Civilizational Paradigm Change

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Civilizational Paradigm Change: The Modern/Industrial Case1

Ruben Nelson2

ABSTRACT:

The intent of this paper is to put a fundamental, but not as yet seen as societally urgent,

question on the table for further exploration and discussion. We begin by offering stipulated

definitions of three key concepts: paradigm, culture and form of civilization. Then the

concept of paradigm is applied to the concept of a form of civilization. This combination

enables us to ask, “If we are to have a future as a species, must we learn to see, think things

through and act in ways that takes our time as a truly rare time in human history – a time

during which the dominant form of civilization (now the Modern/Industrial) is disintegrating

and a truly new form of civilization is beginning to emerge?” “When we talk of a ‘transition

to a new society’ must we also learn to see, explore, understand and respond to our transition

to a new form of civilization?” “Is it plausible to imagine that we could learn to do so?”

“Are those who worry about the long decline of our Modern/Industrial world essentially right

in what they assert, even if, by and large, they are still largely blind to the signs of emergence

of the next form of civilization?” If a positive answer to these questions is at all possible, then

in order to align with the emerging future and not merely extend our inherited habits, we need

to understand the root patterns of imagination, thought and action that inform our

Modern/Industrial form of civilization. These are sketched. Reflections are offered on the

significance of ours as a time of civilizational paradigm change. This perspective

fundamentally reframes the 21st Century. We must digest the thoughts that few of our

ingrained habits of head, heart and institution can be trusted as reliable guides to a humane

and sustainable future; that any imagining, thinking or acting that reflect our inherited habits

lead to the extension and collapse of the Modern/Industrial world, not to the birth of the next

form of civilization. Therefore, we must face and commit to new work – learning to see,

explore, understand and live by fundamentally fresh perspectives and orientations. One

implication is that our conversations about transitions to a new society and a search for a new

paradigm must themselves come to reflect the best of what we can now know about the

transformation we are in.

Key Words: paradigm, culture, form of civilization, Modern/Industrial, co-creative

INTRODUCTION

I have long been convinced of the vital importance of the mental maps, images and metaphors through

which we experience, make sense of and plan our lives as persons, groups, cultures and whole forms

of civilization. The prime reason our sense-making matters is that for us as human persons nothing is

clear, simple, obvious or certain. Rather, for persons, uncertainty and ambiguity are irreducible

realities. Consider that, for good and ill, we are animals which not only construe our world, but live

within a reality that is itself construable. This combination does not allow for the possibility that

knowledge is and must be marked by certainty. A second reason we must attend reflexively to our

sense making is that human persons only occur with other persons within an ongoing culture. [12]

Given the fact that all cultures construe reality in some ways and not others, and that they do so in

ways that are largely unseen by those whose constitute the culture at a given time and place, it follows

that human experience is necessarily culture-laden. [2] There is no timeless and historically

uncorrupted space on which we can stand to see human realities as they really are. As Northrop Frye

uses to observe, “It matters when a person, venture or country is cast into history.” [3]

Several conclusions follow. Three are noted. First, all human cultures are more accurately seen when

acknowledged to be human constructs. [2] As yet, no culture has acknowledged, digested and

routinized this perspective and its implications. Rather, the default view held within all cultures is

that our culture is given and our character and substance are non-negotiable. Yes, the slow and

1 Some of the material in this paper draws on an earlier paper. [14] 2 Contact Information: Ruben Nelson, Executive Director, Foresight Canada, 29 des Arcs Road, Lac Des Arcs, AB, Canada, T1W 2W3, +1-403-673-3537, [email protected]

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incoherent emergence of a post-Modern sensibility within Modern/Industrial3 cultures is beginning to

erode the sense of unquestionable solidity that has up to now marked the human perception of human

culture.

Second, as yet, no culture has developed the capacity to see, critically test and intentionally adapt the inherited imagination and thought processes which define its culture. As yet, none has even been tempted, for to do so is to admit that our culture has not been and will not be forever. The Delphic admonition to “know thyself” is not yet understood by a whole culture as directed to ourselves as a temporary species, to our whole inherited culture as a cultural artifact, or to ourselves as an outcome of our culture.

Third, the sense of certainty and givenness that permeates all still cultures all cultures creates greater risks than does a precarious sense of human culture, including one’s own. The reason is that, at best, all cultures are only partially tested cosmic bets that their grip on reality is sound and reliable enough that their grandchildren’s, grandchildren will be able to cope with the emerging conditions of their time and place, if they faithfully continue to live by the traditions and cultural norms they have inherited. However, we now know that the widespread and deeply-held human assumptions about the reliability of one’s culture’s grip on reality are not warranted. Cultures do evolve and cultures can be wrong.

When taken together, especially in a globalizing world as turbulent as ours, these insights suggest that the normal degree of confidence any people have in the reliability of their inherited culture is greatly overblown. Great danger lurks when we insist on continuing to construe life in unconsciously inherited ways. [7] As Will Rogers put it, “You can’t trust your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”

Given the above, it should not surprise us, then, that in 2014 a small but growing minority of careful observers of the human condition are increasingly worried about the human future. [1, 4] It follows that it would be wise for every culture to make special efforts to double-check the reliability of its cultural assumptions and perspectives; to become consciously aware of the cognitive content, emotional freighting and logic of the metaphors, images and mental maps by which it imagines, shapes, experiences and responds to its world, itself and others. Happily, the challenge or re-perceiving and re-imagining the nature, predicaments and future of human cultures is being taken up in several conversations now taking root in a variety of places around our world. The Search for a New Paradigm nurtured by WAAS is one of these. See http://www.worldacademy.org/new-paradigm

The contribution we seek to make to the conversation about our journey to a new society that is an exemplar of a new paradigm has five parts. First, we shall offer an understanding of paradigm. Second, we offer an understanding of culture and form of civilization. We argue that both of these concepts are needed if we are to make reliable sense of the dynamics of the 21st Century, let alone human history. Third, we ask the core question of the 21st Century, “Is ours a rare time of civilizational paradigm change?” Fourth, we offer an understanding of the core (paradigmatic) characteristics of our Modern/Industrial form of civilization. Fifth, we briefly consider some of the major implications of the above line of thought for any journey towards a new society in search of a new paradigm.

