Rethinking our Ways of Knowing to Contend with Civilisational Change[1]

Tony Stevenson[2]  

Summary

From this outlook on a new century, and a new millennium, it seems that future generations will inherit the consequences of significant shifts in the tectonic plates of human civilisation. These shifts, which are cross-fertilising, represent threats and opportunities to current and future generations. They include:

·        globalisation and associated responses in the form of localism;

·        an increasing gap between the rich and the poor in access to resources, including knowledge and wisdom;

·        a redefinition of reality, the self and social relationships; and

·        a realignment between human culture and nature.

  The new globalisation reaches across space and into most aspects of our lives. Its neo-liberal proponents believe the free market will correct the current imbalances in those societies that subscribe to it. The critique is that globalisation is a postcolonial hegemony of the rich and powerful, led by the United States regime, which is set to centralise power and wealth, and standardise culture. It is the product of the dominant mindset which also legitimises it. A third way sees globalisation as an opportunity for multinational collaboration and networking among diverse cultures

  In the 1970s, futurist, Magoroh Maruyama, spoke of a transition to alternative mindsets, but the dominant one remains largely intact, at least on global scale. Further cracks have now begun to appear. Postmodernism is just one example of the turmoil in our current ways of knowing. But postmodernist thought still does not change the dominant mindset or the social order of economics-first, market-place domination.  

Universities are corporatising in the service of globalisation. They are in danger of losing intellectual freedom. Globalisation presents an opportunity for universities to challenge the dominant mindset, by changing the ways of learning to an understanding of plural mindsets. But what future do we want? Do we call in the futurists?  

Following Maruyama, the futures-oriented educationist could encourage a participative exploration of alternative future goals and active creation of new cultures to meet the particular needs of the local learners in a world that has been globalised. Such a task would question any blind subservience to global power.  

Are our universities able to make this happen?  

The Australian continent, where I live, is reported to be moving slowly north towards Indonesia. This creepage of the geological tectonic plates is already causing volcanic activity in the island chains immediately to Australia's north. It is expected to scrunch the many volcanoes into even higher mountain ranges -- just as the northwards push of the Indian subcontinent long ago seriously wrinkled the Asian landscape to create what are now the Himalayas.  

None of us will be around to see the Indonesian archipelago become a new geological highpoint on the world map. It is estimated to take another 25 million years. Now, that's real futures studies.  

But the social and cultural landscape, from this outlook on a new century, and a new millennium, seems to be on a fast- forward time scale by comparison. The tectonic plates of human civilisation pose new threats and opportunities to not-so-distant future generations, and maybe even to some of us in the current generations. We will not have to wait 25 million years. Such is the speed of change wrought by human intervention.  

These social and cultural shifts, which are cross-fertilising, include:

·        globalisation and associated responses in the form of localism;

·        an increasing gap between the rich and the poor in access to resources, including knowledge and wisdom;

·        a redefinition of reality, the self and social relationships; and

·        a realignment between human culture and nature.  

These cross-currents of change are mediated and further amplified by emerging technologies, including information and communication technologies (ICTs), genetics and molecular engineering. They have implications for social organisation, especially the traditional authority of the nation-state. Not least, they have important ethical considerations.  

Ultimately, they demand a rethinking of our ways of knowing, placing a heavy burden on what we now call education. This particularly challenges the universities, right now and in the future.  

But first, let us look at the shifts a little further.  

The reach of globalisation

The new, ever-present phenomenon of globalisation, not to be confused with the notion of globalism, can be interpreted in at least three ways. First there is the model being promoted by the rich and powerful. They see globalisation as the ultimate, neo-liberal social experiment in which the market, allowed to operate with little or no intervention by government institutions, will automatically produce new wealth and higher standards of living for those communities around the world who embrace its economic principles.  

The critique of this model is that globalisation is a form of totalitarianism, or neo-colonialism, where the primacy of economics over other human exchange, induces a centrifugal force that sucks all the resources and their benefits from the economic periphery into the powerful centre. Mahdi Elmandjra says that those who force globalisation down our throats have kidnapped the globe. They have militarised space, occupied countries, corrupted governments, bought the minds and pens of certain third-world intellectuals, and paved the way for multinational business to take over certain public establishments, thus impoverishing national economies and increasing social inequalities. One nation, the so-called 'lonely superpower', the United States of America, with only one in 20 of the world's people, uses globalisation to justify its foreign policy and lead the planet as the United States wishes. In the words of its secretary of state, Madeleine Allbright, it is 'because we stand tall and hence sees further than other nations'.  

