FOR WANT OF A VISION, OUR SPECIES WAS LOST

Not long ago, I celebrated my 81^stbirthday.   A few years before, a day or so prior to  my 74^thbirthday, the passage below  came to me as I was meditating,  It was my blog posting for March 12, 2012.  I also Scotch-taped a copy, below the keyboard of my MacBook Pro, where it remains to this day.   When I delivered a plenary address at the 2013 System Dynamics Society’s Annual Conference, acknowledging receipt of the Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award, it was my conclusion.

Deng Xiaoping was born in 1904

He became paramount leader in December 1978

He led China through October 1992

His leadership transformed the country

What I have done is preparation for what I will do

My most productive years lie ahead

Though my address was generally well received, my choice of Deng Xiaoping as a role model did not win accolades. (A second role model, New Institutional Economics Pioneer, Ronald Coase, who published his last (co-authored) book, how China Became Capitalistat age 100 and died at age 102, was better received.) 

The week of my 81^stbirthday, my first in a new venue, relieved of institutional responsibilities (except family kitchen chores) seemed a good time for stock taking. I chose to take stock, not only of my own modest contributions to a calling that might be called “Sustainable Development” advocacy, but those of others. The output of dedicated advocates, in varied media and genres has been prodigious, however achievement of fundamental changes advocated by these proponents, has been far less than needed and hoped for.  To cite one example, a viewer of Singapore’s Asia News Channel will hear reports of high GNP per-capita growth rates reported as good news many times each day. These will be echoed in Singapore’s national newspaper, The Straits Timesand many other venues.  Indices related to sustainability, will be reported rarely, if at all.   Here in the US, of course, there are even fewer grounds for optimism.   We Americans have a climate-change denier as president and had until recently, a lobbyist for energy corporate interests as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agenda.  This is a far cry from the days when President Richard Nixon created the Council on Environmental Quality and Environmental Protection Agency.  Subsequently, President Jimmy Carter initiated the Global 2000 Project and, as a follow up, I drafted for President Carter’s staff, Towards Effective Foresightfor the US Government, drawing on Global 2000, and proposing a sustainable development agenda for the President’s Second Term.  

A growing cadre of advocates have been at the business of what has come to be known as sustainable development and the promotion of sustainable societies ( if one takes publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring as starting point), for more than five decades.  The Limits to Growth came about10 years later.  It used a rigorously crafted “global” simulation model to produce starling results that have been rigorously affirmed in two subsequent volumes, (Beyond the  Limits (1993)  and Limits to Growth: The 30 Year Update (2004).  “The 30 Year Update,”  affirmed the results of earlier volumes and warned that the window of opportunity for steering the Planet Earth’s interdependent  social, political, economic, towards a stable sustainable equilibrium might be closing.  

I believe there is a well-established and well documented technology for slowing and ultimately reversing this trend that has not be fully explored.   It is that technology of “visioning”  (envisioning). It draws target audiences towards clearly envisioned positive outcomes rather than away fromproblems that need to be addressed.  The distinction may seem subtle, but it is important.  Along with Donella Meadows, I was first exposed to this technology in a workshop entitled Leadership and Mastery, led by Charlie Kiefer, Robert Fritz and Peter Senge.  For me, Robert Fritz’s emphasis on the power of “visioning” (or envisioning) was a life-changing take-away of lasting value..  I know this was true for Donella Meadows as well.  In fact, before her untimely, tragic death, I believe she had become one of humankind’s most eloquent spokespersons, both of envisioning technologies, and of  the sustainable equilibrium visions that were the product of her own envisionings. Dana’s Vermont, USA based co-housing community, Cobb Hill and her Sustainability Institute manifested them concretely.  

How does one “envision?” in a passage his book, The Path of Least Resistance (DMA INC. 1970, P. 66-67)  I have quoted many times, introducing visioning exercises to my students, Robert Fritz writes this.  By vision I mean the inner crystallization of the result that you want to create so that the result is conceptually specific and tangible in your imagination, that you would recognize the manifestation of the result if it occurred.  If you had a vision of owning a ten room home in a wooded area close to a lake, you could easily recognize the result if it occurred.  Similarly, you could easily recognize a job which utilizes your talents and abilities, which is loving, interesting and mutually supportive.  You could easily envision a vegetable garden of large, ripe juicy tomatoes, tender ears of corn and so on.  In each case you could recognize the manifestation of the vision if it occurred. ...Vision has power;  for in vision you can easily reach beyond the ordinary to the extraordinary. 

You have only to imagine yourself in the 19^thcentury, before indoor plumbing and electricity, before refrigeration and air conditioning, ...before jet flight and mass transportation, …before telephones and superglue to see the extraordinariness of  inventors and technicians.  Vision also has a magic quality.  I define magic as seeing the results without seeing the entire process leading to those results.  The inner eye of vision can see what isn’t yet there, can reach beyond present circumstances, and can see what, up to that point has never been there.  It is truly and incredible human faculty that is able to see beyond the present and the past, and from the unknown conceive something not hitherto in existence.

Let me conclude this introduction with a brief parable from several years as co-owner with my wife of a Minneapolis high fashion boutique in the late 1960s.  A young woman enters our sales floor and begins leafing through a rack of high fashion attire.  I walk up, look her up and down, listen to her story and  with a somewhat critical expression and say,  I can see that your present attire is not sustainable for the social life you would like to lead?  You are right to be concerned about your looks and your popularity.  However, I can sell you just the outfits that will help you turn things around.  

How different a conversation would be that did not begin with “current reality” but, rather envisioning a reality that was exactly the way my customer would wish it to be.  We might than begin seeking out role models, real or imagined that embodied that envisioning. .  

Walt Disney is quoted in writings by Robert Fritz and Peter Senge among others as saying “If you dream it, you can do it.” I don’t claim that my little parable is a perfect metaphor for the needed and necessary task of envisioning sustainable societies as important step on the path to attaining them.  However, as we struggle to solve the problems that impede the path to sustainability in villages, towns cities, regions nations and our planet, we should not neglect taking time for envisioning how life will be for our human species when our hopes and dreams have become our reality.