I’ve just added a new section to the site.

It introduces five recently produced clips from a mid-2012 conference session in Toronto. The material may be useful to anyone wishing to review approaches to what, by any measure, is a vast and immeasurably challenging topic (but, I would argue, one we can no longer afford to ignore). It also acts as a kind of ‘marker in time’ that identifies the point that an extended conversation between Michael Marien, William Halal and myself had reached. We were also fortunate that Thomas Homer-Dixon was available to participate. If you only have time to view one clip, I suggest you look at his since there are few people anywhere with his depth of understanding and knowledge.

Impressed with John’s article on global governance entitled Transcending 1st-Tier Values in Achieving Binding Democratic Global Governance, Ken Wilber invited John to dialogue about how global governance can be achieved even though most of the world still remains relatively uninterested by the subject. John also explains how non-democratic nations could be included.

The first half of the dialogue which analyses global problems and explains the shortcomings of existing approaches to global governance can now be heard at http://integrallife.com/ken-wilber-dialogues/building-global-democracy  

Ken Wilber, founder of Integral Theory, recently described Simpol as “a 2nd-tier political practice that makes a great deal of sense and is certainly worth backing”.

This month on whatnextintegral.com, Ken Wilber spoke extemporaneously about futures schools of thought. As is Ken’s custom concerning authors to be published in the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice (JITP), Ken and I spoke on the telephone for about an hour about an article of mine soon to be published in JITP, “Applying Integral Theory to Futures Schools of Thought” (which is based on a presentation I gave at the Istanbul Conference, “Theory Building in Futures Studies,” last year). So, more or less, except for the part about Bill Joy and Ray Kurzweil, he’s giving his interpretation and adding some of his own thoughts about the piece.

Also, it’s probably an understatement to say that the move from three to eight futures schools of thought certainly isn’t settled in the futures field; however, it is encouraging to hear Ken refer to them in this speech. Here is an excerpt from the whatnextintegral weblog, followed by an audio link.

Dennis

[From the whatnextintegral weblog] This week we are asking the question, “why does the future matter?” With all the emphasis we see in spiritual communities about the importance of being in the NOW, it can be easy to forget how important it is to keep a careful eye on the future. After all, aren’t our thoughts about the future just another way to distract ourselves from connecting to our true selves in this present moment? Here’s what Ken has to say:

“The way you approach the present isn’t just determined by the way you approach the past, but by the way you approach the future. The richer conception of the future you have, the richer your life in the present becomes.”

But here’s our question for you: what future we are imagining for ourselves, for the integral movement, and for the impact of the integral vision on our shared future?

Listen as Ken sorts out the various schools of futurism, what each has to offer from an integral view, and how it’s just as important for us to integrate the future in our awareness as it is to integrate the past and present.

[In case the "play" button doesn't work, you can also access the audio from the following link: http://whatnextintegral.com/integratingfuture/]

The Association of Professional Futurists (APF) marked its 10th anniversary with a series of events in Toronto during late July, most of which I attended. Among them was an evening get together in the Distillery District during which time a number of awards were presented. One of these was a Most Important Futures Work (MIFW) award for my 2010 book, The Biggest Wake-Up Call in History. In the book I reviewed the global predicament, some of the strategies proposed to address it and possible ways forward in what look like increasingly impossible times. (Further details are here in earlier posts; about a dozen reviews can be found on the Foresight International site, from which the book can be purchased.)

The relevant award category was ‘published works that analyse a significant futures issue.’ What may be of interest in an Integral Futures context is that the BWCH is one of the very first books to consider the global predicament from a broadly integral viewpoint.

The other publication similarly honoured was Tim Jackson’s stimulating Prosperity Without Growth. It is indeed an honour to be recognised by the APF and to share the limelight, as it were, with work of this quality. The award may, in turn, help to prepare the way for a second edition and mainstream publication. Sincere thanks are due to all those involved in this year’s selection process.

The issue of leadership is a hardy perennial that has been around for many years. It was therefore inevitable, perhaps, that those with interests in Integral perspectives would attempt to re-think and re-vision the topic in a new light. Having been the CEO of a major international company, the founding Director of Graduate School of Entrepreneurship and a practitioner of vipassana meditation there are few people better qualified to comment on such efforts than my colleague and friend Adolph Hanich. So I sent him a recent post by Brett Thomas from an Integral website that attempted to set out a ‘new’ approach.* This is his response.

Is There Anything New About Integral Leadership? (To open click here)

* Thomas, B. Kickstarting a Movement: A Call for Integral Leaders, 2012.

http://integrallife.com/member/brett-thomas/blog/kickstarting-movement-call-integral-leaders

Retrieved 18^th April, 2012

A seven minute presentation by Wilber has been added to the videos page. He introduces a 5 day event in early 2012 on the above topic and covers some of the main concepts and implications in his own distinctive style.

Over recent years it’s become clear that the human race has been overshooting global limits in a number of crucial areas and looks set to continue this process for some time to come. This, in turn, raises very serious questions about the future – not only for human life but for all life on this planet. For the last several years political leaders have been preoccupied with financial and other economic issues. They appear paralysed when it comes to deeper concerns about, e.g. species extinctions, global warming and the onset of peak oil. These and similar threats that arise from escalating human demands and multiple human impacts seem to remain in the ‘too-hard’ basket.

In the light of the above an invitation has been posted on the Work in Progress 2 page for anyone interested in contributing to a themed issue of On the Horizon, edited by Tom Abeles, on the topic of ‘overshoot and collapse’ futures. To the extent that we take such an outlook seriously we can together perhaps craft appropriate responses. What we cannot and should not do is to pretend that there’s any future at all in a continuation of ‘business as usual.’ That, I suggest, is the most dangerous future of all.

