Future Explorations

Time: Early 2025
Location: To be determined

The present is the evermoving divide between our past and our future. We may try to understand our past by looking for and applying our collective scientific knowledge but applying that knowledge to (correctly) predict our future fails. In fact, the complexity of our societies which is characterized by phenomena such as emergence, adaptation and self-organization prevent us from knowing even our immediate future. Our future and our past are incommensurable.

Yet, the West approaches the future with the tools of the past. Western thinking has, since antiquity, been framed by what questions, like: What is the world made of? What is a good life? What is justice? These questions have shaped Western thinking and perceptions, and consequently its methods and approaches towards solving problems. In such thinking What to do is an extension of the analysis of what happened and what we did. Thinking in what to do terms does not work for problems that defy rationality. There we need thinking in terms of how questions, like: How do we establish order? How do we create harmony? How do we cope with uncertainty? How do we cope with climate change?

Thinking in terms of How.. is typical of traditional Asian cultures. It is an entirely different kind of thinking. It needs to be developed and applied on a global scale to address problems of the future that are characterized by incommensurability, or the lack of common measures. The future of humanity may depend on our capabilities to effectively address such how questions.

The conference Incommensurability intends to a find anchor points (and wise approaches) for addressing issues such as: how to break the barrier between eastern and western thinking or, for that matter, between northern and southern world views; how to defuse the US – China rivalry; how to muddle through the millennium old conflict in the middle east; how to find a balance between traditions and the modern world; how to develop a constructive engagement between science and religion; how to fit a world economy that is based on growth in a globe that cannot grow; how to be both wise and rational.

The list of “how to” questions may expand, but the key issue is to find and explore ways to develop thinking patterns that can address such question.

The Conference

Format
In energy of the conference will be released through in depth talks and intensive interactions with the audience. The conference will have twelve world class speakers. Each speaker gets in total 1,5 hours for his or her talk and discussion with the audience. After 1,5 hour there is a half hour break, with coffee and other refreshments. We will have an opening reception the night before, a conference dinner on the first evening, a concert (or another cultural event that can match the quality of the conference) on the second night, and a closing dinner for the speakers and a small group of invited people on the third night.

Audience
We are looking for an audience of about 150 leaders from industry, governments and academia (including students) who are willing to commit themselves to explore ways to develop thinking patterns that can address the “how” question. It will be possible to join the conference electronically.

Time & Location: To be determined

Historians have shown that civilizations, cultures, empires, societies come and go. Ageing is universal, even to the universe. Yet we treat ageing as something unique to people and to our times. We search for eternal youth and tend to ignore the cycle of life that we, civilizations, our earth, everything around us, are part of. What does this mean for the narrative about the meaning of our lives, for the day-to-day care for how we look and care, for the impact of mankind on earth, for the harmony between young and old in societies that are more and more driven by technologies, that force a continuously changing perspective on us?

Ageing is universal and ubiquitous: animate or inanimate, real or virtual, small or large, everything is marked by the passage of time. We have seen an evolution of species, including mankind, cultures, civilizations and empires. Civilizations and empires emerged and collapsed and it seems that the more powerful the empire and the longer its existence, the larger the turmoil after its disappearance. As human beings, we live longer and in better health conditions than before thanks to modern health care. While in the old days the age distribution in and the dynamics of societies were more or less in harmony over long periods of time, in our time such harmony seems to be lost. In the past, old age was venerated as a beacon of wisdom, a blessed period at the end of one’s life. Only few reached that period.

Nowadays, many people do and societies’ perspective on ageing has changed. Society spends billions of dollars with almost exponential increase to extend the life expectancy of its people; yet a clear answer as to why spending for extended life should prevail above spending for other values, becomes more and more compelling, as other societal challenges like climate change and good education to bridge the gap between well-educated and less-educated people are pressing.

Increasingly, there is a perception of inter-generational unfairness as the economic burden for maintaining an ageing population falls on the following generation. In the past, in western societies, it has generally been assumed that each generation will have an improved life in comparison with previous generations. This is no longer true, and this adds to the perception of inter-generational unfairness.

