T HE

P OS T NOR M A L
T IMES
R E A DER
VOLUME 2
 T HE
P OS T NOR M A L
T IMES
R E A DER
VOLUME 2

EDITED BY
ZIAUDDIN SARDAR
SHAMIM MIAH
C SCOT T JORDAN
 First published in Great Britain 2024 by
International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), in cooperation with
Centre for Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies (CPPFS) and MAHYA

www.iiit.org
www.cppfs.org
www.postnormaltim.es
www.mahyayayincilik.com.tr

Copyright© 2024 International Institute of Islamic Thought

and Centre for Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies.
All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any

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except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical
articles or reviews.

A CIP catalogue record for this

book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-9957581-1-7

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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION

What is happening now? 13

Ziauddin Sardar and Shamim Miah

OVERVIEWS METHODOLOGY

Time in postnormal times 33 The perfect postnormal storm 113

Ziauddin Sardar Christopher Burr Jones,
Jordi Serra del Pino, and Liam Mayo
Sea glass 57
Liam Mayo The postnormal landscape 133
Philip Spies and Chris Jones
The end of the ordinary 69
Elizabeth Stephens Polylogues 153
Ziauddin Sardar
As things fall apart 83
Christopher Burr Jones Engaging communities 157
in polylogues
Adventures in postnormal times 99
Liam Mayo, Caroline Osborne,
Jerry Ravetz
Marcus Bussey, and Timothy Burns

Four scenarios for the third rock 177

from the sun
Christopher Burr Jones

Building scenarios 197

in postnormal times
Jordi Serra del Pino
KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION CULTURE & CREATIVITY

The smog of ignorance 219 Postnormal times & minced words 353
Ziauddin Sardar C Scott Jordan

Reimagining expertise 245 Museums in postnormal times 365

for postnormal times Olga Van Oost
Maru Mormina, Julia Schönebergand,
Confronting postnormal times 377
and Lata Narayanaswamy
Yelena Muzykina
Science and mathematics 271
Capturing the queen and other 391
education in uncertain times
creative moves in postnormal times
Kjellrun Hiis Hauge and Richard Barwell
Liam Mayo
Science education for 293
Afrofutures for postnormal times 409
the anthropocene
C Scott Jordan
Jane Gilbert

Drama education and applied 311

theatre in postnormal times BEYOND POSTNORMAL TIMES
Michael Anderson
Going beyond postnormality 427
Zombie disciplines 327 Alfonso Montuori
Liam Mayo and Shamim Miah
Afterthoughts 443
Ziauddin Sardar
WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW?
Ziauddin Sardar and Shamim Miah

The world has faced some drastic changes since the publication of The Postnormal
Times Reader in 2019.
There was, of course, the Covid-19 pandemic which brought the globe to a
grinding halt. Russia invaded Ukraine, leading to disruptions of supply chains,
energy deficits, and the cost of living crisis. The world finally realised just how
interconnected and interdependent the planet had become. The Far Right came
to power, or edged closer to political control, in Israel, Hungary, Poland, Czech
Republic, Italy, and the Scandinavian states. Latin America moved Left. NATO
withdrew in disgrace from Afghanistan; and the Taliban returned to power in the
country. Pakistan became unstable (again). Muslims declared persona non grata in
India. Climate change became climate emergency; and the World Meteorological
Organisation declared that temperatures are likely to rise more than 1.5°C above
pre-industrial levels by 2027. Scores and scores of hurricanes and storms appeared.
Parts of Italy drowned. Climate refugees became a recognised term. Cybercurrency
collapsed as some noted banks went into liquidation. Inflation returned worldwide.
The revolutionary gene editing technology CRISPR was succeeded by CRISPR-Cas3
which can ‘chew up DNA like Pac-Man’. Insects started appearing on the menus of
posh restaurants.
Just as we are experiencing climate emergency in real time, we are now actually
living through postnormal times. Postnormal times are no longer about anticipating
something that is lurking over the horizon. Postnormal times are already here –
with their attended consequences of contradictions, complexity, and chaos.
Consider the fact that we are rapidly transitioning from the development
of basic artificial intelligence algorithms to generative AI, and even machine
superintelligence. These game changing technologies will have a serious impact
on every aspect of our lives from jobs to education, from economies, medicine,
to knowledge production, and could even pose a threat to human survival. Open
AI, which was only set up seven years ago by venture capitalists and investors,
including Peter Tiel of PayPal and Elon Musk of Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter, has now
metamorphized into ChatGPT. It is a chatbot with the ability to provide answers to
complex questions, create songs, write codes, and compose haikus and limericks in
an instant. It even wrote and developed a horror movie titled Oil and Darkness – the
director only had to provide a title, basic content, plot details, key characters, and
simply ask the AI chatbot to write a script about a ‘horror film set on an oil rig.’ But
apart from writing scripts, ChatGPT will also put the future of education, journalism,
 14 WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW?