The way of seeing, thinking through and acting in the world sketched here enables us to do two things. First, we can come to see that our Modern/Industrial form of civilization is unsustainable and that it cannot be made to be sustainable as long as it assumes and lives by a Modern/Industrial imagination. This means that we must give up the illusion that we can reach a humane future by

3 “Modern/Industrial’ is used as a technical term to name that form of civilization that emerged in the West (Europe and its colonies) over the last 1,000 years and that is not going global.

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extending and refining the path we are on; that a better version of the world we already know will serve our future well.

Second, we can learn to see the signs of emergence of the next form of civilization. This allows us to distinguish among the host of things that proclaim themselves to be new and transformative and reliably sort them into two groups: (a) those things that are truly aligned with a new future because they exemplify the next civilizational paradigm, and (b) those things that while appearing to be new and desirable are, at root, just new versions of our Modern/Industrial yesterday. In the latter case, while claiming to have created a new thing, we have merely repainted the barn and deemed it to be a new building. Little of significance will happen until we have come to terms with the first point and developed the skills set out in the second.

PARADIGM

The OED offers both ‘pattern’ and ‘exemplar’ in its definition of ‘paradigm.’ [17] This definition implies that both features – a pattern and an example of the pattern – are required for a complete understanding of a paradigm. For example, being told by one’s mother that one must finish cutting the lawn before one can eat supper, may be seen, at least by the mother, as paradigmatic of the general and desirable pattern that one should finish what one starts before taking on another task.

As so many have noticed over the years, particularly Margaret Masterman [13], the concept of ‘paradigm’ is inherently fuzzy. Therefore, we shall note four things in order to be clear about how we use this term.

First, since they are not the same thing, it is necessary to distinguish patterns of the imagination from patterns of thought and both of these from patterns of action.4 All qualify as patterns with exemplars. Therefore, a paradigm – a pattern and an exemplar – can exist at each of these levels of generality as well as at combinations of these levels. Further, typically, human imagination is seen to be at a higher, or more general, level of existence than human thought or physical action. This view is reflected and reinforced by the litany that “As we see the world, so we will think it and think it through. As we think the world, so we will act within it. As we act in the world, so we set ourselves up for future success or failure.”

This litany makes it clear that there is a hierarchy of what may be characterized as degrees of change or transformation. From the least to the most transformative the hierarchy runs like this:

New actions that reflect and reinforce familiar patterns of thought and imagination.

New actions combined with new patterns of thought that reflect and reinforce familiar patterns of the imagination.

New actions combined both with new patterns of thought and new patterns of the imagination.

While the particular distinctions noted above may not be familiar, the general sense of the distinctions they reflect is common. For example, when we evaluate a new novel or other work of art from a familiar author, we easily determine whether it is much the same as his/her earlier work or truly ground-breaking. We make similar judgements about particular artists or leaders when compared with the field of artists or leaders at his/her time.

More formally, when considering degrees of change, the following levels of generality must be taken into account. In time, we must learn to see, think and act routinely in these terms as if the distinctions matter. They do. Any authentic paradigm of a form of civilization must be a PCITA – it

4 These three levels of generality – imagination, thought and physical action – are central to the methods and mental

models developed and used by Foresight Canada, especially in Causal Layered Synthesis. See [16] for a elaboration of this three-level model and its implications for the next generation of strategic foresight.

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must have mutually-consistent content within and between all three levels. A truly new societal paradigm must have new and mutually-consistent content at all three levels.

PCA stands for paradigm change solely at the level of human action.

PCT stands for paradigm change solely at the level of human thought.

PCI stands for paradigm change solely at the level of human imagination.

PCTA stands for paradigm change at both the levels of thought and action.

PCIT stands for paradigm change at both the levels of imagination and thought.

PCIA stands for paradigm change at the levels of imagination and action.

PCITA stands for paradigm change at all three levels – imagination, thought and action.

This hierarchy does not imply that only paradigmatic changes of action, thought and imagination are to be valued. However, it is to say that until our faltering steps towards a truly new way of living reflect new ways of seeing, thinking and acting, and doing so with reasonable consistency, the journey of becoming a new society will not be complete. At the least, talking glibly about moving towards a new society as if we know what we are doing when only one or even two levels of human life are involved, is inappropriate and unwise because it is deeply mistaken about the nature of the changes one is observing or advocating. For example, we have argued elsewhere [15] that in a time when change is occurring at all three levels, “thinking outside the box” will not get the job done because one’s new thinking will still reflect and reinforce one’s inherited imagination. In these terms, we take it as given that little of the flood of work regarding either innovation or sustainability, at least as yet, challenges the deep Modern/Industrial patterns of our imagination that still dominate our globalizing world.

Second, it should be noted that the dynamics of transformative paradigmatic change work in both directions – from action to imagination and from imagination to action. In the former case, moving from specific actions to the recognition of a new pattern of action, exemplars of the new paradigm will be encountered before the overall pattern becomes visible. Actions that feel somewhat strange at first are observed, undertaken and repeated until they feel normal. Thus, for good and ill, new habits are formed and new seductions undertaken whether in the bedroom or the boardroom.