Today, governments perceive the costs and societal implications of an ageing population as a “challenge” that has to be tackled. On the surface, economic arguments are brought to bear, relating to the costs of treating or caring for the effects of biological ageing. But human ageing is much more than just biology and medicine. The social reality of ‘ageing’ entangles a variety of societal factors (economic, social, political, cultural) and personal elements (psychological, philosophical, religious, creative/artistic). How do they interact and how do they effect the time constants of the dynamics for the evolution of civilizations, states and human subjects?

The considerations above raise many questions that will be addressed in the conference. Can we get a grasp on the complexity of interactions that underlie the evolution of societies?

What is the minimal set of conditions for robust, stable and vital societies where people feel happy? Can we move the discussion beyond the “challenge/burden” perspective and (re)envision ageing as a source of richness, wisdom and opportunities? Can we shape, as individuals and as a society, a path that improves the well-being and opportunities for people of all ages? And, with an eye to the future, can we develop perspectives that prepare the younger people for a longer and happy life? At the same time, can we make death, as the end of the cycle of life, a natural part of our perspective.

Time & Location: To be determined

Based on the above one can argue that value gets meaning through three basic concepts:

• Information: the potential enclosed in the smallest of particles, to arrange (combine) itself with other particles into something recognizable to us.
• Knowledge: the human capability (power) to free that potential.
• Insight: know how and where that knowledge can be applied to.

According to Wikipedia the value of information is the amount a decision maker would be willing to pay for information prior to deciding¹.

In Darwinian evolution the value of information is directly related to the potential this information provides organisms to explore their surroundings and to survive in a changing environment through ecological fitting².

These two approaches to value information seem incompatible, one referring to the linear world of monetary transactions, the other to the complex adaptive systems of survival.

And yet, as the ecosystems on our planet break down under the weight of linear human interventions, we need to find ways to use the characteristics of its complexity for the continuous survival of the technology-based world that is built on it and that we, humans have come to depend on.

Starting from the approach to information given in the text-block above, this conference aims to explore such ways and to identify key questions that must be addressed if humanity is to advance in harmony with the ecosystems that support it.

_{¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_information}

_{² Agosta, S.A. and D.R. Brooks.(2020) The Major Metaphors of Evolution; Darwinism Then and Now. New York: Springer.}

Time & Location: To be determined

Explorers focus on exploration. Exploiters exploit what explorers find. When exploration is leading, there seems to be no limits to our world. Now exploitation is leading, and the limits of our world are becoming painfully visible.

Natural selection reinforces exploitation when conditions are stable, exploration when conditions change, and new exploitation when new stable conditions are found³.

The ability to survive indefinitely in a world that is always changing relies on being flexible enough to survive in less-than-ideal conditions. Having the potential to move from unsuitable to suitable conditions is more important than being the fittest in any set of conditions.

Our world is always changing. It now seems to go through a period of rapid and destabilizing change, partly because of human interactions with natural systems on which they depend.

Those natural systems are subject to Darwinian evolution. Darwinian systems survive, and sometimes thrive, in an uncertain world by using the evolutionary potential stored within individual organisms and the ecosystems they form.

A dominant feature of Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) is emergence. Emergence manifests itself in properties that cannot be predicted from the characteristics of the individual components (agents) of a system, like wetness of water cannot be seen in individual water molecules, or the consequences of interference with a CAS that cannot be predicted by studying individual components of the system.

Although not the same as evolutionary potential, emergence is a phenomenon that points to an unused potential within complex adaptive systems. Unused in the sense that it might provide humanity with enough flexibility to survive in less-than-ideal conditions. 

What is this potential? How can we explore it? Can we explore it so that we can exploit it?

Can traditional Eastern approaches (with a focus on patterns, context, balance, whole systems) and Western approaches (with a focus on reductionism, linear cause and effect relationships, absolute truths and generalization) reinforce each other for the benefit of mankind? (E.g. to prevent crises instead of fighting them at a much higher cost?

If so, how can that be done? This conference will explore these questions and venture to identify key issues that need to be addressed.

³ Agosta, S.A. and D.R. Brooks. (2020) The Major Metaphors of Evolution; Darwinism Then and Now. New York: Springer.

Time & Location: To be determined

Compared to the vast amounts of knowledge about the components of systems⁴ of which we are part, there is very little scientific knowledge at the level of the systems themselves.