and related professions into question. The public discourses surrounding ChatGPT
has been conflicting; some have plauded the use of technology in responding
to social challenge, while others have described AI text generated models as
‘fluent bullshit’.
‘Bullshit’ is one of the many words that have moved from the domain of
profanities and expletives to a highly conceptual category. In On Bullshit Harvard
professor Harry G. Frankfurt captured the ubiquitous feature of this cultural
phenomena in contemporary society. He sees bullshit as being distinct from lying,
because it places little value in truth; instead, it deliberately makes false claims
about what is truth. [1] So given the nature and the context of post-truth, many
have rightly questioned the impacts of AI generated responses and the future of the
quality of data that chatbots are trained on. Amit Katwala writing in Wired argued
that ChatGPT relies upon existing data created by humans in an era of post-truth. The
quality, and as such, the substance of the outcome would be deeply suspicious. He
notes, ‘in the end, Chat GPT’s bullshit is a reminder that language is a poor substitute
for thought and understanding. No matter how fluent and coherent a sentence may
seem, it will always be subject to interpretation and misunderstanding’. [2]

IN A WORLD WHICH HAS LITTLE REGARD FOR ANY TRUTH, CHATGPT’S

HIGH PROBABILITY OF INCORRECT ANSWERS IS LITTLE OR NO CONCERN
FOR THE PUBLIC. YET, IT IS A DISTINCTIVELY POSTNORMAL
PHENOMENON WITH MINDBOGGLING CONSEQUENCES FOR OUR EPOCH.

‘Epochs’, argues the noted sociologist Goran Therborn, ‘turn according to

their own temporality, rather than following the Gregorian calendar; yet for
those living them, the calendar can still provide a handy tool on which to mark
historical ruptures and transitions’. [3] More and more scholars, academics and
thinkers are now trying to pin down just what is so different about the current
epoch. For Therborn, the twenty-first century can be described as a dialectical
century; whereby changes are brought not through innovation and growth but
through contradictions, conflicts, and unintended consequences. For Nancy Fraser,
American philosopher and cultural critic, the zeitgeist can be summed up by the
title of her little book, The Old Is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born. It is, as though,
Fraser suggests, the authority of the established order has suddenly evaporated.
At the centre of the ‘crisis complex’ we face are the contradictions of the capitalist
economy which ‘consumes its own background conditions of possibility. It is like
a tiger that eats its own tail. While social life as such is increasingly economised,
the unfettered pursuit of profit destabilises the very forms of social reproduction,
ecological sustainability, and public power on which it depends’ – all of which
makes financialised capitalism ‘an inherently crisis-prone social formation’. [4] For
Indian economists Pranab Bardhan, the problem is financial and cultural insecurity
 15 Introduction

– ‘from ecological distress, wars and civil wars, terrorism and crime, to cyberattacks
against crucial infrastructures’ as well as ‘the possibility of nuclear destruction,
climate collapse, engineered pandemics and rouge or what is called unaligned (as
in unaligned with human values) artificial intelligence’ – which has led to the rise of
undemocratic movements. In A World of Insecurity, says Bardhan, the temptation to
authoritarianism is difficult to resist, and majoritarianism and nationalism spread
like wildfire. [5] British biologist and writer, Colin Tudge, suggests that with the
world warming and waters rising, ‘we will be lucky to survive the present century
in a tolerable state’ because ‘the oligarchy of governments, corporations and their
attendant intellectual who now dominate the world have largely lost touch with
the moral and ecological realities of life’. [6] For others, the ‘crisis complex’ is a
result of the demands we are making on nature by living in cities which are leading
us towards ‘terminal consumption’. [7] Or a product of the hybridisation of space
and self, where the ‘old’ world is becoming virtualised leading to contradictions
and confusion. [8]
The postnormal condition is coming into sharper focus as the destructive
aspects of accelerating change become more and more apparent. But the change
equation also has the other side where entrenched facets of our world do not
change; or rather, continue in their established trajectories. As the French proverb
puts it, ‘the more things change the more they stay the same’. Or, as Bon Jovi sang,

Yesterday keeps comin’ round, it’s just reality

It’s the same damn song with a different melody
The market keeps on crashin’ [9]

According to the World Inequality Report 2022, ‘contemporary global inequalities

are close to early twentieth century levels, at the peak of Western imperialism’:

the top 1% took 38% of all additional wealth accumulated since the
mid-1990s, whereas the bottom 50% captured just 2% of it. This
inequality stems from serious inequality in growth rates between the
top and the bottom segments of the wealth distribution. The wealth of
richest individuals on earth has grown at 6 to 9% per year since 1995,
whereas average wealth has grown at 3.2% per year. Since 1995, the
share of global wealth possessed by billionaires has risen from 1% to
over 3%. This increase was exacerbated during the COVID pandemic. In
fact, 2020 marked the steepest increase in global billionaires’ share
of wealth on record. [10]

There was great hope that Covid-19 pandemic would lead to creatively rethinking
existing socio-political models and lifestyles. But the repackaging of antiquated
modes of thinking and epistemologies to solve problems which they themselves
created is one of the greatest ironies of our epoch. By returning to the old
16 WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW?

