Anticipation as Deep Driver for a New Paradigm

Paradigm change is driven by circumstances and events shaped in the past. But a deterministic view of history overlooks the immense importance of anticipation as a driver for evolutionary and revolutionary change. Paradigm change actually occurs only when a new vision emerges of the nature of reality — whether physical, social or intellectual — which is translated into a new organization of values, ideas, knowledge, or social activity. At the same time, paradigm change is impeded by the inordinate importance accorded to current centers of power, prevailing forms of social organization, vested interests and the momentum of pre-existing conditions. These forces tend to blind us to the very possibility of radical change until after it has already occurred.

This session explores the potential applications of the emerging discipline of Anticipation to advance the research program on social paradigm change conducted over the past three years by the World Academy of Art & Science. It will examine the role of anticipation in framing the movement toward a new paradigm in human development capable of effectively addressing the pressing challenges confronting humanity today. Topics will include

• The power of ideas to change the world
• Values of drivers of change
• The revolution of rising expectations
• The role of the visionary individual as catalyst for change

Conveners

Garry Jacobs, Chief Executive Officer, World Academy of Art and Science; Chairman of the Board of Directors, World University Consortium; Editor, Cadmus Journal; Vice President, The Mother’s Service Society, a social science research institute (India).

Winston Nagan, Samuel T. Dell Research Scholar Professor of Law, Levin College of Law (University of Florida); Founding Director, Institute for Human Rights and Peace Development; Chairman of the Board of Trustees, World Academy of Art and Science.

To submit an abstract to this workshop send a mail to Garry Jacobs

Bring Forth Futures

There is a growing consensus that we are going through what many refer to as a ‘great transformation’ from an epoch based on the exploitation of nature for the benefit of a few to an epoch that can, hopefully, be more sustainable and just. To defuse a narrow set of monopolizing discourses that tend to colonize the visions of global futures, we need multitudes of voices to claim, create, and bring forth their own and more spirited futures. The voices that currently dominate the discussion tend to be from regions located mainly in the global North where there are well-resourced institutions of higher learning and relatively easy access to publication outlets. This impoverishes the global discourses that shape the way futures and transition dynamics are anticipated. This raises challenging questions about what we imagine to be the key agents of change. Fresh voices tend to come exactly from such peripheral places and geo-political and socio-cultural interstices. In anticipation, we ask: Whose futures? Who decides on the most appropriate futures? What kind of individual does it take to carry out comprehensive socio-cultural transformation? As a gathering and coalescing of visionary voices from and across a vast range of regions, disciplines, and domains to address a spectrum of relationships from individual and collective conditions, to other life forms, and our shared environment, this session seeks to harness the energies of both mythical envisioning, science fiction foresight, scientific analysis and philosophical inquiry. We want to summon the voices that speak of the probable, possible, unforeseen, unthinkable, emerging and unknown – the voices that have the courage, the passion, and the vision to anticipate, create, and bring forth their futures on the living horizon.

The objective of the session is to explore this theme from the perspective of the emerging discipline of anticipation to engender a global research effort that results in a book that brings together a wide range of voices on the future. The core question that will be addressed is as follows: it is 2050 and you are looking back on the year 2015 – ‘what would I have liked to say in 2015 about the future and the transition that needed to take place?’

Conveners

Prof. Mark Swilling, University of Stellenbosch

Dr. Mila Popovich, University of Colorado at Boulder; Associate Fellow, World Academy of Art and Science; Associate Expert, European Commission

To submit an abstract to this workshop send a mail to Mila Popovich

1. Untying the Gridlocks – Changing our Hermeneutics to Bifurcate for Good by Carlos Alvarez Pereira
2. Anticipating as Deep Driver for Social Change by Garry Jacobs
3. Anticipation as the central element for the working of individual minds and whole societies by Knud Thomsen
4. Anticipation, Law, Prediction and Problem Solving by Winston Nagan
5. Education at Warp Speed by Garry Jacobs
6. No Anticipation, No Well Being by Rodolfo Fiorini