Later reflection on the actions may or may not reveal the pattern that shows the action to be paradigmatic of a new paradigm. In any given person and culture, most actions are undertaken as largely unconscious actions, not as acts of conscious thought, much less conscious imagination. If this were not so, life would be even more exhausting than it is. However, those who live without nurturing consciousness pay a price. As the saying goes, “Habits of action, thought and imagination you do not know you have, have you.” There are examples at every scale from individual to international of persons who only awaken to the realities to which they have unconsciously committed themselves after it is far too late to back out. “Look before you leap,” is easy to say. But even this advice is of little use if our assessments are made one action at a time without reference to the cultural patterns they exemplify. When we fail to consider the possibility that an action, seen to be attractive in itself, may hide a pattern of destruction that threatens much we hold dear, we put the future at risk.

In the latter case, moving from the perception of new patterns to exemplars of the patterns, consider the “discovery” of the structure of DNA. Once Watson and Crick had imagined the structure of DNA as a double helix, they were able to make more reliable sense of the material with which they were working. Similarly, the slide into bankruptcy of both GM and Kodak are examples of corporations led by persons who were not able to make reliable sense of what was happening to their firms because they were hooked on a previous pattern that was too attractive to give up. In both cases, serious redemptive steps were not taken until enough Corporate Board members were driven to the new and frightening realization that on their present path they faced nothing but continued failure; that if they were to survive, they must re-imagine and then literally re-form the business they were in. In these and similar cases, the facts on the ground cannot even be seen,

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much less thought through, with the dominant imagination, thoughts and actions inherited from the past and deeply programmed into the present.5 When a person breaks free from such ingrained habits and comes to a new realization of their situation, it is almost always inappropriate to ask, “What are you going to do now?” Most often the person with the new imaginative insight has no idea, at least not immediately. It takes time to wrap one’s mind, heart and hands around new realities and let them sink in to the point that one can begin to think through what new paths one must learn to travel and what new actions one must undertake. This is one reason why paradigm changes are so fraught with danger and why serious scenario creation has become so central to sound strategic foresight.

Third, any culture that has even a reasonable chance of success has to be reasonably coherent in two ways. One way to measure coherence is the degree to which the key elements at any of the three levels of generality – imagination, thought and action – are consistent and mutually reinforcing within a level. A second measure of coherence is the degree to which there is a coherent and bi-directional line of sight among the levels of the patterns of imagination, thought and physical action. Given the growing recognition of the importance and power of coherence within a system, both these forms of coherence are critical matters. Although there is not the time to explore it, one implication must be mentioned because it is so clear. Persons, families, firms and nations are putting themselves at risk by the increasing acceptance of the positivistic and therefore reductionist views that all things of value can be measured by money and that economic efficiency trumps all other values. There can be no human future when both thought and imagination are seen, thought of and treated as less than fully real in their own right; merely as epiphenomena.

Fourth, all societal journeys to a new society, provided the “new” is truly a new paradigm of human civilization, will experience a temporary and profound increase in the degree of incoherence within the society. I note that ‘temporary’ as used here may be measured in generations, not years. The slow disintegration of the existing paradigmatic order is a prerequisite for a truly new civilizational order to emerge. Therefore, if ours is a time of civilizational paradigm change, then we can expect increasing degrees of incoherence in all Modern/Industrial cultures and in the societies they impact. Does this perspective help us make sense of the largely unanticipated increase in disorderly societies globally? What does it say that we persist in seeing societal disorder as an enemy that must be stamped out and not as a sign of hopeful transition with which we must learn to cooperate? Yet, sadly, we know that cultural disintegration does not entail the emergence of a new order. Sometimes societal death is simply the end of the road.

CULTURE

By ‘culture’ I mean not arts and culture. Rather, we use the term, as it is commonly understood by sociologists and anthropologists to capture the totality of a people’s ways of being – the sum of their common ways of seeing, feeling, thinking and acting. In this sense, what we call religion, or science or the economy are all dimensions of their culture and cannot be understood apart form the whole culture. The way these dimensions are seen, understood and practised will both reflect and reinforce the overall sensibility carried by any particular culture. At the least, this means we should be paying far more attention than we do now to the implications and impacts of the introduction into any given culture of artifacts or processes that exemplify, reflect, carry and reinforce a sensibility foreign to the form of civilization taken-for-granted by the culture into which the processes are being introduced. Today’s talk of technology transfer is misleading because it is systemically superficial. It does not encourage or enable us to understand what is going on and what may yet occur in the future when we cross-breed one form of civilization with another. As of today, we have but a dim sense of how inherently destabilizing and destructive such introductions can be.

5 Margaret Heffernen has explored the science and psychology of wilful blindness in her book of the same name. [7]

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Ignoring this destruction by calling it “creative destruction”, reflects the avoidance, not the exercise, of imagination, thought and responsibility. [11]

Over the years, we have come to distinguish between a culture and its current form of civilization. We see this distinction is critical. In our view, it is not sufficient to use the category of culture to capture the deepest and most profound transformations that are afoot within and among us today. Much as cultural differences are not to be overlooked or taken lightly, they do not capture the deepest difference among us as peoples, nor do they illuminate the deepest dynamics of what is going on among humans in the 21st Century. To get at these more profound differences, dynamics and changes we use the phrase ‘form of civilization.’

FORM OF CIVILIZATION

We readily acknowledge that ours is a stipulated definition of ‘civilization.’ It differs from the vast array of senses commonly given to this term. Since there is today no coherent and common sense of what is meant by ‘civilization’ – rather its usage is a dog’s breakfast – we feel free to stipulate how we shall use the term. We follow this path, of course, because at the least, it clarifies how we use the term. In addition, our usage allows us to make more sense of the past, present and future and do so more reliably than any other usage.

By ‘form of civilization,’ we point to the deep and largely unconscious patterns and boundaries of the imagination, thought and practice that characterize those cultures that are exemplars of a particular form of civilization. So, for example, both the Cree and Inuit, while living by very different cultures, are both exemplars of the Small Group Nomadic form of civilization. In this sense, any society in any given place and time is a paradigmatic exemplar of some form of civilization. This implies that at any given time in human history, if we are to make reliable sense of what has gone on, is going on and may well go on, we must understand both the unique character of every culture and the wider, deeper and longer frame of reference each culture exemplifies, namely, its form of civilization.