normal, which as graffiti around the world and the Twittersphere pointed out,
was the problem in the first place, we have only aggravated the tribulations of
postnormal times.
But as the globe went into complete lockdown, it forced many people to re-
evaluate time in the lived present of Covid-19. In fact, understanding the nature and
the consequence of time took on a collective endeavour. In doing so it embodied
many elements of postnormal times, especially through introducing the idea of
corona-time as a lived reality. Corona-time, or ‘blurs day’, unsettled and ruptured
the nature of fixed time with days and weeks, weekdays and weekends, and morning
and days all rolled into one. The opening essay of The Postnormal Reader Volume 2
discusses the nature of time within postnormal times.
Ziauddin Sardar shows how the ‘distinction between the present and the future
has become so porous and diffused that it is now difficult to discern when the present
ends and the future begins’. Postnormal times marks a crucial turning point, which
arises from the combined experiences of modernity and postmodernism; and
creates a whirlwind of complexity, contradictions, and chaos. In postnormal times,
the future constantly interacts with and determines the present, and, consequently,
time is experienced simultaneously as linear and cyclic. Thus, the future is either
eclipsed or is feared – a fear, as Bardhan also suggests, associated with shifts in
global power, breakdown of paradigms, and the collapse of society and civilisation
from climate change and ecological disasters. Sardar argues that time in our epoch
is epistemologically and ontologically broken; and speed – moving ever so fast and
breaking things – is linked to ‘implicit fascism’. He suggests that in postnormal
times future should not be seen as a time horizon but as ‘an ever-present garden to
be cultivated by all for all times.’
The notion of time in postnormal times is further explored by Liam Mayo in
his article ‘Sea Glass.’ Mayo starts with a personal anecdote of collecting shells on
an Australian beach with his son to exemplify how artificiality is ‘manufactured
by humanity to replicate that which occurs in nature’. He goes on to look at the
different ways modernity constructs the notions of time as apolitical and value
neutral; and debunks the ‘myth of modernist progress’ by deconstructing the
modernist construction of time as it seeks to overcome the patterns of change
by capturing, owning, and controlling through technological notions of time.
Mayo’s examination of the relationship between reality and society with symbols
of culture, and especially the role it plays in shaping shared existence, touches
several important strands within sociology and philosophy, in particularly the ideas
around Simulacra and Simulation as developed by the late French sociologist and
philosopher Jean Baudrillard.
The pull of modernity, especially with its emphasis on ontological security,
is a recuring theme throughout this collection. In Modernity and Self-Identity,
Anthony Gidden argued that modernity plays a critical role in shaping self-identity,
especially in directing society towards a sense of order and continuity to individual
life experiences. [11] The process adds meaning to people’s life, and the emotions
 17 Introduction

help guide and structure positive views of self, society, and above all the future.
Thus, it was not surprising to observe the ubiquitous yearning of going back to a
sense of ‘normality’ because the sense of normality gives a (false) sense of security,
order, and meaning in people’s lives. Elizabeth Stephens, co-author with Peter Cryle
of Normality: A Critical Genealogy, focuses on the media discourse of ‘return to the
normal’ in her article ‘The End of the Ordinary’. Stephens points out that the normal
is seldom explicitly described; its meaning is taken for granted. [12] The fixation
with a return to normality during the Covid 19 pandemic seem to be ubiquitous,
with plethora of self-help guru’s providing their own advice on returning to a
sense of normality. It wasn’t only the fringe element of the podcasting world that
would offer advice, the UK, National Health Service (NHS), was also quick to offer
10-Tips of going back to normal, following the relaxing of Covid-lockdown rules.
Part of the advice includes healthy eating, regular exercise and supporting local
businesses. Stephens points that many things that have happened in recent times
are not normal – such as the election of President Trump, climate change, the 2019
Australian bush fires, and the pandemic itself. She raises a number of pertinent
questions. Did normal actually fail us? Would any attempt to return to normal be
inhuman? Whose normality are we expected to return to?
The discourse surrounding the return to normality is a little more than an
attempt to maintain the status quo of excessive consumerism, deepening global
social inequality, and worsening climate crisis. In an article written for the Financial
Times during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Booker Prize winning novelist
Arundhati Roy argues

‘OUR MINDS ARE STILL RACING BACK AND FORTH, LONGING FOR A
RETURN TO “NORMALITY”, TRYING TO STITCH OUR FUTURE TO OUR
PAST AND REFUSING TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE RUPTURE. BUT THE
RUPTURE EXISTS’.
The rupture is the tragedy unfolding itself as an overwhelming series of events
is occurring simultaneously with unprecedented speed: it is ‘the wreckage of a
train that has been creaking down the track for years’; and it ‘is immediate, real,
epic’. [13] And it is a rupture that established forms of theoretical, explicit, implicit,
procedural and disciplinary knowledge systems can longer help us navigate.
But is postnormal times itself a theoretical idea suitable only for academic
musing and philosophical discussion? Christopher Burr Jones attempts to answer
the question by examining the challenges faced by emergency first time responders
and public administrators due to accelerated warming and global weirding. He looks
at the impacts on government departments, international organisations, and non-
governmental organisations to implement their sustainable development goals. By
drawing upon key principles within PNT, Jones shows the importance of polylogue
 18 WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW?

between public leaders and public administrators to develop plans for worst case
scenarios. It’s critical to think through multiple collapse scenarios and accelerated
change, Jones argues, whilst engaging with community activists to envisage their
preferred futures and sustainable cities. He wants to go beyond the defeatism and
escapism as possible options advocated by many, especially given the worsening
situation with global warming and weirding. Instead, he locates hope and optimism
in futures literacy and consciousness through envisioning preferred futures and
sees the fruits in the labour of such organisations as Teach the Future and World
Futures Studies Federation, in children and activist leaders throughout the world.
Jones demonstrates the importance of nurturing more responsible leaders of the
future with a strong grounding in planetary ethics and wisdom.

