We could do worse than to explore the notion that the Western worldview is, to a worrying extent,
defective and hence provides us with a thin, instrumental, view of the world. Next, we can be clear
about the fact that many, if not most, of the dominant political and economic powers in the world
are on the wrong track insofar as they are perpetuating destructive and unsustainable views,
practices and systems. Third, there are significant arenas of human experience that have been
marginalised or overlooked by Western institutions, some of which can be recovered. Fourth, we
can explore the notion that our much-vaunted ‘cutting edge’ technologies may actually be
derivative and secondary in terms of what matters most to people. Fifth, we can imagine that the
present ideology of material growth could replaced by an ethic of ‘enoughness’ or ‘voluntary
simplicity’ and that a stewardship ethic replaced the current consumerist ethos. Finally we can draw
on all the above to speculate - in a coherent and disciplined way - about how things might be
different if we were to consciously re-design the Western worldview by retiring defective
components and replacing them with consciously-chosen equivalents. 10
This kind of deeply grounded and extended ‘thought experiment’ is surprisingly rare. But even this
brief overview suggests that the range of possibility for re-visioning the near-term future is much,
much broader than even futures specialists may realise. It follows that, unlike some of my
colleagues, I don't believe that the human race is merely a transitional species that should make way
for so-called 'intelligent' machines. In this view, it is a species capable of endless selftransformation,
vertical (qualitative) growth and development.