By distinguishing between a culture and its form of civilization at any given time, we can identify cultural changes that occur within its current civilizational frame of reference and distinguish them from those changes that indicate that a culture is growing out of its inherited civilizational frame and possibly into another. This distinction is vital because these two types of cultural change have very different dynamics and very different risks of truly tragic outcomes if mishandled. Therefore, quite different strategies are required to handle each type of change successfully. Sadly, this point is not well or widely understood. We are suggesting that we must not focus only on the evolution of different cultures as if this is the most important game in town. Such a focus systematically misses a good deal of the length, breadth, depth and drama of the challenges and opportunities we face in the 21st Century. To ignore the larger game of civilizational transformation is to ignore the key changes and dynamics on which our future hangs.

An example may help.

Consider the statement made in a powerful Keynote address in 2009 in Essen, Germany at a conference on Climate Change as Cultural Change by my friend and colleague – Thomas Homer-Dixon, “I have come to realize that the solutions to our climate-change crisis will ultimately reside at the level of culture.” [8] Most who hear this statement will hear it as Homer-Dixon intended it – as a call to include in our attention not merely the technology of climate change but also the much wider and more powerful level of the shape and evolution of the whole culture. While we wholly agree with this call and his use of ‘culture’, we would add to his statement, “and the form of civilization it manifests.” In our view, the changes he is pointing to and calling for do not only entail a transformation of our culture, but the evolution of our commonly-shared Modern/Industrial form of civilization into a new form of civilization.

It may be that our future hangs on understanding and operationalizing this difference. If it does, the distinction matters. Put bluntly, in our view we must sustain success not only as a culture, but as a

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truly new form of civilization. We note that the aspiration of consciously evolving our Modern/Industrial form of civilization into a new form of civilization is not yet on the agenda of any significant body on this planet.

As we consider our history as a species, we find it useful to distinguish five forms of civilization. We will list them in the order in which they emerged. Only the first four are now exemplified in actual human cultures and societies. First, Small-group Nomadic forms. We note in passing that this was the only form for 95% of our life as a species. Then roughly 12,000 years ago, Settled Regional forms of civilization began to emerge. In time and in a few place, the Settled Regional form was followed by the third form of civilization – Settled Empires. Fourth, over the last 1000 years, the Modern/Industrial form developed in Europe and then North America. Given that this form of civilization is now going global, globalization is best seen as modern-day Westernization regardless of the protestations to the contrary by many leaders of modernizing cultures. Fifth, we may now be in a long transition to the next form of civilization. As yet no agreed-upon name has emerged for whatever form of civilization is next. We call it the Consciously Co-Creative form of civilization.

This understanding assumes that any given form of civilization is not static and forever. If the conditions are right, a new form of civilization can emerge from an existing form. If this were not so, there would still only be one form of civilization on Earth. For good and ill, this is obviously not the case. Consider for example, that the French, among many other Europeans, have lived in the first four forms of civilization, although, of course, they did not know themselves as French 20,000 years ago. This evolution suggests that we may well find traces of prior civilizatonal forms in any culture that is no longer Small Group Nomadic.

I note, for example, that the Hebrew/ Christian tradition has also experienced each of these four forms of civilization. The evolution from Small Group Nomadic to Settled Regional can be seen in Deuteronomy 26:5, “Then you shall declare before the LORD your God: “My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous.” The certification that Israel was legitimately a Settled Regional culture is found in Samuel 8:20, “Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us…” The early church was born into the Roman version of a Settled Empire. It is no accident that the Roman Catholic Church organized itself in the same manner as did Rome. Finally, it is clear that the Protestant Reformation was both an outcome of the Renaissance and a contributor to the further development of the conditions from which our Modern/Industrial cultures have emerged.

Americans and Canadians, on the other hand, save for our aboriginal cousins, have lived our whole lives within the Modern/Industrial form of civilization. This claim rests on the fact that, at least in Europe, by 1500 CE the foundation of the Modern/Industrial form was well laid and much of the edifice already designed, if not yet fully embodied. Does this account, in part, for the North American bias to misread and be impatient with those who still know and live by pre-Modern/Industrial earlier forms?

We add two further comments: first, regarding diversity and second regarding East/West differences. It is clear to us that the diversity we who live within the Modern/Industrial form of civilization celebrate is diversity as understood within and framed by the Modern/Industrial form. There is no tolerance for those who would challenge this frame. They are marginalized and even vilified, not lionized. In this perspective, what is now called “development” can be seen as an attempt to move a given culture from its present inherited form of civilization whatever that may be into the Modern/Industrial form. That this fact is not well understood, and even often denied, is a major source of confusion both for folks in “developing” countries and those of us in Modern/Industrial societies. If this confusion were trivial, it would not matter. But, in our view, it is vital. It keep us from understanding, clearly and deeply, the underlying dynamics that are now sweeping and disturbing every culture on the planet. Whatever else it means, ‘globalization’ now

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means there is no place to hide for the consumptive core of the Modern/Industrial form of civilization.

It is also clear to us that a form of civilization, unlike a culture, is not defined by or even a function of its geography. If geography did define the different forms of civilization, then we would expect to find different forms of civilization in different geographies, always and forever. Clearly, this is not the case on this planet. Consider that while there were and still are significant differences among those who live by the Small Group Nomadic form, as a form of civilization it was and is a global phenomenon. The Settled Regional form, while somewhat less global, emerged and is still found on every continent. Even Regional Empires, which given their size, must be fewer than the two previous forms, have been exemplified on most continents. As we have noted, for good and ill, the Modern/Industrial form is now going global.