THIS CAN ONLY BE ACHIEVED IF NECESSARY INFRASTRUCTURAL

INVESTMENT IS MADE IN THE LONG-TERM FUTURE THAT WILL MAKE
IT POSSIBLE AND EASY FOR COMING GENERATIONS TO ENVISAGE AND
BUILD SUSTAINABLE FUTURES.

A great deal of hope is placed on science both to navigate us out of postnormal

times and take us towards sustainable futures. During the Covid-19 pandemic,
science was often projected as the problem-solving strategy. Politicians were often
heard repeating the same mantra of ‘we are following science.’ In early March
2023 after a WhatsApp leak to the Daily Telegraph, it was revealed that the UK
government’s Covid-19 policy was motivated by political expediency rather than
following hard science. In his recent book, The Covid-19 Catastrophe: What’s Gone
Wrong and How to Stop It Happening Again, Richard Horton, the editor of the
prestigious medical journal The Lancet, suggests that we should acknowledge and
deal constructively with ambiguity, ignorance, and complexity within science. [14]
In other words, both scientists and politicians should acknowledge that science has
gone postnormal.
The philosopher and historian of science, Jerry Ravetz, first introduced the
notion of postnormal science (with his long-time collaborator Silvo Funtowicz);
and has been championing it for decades. Ravetz has argued that the received
wisdom which sees science as beneficent, benevolent, and infallible, ‘creating a
fountain of facts for human welfare’ has over the years been fractured. Scientific
knowledge simultaneously transformed the world by creating scientific problems
which natural science is finding difficult to solve. By drawing upon ibn Khaldun’s
principle of ‘thinking historically,’ he aims to ‘understand the conflicts within
science, in the present through the unresolved contradictions inherited from
the past.’ During the Covid lockdown people were able to see the politicisation of
science when the symbols of science were enlisted in policy discourse to promote
political and ideological agendas. Ravetz develops his early ideas by demonstrating
19 Introduction

how the principles of postnormal science were translated into a growing movement
with the aim of reforming science; and offers many insights into the intellectual
relationship between postnormal science and postnormal times.
The methodology of postnormal times theory has been stress tested during the
past few years. An early opportunity to use postnormal times as a methodology
emerged with the Covid-19 pandemic. The article by CPPFS Deputy Director Jordi
Serra del Pino and Senior Fellows Christopher Burr Jones and Liam Mayo, shows
how a global pandemic is best understood through the speed, scope, scale, and
simultaneity of change. Covid-19 became ‘The Perfect Postnormal Storm’ through
the overlapping of the 3Cs – complexity, contradictions, and chaos. The pandemic,
argue the authors, illustrated all the key features and functions of postnormal
times. The article also provides a framework and conceptual tools for governments
and the third sector for creative and imaginative visioning of preferred futures. The
theoretical ideas explored in this article are further developed by Philip Spies and
Chris Jones (no relation to Christopher Burr Jones). ‘The Postnormal Landscape’
was originally written in Afrikaans and re-written and revised for this edition of
the Reader. Spies and Jones examine the impact of Covid-19 on South Africa and
illustrate the complex, systemic, and disruptive nature of the pandemic. They
argue that conventional disciplines with their emphasis on normative modes of
thinking are incapable of understanding Covid-19. Instead, they point to new ways
of thinking, such as the postnormal times theory, to transcend the disciplinary silos,
and shed light on emerging postnormal phenomena.
Such impediments transcended and with a clear sight on the postnormal, we
can ask: what is the relationship between postnormal times as a theoretical idea and
public policy? How can the principles of PNT be used by community practitioner or
indeed people developing public policy? The question is addressed by Liam Mayo and
his team of futures and community leaders through a partnership research initiative
between The Sunshine Coast Council and the University of Sunshine Coast, South
East Queensland, Australia. This research project aimed to investigate multi-modal
approaches to community engagement that grows social capital and increases
local capacity to address complex world challenges. The focus here is the notion of
polylogues, which as Ziauddin Sardar says, is much more than about contemporary
philosophy escaping its western ‘solitude’ or arid ‘texts’ dynamically engaging with
each other. Polylogues are about ushering positive change, ‘creating new physical
and mental spaces where diversity, pluralism, and contending perspectives are
present on their own terms but also deeply invested in engaging others in creating
and sharing information and knowledge’. In postnormal times, polylogues that
appreciate and cope with complexity, help us transcend contradictions, and bring
us back from the edge of chaos. They generate new synthesis and knowledge. Mayo
and his colleagues use polylogues as a way of thinking and understanding, based
on meaningful and structured exchange of ideas from multiple perspectives, and
which transcend competing and contradictory viewpoints. The Australian research
project explores the utility of postnormal times as a navigational tool for our
20 WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW?

