Whither FTA: Struggling to Cooperate with Our Own Evolution Ruben Nelson 1 Abstract This paper seeks to contribute to our understanding of the history and evolution of Futures Research in general and FTA in particular. The intention is to offer, as a hypothesis, a perspective that appears to us to: (1) Make deeper sense of the conceptual confusion and the dominant themes that have marked FTA from the beginning. (2) Make deeper sense of some of the themes now emerging in FTA. (3) Identify what appears to us to be a more promising path forward for FTA. The quintessential characteristics of the preferred path is set out, as are some of the major implications for the practice of FTA. The core thrust is this: On the more promising path, the development and utilization of technology is driven by a passion to enable persons, institutions and cultures to see, think through and meet the grandest human challenge of the 21 st Century – to learn to become aware of and to cooperate with their own evolution as persons at every scale of our existence from individual to species; from local to cosmic. This drive is contrasted with the still-current dominant driver of the development of technology – the accumulation of money and power. The above claims are based on a methodology developed in Canada for making more reliable sense of human persons, cultures and forms of civilization – causal layered synthesis (CLS). The main features of this methodology are sketched, including a fresh map of human development that flows from its application. 1 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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Struggling to Cooperate with Our Own Evolution Ruben Nelson6 Frye, Northrop. ^The Critical Path: An Essay on the Social Context of Literary Criticism _, Daedalus (Spring 1970) 7 Those
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Whither FTA:
Struggling to Cooperate with Our Own Evolution
Ruben Nelson1
Abstract
This paper seeks to contribute to our understanding of the history and evolution of Futures
Research in general and FTA in particular. The intention is to offer, as a hypothesis, a
perspective that appears to us to: (1) Make deeper sense of the conceptual confusion and the
dominant themes that have marked FTA from the beginning. (2) Make deeper sense of some of
the themes now emerging in FTA. (3) Identify what appears to us to be a more promising path
forward for FTA. The quintessential characteristics of the preferred path is set out, as are some
of the major implications for the practice of FTA. The core thrust is this: On the more
promising path, the development and utilization of technology is driven by a passion to enable
persons, institutions and cultures to see, think through and meet the grandest human challenge of
the 21st Century – to learn to become aware of and to cooperate with their own evolution as
persons at every scale of our existence from individual to species; from local to cosmic. This
drive is contrasted with the still-current dominant driver of the development of technology – the
accumulation of money and power. The above claims are based on a methodology developed in
Canada for making more reliable sense of human persons, cultures and forms of civilization –
causal layered synthesis (CLS). The main features of this methodology are sketched, including a
fresh map of human development that flows from its application.
1 Ruben Nelson, Executive Director, Foresight Canada, 29 des Arcs Road, Lac Des Arcs, AB, Canada, T1W 2W3
“It matters when a people or enterprise are cast into history.”2
This point was often made by Northrop Frye.3 He thought the modern bias towards ahistorical
thinking was misleading, at best. Therefore, he was inclined to remind us of the degree to which
all human life was inescapably laden with, if not trapped within, its history. This thought, that
historical context matters, is not strange to those who pursue or apply futures research in any of
its forms. In the futures business context is king. It is assumed that if one truly and deeply
comes to understand the character and dynamics of the past and present context of that which
holds one’s attention, then both the present state and the future possibilities of that thing will
resolve into focus.
This paper is an attempt to think clearly about the future of Future-Oriented Technology
Analysis (FTA): This question, “What path would we take if we knew what we were doing?”
states the challenge somewhat baldly. Our approach is to utilize a futures research method
developed in Canada – Causal Layered Synthesis (CLS) – to shed a fresh light on the long
development of human cultures and forms of civilization.4 This method enables us to gain fresh
insights into the birth and evolution of Futures Research and FTA. Unsurprisingly, it is argued
that they both show the marks of the time of their birth – the mid Twentieth Century. We use the
map of human development that flows from the application of CLS to argue that it is
increasingly clear that the 21st Century will not be a replay of the 20
th. If this is the case, then we
need to update our practice of both Futures Research in general and FTA in particular in order to
align the way we undertake futures work with what we are now coming to know about the
nature, place and roles of persons, cultures and forms of civilization in history.
The logic of the argument is as follows:
CLS offers a fresh map on which we can plot the history of human development.
The map locates Futures Research, including FTA, as late Modern/Industrial
developments with the strengths, weaknesses and degree of coherence that would be
expected of a late Modern/Industrial development.
It is increasingly clear that our still-dominant late Modern/Industrial form of civilization
is not a sustainable form of civilization; that a shift towards post-Modernism is well
underway; that post-Modernism does not provide a basis for a new form of civilization;
and, therefore, that the next form of civilization, if there is to be one in a non-trivial
sense, will be a post-post-Modern form. (For reasons that will become clearer, we
characterize this new form of civilization as the Co-Creative form of civilization.)
If this reasoning is sound, then we who are today’s practitioners must learn to adapt the
practice of FTA in ways that put it in service of nurturing the emergence of a truly new
and co-creative form of civilization. Suggestions for such adaptations are made.