We do not understand why such systems behave and evolve as they do. We cannot predict how and when a system will respond to an innovation or change that man wants to introduce or that occurs spontaneously. And as we lack such basic knowledge, we cannot devise plans for controlled system changes — we even don’t know in which circumstances such changes would be possible. None of the disciplinary sciences, however successful in their search to understand the individual components of complex systems, have either the concepts or the insights to move to the system level.

During the last decade it has become abundantly clear that those major systems are under heavy pressure. The effects of human intervention on a component level threaten our major systems. We urgently need new theories, concepts and ideas to understand these systems as a whole and be able to search for solutions based on insights at a system level. This asks for bold thinking and bold science to be pursued at the highest level and with great imagination.

As has been shown time and again, there is tremendous power in new combinations⁵.

Often, already when new combinations are explored, new ideas and concepts spark through which insight is gained in the systems that we live in and depend on.

We need to free that power by creating organizational settings that provide conditions for top level scientists, philosophers, artists and people of practice to explore the boundaries of their trade. Settings that allow broad views and agendas that go far beyond individual disciplines, agendas and time horizons.

This conference aims to explore settings where new combinations can be explored and developed, and its power released.

_{⁴ We refer to the complex systems that are directly relevant to our existence like municipalities, mobility systems, climate and ecosystems, political systems, water and energy systems or large-scale technical systems like communication systems and computer networks.}

_{⁵ Combinations of scientific disciplines, cultures, styles, modes of operation, etc.}

Time & Location: To be determined

We assume that within his lifespan an individual human goes through all the steps in the cycle that starts with his natural birth and ends with his natural death. Each of those steps is closely tied to biology, from the fast development of learning neural networks in his early years to losing memory in his old age. We also assume that the average lifespan of an individual human is 80 years. That may not matter much for the key questions to be identified in this conference, but it may matter later in the discussions about those key points. Therefore we make that assumption explicit.

Center of the Universe

Every person is the center of his universe. His universe reflects the phase of life that he is in, the spirit of time that he lives in, the day-to-day events that he deals with and any other issue that come to his attention. He lives his life day by day, impression by impression. Every day in the 80 years in which his life moves for birth to death, everything refers to him. He is always the center of his universe; history and future always start with him. His perspective changes with age but is always his.

Age is a key parameter. It is an indicator how far one is in one’s biological development and accumulation of knowledge⁶ and it tells us what still will develop (biologically) and what one can know from the past and what not.

Why is this relevant? Because knowledge over time is knowledge accumulated in life, in stories, and in books⁷. Each person starts with zero knowledge at birth and when he dies the knowledge that he accumulated during his life dies with him. As he grows in years, the knowledge he can use changes, depending on how far he has developed biologically and on what he has learned. When he dies, the (explicit) knowledge he learned from books and stories remains. All the other (tacit) knowledge fades away.

Humans spend a large part of their life being educated or educating. Language is key to this.

Languageis acquired over time. As with knowledge, each person starts with zero language at birth and when he dies, his language dies with him. In between, his language develops based on his biological development, the environment he grows up in, and the knowledge he acquires through his education and experiences in life. This means that from the point of view of biology and the development of language there is always a gap of one generation between the language of a parent and his child⁸.

Older people (can) have an active memory of the past and may still have a memory of what they experienced when they had the age of their children. Their children can have no active knowledge of the years that their parents lived before they were born, other than the stories told by their elders⁹. These stories are told in the language of the parents. That language embeds biological developments and knowledge that children will only have when they have the age of their elders. It is only at that time that they can fully understand what their elders told them a generation ago¹⁰.

What may this all point to?

What all this may point to will be the theme for this conference. What may it mean that the body of explicit knowledge grows (as it is not influenced by the death of individuals), while the body of tacit knowledge (more or less) remains the same (as it largely disappears with the death of the individual who has this tacit knowledge) and the language to transfer lessons (such as tacit knowledge) from generation to generation is insufficient? How might this imbalance manifest itself, what could be the consequences, how could the cause for this imbalance be addressed and how the consequences be dealt with? What would that mean for education, for governance, for addressing the existential problems humanity is facing? What does the lack symmetry between what elders can know about the thoughts and perspectives of youngsters and what youngsters can know about the perspectives and accumulated wisdom of the elders mean for the value of decisions that will affect the world and the future of the youngers much more than the world and future of the elders?