Therefore, it is a mistake to define civilizational differences, at least as we use the term, merely as a function of geographic differences. More specifically, while today’s differences between Eastern and Western cultures are real, contrary to an oft-made claim, they are not a function of different locations on the planet per se. In our view, those who talk of East/West civilizational differences as if these are always and forever, are mistaken. Rather, the place we look to account for the real cultural differences between “the East” and “the Modern/Industrial West” is to the form of civilization exemplified by the cultures in each of these geographic locations. This assertion implies that there was a time when the patterns of culture of what is now the Modern/Industrial West were largely indistinguishable from what are now held up as Eastern forms. What is more, if as a species we survive the next few centuries, today’s differences will be largely transcended in both East and West as both undergo a transformation in the form of civilization their cultures currently exemplify.

If I had time, I would argue that this perspective can re-frame our well-intended but almost wholly misbegotten ways of creating public policy about human security, social welfare, innovation, multiculturalism, Islam, globalisation, the clash of civilizations, development and East/West differences. One policy implication is clear – we should stop promising persons in any existing culture, including our own, that they have the right to maintain their present form of civilization forever. Whatever our intentions, this is a promise that, given the actual human dynamics of this planet, we simply cannot keep. Whether we like it or not, or deny it or not, no way of life as either a culture or a form of civilization is non-negotiable and forever. On this point, those who continue to claim otherwise are not only wrong, but tragically wrong-headed. The expectations they create cannot be met.

THE QUESTIONS

We are now in a position to ask and briefly explore what may well be the most important questions for humanity in the 21st Century: “If we are to have a future as a species, must we learn to see, think things through and act in ways that takes our time as a truly rare time in human history – a time during which the dominant form of civilization (now the Modern/Industrial) is disintegrating and a truly new form of civilization is beginning to emerge?” “When we talk of a ‘transition to a new society’ must we also learn to see, explore, understand and respond to our transition to a new form of civilization?” “Is it plausible to imagine that we could learn to do so?” “Are those who worry about the long decline of our Modern/Industrial world essentially right in what they assert, even if, by and large, they are still largely blind to the signs of emergence of the next form of civilization?” [6, 10]

This short piece is not the place to respond to these questions. However, we note three things.

First, these questions has been at the centre of my life as a futures-oriented societal/civilizational researcher, policy wonk and activist for five decades. My own response to the above questions is, “Yes.”

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Second, these questions are not yet securely in our minds or on our lips. They are not yet ideas in good currency. As far as we know, no significant organization or research centre in any sector is dedicated to raising and exploring the above questions. Today at best, only half of the view advocated here – that our Modern/Industrial form of civilization has no long-term future – is recognized, if somewhat hesitantly. Even the boldest of political parties or business associations are wholly unwilling to gently suggest more than the view that while we may have trouble, long-term, sustaining our Modern/Industrial way of living is the only way to frame our situation in the early 21st Century. Sadly, even the vast bulk of the sustainability conversation has been captured by those who presume that if we apply enough capital and science-based technological innovation within a Modern/Industrial frame our future is secure.

Third, the frame of ours being a time of civilizational paradigm change changes almost everything. It makes sense of the fact that our normal patterns of sense-making no longer enable us to make reliable sense of our world. It allows us to face, rather than deny, the facts of the long-term disintegration of the world as we have known it. It also allows us to come to terms with the increasing disorder caused by the intensification of our own efforts to impose order by means that are consistent with our Modern/Industrial mind set. Most important, the acceptance of ours as a time of civilizational frame change transforms the story we are in from one of either outright denial or the embrace of never-ending societal decay to one of facing a challenge that no other humans have had to consciously embrace – our conscious, active and co-creative participation as agents in the emergence of a new form of civilization. This, in turn, presupposes that we will see, think through and embrace the work of learning to cooperate with our own evolution as persons, at every scale of our existence from individuals to a species. Sadly, neither of these pieces of work are on the agenda of any truly influential institution.

This new way of framing our situation provides a firm basis for hope and work – a reason to get out of bed every day and suit up and show up. It offers a call to active service that is the psychological equivalent of a call to arms without the Manichean tendencies to demonize that with which we contend. Yes, the odds are long. One may be pessimistic about the chances we have. But hope is warranted. In part, this is because we simply do not know enough about the future of complex living human systems to say with confidence that our fate is already sealed. As is always the case, truly courageous human action emerges in the ambiguity of a somewhat uncertain future.

But, such hope is conditional. It is justified only if we are willing to pay the price of learning to see our situation and our role within it for what they are and then respond to the best of what we are coming to know about ourselves and our situation. That that will take degrees of courage, insight and love that are truly rare, we readily acknowledge. Yet we know that to call us to any other response is a betrayal of all that we hold dear.

OUR MODERN/INDUSTRIAL FORM OF CIVILIZATION

We turn now to the work of sketching our understanding of the core paradigmatic character of our Modern/ Industrial form of civilization. Having an adequate grasp of who we have been and mostly still are is a necessary, if not sufficient, condition for a successful transition to a truly new society that exemplifies a new paradigm of civilization. The reason, as noted above, is that, openly and consciously, we must come to be able to distinguish between those new things that are truly new and those that merely reinforce our existing civilizational habits, if with greater subtlety. We need to develop a reflexive meta-consciousness because, as we have learned from every liberation movement, imaginations we do not know we have, have us.

As we undertake this work, it is useful to remember two things. First, that the Modern/Industrial form of civilization grew out of pre-Industrial forms of settled civilization, namely Regional Empires and Regional Settlements. Second, that it is most unlikely that the Modern/Industrial form broke in every respect with the civilizational forms that came before it. Therefore, is useful to ask, “Which

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defining characteristics of the earlier forms of civilization were continued by the Modern/Industrial form and which were developed as truly novel?”

In our view, one of the two paradigmatic characteristics that most deeply define the Modern/Industrial form of civilization is a continuation from the past and one is truly novel. The continuing characteristic is the deeply-held sense that ultimate reality is timeless and changeless; that truth, if reliably known, is the same for all persons in all places in all times; that the logic of contradiction and contrariety both hold; and that certainty is a mark of true knowledge.

