Aspirational guidance for wiser futures: toward open-sourced ascension from ego-centric to eco-centric human communities

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to explore and demonstrate how the meme of aspiration can help guide human cultures through an epochal transformation triggered by a global megacrisis and leading to sustainable maturation of human cultures.

Design/methodology/approach

Aspirational futures process, intuition-based visioning and “Type II” thinking that has high credibility for knowledgeable experts but low credibility to most others.

Findings

Megacrisis is a Type II wild card needing anticipatory mitigation via strategies such as are suggested. While descent paths may be a suitable meme for technical professionals, ascent paths to higher levels of civilizational maturity are a better guiding image for the public. Aspirational methods whose core involves intuition-based creativity, wisdom and co-creative emergence are a vital complement to rational/analytic futures methods, especially in times of epochal change and uncertainty when a new “regime” of guiding world views, institutional processes and innovative technologies may emerge.

Research limitations/implications

Results represent a high degree of uncertainly as well as “fringe” thinking needing to be more widely considered.

Practical implications

Strategic suggestions based on Type II thinking are a unique category for “leading edge” funding and application.

Originality/value

The Type II perspective offered here is unique and offers a promising approach for transformative megacrisis mitigation.

Citation

Markley, O. (2015), "Aspirational guidance for wiser futures: toward open-sourced ascension from ego-centric to eco-centric human communities", Foresight, Vol. 17 No. 1, pp. 1-34. https://doi.org/10.1108/FS-01-2014-0005