References

_{⁶ We distinguish between two different modes of knowledge: explicit knowledge that can be taught, learned or communicated through books and stories, intuitive or tacit knowledge that can only be acquired (learned) by living and doing. There is at least a third kind of knowledge (Pöppel and Bao), knowledge that is directly related to what we see (pictural knowledge).}

_{⁷ To a large extent the biological development of a person and his cultural predisposition determine the kind and amount of knowledge that he can acquire and accumulate.}

_{⁸ The length of such a generation will differ from culture to culture and from country to country. We will assume that it anywhere between 20 and 35 years.}

_{⁹ Parents and their contemporaries (like family and friends)}

_{¹⁰ This does not count for the explicit knowledge from books and stories, but it does count for experience and wisdom that is acquired while living.}

_{Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre (1955),The Phenomenon of Man, reprint (2002) by Perennial, page 32 etc.}

_{Pöppel Ernst, and Bao Yan,Three modes of knowledge https://www.ernst-poeppel.com/opinions/three-modes-of-knowing/}

Time & Location: To be determined 

From ancient times on (1 million or more years ago), elders were valued for knowing things and for teaching what they knew to the youngsters while the adults were busy with their daily lives. Drawings of animals in the back of the caves, where the grandkids and grandparents could be safe while parents foraged and hunted, testify to that. There has always been a natural trust bridge between grandparents and grandchildren along which narratives, knowledge and wisdom were passed on. Can that trust bridge be mobilized to address serious problems in society?

Time & Location: To be determined

Throughout history all major changes in societies have “swept over” the masses of individuals (populace) that inhabited the world. Members of the populace were directly affected by those changes (enriched by it, impoverished by it, enslaved by it, brutalized by it, or killed by it). Yet, whatever the changes, be it wars, renaissance, enlightenment, dynasties, or economic systems, the life of individuals went on during and after. The context within which they live (such as culture, economic situation and climate) may change, but does what constitutes a good life, change as well?

A few years ago, I visited one of the townships near Cape-town in South Africa. What drove me there I cannot say for certain: curiosity was part of it, and a sense that I wanted to see myself what misery apartheid had sown upon black people. I was totally surprised by what I observed: people with pride, seemingly enjoying life, their life. Looking at the miserable circumstances in which they lived, I began to wonder what, in the heart and mind of an individual, makes his/her life worth to live? Or, given the context of life and equating “worth to” with “good”: What is a good life? Or, in terms of philosophy: “What matters?” (1).

Many things do, of which balance is a central one. In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), balance is central to well-being (2):

• Emotional and physical balance
• Self-balance: self-correction and returning to balance
• Balance with the environment: Coping with the environment and live in accord with time and seasonal changes (live in accord with the patterns of Yin Yang and the Dao).

The latter seems an excellent starting point for “a just and sustainable future where human dignity can flourish”, or “a society in which humans live in harmony with each other and their environment”.

A second central thing that matters is the community an individual lives in, particularly its strength and the position the individual holds in it. One may assume that that position changes with the age of the person, but so does the sense of what constitutes a good life.

A third key thing that matters, is the strength of the internal moral compass that steers individuals in their lives. That, no doubt, is a function of strength of family relations and the moral strength of the community a person is part of, but part of it is character, or the way a person’s DNA expresses itself in a given context.

These three key things (issues) that matter, are qualitative and related.

And then what matters is the difference between “objective” conditions for a good life and “what matters for the person” who lives a good life.

We surmise that a good life depends on personal characteristics and day-to-day living conditions, not on philosophical constructs or abstractions. That what constitutes a good life may not be quantifiable in objectively measurable qualities.

Yet, “progress” of humanity is largely measured in the effects that science (in its broadest sense) and the changes made possible by it, have on the life of individuals. But are the derivatives of modern science, its technologies, or system changes, relevant for a good life? If so, to what extent? When considering what constitutes a good life, we may focus on wrong metrics such as measures for happiness, income, wealth, or pleasure (5).

Governments striving for the betterment of life for its citizens relate, to a large extent, on measurable quantities that are derived from ideologies and its underlying theories and abstractions. Maybe “progress” or “striving for the betterment of life by improving the values of measurable quantities” is irrelevant for a good life.