transformational epoch and as a socio-cultural political theory that contextualises

change in the present. More critically, the authors mobilise polylogues around local
solutions to complex problems, and in doing so investigate emergent manifestations
of subjectivity.
Postnormal times can be characterised as a constant tension between the old
world and the one yet to emerge. Perhaps the key area which makes this tension
more pronounced is the conflict between humans and nature. Hidden within this
conflict, argues Christopher Burr Jones in his article ‘Four Scenarios for the Third
Rock from the Sun’, ‘is the ominous contradiction between humanity’s dependence
on natural resources and their neglect and misuse of the Earth’s goods.’ Jones
uses postnormal times theory to develop four alternative futures, while tackling
posthumanism, transhumanism, and other related paradigms. The first alternative
future sees society moving back in time as opposed to moving forward. In this
scenario, life will continue as it returns to ‘normality’ as characterized by human
existence for most of the million years before the dawn of agriculture. The second
scenario, which draws inspirations from dystopic fiction and other reoccurring
images of the future, ‘predict’ the total collapse of the earth. The Third, Hybrid Gaia
is a highly artificial world, inspired by literature around critical posthumanism,
where human-centred ethics and mythology are replaced by respect and cooperation
with other species rather than dominance and exploitation. Finally, Jones presents
a utopic alternative future governed by Dyson’s Children where all the dreams of
techno-optimists and posthumanists come true. In this image of the future, ‘human
science achieves godlike control over medicine through molecular and nanite robot
prevention, repair, and disease defence. Cancer is effectively cured, and longevity
increases dramatically, with the likelihood that genetic flushing technology can
extend lifespan.’
Scenarios are further explored by Jordi Serra del Pino who develops an approach
for ‘Building Scenarios in Postnormal Times’. This is a three-stage process where
scenarios are constructed within the framework of the Extended Present, Familiar
Futures, and Unthought Futures – the three tomorrows. Each stage provides ‘an
epistemological framework that allows us to select the most suitable methods in
accordance with both the object and each tomorrow’s logic’. Serra contends that his
approach not only ‘help us to understand why our scenarios will go in particular
directions’ but also ‘how we can acquire a deeper understanding of the future. In a
typical postnormal dynamic, the three tomorrows require us to examine both our
perception of reality and the cognitive processes we use to comprehend this reality’.
Our understanding of reality and our futures is made all the more difficult
as postnormal times has had a major impact on knowledge production, which is
actually changing the nature of knowledge itself. By most accounts, knowledge is
not purely an ontological reality, rather it is, to some extent, socially constructed
and imbedded through structures of society. As such, it often changes with socio-
political trends. The rise of Big Data, for example, now informs much research
and is also used for commercial and political ends. Global corporations, such as
 21 Introduction

Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon, use Big Data to inform Artificial
Intelligence, not only to influence human behaviour but also to transform the course
of human history. [15] The era of fake-news, alternative facts, and deep fakes as it
merges with Big Data have further compounded some of the many concerns and
fear. ‘In an Age of Information, our information ecosystem has become polluted and
dangerous’, argues Nina Schick in Deep Fakes and the Infocolapse. Schick warns that
we are facing an unprecedented and immense crisis of an increasingly dangerous
and untrustworthy ecosystem otherwise known as Infocolapse. [16] In a much cited
paper, ‘The Smog of Ignorance’, published before Schick’s book, Ziauddin Sardar
argues that

KNOWLEDGE HAS BECOME TRIGOXIC – THAT IS, EMERGENT KNOWLEDGE

INCORPORATES, BOTH CONSCIOUSLY AND UNCONSCIOUSLY, THREE
TOXIC ELEMENTS: PLAIN IGNORANCE (SUCH AS FAKE NEWS), VINCIBLE
IGNORANCE (THAT IS AN IMPLICIT PRODUCT OF THE FUTURE DIMENSION
OF MANY, CONTEMPORARY COMPLEX PROBLEMS) AND INVINCIBLE
IGNORANCE (WHICH PREVENT US FROM IMAGINING ALTERNATIVES
BECAUSE THEY ARE LOCATED OUTSIDE THE PRINCIPLES AND AXIOMS OF
THE DOMINANT PARADIGMS AND WORLDVIEW).

These critical changes in knowledge production will have an overpowering impact

on education, especially given that the fundamental essence of what constitutes
‘knowledge’ is rapidly undergoing profound and significant transformations.
Sardar argues for a radical shift ‘away from the notion of wisdom as a repository
of individual quality, the prerogative of sagely (mostly) men, to a more profound
understanding: wisdom as a collective, communal, enterprise; a social and cultural
quest for life we are losing in postnormal times’.
In ‘Zombie Disciplines’, Liam Mayo and Shamim Miah also deconstructs the
ways of knowing and being in a rapidly transforming world. The tools that we once
used to navigate complexity and change, they argue, have become all but obsolete.
Considering these fundamental changes in society, especially through the decline
in the grand narratives around science, technology, and politics, there seems to be
great uncertainty around Western constructions of the future (in the singular). By
drawing and expanding upon Ulrick Beck’s ‘Zombie categories,’ they argue that it
is indeed ‘zombie disciplines’, concomitant with the erosion of knowledge, that
leave us ill-equipped to effectively navigate current epochal changes. The zombie
metaphor provides a deeper critique of knowledge in postnormal times as an
occupying space between both the living and the dead, embodying the paradox of
our transitional age.
22 WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW?