It follows that in a classic Modern/ Industrial culture life will be organized, both inside and out, hierarchically. The practical reason for hierarchies, given the communications technologies of the time, is that for large scale purposes someone must be in charge. The ultimate reason, of course, is that the whole point of human life is to learn to live on earth in the ways that best reflect and reinforce our knowledge of the unchanging eternal. As above, so below. In order to get organized at all as humans we must assure ourselves that we have reliable access to eternal truth, even if only through a great chain of being, with a god-ordained-king at the top as the key link between heaven and earth.

We note that obedience to the eternal is built into all cultures that presuppose that eternal truth is unchanging. As Pope Paul IV, the first Pope to visit the USA, reminded Americans as he flew out of Detroit, even if one disagrees with him, to be Roman Catholic is to understand the requirement that to be faithful to Christ is to obey him as Pope. Given the presupposition of static reality and timeless truth, this claim is reasonable and to be expected. We also note that a sense of hierarchy is not Western or Eastern. It shows up in every culture that exemplifies the Regional Empire, Regional Settled or Modern/ Industrial forms of civilization. Thousands of years ago, once the logic of a settled life took hold of our ancestors, truth has always been found higher up the hierarchy – beyond one’s present pay grade.

This hierarchical sense can be seen in Ken Boulding’s doggerel, “In every organization from root to crown, ideas flow up and vetoes flow down.” Command and control based on one’s role and place in the cosmic and societal hierarchy continued to be of the essence over the centuries during which the Modern/Industrial form of civilization took shape.

But to the last several Popes’ consternation, the West did not remain wholly faithful to the Regional Empire form of civilization into which the church was born. As our Modern/Industrial sensibility and society developed, a powerful and truly new insight into reality also came to define the Modern/Industrial West. While we kept the sense of static reality and the hierarchy that goes with it, over the last 1,000 years the West has cut a new swath in history. We in the West moved slowly and incoherently from our pre-Modern/Industrial default sensibility of a deep holistic grasp on reality to the sense we now still largely take for granted, at least for most public and private purposes: whole systems and entities are made of pieces, that are themselves made of pieces, that are themselves made of pieces. It is pieces all the way down. Further, the pieces are ultimately more real than the wholes they, when taken together, constitute.

In sum, the holistic grasp on reality that marks all forms of civilization prior to the Modern/Industrial was fragmented by the Modern/Industrial into stand-alone pieces. The roots of this journey run very deep. It can be seen in some 11th Century European architecture. By the 13th Century, reality was fragmented by Aquinas who authorized us to think about the Earth apart from God; of Nature apart from Grace. We understand that Aquinas is not normally taught as a father of our Modern/Industrial world, but from this perspective he surely is. At this same time, time was fragmented precisely enough to demand mechanical clocks.

Once on the path of fragmentation, we soon learned to think of physics without philosophy or even the history of physics, fact without value, the secular apart from the sacred, commerce without ethics, nations as sovereign entities, and solipsistic individuals as sufficiently primordial to require a

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social contract in order to establish any binding relationships to one another or to a common societal authority. That authority, of course, was the King.

I note in passing that, at best, all of these developments are puzzling, if not offensive, to those with a pre-Modern/Industrial sensibility. Most would pay it no heed if we did not have more money and better weapons as an outcome of our sensibility. We would be well-served to reconsider the rebellion of some parts of Islam against the West in this light. Should we do so, we would learn things about ourselves and our situation that we need to know. Many will discomfort us. There is no mystery in why some pre-Modern/Industrial peoples hate us. They understand in ways that, as yet, we do not that the success of our civilizational project will eliminate the possibility that they will be able to live alongside us with a pre-Modern/Industrial sensibility in a pre-Modern/Industrial culture that exemplifies a pre-Modern/Industrial form of civilization. The geopolitical issue is not, as so many would have us believe [9], our Christian civilization versus their Islamic civilization. Rather, it is our unconscious Modern/Industrial Christian civilization against their equally unconscious pre-Modern/ Industrial Islamic civilization. It is the civilizational qualifiers that make the difference.

This evolution from wholeness to fragments that marks the emergence of the Modern/Industrial west can also be seen in Western art, architecture, weaponry and philosophy. As Northrop Frye observed, “In what our culture produces, whether it is art, philosophy, military strategy or political and economic development, there are no accidents; everything a culture produces is equally a symbol of that culture.” [5] Again, I would add, “and its form of civilization.”

Forms of Civilization as Determined by Ontological/Epistemological Presuppositions

Figure 1

The above figure captures the evolution of the five forms of civilization. We note that this presentation does not capture dynamics of either Empire or Modern/Industrial colonialism – when a people that exemplify one form of civilization imposes its culture on the culture of an earlier form of civilization. The solid lines mark transitions in forms of civilization that have already occurred. The dashed lines indicate two of the three major dynamics within present-day Modern/Industrial cultures – a retreat to a myth dominated culture or a drift into a post-Modern culture. The third dynamic is the defence of one’s Modern/ Industrial culture against both backsliding into pre-Modern/Industrial myth-dominated culture and moving on into any form of a post-Modern/Industrial culture. The lines with dashes and dots indicate the paths being followed by pioneers of the new civilizational paradigm.

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If you wish to take the time, we invite you to work with a few others and answer this question, “What are the characteristic features of a culture that assumes and exemplifies a sensibility that is the product of the tension between these two deeply defining ontological/epistemological assumptions about reality: One, that reality is static, not dynamic. Two, that reality is made up of and can be known by individual persons as separate pieces – pieces which then can be added together to result in some form of wholeness?”. This space can be seen in the bottom left quadrant of Figure 1.

