Global sensemaking and collective self-reflexivity

Engendering 2052 through Re-imagining the Present: Review of a report to the Club of Rome (Part #7)

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Systemic analysis of past Club of Rome reports: Potentially more incredible, given the modelling expertise by which that approach is informed, is the complete failure to benefit from any systematic approach to the variety of insights engendered in the extensive set of 50 reports to the Club of Rome (most of them of book length). Beyond simply segmenting them into Wikipedia style profiles (of which there are many variants), there is the proven possibility of using text analysis software to map out and interrelate the various preoccupations (using applications such as Leximancer, for example). This would enable a degree of self-reflexivity on the part of the Club of Rome -- allowing it to go where the modelling approach of Limits to Growth has proven unable to venture. Its current inability to map its own insights exemplifies the problems of collective intelligence gathering and is indicative of the fate of the 2052 Report -- whose insights cannot currently be related to the context of any such map.

Ignoring past wisdom: The reasons this is not done are themselves worthy of considerable attention as characterizing the challenges of governance at this time. Irrespective of whether they are physically accessible together in any single physical location, it is more than ironic that the intellectual copyright is in fact owned by a scattering of commercial publishers variously resistant to the compilation of any synthesis. The information overload phenomenon suggests the high probability that few of the 50 reports have been examined by a statistically significant number of Club members -- even if they are aware of all of them and the range of topics treated. However, even if the insights could be portrayed in some new visual form, it is unclear that this integration would "make any more sense" or enable more integrative strategies -- despite the efforts of the Global Sensemaking Network.

This raises the question of the form required to make sense of relevance to governance of the future? To what extent is the Club of Rome attentive to this issue? Are the insights of the 2052 Report likely to be eminently forgettable for that reason -- and essentially impossible to communicate widely?

Being one's own metaphor: At this time, as with any initiative promoting change, the Club of Rome is very much a metaphor of its own problematic condition -- as insightfully articulated by Gregory Bateson in concluding a conference on the effects of conscious purpose on human adaptation: We are our own metaphor. (cited by Mary Catherine Bateson, Our Own Metaphor, 1972, p. 304). Unfortunately there is a marked tendency to over-identify with the metaphor, making it difficult to obtain a sense of perspective.

Whereas the 2052 Report explicitly regrets policy-making delays, and specifically recognizes a need to "kick-start" action, it might be asked what are the analogous delays within the Club of Rome and how appropriate paradigm change might be "kick-started" within it.

Until the Club of Rome understands how it is itself is part of the problematique, it cannot hope to understand the nature of the resolutique required. For that, as argued above, it needs to engender an appropriate imaginatique and to engage vigilantly with the dynamics of the irresolutique. This is the leadership it might have sought to provide. Despite its systemic laurels, it can be fruitfully concluded that the Club of Rome is "cybernetically underpowered" in its engagement with requisite variety (Consciously Self-reflexive Global Initiatives: Renaissance zones, complex adaptive systems, and third order organizations, 2007). This might not now be the case had it taken some account of the arguments of Hasan Ozbekhan (The Predicament for Mankind: Quest for Structured Responses to Growing World-wide Complexities and Uncertainties, 1970).

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