From appreciative inquiry to imaginative inquiry

Engendering 2052 through Re-imagining the Present: Review of a report to the Club of Rome (Part #10)

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Generative metaphor: There is a well-developed literature and methodology concerning appreciative inquiry -- centered on the Weatherhead School of Management (see Appreciative Inquiry Commons). One lead researcher is David L. Cooperrider (Business as an Agent of World Benefit: awe is what moves us forward, 2007). A particular interest is development of the role of generative metaphor as an engine for change (Frank J Barrett and David L Cooperrider, Generative Metaphor Intervention: a new approach for working with systems divided by conflict and caught in defensive perception, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 1990).

Generative metaphor was originally articulated by Donald Schön as a perspective on problem-setting in social policy -- a figurative descriptions of social situations, usually implicit and even semi-conscious but that shape the way problems are tackled, for example seeing a troubled inner-city neighbourhood as urban "blight" and, hence, taking steps rooted in the idea of disease (Frame Reflection: toward the resolution of intractable policy controversies, 1994; Beyond the Stable State, 1973). The 2052 Report makes no mention of metaphor, although it has long been recognized as the primary vehicle for imaginative reflection -- and increasingly with respect to issues of governance.

Exploring the 2052 Report "otherwise": In developing the possibility of engaging with the implications of the 2052 Report, the question is how an imaginative approach might be developed much further. Arguably some such imaginative method is what is required to engender and engage with the future. This might be understood in musical terms as a "transposition of key", as previously argued (Paradigm-shifting through Transposition of Key: a metaphoric illustration of unexplored possibilities for the future, 1999). In this context it is an "assumption of virtue" as advocated by Shakespeare's Hamlet (Act 3, Scene 4):

Oh, throw away the worser part of it, And live the purer with the other half.... Assume a virtue if you have it not. That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat, Of habits devil, is angel yet in this... That aptly is put on. Refrain tonight, And that shall lend a kind of easiness. To the next abstinence, the next more easy.

The question then is how to re-imagine the 2052 Report, treating it as an  imaginative work. Could it be "re-read" as what it might have been -- and may be if one chooses to see it so, in the light of what the author might have intended?

Re-imagining, re-framing and re-enchantment: This "method" has been previously explored as a means of describing international conferences (Transdisciplinarity through Structured Dialogue: beyond sterile dualities in meetings to the challenge of participant impotence, 1994; Gardening Sustainable Psycommunities: recognizing the psycho-social integrities of the future, 1995; Towards Spiritual Concord: report of the First World Congress towards Spiritual Concord, 1992; Enacting Transformative Integral Thinking through Playful Elegance A Symposium at the End of the Universe? 2010). It has also been applied to "forecasting" the nature of governance in the more distant future (Aesthetics of Governance in the Year 2490, 1990).

Related approaches have long been developed by many authors (noted below in the References) (cf. Morris Berman, The Reenchantment of the World, 1981; Bernard Stiegler, The Re-Enchantment of the World: the value of the human spirit vs industrial populism, 2013. A leading business newspaper frames the study by Charles Taylor (A Secular Age, 2007) in such imaginative terms (Daniel J. Mahoney, The Re-Enchantment of the World, The Wall Street Journal, 21 September 2007). Of particular relevance to the future wasteland foreseen by the 2052 Report is the study by Petr Gibas (Globalised Aestheticisation of Urban Decay, 2010).

More evident is the extent to which it has become widely acceptable, even fashionable, that people should choose to "re-invent" themselves. The fashion industry reinforces this possibility.

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