Unruly Future

In their new book, The Possibility Wheel, Patricia Lustig and Gill Ringland talk at length about ‘fractured backbones’ — the hitherto agreed sets of rules that support the way things work. As the authors explain it:

“Societies design these sets of rules to help people get things done. For societies to work well, these rules need to be shared and accepted. Then, Backbones will enable people to work, communicate and solve problems together successfully. When Backbones work well, they provide the resilience needed to adapt to other Threats.”

That’s clear enough, and we all recognise that the fracturing of backbones causes messy disruption… the dissolution of empires, social structures, ideologies, and so on.

Where it gets tricky is that the existing structures are often flawed, or worse. Lustig and Ringland note that “not all Backbones are ‘good’ (or good for everyone). For example, monopolies and cartels are Backbones!” The patriarchy is a backbone. So is a class structure or an aristocracy or white supremacism or slavery.
These backbones need fracturing. But what replaces them may be even worse — as we are currently seeing.
The lesson seems to be to plan for fracture before it happens. The Possibility Wheel offers a clear process for organisations to do that — an update on scenario planning that’s been radically modified for the complexity of the 2020s.

And, as we’ve mentioned before, the bigger question (how to plan for the world, not just an organisation) is one that preoccupies Andy Hines in his latest book, Imagining After Capitalism.

The fracturing of the capitalist system, which seems undeniable to Hines and many others, seems likely to create even more disruption than the fracturing of (say) the Roman Catholic and other Christian Churches in Europe and much of the rest of the Global North.

And the number of left-wing populist leaders articulating credible plans for what might replace capitalism can be counted on the fingers of a person of no hands.


Credits and references: 
The Possibility Wheel, Patricia Lustig and Gill Ringland
Imagining After Capitalism. Andy Hines

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