2 Northrop Frye, Journey without Arrival, a National Film Board of Canada film on the life and thought of Northrop
Frye, circa 1970. Now out of print. 3 At the height of his career as a literary critic and professor at Victoria College, University of Toronto, according to
the Citation Index, Frye was the third most quoted person in the academy. He trailed only Jesus and Marx. 4 The case for making a distinction between a culture and its form of civilization can be found at:
What follows is only an article. Therefore, much of the argument will be sketched, rather than
elaborated. The point is to outline an argument that states that there are good reasons to alter our
intentions for and practice of FTA.
Causal Layered Synthesis
Because CLS is neither widely-known nor well-documented, a brief history is in order. CLS has
been developed and utilized by the author for fifty years. It first emerged in the mid-1960s in his
graduate work at Queen’s University and Queen’s Theological College, both in Kingston,
Canada and at United Theological College, Bangalore, India.
At its heart is the insight that it is possible to map the development of human cultures and forms
of civilization against a ontological/epistemological (O/E) map with the following coordinates.
The X axis of the map measures the degree to which the dominant default ontological and
epistemological stance of a culture and form of civilization assumes that reality is (a) static,
timeless and unchanging (left end) or (b) dynamic, historical and in some sense evolutionary
(right end). The Y axis of the map measures the degree to which the dominant default
ontological and epistemological stance of a culture and form of civilization assumes that reality
is (a) relational and therefore contextual and that reliable knowing is itself relational (top end) or
(b) individuated into stand-alone pieces and that a lone individual can know reliably quite apart
from others (bottom end). See figure 1.
Civilizational O/E Default Settings
Figure 1
A few minutes reflection on the two ends of each quadrant will reveal the inherent character and
tensions of the dominant form of civilization and the cultures that exemplify it.5 We note that as
Stafford Beer often said, cultures are systems – the characteristics and tensions of each form of
civilization will be manifest in every domain of the cultures that exemplify it. As Northrop Frye
noted: “In what our culture produces, whether it is art, philosophy, military strategy or political and
5 If given a bit of coaching and time a group of people can ferret out the defining characteristics of a society that
exemplifies each of these quadrants with no additional information than that which is shown on figure 1. The work of such groups has been remarkably consistent and isomorphic over 40 years of using this exercise.
economic development, there are no accidents; everything a culture produces is equally a symbol of that culture.”i And, I would add, “and its form of civilization.”6
As one becomes comfortable with the defining characteristics of human life in each quadrant
questions such as these may be asked, explored and answered:7 Where were we as a species
when we first emerged in Africa 200,000 years ago? (top right) Where are limited-contact tribal
peoples even today? (top right) In which direction did agricultural settlement move those of us
who became settled over the last 10,000 years? (top right to top left) In which direction did the
emergence of a Modern/Industrial form of civilization move those of us who made that journey
from roughly 1000, CE to 1900 CE? (top left to bottom left) Where was Europe during the
Reformation? (moving from the top left into the bottom left) In which direction are those who
are becoming somewhat post-Modern moving? (bottom left to bottom right) In which quadrant
does a truly sustainable and humane post, post-Modern form of civilization lie? (top right) In
which quadrants do we find fundamentalism and so many other “isms” about which we are so
troubled? (the two left quadrants where true knowledge is deemed to be marked by timeless and
impersonal certainty). Relativism arises in the bottom right. Knowing reliably, but in the face of
relativity, is the deep challenge of the top right quadrant.
One can also plot the number of people in any given quadrant at any given time and the
directions of their movement, if any. For example, today the major traffic is towards the bottom
left quadrant. It is the result of a process widely called modernization or development. Those
securely in that quadrant are still outnumbered by those heading towards it. Ironically, those
who have lived longest in the bottom left quadrant are the most likely to be the ones leaving it.
The bulk of the Modern/Industrial people who are moving are headed to the bottom right
quadrant. However, some are heading back to the top left and a small minority to the top right.
Contrary to Francis Fukuyama’s earlier claim that the bottom left is “the end of history”8, the
human journey is far from over.
While this map can be used to generate non-trivial insights into our past and present conditions
and future potentials as a species, it becomes even more powerful when a simple, but powerful,
understanding of human consciousness, culture and forms of civilization are added to it. This
additional element is what turns the O/E map into CLS.
CLS is both causal and layered in the same sense that Causal Layered Analysis (CLA)9 is causal
and layered. That is, both assume that human consciousness, persons, cultures and forms of
civilization can and must be seen, understood and acted towards at more than one level. (CLA
has four levels, while CLS has three.) Both also assume that there are two-way causal relations
between the levels.
6 Frye, Northrop. “The Critical Path: An Essay on the Social Context of Literary Criticism”, Daedalus (Spring 1970)
7 Those who are familiar with Dave Snowden’s Cynefin Framework will recognize that the CLS quadrants map onto
those of the Cynefin Framework. In CLS the top right is complex, top left is complicated, bottom left is simple and bottom right is chaotic. We note that Dave Snowden uses his framework to distinguish among situations or conditions facing persons within an on-going culture, while we use them to distinguish among four types of human civilizations. 8 Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, Avon, New York, 1992.
9 Causal Layered Analysis. Developed by Sohail Inayatullah. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causal_layered_analysis