A third way sees globalisation as an opportunity for multinational collaboration and networking among diverse cultures.  

Whatever way we see it, globalisation reaches out not only across geographical space, but also into all aspects of the human condition, especially now our psychological space. When combined with other human attributes, especially the arrogant domination of the rest of nature, the effects are impacting all civilisations, not always positively. The question is: will the market eventually correct these imbalances; or is institutional intervention necessary and, if so, in what form? And, how long have we got?  

Here are some of the dimensions of the problem:

·        Less than 17 percent of world population consumes over 80 percent of the resources, leaving five billion people in dire need.

·        Almost one-third of the world's natural resources have been consumed in the past quarter century, seriously threatening biological diversity.

·        The gap between rich and poor has widened significantly in the past few decades; no longer does this gap divide only rich and poor nations, but it exists within nations, including the richest.

·        A new stratum of economy has emerged, marked by financial speculation mediated electronically, and should not be confused with the productive economy; it pays no rent and the gambling losses are borne mainly by the poor.

·        One in six of the world's people do not have safe drinking water.

·        Most giant cities of Africa and Asia still have no sewerage.

·        60 million aged between 15 and 24 are looking for paid work and cannot find it.

·        The entertainment industry has become one of the engines of globalisation, driving consumer expectations and threatening cultural diversity.

·        Knowledge is becoming less accessible; as an extreme example, an annual subscription to the journal, Brain Research, is now over US$15,000.

·        Multinational business is wresting control of agriculture from the farmer with genetically modified crops.

·        The rich countries hold virtually all the world's patents; gone are the days when Jonas Salk refused to patent his polio vaccine, saying that to do so would be like 'patenting the sun'.  

Meanwhile, the spread of Hollywood from Los Angeles to engulf most of the planet is hijacking the human imagination. For many young people, including youth in Eastern Europe, it has become the boundary of their imagination. They project their world, particularly the one they desire, into the fantasies of the movies. Added to this, the Internet is beginning to fracture traditional culture and is offering a dizzy array of multiple realities where personal identity is besieged. All this, and the economic pressures on the work place, not to mention those without work, is reshaping social relations such as marriage partnerships, other family roles and work-place collegiality. New media cultures and cyber cultures are destroying what we once believed to be natural. Nature itself is being left out of our contemporary imaginations.  

Of course, there are a myriad selective examples of how globalisation has allowed local cultures to find new ways of expression. New global friendships have been formed and local perspectives shared to good advantage. And, from the privileged position of some global travellers, who fail to venture far from the air-conditioned comfort of their hotels and airport limousines, all is rosy.  

Rethinking the dominant mindset

It is to the disturbing signs of globalisation that we turn here, to examine the dominant mindset that underpins, and now also legitimises this self-destructive zero-sum game of economics and politics being played on a global field.  

At the risk of being criticised as a futurist who looks back, let me explain. Surely, it is the responsibility of futurists to anticipate, and in this anticipation to revisit the past in order to reinterpret it, unlearn if necessary, and relearn for our onward journeys.  

This said, I find it helpful to return to some of the ideas of Magoroh Maruyama[i] in the 1970s, when futures studies was more fresh-faced.  Maruyama said then that the world was at an epistemological threshold, in transition away from the dominant mindset derived from Greco-European deductive logic, linear cause-and-effect and hierarchical social order. This was mixed with the peculiarly American worldview that subscribes to a unidimensionally rankable universe, competition, conquest, techno-centricism and unicultural assimilation.  

Such a mindset, believed Maruyama, was being challenged in the 1970s by alternative epistemologies, some of them held by minority groups even within the United States. Examples include a recognition of mutual complementarity and the harmony of nature. A quarter century later, the dominant ways of knowing are still well intact and spreading. And Maruyama seems to have dropped out of the futures literature.  

