Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights before the dark hour of reason grows - John Betjeman
I have just dropped into the Apple store located in the Robinson Lifestyle Centre in the city of Sakon Nakhon in the far northeast of Thailand. The journey from our home in the tiny village of Ban Tha Rae near the border with Laos, through the scenic surrounds of rice fields stretching into the distance, takes me about eighty minutes. I am now conversant with every inch of this route having moved here almost 17 years ago.
Living in a rented condominium in Bangkok, in addition to owning a family home in Sakon Nakhon province and, in normal times, travelling around the world in my role as Executive Director of the Centre for the Future, gives me a certain worldly outlook - one where I am party to everyday routines uniting us as a family, but one that also allows me to grasp the post-normal state of the human condition.
My outlook is shared by a relatively small number of people. For in spite of our increasing propensity to travel long distances for work and leisure, enabled by an extensive global transportation infrastructure comprising passenger jets, expressways and high-speed trains, the majority still spend most of their adult lives within the confines of small neighbourhoods, invariably influenced by the need to access schools, a hospital, the office, sporting venues, entertainment facilities, and retail outlets.
In an age of rapid urbanization and suburban sprawl, neighbourhoods are the modern-day equivalent of the village defining contemporary living in most countries. We venture out of our cocoons from time to time for vacations and special events. But by and large we spend our days within these community enclaves.
The situation is the same today as it was 60 years ago. I vividly remember old Bob Bishop, a gamekeeper for Lord Sheffield’s estate near Fletching (a small hamlet in East Sussex where I spent much of my youth) had never been to London – barely 40 miles distant. His entire life was spent in the environs of the parish and he had no desire to venture overseas, into what he wryly referred to as 'them foreign parts'. Familiarity was consoling to Bob. He was acutely aware of the discomfort he might feel in unusual surroundings. So he stuck to what he knew, secure in a community where everyone respected him, and where he knew every person by name.
I learned this was by no means uncommon. In post-war Europe most people preferred to just stay put - wherever they happened to feel most at home. Only later did we begin to feel the urge to venture further afield.
In almost every part of the globe there are people who still live like that – some by choice in picturesque settlements and out-of-the-way places, some in skyscrapers in the busiest of cities, and many others trapped in ruins, uncertain of when the next drone-guided missile will shatter their routine way of life.
Places are important to us. A sense of origin, purpose and identity remain important factors in shaping our journey throughout life, while the communities in which we dwell, even for those of us who are tenaciously nomadic, are more than just incidental. Habitats are vital elements in defining our humanity, imprinting our deepest sentiments of social affiliation, and assuring peace of mind in times of disquiet.
These days a majority of people seem content to amble through a life marked by the seasons, punctuated by the few distractions we can assemble between birth and death. During the course of each unique passage we do the best we can, for ourselves and for our immediate family. We work when and as hard as we can, make the most of any leisure time, indulge in an occasional holiday, reflect on the nature of our circumstances, try to stay healthy and strong, and eventually fathom out, usually from bitter experience, how to cope with life’s many obstacles and opportunities.
For most of us an awareness that the ride is short, and will soon be over, arrives too late. Suddenly it’s evening, and the promises of youth are long forgotten in the fog and decline of old age.
That cannot endure. A human life is more than the sum of its diversions. From the age of thirteen I was able to savour every precious hour, using my very existence as the premise for exploration and adventure. Today my life is pure dance - a mystery expressing far more than a vain desire to live just a few years longer. Of course the point of dancing is the dance itself. Each day I meet people who inspire me with their own dance. They too are set on remembering and experiencing what it means to be human and alive.
Life is far easier for some than others of course. The struggle of surviving in war-torn Kiev, Mariupol and Kherson, where each day is a struggle for survival, is inconceivable to those of us who have not suffered the terror we inflict upon each other in the name of liberty – a euphemism ensuring the occidental mindset is not seriously threatened.
And although my friends often hear me complaining about slow internet speeds, or the lack of etiquette on display from young people today, everything in this village of mine works. I can walk the farm lanes in safety. I can speak my mind relatively freely. And there is an abundance of clean water, electricity, blue skies, fresh air and organic food from our garden.
What then gives me the effrontery to suggest life is not looking good for my grandchildren? What gives me the right to complain about the state of the world, and to criticize those in charge, when my own life is so gratifying? Why am I alarmed about the human condition in all its paradoxical agony when others are not, or seem able to brush aside the truth? What and where is the evidence that the world-system is not working as it should?
The culmination of so many years of seeing the world through a polyocular lens and thinking in terms of reinventing whole systems from first principles, of second order change, has been percolating in the Centre for the Future for some years, along with an agenda for helping to create a world that works for everyone. But the original impulse can be traced back to my own and others observations of what is not working and why. I am most concerned about three facets to be found in our civilizational schema:
1. Entanglement
Science is the most reliable lens we have devised for understanding how the world works. To ignore science is to remain willfully ignorant. Quantum science confirms that everything we experience is intertwined. Events exist within a single energy field even though they might resonate at different frequencies. Some call it the web of life.
Without exception all the emergencies facing us - including a populous planet, widespread poverty compared with the obscene wealth of a few, the threat of pandemics, global heating, the destruction of natural ecosystems, warfare, religious fundamentalism, the refugee crisis, and famine, for example, are inextricably linked - their separation just a cruel illusion.
As Joe Brewer, writing in Kosmos magazine, so eloquently stated: Climate change cannot be addressed in isolation from the wealth-hoarding of capitalism that has made the world so unequal. Terrorism cannot be tackled in the absence of deep inquiries about what happens when money is treated as more sacred than life or spiritual tradition. Peasant farmers kicked off their land in India share a common plight with sex workers trafficked into the Netherlands alongside illicit flows of money, drugs, and guns. And so on.