In these circumstances, expertise also comes into question. In ‘Reimaging

Expertise for Postnormal Times’, Maru Mormina, Julia Schönebergand, and Lata
Narayanaswamy use the global pandemic as sociopolitical backdrop to examine the
epistemological assumptions behind the ubiquitous phraseology of ‘we are following
the science’ as used by many national governments to justify their pandemic and
post-pandemic policies. They show that the declaration is nothing more than a
political slogan to reassure the public and justify government policy – more critically,
they demonstrate how this mantra is devoid of any real commitment to positivist
epistemic endeavour. The paper provides a critique of the assumed neutrality
of science while highlighting the process involved in the social construction of
scientific knowledge. Mormina, Schönebergand, and Narayanaswamy further offer
several important insights into the role of science within postnormal times through
revisiting and elaborating the key ideas of postnormal science; and concludes by
questioning the monolithic claim to ‘one science’ and ‘evidence’. Rather, they
suggest, that the scientific enterprise must encourage diversity of experiences
and knowledge by widening the purview of scientific expertise. Several salient
points implicit in the works of Mormina, Schönebergand, and Narayanaswamy
are fleshed out by Jane Gilbert in her contribution to this volume. In ‘Education for
the Anthropocene’, Gilbert highlights the disciplinary ‘blind spots’ within science
education. She discusses many ‘unacknowledged assumptions that obstruct
its development and make it immune to change.’ For example, most of science
education within the Western world is rooted within the logic of ‘carbonised
modernity’ and a new dynamic science education is desperately needed to fit
the demands of a post carbon Anthropocene era. Considering the recent trends
associated with postnormal conditions ‘it is now imperative that we see these blind
spots and think differently about what science education is for,’ argues Gilbert.
In their paper on ‘Postnormal Science and Mathematics Education’, Kjellrun Hiis
Hauge and Richard Barwell argues that the category of ‘the scientist’ as ‘the expert’
confined within elite universities and often linked to industry funding is becoming
obsolete. By examining some of the pedagogical challenges in interpreting and
negotiating values, choices, and interest within complex mathematical models,
Hauge and Barwell show that mathematic education based on uncertainty that
characterises postnormal situations can prepare students to participate in extended
peer communities. The function of critical mathematics education should be to
prepare citizens to be able to deal with the different ways in which uncertainty
matters in postnormal times.
It is not just science and mathematics that the postnormal condition is rapidly
changing. Arts must transform too. Michael Anderson examines the challenges
of postnormality to drama education and applied theatre – and demonstrates just
how many diverse disciplines postnormal times theory has touched. Anderson
sees postnormal times as an opportunity for ‘transformational power’ through
the revitalisation of creative arts and education. He reminds us of the importance
and power of creative imagination in these chaotic, complex, and confused
 23 Introduction

times. ‘Drama education and applied theatre’, suggests Anderson, does ‘have
a contribution to make in a postnormal world by re-imagining itself to make a
difference.’ Like drama and theatre, museums too serve both as entertainment and
as instruments of education and preservation of cultural heritage. Olga Vanoust,
from the Flemish Institute of Cultural Heritage, shows that the emergence of
movements like Black Lives Matter have turned museums into contested sites
where past is being used to shape the future. Vanoust argues that public pedagogy
must recognise the importance of informal education beyond formal schools,
colleges, and universities; and illustrates how Black Lives Matter has impacted
political culture of museums at all levels including collecting, preserving, and
researching to educating and responding to issues of ethics. She leaves the reader
with an important question: what form should museums take in postnormal times,
especially given the complex, chaotic, and contradictory nature of society?
The genre that is ‘performing the past to claim the future’, to use the words of
Daniel Kreiss, is Afrofuturism, now being popularised by Hollywood to the socio-
political backdrop of the Black Lives Matter. [17] The antecedents of Afrofutures can
be traced back to the works of Sun Ra during the early 1950’s in Chicago, with his
lifelong project of merging music and technology with African American identity.
Carli Coetzi in Afro-Superheroes: Preposing the Future uses the concept of emerging
present [18] – akin to the notion of ‘extended present’ in postnormal times theory – to
understand the ways in which the ideas of Afro-superheroes (or Super Black, a term
popularised by Adilifu Nama [19]) are embedded in socio-political contexts with the
merging together of the science fiction genres. C Scott Jordan explores this long
and complex history of Afrofuturism, interrogating the complex interrelationships
between tradition and Afro-hypermodernity.

BY EXAMINING THE AMERICAN SUPERHERO FILM BLACK PANTHER,

JORDAN REFLECTS UPON THE MANY INCONSISTENCIES IN THE MARVEL
FRANCHISE ESPECIALLY RELATING TO THE WAYS IN WHICH FUTURES ARE
CONSTRUCTED, DEPICTED, AND NAVIGATED IN POPULAR CULTURE.

