Engendering Viable Global Futures through Hemispheric Integration

A radical challenge to individual imagination

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Paper originally commissioned for a proposed book on the History of Australian Futures

Introduction

The interesting challenge in writing about the future at this time can be summarized in terms of "for whom", "how succinct", and how "radically imaginative" -- in the light of learnings from the past and frustrations with the present course of events. It can be framed by studies by which one would have liked to have been influenced early on, in this case that of Susantha Goonatilake (Toward a Global Science: mining civilizational knowledge, 1999).

With a view to being succinct, it is then useful to frame the argument which follows by the experiences which engendered it. These most notably included the privilege of designing the profiling for online access to thousands of interrelated: international nonprofit organizations, their preoccupations, their strategies, the values underlying their initiatives, and the associated understandings of human development, and the integrative organization of knowledge.

This initiative took the form of multiple editions of the Yearbook of International Organizations, and of the complementary Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential. The latter arose specifically as a consequence of the initiative of Mankind 2000 -- instrumental in the creation of the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF). The evolution of the Encyclopedia initiative benefitted significantly from the environmental perspectives of another Australian, Nadia McLaren. Efforts were made to continue the process through the Australia-based Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability, directed by Peter Hayes.

Perhaps especially curious is the manner in which these information initiatives were undertaken within an unusual institutional complex, engendered and sustained over a century, namely the Mundaneum, the International Federation for Documentation, and the Union of International Associations. A key figure in that complex, Paul Otlet, has been named by historians as the "Father of the Internet". Strangely it has been another Australian, who has done much to increase recognition of that innovative period (W. Boyd Rayward, The Universe of Information: the work of Paul Otlet for documentation and international organization, 1975).

Rayward has successfully mediated the extraordinary current interest of Google in digitising the resources of the Mundaneum from that period (Google Cultural Institute, The Origins of the Internet in Europe: collecting, indexing and sharing knowledge). As he makes clear, Otlet can also be seen as one of the early futurists with a global knowledge-based preoccupation -- evident from his writings and his final visionary opus (Monde: essaie d'universalisme -- connaissance du monde; sentiment du monde; action organisée et plan du monde, 1935).

Otlet's initiative may be appreciated as a challenging conundrum (Union of International Associations -- Virtual Organization: Paul Otlet's 100-year Hypertext Conundrum? 2001). This frames the challenge variously articulated otherwise (Eliciting a Universe of Meaning -- within a global information society of fragmenting knowledge and relationships, 2013; Self-reflexive Challenges of Integrative Futures, 2008).

The title encourages a variety of interpretations of relevance to the argument, especially with respect to "hemisphere". Clearly Australasia offers perspectives from a different hemisphere -- potentially challenging the tendency to any Flat Earth sense of globalization (Irresponsible Dependence on a Flat Earth Mentality -- in response to global governance challenges, 2008). Such perspectives clearly frame the need to recognize the challenge of blind spots. The deceptive cultural contrasts are a reminder of the contrasting functionality variously attributed to the hemispheres of the brain -- with the implication here of the need to integrate disparate modes of thinking.

It is appropriate to ask whether the current challenges to global governance, and any requisite integration of the global brain, could not be fruitfully explored with respect to split-brain pathology, any form of split consciousness, hemispheric specialization, or bipolar disorder. "Hemisphere" is also a reminder of its metaphorical appropriation from the potentially complex patterns of geometry -- rarely explored in relation to globality (Metaphorical Geometry in Quest of Globality -- in response to global governance challenges, 2009).

With respect to strategic vision, the requirement for separate hemispheres to achieve stereoscopic depth could also be understood as a challenge to implicit assumptions regarding any "cyclopean" form of globality (Cyclopean Vision versus Poly-sensual Engagement, 2006). Such integrative implications are also evoked with respect to political economy (Diego Sánchez-Ancochea and Kenneth C. Shadlen, The Political Economy of Hemispheric Integration: responding to globalization in the Americas, 2008; Maxwell Cameron, The Future of Hemispheric Integration, The Mark, 7 March 2012). These currently play out with respect to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Given these various uses of "hemisphere", there is the most considerable irony to the design of nuclear weapons based on ensuring the "integration" of two hemispheres of sub-critical uranium such as to constitute the critical mass engendering the explosion. This is seen variously as either heralding the end of global civilization or ensuring its survival. With the other associations, it is useful to explore the potential implications of a cognitive analogue

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