Having travelled the roads of abstraction and depth, of other cultures and other ways of knowing, of
the dynamics of macrohistory, there then arises the task of refreshing our visions of divergent
futures and then translating these visions into socially-useful forms through designs for social and
practical innovations. I mentioned the example of a ‘wise culture’ above. What would it be like?
How would it respond to a vastly enhanced internet, to the emerging genetic revolution, to
nanotechnology? How would business and commerce change if it altered some of the present
guiding presuppositions and substituted others that derived from ‘the economics of permanence’?
How would education change if the present generation of soulless bureaucrats were replaced with
people who had learned how to balance and reconcile both the inner and outer worlds? What if
governance became imbued with transpersonal awareness, respect for life and the rights of future
generations? Questions of this kind can be explored in depth in futures visioning workshops. 7
We should never forget that the human brain/mind system embraces an arena which is far larger
than that which is physically present. It can range at will through distant pasts and explore distant
futures with equal ease. It can look reflexively upon the pre-given axioms that it inherited from a
particular culture, substitute different ones and explore the consequences. Human beings are selfconstituting
beings and reflexivity is a natural talent for them. When it is supplied with the rich