Eliciting a 10-fold systemic framework

Organizing the Future of Humanity (Part #7)

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This commentary on the report of the Commission for the Human Future can be taken further by exploring ways of presenting any set of risks, principles, or challenges -- other than as a simple checklist lacking any systemic implications. Arguably one of the reasons that global strategies are less viable than envisaged is precisely because they lack a systemic dimension indicating patterns of feedback loops between their primary strategic elements. With respect to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals and its 169 associated tasks, for example, The Economist titled its comment as The 169 commandments: the proposed sustainable development goals would be worse than useless (26 March 2015), and referred to the result as a "mess".

In this respect the new report is relatively unique in asserting with respect to the ten risks identified:

The group recognised that all these risks are interconnected and therefore cannot be solved one at a time. It is a systems issue. All risks must therefore be solved together, as a system, at the same time and in ways that make none of them worse. We assert that, at present, no nation or government on Earth recognises all of these threats as a related complex, nor does any have an explicit policy for human survival. We consider this needs to change, urgently, to focus world attention on what needs to be done. (pp. 4-5, emphasis added)

Unfortunately, as is typically the case with such reports, there is no effort to articulate the interconnection of such risks, to depict them visually (and comprehensibly), or to recognize where such articulation has been systematically documented. The early report to the Club of Rome (Limits to Growth, 1972) remains relatively unique in mapping such connectivity. As such it was a primary inspiration for the highly networked Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential.

The approach explored here follows from earlier experiments with visual representation of configurations of "pillars" and the like (Coherent Value Frameworks: Pillar-ization, Polarization and Polyhedral frames of reference, 2008; Dynamic Exploration of Value Configurations Polyhedral animation of conventional value frameworks, 2008). In the case of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, this made use of Rubik's Cube as a pattern especially significant for its global appreciation (Interplay of Sustainable Development Goals through Rubik Cube Variations, 2017).

The approach to any 10-fold framework follows from arguments made in critical reviews of reports to the Club of Rome -- whose long-term relevance is not recognized by the Commission for the Human Future. The reports are:

• Jorgen Randers: 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years (2012) as reviewed separately (Engendering 2052 through Re-imagining the Present, 2012)
• Ernst von Weizsaecker and Anders Wijkman: (Come On! Capitalism, Short-termism, Population and the Destruction of the Planet, 2018) as reviewed separately (Exhortation to We the Peoples from the Club of Rome, 2018), notably with respect to the Papal Encyclical Laudato Si' in anticipation of the UN Climate Change Conference (Commentary on the Environment Encyclical, 2015)

The question to be emphasized, in seeking more systemic insight of global significance, is how can a 10-fold articulation be mapped to suggest an integrative pattern of feedback loops between its elements -- if only to evoke exploration and debate on the utility of the mapping and its comprehensibility. This could be understood as potentially highlighting what may have been ignored that is essential to the systemic viability in global terms.

The further point is why there is no impetus to seek such mappings in preference to the oversimplistic nature of lists which are essentially meaningless in systemic terms. Arguably the many situations in which systemic articulations are presented are resistant to non-textual presentation in colour, in 3D, or in dynamic terms. This is typical of powerpoint-like presentations, photocopies, and the constraints of book and journal publishers.

There is a case to be made for arguing that articulations of ever more complex strategic plans in hierarchically nested linear text form can be seen as vulnerable to a variant of the notorious Peter Principle. As a concept in management articulated by Laurence J. Peter, this indicates that people in a hierarchy tend to rise until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent.

Is there a case for recognizing that strategic principles tend to be articulated to the point at which they become inoperable? There is a challenging irony to the possibility that widespread preference for a 10-fold articulation is one step beyond the cognitive competence associated with George Miller's Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two (1956).

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