However cracks are appearing. The popularity of New Age thinking, particularly in the richer, Western countries, is one example of people's disenchantment with rationalist, economics-first thinking. The New Age has embraced Eastern belief systems and also found comfort in local indigenous mysticism. Similarly, there is a return to religion in postcommunist countries, perhaps to answer a need for finding meaning in life.  

The ascendancy of postmodernism further highlights the cracks, at an intellectual level. Postmodernist thought still does not change the dominant mindset or the social order of arrogant market-place postcolonialism that is commercialising both human learning and knowledge into a reformed industrial economy, where information has been simply repackaged as a new commodity. But it could be a sign of our emerging social maturity when certain thinkers are coming to recognise the limitations of our dominant mindset.  

There are other more visible signs where people find the need to reassert their identity. We see bloody conflicts around the world in the name of religion, ethnicity and national identity.  

It remains to be seen whether these cracks are actually the direct result of a reaction to globalisation. But they do represent a threat to the dominant mindset and an opportunity to those who oppose the arrogant sweep of globalisation.

  Role of education?

One feature of the dominant mindset, according to Maruyama, is the role of education in transmitting the known means for attaining virtually stationary goals. If the goal of globalisation is to establish a uniform global culture within an economic and social order controlled from the very top of power and wealth, then the education system of the immediate future will continue to provide information and answers for this to happen.  

Universities today, at least in the West, are fast moving to a managerialism, complete with mission statements, aims and objectives. Performance is measured against a set of indicators in an engineering-like stance where knowledge is applied to the attainment of a given social goal. These universities have set themselves goals for capturing market share, often globally. The universities themselves, even public institutions, are bowing increasingly to the free market mantra. In so doing we increasingly see the course content being redesigned to attract the greatest number of students, and in an increasing number of cases, they are seeking students willing to pay handsomely for an education that will fit them to succeed in the global economy. Here the Internet offers a new marketing tool, as well as a great new library.

  Oswyn Murray sees education as a competition between two forms, with a legacy in the ancient quarrel between rhetoric and philosophy[ii]. The rhetorician demands only that the audience perceive and receive the images rather than believe in them, whereas philosophy is the only path to true knowledge. Rhetoric has always been at the service of authority. Here, learning is subordinated to power. It stifles originality and imposes the values of the ruling elite. But the opposing view is that learning can be used for freedom in thinking, to applaud the human spirit  

If we follow Maruyama[iii] in seeking an epistemological transition, to shatter the shackles of a global hegemony, then education would become a matter of developing an attitude, ability and skills to transcend the existing dominant cultural goals and means. This would challenge present ways of thinking, logic, science and epistemology. We would come to value the 'unlearning' of any expectations for receiving information primarily on ready-made goals and means.  

What future do we want? A new, globally uniform industrial age, where the chief commodity is information, rather than knowledge, or better, wisdom? Or a communicative age, where different cultures learn mutual understanding and collaboration for continually creating and reviewing mutually acceptable goals and the means for attaining them?  

Alternative futures

If we call in the futurists, what help can we expect? That depends on what kind of futures studies they practice.  

There are futurists who rely on the past and the present to extrapolate into a future with more of the same. That's why we see transport planners giving us more freeways, because they have predicted a growing number of privately owned automobiles. Change is seen mainly as quantitative. Qualitative aspects are subordinated.  

There are futurists who want to give us the future that the establishment has proclaimed. Some futurists in industrialised countries forecast futures with hi-tech scenarios, I believe, in order to stimulate demand for more technological solutions from their sponsors.  

There are futurists who idealistically wish for cleaner, greener futures and sit back hoping that the universe has the good will, or New Age sympathies, to deliver. Or there are those who speculate on preferred visions and naively expect that the experts will deliver them as a future reality. The weakness here is that too many experts are in the employ of the power structure.  

And then there are futurists who prefer an active, participative role for people in creating their own futures. This follows Maruyama's[iv] preferred view of futuristics as the study of future cultural alternatives, limitations and choices in a social system of evolving goals. Here futurists do not aim to generate goals, but help people in generating their own goals. This is a catalytic function that differs from utopianism as it is usually understood.  