The use of ambient real-time intelligence to inform systemic analysis, strategic foresight and design thinking, is therefore an essential tool if we are serious about making sense of reality and overcoming such perils. They demand fresh approaches too. Yet we continue to use the tools and methods with which we are familiar to address events separately and haphazardly. It’s like using a map of New York when visiting Mumbai and expecting not to get lost!
In part this is habit developed in schooling. We are reassured by using those tools to which we have become accustomed. We also have a tendency to compartmentalize issues, reducing the system-in-focus into its most basic elements, trusting that this knowledge is complete and will therefore aid our comprehension of the whole. It does nothing of the kind.
2. Economics
Since the Reagan–Thatcher era wantonly adopted Milton Friedman’s theories, we’ve been encumbered by the economics of neoliberalism. This paradigm, and its political counterpart, quickly became divorced from empirical reality. Yet even now, when we have knowledge of its destructive qualities, and can see it crumbling before our eyes, many refuse to accept its tragic end-game.
The truth is simple enough. Decades of stagnant wages, entrenched unemployment, rising inequality, low social mobility and increasing economic insecurity, now fuelled by real and imaginary enemies, have conspired to create a patriotic frenzy and the rise of proto-fascism that populists like Trump (US), Duterte (Philippines), Bolsonaro (Brazil), Erdogan (Turkey), Heinz-Christian Strache (Austria) and Le Pen (France) can benefit from in all their angry, indignant, self-righteousness.
The ongoing dilemma between free market neoliberalism (growth) and redistributive socialism (fairness) has framed much of our political debate for decades. But it is a totally false proposition. If we go back to first principles we see the economy is actually an evolutionary and adaptive system of cooperative problem solving through economic inclusion.
In his influential book The Origin of Wealth, Eric Beinhocker defined prosperity quite simply as 'solutions to human problems'. In that context capitalism should be the institutional system for rewarding cooperative problem solving and evolving new and better forms of cooperation and solutions. At the moment, of course, it falls far short of that ideal. But it does give us clues as to how we need to think differently about a new theory of economics given the complexity and dynamic messiness of the world we have created.
In order to succeed, an economy founded upon neoliberal precepts requires constant growth. Without growth everything else collapses. The logic of growth proclaims the sole measure of progress to be a rising GDP - the aggregate price of all goods bought and sold during a given period of time. This is the most fundamental flaw sustaining modern capitalism and the single most urgent issue we should address. That does not mean jettisoning capitalism entirely. Nor does it mean we should ignore other flaws embedded within the capitalist model. But it does mean adopting a different architecture, along with a mantra based on Beinhocker’s definition, in order to rid ourselves of its more predatory temperament.
3. Competition
Growth and competition are partners in crime. Growth is more easily accomplished when competition paves the way. And in many instances competition is the most crucial driver of growth.
Competition is innate in human beings - a natural corollary of our instinct for survival. It helps us endure in a relatively harsh world. In large part, too, competitive policies and conduct are responsible for encouraging innovation. It is etched into our social norms to such an extent that we take its virtue for granted. There is no doubt that without competition, we would be a weaker and more vulnerable species.
But it can also be a destructive force - a cancer. When competition exists in isolation, divorced from any sliver of cooperation, and when its more grievous aspects are ignored, the outcomes will inevitably be socially damaging.
In today's world competitive behaviour insinuates itself its way into every part of the social fabric. It dominates thinking in ways we least expect, and do not necessarily acknowledge. It is a distorting mirror in which winning is everything. In many sporting spectacles, especially where big money is involved, winning has crushed sportsmanship. Nobody wants to be a loser. Only winners reap the rewards. And so employment is competitive. Sourcing a bank loan is competitive. Access to health care is competitive. Purchasing a home is competitive. Education has become a hotbed of competition, particularly across Asia where learning can start as early as 2 years old, while universities have created a competitive culture that defers to authority and precedent rather than promoting true inquiry and original research.
Life in our communities has become so competitive that we are insensitive to its effect on our reasoning. And that is dangerous. Many wars and conflicts can be traced back to expressions of intolerance, petty jealousies and 'bad blood' brought about by needless competition, while countless calamities have occurred to individuals due to a lack of empathy, bruised egos and damaged pride.
It is also the foolishness of trusting in an obsolete leadership model that relies on ordinary individuals, portrayed as charismatic celebrities by the press, taking action to 'save' the rest of us which galls me most. In a rising tide of hate, bigotry, and conflict only the converse can usher in peaceful coevolution. And that requires a level of cooperative stewardship that is light years away from our stock standard approaches to leading and leadership.
Latent resolutions to the issues of entanglement, economic growth, and excessive competition are relatively straightforward as long as we can substitute a new context for the shifts that must occur. We need to find culturally suitable ways to set aside contrived differences, mechanisms that customarily divide us, as well as reinvigorating cooperation across material, psychological and ideological boundaries.
We need to apply whole-of-system design intelligence to the problems we inevitably share, for only partial solutions are to be found within conventional disciplines. Instead of reacting to systemic crises with inane chat, modelling and measures aimed at causing the least offense to some parties, we must locate the most vital constraints within the systemic architecture, as it is currently designed, to operate and change these in ways that are systemically convincing.
And a collaborative stewardship praxis, based upon empathy, and a common desire to improve one or more aspects of the human condition, must replace obsolete leadership behaviours.
The best antidote to these current conditions is secular humanitarianism - a fusion of love, inclusion, generosity and compassion. But theorizing is easier than practice. It is incredibly more difficult to break free from the decades-long conditioning that has us believe what we have now is the zenith of what is humanly possible, that alternatives are not feasible, or that the status quo, applied with a little more rigour, enthusiasm or efficiency, is really all that is needed for humanity to be in a state of enduring global bliss.