----- Original Message -----
From: Ed Weick
To: [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, June 23, 2011 4:00 PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] [Ottawadissenters] RE: Musing on humanity
Hello John,
Just a quick comment on the question you raise in responding to Steve:
How many people actually understood, Rousseau, or actually read Adam Smith, or
Kant or even harder Hegel? How could these thinkers have influenced the world?
Surely less than 1/10% of the population then read or could read these authors.
What I’d suggest is that, in Rousseau’s or Smith’s time, large numbers of
people were already seeing the world as Rousseau or Smith saw it. What Smith,
Rousseau and other thinkers of the time did was take the widespread thoughts
that were floating about and nail them down into a solid and comprehensible
explanation of what was happening. Similarly, the people of Russia didn’t
rebel because they had read Marx. By the end of the 18th Century they were
more than ready to rebel. What Marx did was nail their thoughts in place and
provide them with an explanation of why they should do what they were going to
do anyhow.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: John Verdon
To: [email protected]
Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2011 10:47 PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] [Ottawadissenters] RE: Musing on humanity
This may interest many on the list. It offers what may be a very reasonable
examination of the dark (including very rapid climate change) as well as the
optimistic plausibilities of the next 15 years.
Learnings From The Long View
http://www.gbn.com/articles/pdfs/GBN_Learnings%20from%20the%20Long%20View_PS_2011.pdf
The Art of the Long View, The book that helped spur the widespread adoption
of scenario-planning methods in the corporate world and beyond, was first
published in 1991.
When Peter Schwartz wrote the book in 1990, his knowledge about foresight and
scenario planning was limited, mostly drawn from his previous roles at Royal
Dutch Shell and the Stanford Research Institute. Global Business Network (GBN)
—the company he had cofounded--was a mere three years old. Since then GBN has
done hundreds of scenario projects with hundreds of clients: Fortune 500
companies, nonprofits,NGOs, and governmental groups around the world.
This little book, completed in late-2010, reflects on that legacy. It shares
GBN's mistakes as well as successes and what Peter got right in the the
original The Art of the Long View, (e.g., the rise of the global teenager, two
out of the three original scenarios) and wrong (e.g., the power of the nascent
Web). Finally, Peter looks forward once more — examining the next great global
driving force (hint:more troubling than teenagers) and constructing three
scenarios for the year 2025.
On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 7:15 PM, Steve Kurtz <[email protected]> wrote:
No, John, you are not necessarily too optimistic about memespread, and I
hope you prove correct. I just can't see the scenario playing out in our
present socio-psychological state. I have a 38 year old son who is in a decent
part of the US (central Massachusetts) The state mandates health care for all.
It has large expanses of wilderness (as does NH, VT & ME) And the population
is reasonably educated in N.E. % wise. But...the education level is still far
lower than it was in the 60s.
Problems include the impoverishment of the Fed govt (by wars, corruption,
natural hierarchy of the species, and conditioned laziness/entitlement,etc) led
to the same situation in state and local govts via the trickle down effect. The
US is now largely a strung out bunch of addicts.
But... almost anything is possible. I will wait to be surprised. ;-)
Steve
On Jun 22, 2011, at 6:57 PM, John Verdon wrote:
Your right Steve,
How many people actually understood, Rousseau, or actually read Adam
Smith, or Kant or even harder Hegel? How could these thinkers have influenced
the world? Surely less than 1/10% of the population then read or could read
these authors.
Did they change Western thought? and set in motion new was of thinking,
new concepts of governance, or self-organizing?
It is truly an important question you ask - what is the power of ideas to
change how people reason.
A recent set of experiments was carried out where the same body of
text/data related to crime was introduced with two metaphors and another where
only one phrase was in the preample. One group was presented with a metaphor of
crime as a virus - the other group with crime as a beast.
People in the first group overwhelming began to reason with about the
conditions by which crime arose and spread and how the spread could be
prevented (etc.). The other group began to reason about how to catch the
'beast', how to trap it, contain it eradicate it. (etc).
Ideas can present people with new and powerful frames that let them
reason in new ways. Rousseau's heretic proposition that the general will of the
people not only 'could be' but was the Sovereign set in motion a new narrative
of political organization that continues to struggle against ancient and
medieval narratives of rule by elite/nobility over a rabble of the untutored
and incapable.
But perhaps I'm too optimistic.
john
On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 1:03 PM, Steve Kurtz <[email protected]> wrote:
John,
The main problem with this is that it addresses members of the top 1/10
of 1% of the mentally competent and educated. Can that tiny group really change
the course of the downslope of resource scarcity and population overshoot? The
flapping of butterfly wings has effects...but not on all systems. ;-)
Steve
On Jun 22, 2011, at 12:11 PM, John Verdon wrote:
I like this very much Micheal,
Here's another view of the underlying American Ethos
“we now have ways to create a networked imagination – one that
emerges around joint action…”
"... a simple suggestion to not over plan your career but, instead,
to trust serendipity and to realize that serendipity can be shaped. Luck
doesn’t just happen, it can be shaped as long as you are open to reading the
context as much as the content of a situation"
Commencement Speech, Stanford U, John Seely Brown June 2011
http://www.johnseelybrown.com/stanford2011.pdf
john
--
John Verdon
4 Ashbury Place
Ottawa, ON
K1M1H3
voice 613-744-4278
searching for the pattern which connects....
knowing the difference that makes a difference...
Sapere Aude - The true is the whole.
Compassion is the natural condition of what one really is.
--
John Verdon
4 Ashbury Place
Ottawa, ON
K1M1H3
voice 613-744-4278
searching for the pattern which connects....
knowing the difference that makes a difference...
Sapere Aude - The true is the whole.
Compassion is the natural condition of what one really is.
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