From such a mindset, education would play a different role from where it is now fast heading, that is to apply knowledge and skills to achieve predetermined goals for the ruling, global elite. Instead, the futures-oriented educationist could encourage a participative exploration of alternative future goals and active creation of new cultures to meet the particular needs of the local learners in a world that has been globalised. Such a task would question any blind subservience to global power and encourage knowledge and skills for the development of appropriate, evolving local cultures.  

Alternative university curriculum

To nurture such a new mindset, the university curriculums would need to encourage a sharper focus on things now being taught more extensively in many primary schools, even if at a different level. While universities would not abandon the imparting of professional knowledge and skills, these would now be offered within a new pluralist environment that would ensure experiences such as:

·        exposure to a variety of mindsets, not just the dominant one

·        understanding human consciousness and creating alternative tools for thought and change

·        thinking across a range of mindsets, clearly declaring the epistemological assumptions, or 'clean epistemological accounting', as Francisco Varela called it

·        critically questioning personal assumptions and traditional values

·        exploring new life patterns and cultures, and social inventions generally

·        integrating theory and practice, and quantitative and qualitative inquiry

·        interdisciplinary understanding

·        lifetime learning

·        design and delivery of learning to suit local conditions, specific cultures and a variety of learners

·        intercultural and intergenerational exchange and sensitivity

·        long-term thinking (futures) and responsibility for future generations.  

The inclusion of futures studies, or prospective studies, would not replace history but extend the perspectives of students forwards to anticipate the consequences of present actions and decisions and allow for future generations. This is necessary to challenge the unsustainable short-term perspectives of most of today's government and business institutions. Futures studies is now being offered at about 20 university institutions around the world, while it is offered in primary education in places as far apart as Malaysia, the United States, Finland, Italy, Romania, the Russian Federation and Australia.  

Whether the establishment would financially support such an education system, as outlined above, remains to be seen. I doubt that support would be easily forthcoming, since it is subversive of most globalising structures.

  However, unless education finds new ways to unlock people from their mindset prisons, to reimagine what it is to be human, we could witness increased global uniformity and bullying at the expense of cultural diversity and intellectual freedom.  

There are critics of a mindset approach to social change. They usually assert that the only sure way to bring about change is to make structural adjustments through regulation and legislation.  

New localism

So it remains to be seen what countervailing mindsets will emerge either through new forms of education, other interventions, or as a result of the selective dissatisfaction with globalisation. Education could take a generation of more to work through a society. On the other hand, dissatisfaction could see change come more rapidly, but this would not necessarily follow from critical reflection and analysis. We could see renewed tribalism as is evident in Indonesia and the Balkans. We could see a return to a nostalgic sense of local community.  

Revolutions need not necessarily be restricted to the poorer nations. The current corporatisation of institutions in the West is seeing mounting dissatisfaction from the managerial and professional classes who are getting their first taste of unemployment and underemployment from the downsizing and the casualisation of the work place. Associated privatisation is commercialising once-public services such as power generation, health delivery, prisons, even ambulance services. Here more people lose their livelihood and facilities are pared to the bone to deny basic services to the needy.  

A more rational alternative, if we apply reason with compassion, would be to see education actively assist in the creation of new human cultures, through mutual adjustment and symbiosis among people of difference, to ensure the continuing diversity which globalisation seeks to destroy. This is one of the prime opportunities presented by globalisation.  

Have our universities got sufficient intellectual freedom to make this happen? Maybe the universities need to team up with the growing ranks of the disenchanted, educated class that is fast being marginalised. This would be resisted, of course, by the free marketeers who are in the service of globalisation.  

It seems that we need some brave new hearts and minds in the academy now and in the near future. They need to anticipate and develop new tools for thought and action to reinsure the intellectual freedom of our future universities, whatever shape they may take on.  

Thus the world urgently needs to know more about human consciousness and to experiment with alternative ways of knowing that challenge the competitive, hierarchical and exclusionary mindset. This may necessitate the development of alternative university systems over the shorter-term future. This would mean unlearning and then relearning how to learn, question and act, on the part of the university administrators as well as their students.  

Can we afford to wait any longer?

  Papers/Mamaia paper.doc  19 September 1999