We have facilitated this exercise for over 30 years. It is our experience that a variety of possible cultures, all of which embody and reinforce the Modern/Industrial form of civilization, can be inferred from the tension and interaction between these two fundamental ontological and epistemological assumptions. We note that no well-trained Jesuit would be surprised or bothered by this assertion. We note further, that the diverse cultures which result from this exercise are all isomorphic with our Modern/Industrial form of civilization.

One way to experience the sensibility that has come to define our Modern/Industrial form of civilization is to walk through any art gallery with a decent collection of European art from roughly 1200 to today. As you learn to look at both the overall gestalt and the details of each picture, you will come to see the slow transformation of the deep sensibility that marks our journey as a form of civilization from the top left to the bottom left quadrants of Figure 1.

We will now note our understanding of many of the core elements of the imagination that has come to dominate and shape the Modern/Industrial form of civilization, and therefore, all Modern/Industrial cultures. For us this is not a random list. Rather, the following features are entailed in the interaction of the two deep assumptions that underlie our way of being in the world. Given variations in time, geography or among cultures, of course, these features will not all show up to the same degree or in exactly the same ways. In this sense some Modern/Industrial cultures can be said to be more or less Modern/Industrial than others. But these features are present as defining characteristics of all developed Modern/Industrial cultures.

A Modern/Industrial culture will have a positivistic/reductionist/materialist bias – physical realities will be seen as not merely more obvious and coercive, but as more real than subtle realities which, without coercion, touch us gently. In the Rock, Paper, Scissors game of such societies, numbers always trump metaphors and anecdotes. On this point, every Chamber of Commerce agrees with Karl Marx.

In human terms, individual persons are seen as the primary units of reality and each individual is just that: an individual who is complete in him or her self.

Nation states are spaces in which persons who are culturally similar live together. Each nation state is a sovereign unit unto itself and must not be intruded on by those external to it, not even by the UN’s recently declared “responsibility to protect.”

Within the culture, life is divided into public and private realms – matters that are shared and common to all (the public realm) are divided from those that are unique and private to each individual (the private realm). In the public realm, the same rules must apply to all without discrimination. The price that must be paid for each of us legitimately to have an idiosyncratic private life is that our subjectivity cannot be taken into public space as if it belongs there. In public space, we are functions, not persons. Don’t bring it to the office. For example, in Canada’s largest province you cannot know anything about my private persona for public purposes. If you want to hire me it is illegal to ask me what schools I attended. The reason is that I may have gone to St. Michael’s and then you might think I am Roman Catholic – a private matter that by law you may not know for public purposes.

Freedom is the trump value by which others are judged. It is a cosmic offence to impose external rules, conditions or powers on any entity that has its own separate cosmic identity.

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So persons, families, countries, corporations, technology, money and trade must all be freed from any force that would limit or shackle them.

The bias to reductionism results in a bias to reify human affairs into separate and self-contained realms, e.g. politics, commerce, science, religion, art. Non-overlapping magisterial (NOMA) between these sectors is an expected and widely-held perspective.

Public, common to us all, space is itself divided into self-contained sectors in some way or other. One type of division is the now common Triple Bottom Line with its economic, environmental and social sub-sectors.

Institutions in every public sector are organized hierarchically. Those few that have merged recently that are not organized this way are rightly seen to be paradigm breakers.

Economic matters trump all others. “It’s the economy, stupid.” The primary function of the economy is to increase material wealth. It does this primarily by increasing the scope and efficiency of material throughput. Within economics, money dominates all other economic considerations. Efficiency, therefore, trumps effectiveness and relevance.

At root, then, human life is seen as a production/consumption function. The good life is defined and measured by one’s “command over goods and services.” Education is valued because a well-educated person has better access to a job, without which one has no access to goods and services. A well-functioning economy is a consumer-based economy. Social policy is primarily about how much access to goods and services the poor and those with special needs should have.

The bias to experience and treat reality in pieces is legitimized by a host of boundaries. One outcome is that all matters beyond the boundaries of our present concerns and purposes are defined as ‘externalities’ that we can safely afford to ignore for the purposes at hand.

Critical-mindedness is required in public life. Deep reflexivity is restricted to private life. Even there it is optional.

None of the above suggests that love, tenderness and friendship are not valued in a Modern/Industrial culture. They surely are. However, these are private matters that each of us must work out for ourselves in the spaces of our lives that are not occupied by public (common-to-us-all) matters. And, in extremis, the demands of public life may well impose upon and crowd out that which we hold most dear. While sad, this is “just how it is; the way things are.” In short, get over it.

Given the above, it is to be expected that a Modern/Industrial way of living will be riven with tensions among the competing pieces of one’s life and society. It is not surprising that such societies are marked by a host of addictions, all of which claim to lessen such tensions.

CONCLUSION

To recap: the perspective that ours is a rare time of transformational civilizational paradigm change changes almost everything that we who live in Modern/Industrial cultures take for granted, think we know and act on with utter confidence. Within this perspective, refining and extending the root habits of heart, mind and hand that define the Modern/Industrial world does not create a better society, but put our species at risk. A new paradigm is needed, but of a new form of civilization, not merely our society. Seeing our history situation afresh in these terms, thinking it through and acting courageously on what we learn is the deep work of the 21st century.

We recognize that we have not undertaken that work in this paper; that all we have done is attempt to clarify the nature and scope of the work to be done.

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We will conclude by dealing with a matter that may be arising within you. We have said that we need to learn to see, explore, think through, understand and factor into our commitments and decisions the fact that in 2014 there are now four main forms of civilization exemplified on the planet -- Small-Group Nomadic, Settled Regional, Settled Empire, and our Modern/Industrial form of civilization. We have also said that we in the West now predominantly exemplify the Modern/Industrial form. And we have defined the Modern/Industrial form on the basis of two deep ontological/epistemological assumptions – static and piecemeal reality. Yet, you may have noticed that today’s world is also marked by dynamic systems and complexity, not just static pieces. In what sense, then, are we in the West still truly Modern/Industrial?