—

The Conference

The purpose of the conference is:

• To exploit if the central issues mentioned before (balance, community, internal moral compass) are really at the core of what people around the world perceive as a good life? Are there more such qualitative issues that people see as essential for a life worth living and that are independent of culture, material circumstances, and the basic conditions for life (food and water)? If so, how are they related?
• To exploit what ways can be conceived for governments (or other collectives that work for the betterment of people) to influence those qualitative issues (that do not focus on values of measurable quantities). In other words, can governments strengthen the three aspects mentioned before of balance, the strength of communities, and conditions for developing a moral compass, to help citizens attain a good life?

Notes and References

• Derek Parfit (2011,2017), On what matters, Oxford University Press
• Wenqing Zhao (2018): Well-being in the philosophy of Traditional Chinese medicine. Talk given at Capstone conference in St Louis, May 22-24, 2018, within the context of the Happiness and wellbeing project.
• Disrupted Balance- Society at Risk (2018), World Scientific Publishers, Singapore
• Richard Wirth et all (2015), Storying Humanity, narratives of culture and society, Interdisdiplinary Press
• Amitai Etzioni (2018), Happiness is the wrong metric.
• Buying Time for Climate Change, exploring ways around stumbling blocks (2021), World Scientific Publishers, Singapore

Time & Location: To be determined

With hard work, a lot of contemplation and a stroke of genius, Kant found a middle way between dogma and skepticism. Kant’s work was truly “enlightened” because it avoided these two principal avenues of blindness.

The digital world, as it developed in the last 40 years, blinds humanity because the tremendous amounts of data it produces blocks its view, while the preselection and organization of these data by the big and uncontrolled companies undermine an independent basis for skepticism. We need to regain space for independent thinking. We need to revitalize to dare to think.

Time & Location: To be determined

To a large extent, in the present time, the pursuit of science takes place in universities. But suppose there were no universities, and suppose that all the knowledge mankind has ever collected and generated is somehow accessible, would we invent universities to make this knowledge available to address the problems humanity faces? What should be the mission of those universities, and what role would science play in such universities?

In looking for answers to these questions, one should consider the nature of the problems dealt with by science, the knowledge needed to address those problems, the gap between the two, the need for inter-disciplinarity and the need to educate the leaders of the future, and finally, the boundaries of scientific knowledge.

Time & Location: To be determined

The last thirty plus years have seen an explosion of new technologies that find world markets in very short times. These technologies seem to be all pervasive and to determine the ways we produce and consume, view life, communicate and educate. This is accompanied by an explosive growth of wealth in the hands of few companies and individual who exploit these technologies and fund research into future technologies. There is a sense that this accumulation of wealth and these technologies will change our value systems and shape our futures in ways that are controllable by these and future technologies. But can we control the systems that provide the essential needs for humanity by money and technology? How are our value systems related to our stewardship of the natural resources like the fishes in the ocean? How do these new technologies effect our social and legal systems? Is the human mind capable of absorbing the ever-increasing speed of changes to which it is exposed? Can technology help with that and can we control the introduction of such technologies and the consequences thereof?   

In other words, can we buy the future we want?

Time & Location: To be determined

The nature of change: evolution
Evolution changes nature, ecology, new species, new dynamics, patterns.
Changes in nature trigger employment of fitness space, triggers evolution, triggers changes in nature
Major evolutionary triggers: saturation and tipping points.

Evolution of brain size
Other types of changes after the appearance of men?
Evolution of the universe

No purpose, randomness, physical laws?
Boltzmann and entropy and Darwin

Cycles of 80 years as suggested in paragraph 6.6.4 start every year with newborns. A continuous sequence of new starts and overlaps of individual cycles without a continuous build-up of communication and lessons from cycle to cycle.

No build-up of (non-explicit) knowledge. Every person goes through its 80 years cycle and invents the eternal wisdom (wisdom that Seneca and Lao-Tse had, that Montaigne had, and that is continuously reinvented, but never passed on).

How does that relate to evolution and change?
Is wisdom a product of millions of years of evolution?
Are we just impatient? Evolutionary changes opposed to lessons learned a life time?

—

Book by Hugh Peyman: China’s change

Book by Dan Brooks: Lessons from Darwin

Weaver, W. (1948), “Science and complexity,” American Scientist, 36: 536-544

Time & Location: To be determined

Synopsis in development.

Time & Location: To be determined

Synopsis in development.

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Synopsis in development.