistic visions, ideas and opinions about the future.”
[3] Richard Slaughter. Towards a wise culture: Four Classic Futures Texts. (CD-ROM) Australia: Foresight International, 2005.
[4] J.R. Saul. The Unconscious Civilization. Penguin: Melbourne, 1997.
[5] Richard Slaughter. Futures Study Glossary. www.futures.austbus.com. Indooroopilly, Aust.: Futures Study Centre, 1997.
[6] Ken Wilber. The Integral Vision at the Millennium, Introduction to Volume 7 of the Collected Works.
[7] Richard Slaughter. Towards a wise culture: Four Classic Futures Texts. (CD-ROM) Australia: Foresight International, 2005.
[8] Richard Slaughter. Op cit.
[9] Jack Mezirow. Fostering Critical Reflection in Adulthood – A Guide to Transformation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990.
[10] in a British Broadcasting Corporation radio program on November 19, 1933, noted futurist H.G. Wells’ called, for professors of foresight to use their knowledge in socially responsible ways. Wells talked about how unprepared the world was for the motorcar. He said that, “the motorcar ought to have been anticipated at the beginning of this century. It was bound to come. It was bound to be cheapened and made abundant. It was bound to change our roads, take passenger and goods traffic from railways, alter the distribution of our population, and congest our towns with traffic. It was bound to make it possible for a man to commit a robbery or murder in Devonshire overnight and breakfast in London or Birmingham.” He further said that while we could have, we did nothing to work out the potential impacts of the motorcar before our roads were choked, the railways were bankrupt, and the police were dealing with the likes of Bonnie and Clyde (Futures Research Quarterly, 1987).
Since that BBC broadcast close to eighty years ago, specters of global warming and uncontrolled population growth have filled our newspapers; scientists have put a man on the moon, mapped the human genome, cloned Dolly the sheep, crossed a strawberry with an Arctic char, created weapons of mass destruction, and advanced artificial intelligence, robotics, and nano-technologies; and the world is dealing with numerous threats to peace, the global commons, and to humanity itself (Petersen, 2000, Anderson, 2003). At the same time, while the world is characterized by rampant change, and there have been efforts such as those of American Council for the United Nations University (2004), the World Academy for Art and Science (2003) to assess both the positive and negative impacts of these burgeoning developments through expert panels and chat groups, this is not enough. According to Slaughter (2004), “It is one thing to articulate futures issues and problems and to enter into productive futures-related discourses with similarly equipped people. But it is quite another to operationalise the insights so gained.”
Futures Beyond Dystopia – Evolutionary or Revolutionary? A Review of Reviews
Peter Hayward, Swinburne University, Melbourne
In the introduction to his book Futures Beyond Dystopia Richard Slaughter writes that, ‘politics, economics, trade and finance are all urgently in need of reconceptualisation and reconstruction’, and yet, ‘these powerful entities remain strongly resistant to any suggestion that their principles and practices should be revised in line with a different set of values, assumptions and preconditions’.[1] What is he calling for? Is he asking for our ways of knowing and acting to evolve to more effective, appropriate, rational and inclusive ways or is he calling for something more radical, revolutionary and un-rational? In attempting to answer that question this piece will ‘review’ the reviews of Futures Beyond Dystopia by five different authors to see how they have interpreted his challenge.
We assemble the world we experience through our minds. We receive sensory data from our environments while our imaginative processes originate their own conceptual data as well. This interplay of the sensory and the conceptual is managed, with various degrees of efficacy, by our consciousness and from this remarkable process we maintain our sense of ‘fit’ in the world. We ‘fit’ when what we interpret accords with our expectations. When we sense phenomena occurring that does not accord with expectations we either assimilate or accommodate these aberrations. Assimilation extends what we are capable of expecting. Assimilation evolves our schema of the world by elaborating how we currently know and act. Assimilation stretches our knowing and acting so we still fit. Assimilation is small-scale change. Accommodation, however, is revolutionary. The old schema cannot assimilate the aberrant phenomena and so a new schema must be constructed to maintain our sense of fit. Accommodation is uncomfortable because it requires new ways of knowing and acting to be developed. Accommodation is large-scale change. Are the reviewers of Futures Beyond Dystopia assimilating it or accommodating it? Is it evolutionary or revolutionary to their expectations?
The review by Yvonne Curtis assimilates the book into what has preceded it. She sees the book as outlining the ‘progression of futures studies’ that is culminating in practices and techniques that are ‘more comprehensive and inclusive’. The book’s theme is developed ‘logically and succinctly’ and is ‘well-argued’. The reviewer’s overall tone is comfortable with the book and finds it an ‘easy read’.
The Futures Survey review is technically thorough in its précised approach but that does not aid my analysis of whether it is assimilatory or accommodatory except to say that its ‘traditional’ review approach tends towards the assimilatory path. It is only in the author’s commentary at the end of the review that more is gleaned. The reviewer categorises the book/author as ‘righteous’, ‘free-swinging’, ‘ivory-tower’, ‘high-minded utopianism’, ‘bright’ and ‘critical’. Whew! This is edgy assimilation. The reviewer takes some issue with the author and the approach but also acknowledges that others who do not share the author’s ‘superior toolbox of methods’ will be ‘narrow and ill-informed’.
David Rymer, in his review of the book for Boss Magazine, is aware of a ‘gap’ that this book is looking to fill, a gap that he describes as ‘uncomfortable’. His review revels in Slaughter’s iconoclastic treatment of ‘western civilisation, unbridled capitalism and binary thinking’ and you can almost hear the reviewer cheering on from the sidelines as the ‘economic rationalists, marketers and technologists come in for some rough handling’. This reviewer is starting to edge out of assimilation and into accommodation. For him the book ‘is a blueprint for recasting the discipline on a more secure basis’. It’s not full-blown revolution but its not just evolution either.
Lynn Elen Burton’s review sees the book as a call for revolution. To her ‘the author calls not for a minor adjustment in course’. This revolution requires the adoption of conventionally unpalatable actions of ‘reasserting limits’ and ‘understanding some technological options should not be pursued’. The book is ‘provocative’ and does not ‘mince words’. For her the revolution will ‘diminish the weaknesses and build on the strengths’. It will ‘reach a level of emancipation heretofore undeliverable’. She acknowledges that the ‘future generations depend on us’. She closes with her own question. ‘As concerned futurists, the choice is ours. We can actively accept the challenge of helping to fashion a preferable future for humanity, or passively accept the consequences’.
The final review, by Ian Lowe, calls for ‘the crew of Space-Ship Earth to stage a mutiny’ as ‘those who are on the bridge’ are clearly not interested in accommodating a new way of thinking/acting. The book for him is manual about how to mount such a revolution. Like Slaughter, he is aware of the aberrant data around us. Those who are either unwilling or unable to accommodate that data, ‘stumble blindly towards global catastrophe, driven by economic imperatives, technical hubris, short-term thinking, ecological illiteracy and political irresponsibility. He also does not spare the field of Future Studies that he says ‘has been dominated by a narrow approach characterised by superficiality, conservatism and a lack of interest in alternative visions’. The reviewer is asking where he would find you on the Titanic? Are you in the engine room tipping more coal into the furnaces in order to get to the icebergs faster? Are you in the First Class bar feasting on the smoked salmon and champagne, secure in the knowledge that the cheque will not get to the bank? Are you one of the revolutionaries, with a copy of Futures Beyond Dystopia in your shoulder holster, who are prepared to establish a ‘new and potentially durable relationship between people, cultures, technologies and natural systems’?
[1] xxiv, FBD