This is a good and important question. Our reading of the data suggests the following sketch of a response.

First, we wholly agree that in 2014 there are many emerging features of our lives and societies, including for example the category of emergence, that are incompatible with our still being seen as a classic and pure form of a Modern/Industrial culture and form of civilization. Apparently, there is increasing evidence that we are already growing, at least to some degree, into something that is not just a new culture, but a new form of civilization. This, of course, is the major and truly new possibility to which we wish to point. That this notion should come to play a major role in our public policy is an aspiration we wish to mindfully and heartily endorse.

Second, there is evidence that a culture does not shift from one form of civilization suddenly and completely, but slowly, unconsciously and incoherently. This implies that at any given time in history we have to ask of any given culture, “To what extent is it deeply coherent?” By ‘coherent’ we mean that the cognitive content of the fundamental structures and patterns of its physical artifacts, thought patterns and imagination are essentially aligned and isomorphic; that they reflect and reinforce the same dominant mythic form of civilization. We raise the question of coherence because there are limits to how incoherent a culture can become and still be a well-functioning culture. Since the core of globalization is in fact Modern/Industrial Westernization, much of the societal disorder now readily seen around the world can be read in this light. There is a clash of civilizations going on around the world, but it is not the one that we have commonly taken it to be. For an example of one who gets it wrong in the way a Modern/Industrial scholar would be expected to get it wrong, see Samuel Huntington. [9]

Third, regarding any given society at any given time, we need to learn to distinguish between two profoundly different types of diversity and incoherence. The first type of diversity arises because a society encounters artifacts, thoughts and mythic structures that, while different from its own, are from cultures that also exemplify the same form of civilization. Up until roughly 10,000 years ago, this type of diversity was the only type experienced by our species. Today, we can think of encounters between the Mohawk and the Cree, or the modern Greeks and modern Germans as typifying this form of diversity.

The other type of diversity arises from encounters with cultures that exemplify a form of civilization different from one’s own. We note again that we now have four forms of civilization encountering one another. We think of encounters today between Americans and Chinese or European-rooted Canadians and Canadian Aboriginals. By and large these types of encounter do not go well. In large part this is because, while each party can see that the other has a quite different culture, as yet, neither has developed the capacity to understand, much less grasp the type and therefore the significance of the differences they are encountering. Therefore, those engaged in such encounters are prone to systematically misconstrue the other and therefore the encounter with the other. The surprising feature we must account for is not the frequency of disasters that happen from such situations, but the fact that all such encounters do not end in disaster.

Finally, we must reinforce the fact that one can misunderstand one’s own experiences of cultural change without leaving home; without encountering others from cultures that exemplify a different

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form of civilization. The reason, of course, is that inappropriate conduct will almost certainly be an outcome when one is unable to discern which changes in one’s self and one’s culture are within the paradigm of one’s inherited form of civilization and which are paradigm-bursting at the level of our form of civilization6.

Any serious journey that bills itself as a search for a new societal paradigm or a transition to a new society must keep these things in mind.

Or so it seems to me.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

[1] Rachael Beddoe, et al: “Overcoming systemic roadblocks to sustainability: The evolutionary redesign of worldviews, institutions, and technologies.” Proceeding of the National Academy of Science (USA),Vol. 106, no. 8, February 24, 2009.

[2] Peter L Berger and Thomas Luckmann: The Social construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Anchor Books, New York. 1967.

[3] Northrop Frye: “Journey Without Arrival”, and film of the National Film Board of Canada, circa 1975.

[4] Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich: “Can the Collapse of Civilization be Avoided?” Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2013 280, 20122845. Available at http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1754/20122845.full.pdf

[5] Northrop Frye: “The Critical Path: An Essay on the Social Context of Literary Criticism.” Daedalus, Spring 1970.

[6] John Michael Greer: The Long Descent: A User’s Guide to the End of the Industrial Age. New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, 2008.

[7] Margaret Heffernan: Wilful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious. Doubleday Canada, Toronto. 2011.

[8] Thomas Homer-Dixon: “The Great Transformation: Climate Change as Cultural Change.” Keynote address, to a conference with the same title, Essen Germany, June 8, 2009. Taken from: http://www.homerdixon.com/2009/06/08/the-great-transformation-climate-change-as-cultural-change/

[9] Samuel P Huntington: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1996. Available as his 1993 essay in Foreign Affairs at http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/pnorris/Acrobat/Huntington_Clash.pdf

[10] James Howard Kunstler: The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century. Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, 2005.

[11] Jill Lepore: “The Disruption Machine”, The New Yorker, New York, June 20, 2014.

[12] John Macmurray: Persons in Relation. Faber and Faber, London, 1961.

[13] Margret Masterman "The Nature of a Paradigm," in Imre Lakatos, Alan Musgrave Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge , Proceedings of the 1965 International Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science 4, 3rd edition, Cambridge University Press, 1970, p 59 -90.

[14] Ruben Nelson: “Adelaide’s Lament: Exploring Our Inability to Make Reliable Sense of Our Situation.” A Keynote address delivered to the 2012 Summer Conference, “Saving the Future,” Silver Bay, New York, July 31, 2012. Available at http://eruditio.worldacademy.org/author/ruben-nelson

[15] Ruben Nelson: “New Maps for New Times: A Fresh Look at Persons and Community.” A paper prepared for the 20122 National Recreation Summit, Lake Louise Alberta. Available from the Leisure Information Network: http://lin.ca/resources/new-maps-new-times-fresh-look-persons-and-communities-de-nouvelles-cartes-pour-une

[16] Ruben Nelson, “Extending Foresight: The Case for and Nature of Foresight 2.0.” Futures, Volume 42, Issue 4, May 2010.

[17] Oxford Universal Dictionary, Oxford University press, Oxford, 1955.

6 For an application of this thought to our modern understanding of recreation see Ruben Nelson [15]