And, Jordan argues further in his article ‘Postnormal Times & Minced Words’,
popular culture and its attendant politics is also changing the meaning of the
words we use to describe ideas, concepts, things, giving them a postnormal
twist. Take the term freedom: ‘It is a most curious contradiction. Worse yet, it is
a seductive contradiction. Like capital, it is never just satisfied with a unit or two
of itself, it must always be more. Insatiable, freedom fights for itself even at the
consumption of the freedom of others’. Words such as Trump, Brexit, Fake News,
Social Media, Big Data seem to have little intellectual value. However, ‘definitions
must be held accountable’, Jordan contends, as this is ‘the first step towards
owning the future’.
 24 WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW?

In a multicivilisational world, argues Yelena Muzykina in ‘Confronting

Postnormal Times’, each civilisation needs to own its own future. Each civilisation –
Western, Islamic, Indian, Chinese – must rediscover itself ‘according to its own criteria
and concepts and have its own dynamic, thriving way of knowledge, governance,
democratic autonomy, and civilisational identity. And all will enrich each other with
mutual respect, cooperation, and syntheses’. Muzykina sees this as a basic source
of variety which provides a counterweight to complexity; and helps us understand
that ‘the world is of different sizes, shapes, colours, forms, contents, meanings, and
cannot be ruled by a single notion of truth’. Creativity is a sibling of variety. But it
cannot be enhanced without moving forward from the increasingly problematic
logic of modernity that creates an artificial conflict with creativity. Muzykina argues
that creative solutions are achieved ‘through the system of humanitarian education,
through teaching students music, philosophy, and the art’. Liam Mayo takes the
argument further by positing a ‘postnormal creativity’ that ‘seeks to do away with
the Western ontological constructs of subject/object, in favour of a flat ontology;
a universal ontology where all are objects and are given equivalent credence’. It is
based on polylogues which, ‘in and of themselves, are a distinctly creative process,
providing conceptual spaces and opportunities for the diversity of agendas to come
together to negotiate outcomes toward unthought futures’.

AS SUCH, ‘POSTNORMAL CREATIVITY’ HAS THE CAPACITY TO ENTIRELY

REFORMULATE THE NOTION OF THE FUTURE BY UNLOCKING HUMAN
AGENCY THROUGH NURTURING ‘ANTICIPATORY IMAGININGS.’

Moreover, Mayo argues, postnormal futures inherently revolve around ecological

awareness and liberation which is predicated upon an intimate relationship between
human and nonhuman biosphere. Thus, compelling ‘us to consider the vastness
of reality (the real), on time and space scales far beyond our very being’. Emergent
ideas of unthought futures are turned into reality by postnormal creativity. ‘Thus,
postnormal culture is borne. What we have then is a shift from asking, “how do we
plan for the future?” to the question, “what do we do now?”
Exactly. What do we do now?
It should not come as a surprise, given the literature and academic thought
devoted to our turbulent epoch, that suggestions for moving forward are aplenty.
For Nancy Fraser, the ‘present interregnum’ of uncertainty and ignorance can only
be overcome with ‘a decidedly antineoliberal project’. In contrast, Pranab Bardhan
argues for universal basic income and empowerment of workers, but still believes
in the liberal project. However, the liberals must show some grudging respect for
tradition and the local attachments of their fellow citizens. More thoughtful and
detailed suggestions are provided by Gordon Brown in Seven Ways to Change the
World. Brown argues that ‘moments of crisis create opportunities’. He shows how
 25 Introduction

the crisis of the Second World War led to the establishment of the welfare state in
Britain and the creation of World Health Organisation, United Nations, and the
World Bank. [20] While there are valid criticisms associated with each of these
organisations from a postcolonial perspective, Brown still has considerable faith in
them. They provide agency and collective action that is required to meet the global
challenges. His recipe for moving forward includes a global green deal, abolishing
tax havens, eliminating nuclear weapons, meeting sustainable development goals,
reforming education and a new growth economy based on early warning systems,
and global financial safety nets.
But for others growth is a serious cause for concern; indeed, an existential
problem. In Cities Demanding the Earth, Peter Taylor and his colleagues from
University of Bristol suggest that we need root and branch ‘unthinking’ – in
other words, we need to get away as far as possible from the growth agenda and
conventional ways of thinking. Unthinking is needed because the problem of
anthropogenic climate change is both ‘a complexity duet’ and ‘existential’. The
international organisations that give Brown some hope are ‘not fit for purpose’.
Neither is much ‘scientific work that disregards its anthropogenic component’.
Or ‘the state-centrism of the social sciences’. So not much is left of the old order!
Taylor and his colleagues suggest we need a new social knowledge that can help us
‘unthink considerations of our current existential predicament’. [21] Colin Tudge
echoes these sentiments:

to turn things around we, humanity, need to rethink everything that

we do and take for granted from first principles: what we aspire to
– what we are trying to achieve?; how we do things; how we organise
our affairs; what we think is good and bad; what we value. Where
necessary…we need to restructure and rebuild. Overall, we – the world
– need transformation, metamorphosis and metanoia. [22]

