Specific application

Developing a Metaphorical Language for the Future (Part #10)

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The arguments above may be used to strengthen resolve in opposing the current obsession with consensus as the royal road to the solution of all organizational difficulties in responding to social challenges. Governance itself may be seen as the art of managing the relationship between different visions or strategies, rather than striving vainly to combine them into a single compromise that satisfies few of constituencies.

Coherent sub-visions

The question for governance would then be how to cluster sub-visions into a set of distinct visions (possibly denoted by colours, as in the political arena). This could mean shifting some agenda issues from one group to another to get sub-visions with the highest degree of coherence and distinctiveness. But of course visions can overlap, like Venn diagrams (and spherical Venn diagrams are especially interesting), so all can subscribe to one or more visions of local or world society, and shift between at will. It is at this global level of how the sub-visions are mapped in relation to one another that a higher order of consensus on the nature of world governance, for example, can emerge. There is a need to use available skills skills to elaborate ways of understanding such a higher order capable of 'holding' a range of somewhat incompatible or incommensurable sub-visions. But there is a need to resist any obligation to reify this structure into sets of institutions and commissions, although this could be a valid option for some.

How any legal or procedural options and obligations map onto such a higher order meta-vision is of some concern, but it is not of absolute importance. The United Nations, for example, is already more ordered than many bodies. It could be less organized for certain purposes - or even more organized. It could even have 'tracks' for those needing more order, and others for less order - in effect these amount to sub-visions in the above framework.

The plea would be to open the space in which the nature of this meta-vision can be discussed. The nature of the dialogue is closely related to the nature of the content. In that sense, and this is the key point, dialogue about the meta-vision is a structural embodiment of that meta-vision and of the meaningful essence of what constitutes a global organization. There is a sense in which what is important about such a global organization to some is its under-defined nature.

Definitions are good for sub-visions - and necessary for them. Holding sub-visions together calls for the flexibility of under-definition and the ability to live with the paradoxes and uncertainty which keep it alive. Many more metaphors are needed to explore such possibilities. But what is required above all is the dialogue space within which the advantages and disadvantages of different metaphors, for different purposes and sub-groups, can be defined.

Bridging sub-visions

It should not for a moment be thought that such preoccupations amount to an indulgence in philosophical games whilst Rwanda or Bosnia burns. The development of our collective ability to give coherence to a set of seeming incompatible collective sub-visions would seem to be the challenge faced in society at many levels. Such sub-visions reflect preferences of different types of people, with each of us possibly having an affinity for several, and a dislike for others. This is at the heart of the unresolved ethnic strife in so many places - as well as the strife between academic turf holders.

How bridges between these sub-visions are to be constructed, effectively providing communication pathways between different tendencies, is a non-trivial challenge in society today. The Internet ad hocery of 'lets have one more discussion group' is not enough. Such freedom, to be fruitful, must be balanced by some constraining 'mechanisms' - where mechanics may only be one possible metaphor, and probably the least appropriate at this time. It how we think about these which is the key.

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