Recognizing hidden dimensions -- the missing links?

Engendering 2052 through Re-imagining the Present: Review of a report to the Club of Rome (Part #4)

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Human face of systemic adjustment? In the "review" of the Royal Society report, attention was drawn to a form of "scientific gerrymandering" in the consideration of People and the Planet (2012). The question highlighted was what was "designed out" by this process. In that context it was suggested that it was the nature of the psychosocial engagement with sexual intercourse and its importance to the "people" of the planet -- notably as recognized by the advertising industry.

In the case of the 2052 Report what would seem to be missing from the presentation and press release is any concern with human beings in their own right -- rather than with sustaining the viability of the system within which they function. That framework would be difficult to distinguish from the management logic of intensive farming and the productivity and development of such a system. This is consistent with a "limited-to-growth" framework. Environment and other issues are then secondary to the viability of that production system.

Designing out human perspectives: Expressed otherwise, the approach is to design out social and psychological dimensions to the extent possible -- as "externalities" -- making reference to them only in passing, when necessary to ensure the wider appeal of the recommendations in terms of "public relations" (cf. Reintegration of a Remaindered World: cognitive recycling of objects of systemic neglect, 2011). That statement is of course contentious, precisely because for the natural sciences the nature and relevance of "social" and "psychological" is the subject of continuing acrimonious debate between different schools of thought -- all deprecated by the natural sciences. Is this of systemic relevance in a global knowledge society, the theme of the AAAS Conference in 2012 (Nina V. Fedoroff, The Global Knowledge Society, Science, 3 February 2012)? Curiously it is the management context, from which the 2052 Report emerged, that has found the need to give far greater credibility to both. It is then somewhat strange that this did not encourage recognition of these dimensions in the primary focus of the report.

This argument is itself somewhat ironic in that the Secretary-General of the Club of Rome, in introducing the presentation of the 2052 Report, made unusual reference to the manner in which it showed "heart" -- references readily interpreted as purely rhetorical . Many would regard the preoccupations of the Club of Rome as essentially "heartless". On the few occasions when the Club has endeavoured to create the impression that it is responding to these dimensions, it has been unable to work with the insights elicited (Laszlo, 1977). The strategic commitment of the Club is anchored in its limited-to-growth perspective -- having disassociated itself from the Predicament of Mankind -- its original inspiration, as noted above. The "predicament" is consistently framed in terms of ensuring the "growth" by which it assumed that "humanity" is sustainably enabled.

Despite the various growth models with which the Club of Rome has been associated (or has implicitly advocated), the challenge for real people at this point in time is the degree of suffering which they experience and its existential dimensions in terms of insecurity, dignity, self-esteem and despair. As such these intangible dimensions do not figure in the Club of Rome's worldview -- despite a passing reference to "happiness" in the 2052 Report press release. No account is taken of them in the graphs forecasting conditions through to 2052. Negligible? Why is it that current formal investigation of happiness has been given focus by the initiatives of Bhutan, rather than by international institutions from which such sensitivity might be expected?

Threat, fear and despair: More curious in developing the framework from 1972 is the lack of reference to the levels of fear and threat to which society is now held to be ever-increasingly exposed. These too are seemingly held to be secondary consequences of the evolution of the tangibles over that period. This omission is especially strange in the light of the transition out of the fears of the Cold War into ever-increasing recognition of the threats of emerging crises and the fear these may imply.

This transition is accompanied by increasing recognition of the fundamental inadequacies of (global) governance -- seemingly having "lost the plot" and "clueless" as to how to engender viable remedial long-term strategies which invite consensus. This recognition now extends dramatically to the people of the world, supposedly required to have confidence in the elites with which the Club of Rome is so intimately associated -- in whom confidence has been seriously eroded (Abuse of Faith in Governance, 2009).

Given the evident failures of governance as originally conceived and promoted, it could be argued that a switch (or reversion) is being effectively orchestrated to a form of reactive governance justified by threats successively framed (Promoting a Singular Global Threat -- Terrorism: strategy of choice for world governance, 2002). This allows "emergency measures" of every kind to be justified -- systematically by-passing awkward democratic constraints. Following the Cold War and terrorism, the 2052 Report could be understood as "crafting" future threats -- effectively eliciting fear to enable its manipulating, as noted by John L. Farrands (Challenge of Overpopulation. In: Don't Panic, Panic: the use and abuse of science to create fear, 1993). This offers means of further justifying this switch to a "simpler" mode of governance -- with which unilateral geo-engineering initiatives will be consistent, for example, as with targetted assassination and "enhanced interrogation methods" -- all that is possible through the prevailing "Titanic logic"

It is within this emerging context that real people live and are sustained by their imaginations -- specifically by their hopes and fears, and the beliefs which sustain them. Efforts may be made to "craft" the fears in relation to threats, or to offer hopes through the eternal round of (increasingly unsustainable) political promises. It is within this context that religions survive and flourish -- as is evident in the extent of faith-based governance, and most strikingly within the world's currently dominant superpower.

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