The following paper on ‘Evaluating overshoot and collapse futures’ was adapted from chapter 3 of BIggest Wake-Up Call… and published in the August / September issue of World Future Review (To open click here)

In the previous “metaphors” post, I submitted a variety of metaphors that have been used to describe American society; however, what I found most interesting about these metaphors was not so much about their validity in describing American society but that the “melting pot,” “salad bowl,” and “mosaic” metaphors seem to be reflections of modern, postmodern, and integral consciousness.

So, bearing that in mind, what is the best metaphor to describe integral futures? I believe that the “kaleidoscope” is the best metaphor for IF. The kaleidoscope is a toy through which one can look through to view beautiful, multicolored, shifting images and patterns. The “toy” employs the element of “play” or creativity that is important in FS. (That’s why Richard Slaughter inserted the element of “play” in the title of the report, State of Play in the Futures Field.”) Thus, unlike most specialized fields within academia, futures research should not just be a matter of dry, academic reports that utilize specialized language and jargon only for the “initiated,” having little relevance for broader audiences (the “uninitiated”). I witnessed this trend at the “Theory Building for Foresight and Futures Studies” conference in Istanbul. Many of the presentations were quite dry and repetitive. Most had very little to offer by way of “theory building,” but like most other fields of specialization within professional academia, focused more on methodology and proving how ”empirical” they are. I kept wondering “Where is the theory building?” and “What about the Big Picture?” After all, it was the interdisciplinary nature of FS and its attempt to address the Big Picture of global futures that attracted me most to the field back in the 80s.

So, to get back to the metaphor of the kaleidoscope as a child’s toy, I believe that FS, as an interdisciplinary field that prides itself on viewing the Big Picture, would do well to avoid the trap of overspecialization and the empiricist obsession that plagues much of the social sciences. I think the whole American utilitarian mindset (peculiar to American culture in general) has a lot to do with FS chasing other, more recognized disciplines, down the rabbit hole path of mediocrity in its attempt to gain more academic credibility. Instead, it should look to its playful origins, especially as a creative endeavor, like a child with a fascinating new toy, to view and better understand the future.

Furthermore,  the kaleidoscope metaphor also has multicolored patterns of light and images that continually shift and yet magically fit together to tell a story. In the case of FS, multicolored patterns are the alternative futures scenarios; however, unlike the “salad bowl,” these pluralistic images are not random, jumbled, and incongruous, but at the same time fit together and make sense of the future. In fact, it is integral theory that helps to bring back the story of the one future, which had been altogether neglected and abandoned by postmodern futures. Instead, we discover that we can have both. We can have pluralism and yet at the same time recognize the one, common future of humankind through the integral futures kaleidoscope.

In the American Studies course that I teach at HUFS we examine various metaphors that have been proposed at one time or another as ways to understand American society. The most well-known, traditional metaphor is that of the “melting pot,” in which immigrants from various nations and cultures are melted in one pot, losing their distinct cultural heritage, traditions, and languages in the process of assimilation to emerge as distinctly “American.” This metaphor dominated for quite some time throughout American history. Then in the latter half of the 20th century, another metaphor appeared, challenging the assumptions of the “melting pot,” positing instead a “salad bowl” in which all distinct entities do not “melt” but maintain their own integrities while jumbled together. This metaphor is meant to celebrate the rich diversity of American society while rejecting the process of assimilation that melts away cultural differences. However, one other metaphor, which has quite recently emerged, is that of the “mosaic,” in which a variety of colored pieces of various sizes nevertheless fit together to form a whole picture. Though this more recent metaphor is novel and so not as well-known as the others, it is emerging as yet another, distinct way of viewing American society and culture. So, depending on whom you ask, any of these three metaphors may be offered as a way of understanding American society. The most common metaphor is still the “melting pot,” yet the “salad bowl” is getting more and more recognition, while the newest metaphor, the “mosaic,” is still mostly unrecognized and so would only rarely be mentioned.

In my opinion, all of these metaphors are, at the same time, reflections of stages of consciousness. For example, the metaphor of the “melting pot” is obviously a reflection of modern consciousness, technical society, and industrial civilization. In this metaphor, the American is one who sheds his/her cultural traditions, burning away the traditional stage of consciousness to become thoroughly “modern.” It is telling, too, that the imagery is that of the machine, and the emerging consciousness is that which has been manufactured by industry. The assimilation and homogenization of modern consciousness wipes away all traces of tradition and replaces it with man in the new, “modern” man, in the image of his machine.

On the other hand, the almost opposite metaphor, that of the “salad bowl,” appeared in the latter half of the 20th century as a challenge to the image of the melting pot. It is not coincidental that postmodern consciousness also appeared at this same time as a challenge to modernity. One of the main tenets of postmodernism is that of universal pluralism, which the salad bown imagery exemplifies with the tossed and jumbled up pieces all in one “bowl,” in tribute to diversity.

However, though the “salad bowl” is surely an improvement over the “melting pot” metaphor, it is still deficient in that the individual “pieces” are fragmented, isolated, and do not fit together but may, in fact, at times rub against each other to cause friction. Thus, the recently emerging metaphor of the “mosaic” is an improvement over that of the salad bowl and seems to represent the integral stage of consciousness. While respecting diversity through the varied colors and sizes of the “pieces,” nevertheless, the pieces fit together to form a beautiful picture of the whole. Since this metaphor is newly arrived and so represents a very small percentage of the population, it is a mostly idealized metaphor. Could the mosaic metaphor be a guiding metaphor for the future?