Tudge offers a very detailed ‘preliminary agenda’ – from how and what we grow
to how we cook and eat, to the economy and methods of governance, to the
unknowable aspects of science and metaphysics. He seeks nothing less than a
radical new synthesis of physics and metaphysics.
The thoughtful itinerary for a forward journey – which, according to Tudge
is never-ending and perpetual – offered by Taylor and his colleagues, Tudge and
others, takes us back to the original contention of postnormal times theory: we
need creativity and bold imagination to navigate our way to a different worldview.
Alfonso Montuori tells us that creativity, a well-established and conventional
term, is itself being transformed, from an atomistic view of modernity towards a
more collaborative, complex approach. It is through a participatory and creative
approach which invests in new epistemologies, pedagogies, and imaginations
that we can proceed beyond the current impasse to something better. The radical
nature of the postnormal times, says Montuori, ‘demands thinking that embraces
 26 WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW?

complexity and contradictions, does not recoil from chaos, and a willingness to
envision alternative futures’. In short, creativity has moved beyond the mythology
of genius and inspiration to inform philosophy, ethics, and action.
But there is a trap: creativity needs imagination, and imagination is itself
colonised by modernity. Even with all the creativity in the world, colonised
imagination would take us back to the status quo ante – the much vaunted ‘new
normal’, with a few extra appendages. Or, as Bon Jovi would say:

Ah, is it just me or does anybody see

The new improved tomorrow isn’t what it used to be

Imagination, as Ziauddin Sardar has said elsewhere, needs to do more than simply
transform experience and thought and generate new knowledge. It must also
produce new visions of the future. But it cannot do that if it is trapped in the extended
present – which is simply an extrapolation of modernity – or constrained by familiar
futures, which are almost exclusively based on the images and metaphors of the
dominant culture and its worldview. Imagination must move to the domain of the
unthought; and to do that it must overcome invincible ignorance, which is rooted in
the axioms, assumptions, and principles of the dominant paradigms. So:

what we need then, is a kind of imagination that reveals the awareness

of our trapped and colonized imagination, shifts our attention
towards the unthought imagination, and then generates the values and
resources that deepen our engagement with the chaotic, complex, and
contradictory and uncertain world of postnormal times.

This cannot be done by a single culture or intellectual tradition. It

becomes crucial for us to nourish our imagination from a wide range
of cultures, artifacts, modes of knowing and being, non-Western,
Indigenous, even otherworldly. We urgently need an imagination
that can construct new meanings, give a new sense of direction to
individuals and communities, develop holistic outlooks, and ultimately
reorient the narrative of greed and despair into narratives of sharing
and hope. [23]

Imagination and creativity thus must work simultaneously in unthought

paradigms. Sardar suggests working in the domain of the transnormal: over and
beyond capitalism and neoliberalism, modernity, and postmodernism, almost most
of what we can possibly conceive as normal or ‘the new normal’. Transnormal is
also a process of systematic movement leading to transposition: acts of changing
relationships, structures and values that interactively and collectively relocate
humanity to a trans, or stable, state, or realm of existence. Transnormal is conceived
as a dynamic paradigm that looks at cultural diversity ‘on the move’ based on the
 27 Introduction

assumption that future is located in the interactions of cultures; and aims to produce
a trans discourse of knowledge which gives equal importance to knowledge systems
of non-Western civilisations and cultures, including indigenous cultures, tacit and
intuitive methods; and promotes the realisation that in a diverse and dynamic
world, there are many ways to be human.
Sardar combines the concepts of transnormal with the paradigm of ‘mutually
assured diversity’ as tools to navigate towards the transnormal and our way out of
postnormal times. Mutually assured diversity is ‘the acceptance that all cultures
are equally important, that culture is the source of identity for everyone, and that
identity provides a hand and eye to manipulate the kaleidoscope of diversity, both
within culture and between cultures’. Sardar argues that the human condition
is a cultural condition and that ‘culture is an essential relational attribute, an
enabling feature of knowing, being and doing’. The ‘assured’ aspect of mutually
assured diversity

is the universal acceptance of the continuity of cultural identity

for everyone on the planet as a negotiated, adaptive, and meaningful
space. It is the acknowledgment that for difference to exist as
difference, it needs cultural space to be different. It is the
proposition that all cultures have the right to know themselves,
to understand and interact with their cultural self, and to do this
within their own cultural space. In other words, all cultures have a
right to enhance their cultural power and to represent their cultures
with their own concepts and categories.

Mutually assured diversity is not a linear concept focussed on a single issue or

arena. Sardar postulates it as a holistic notion operating simultaneously in twelve
dimensions: mutually assured definitions, dissent, discourse, demarcations,
democracy, degrowth, dematerialisation, defence, dependence, desires, dignity,
and destinies.
As suggested by Sardar, Tudge, and Taylor and his colleagues, the
transformations required to meet the challenges of postnormal times – accelerating
change, increasing uncertainty and complexity, astounding contradictions, and
cumulative chaos – are truly overwhelming. We are required to abandon most of
our established notions, what we consider as normal and a priori given. It is not just
The Great Re-Think but perhaps the greatest rethink in history.
This is a very tall order. But who said navigating our way out of postnormal time
was going to be easy?
28 WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW?

References

1. Frankfurt, Harry G (2005), On Bullshit. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

2. Katwala, Aamit (2022), ‘How to Stop ChatGPT from going off the rails’. Wired
https://www.wired.com/story/plaintext-how-to-stop-chatgpt-from-going-off-
the-rails/

3. Therborn, Goran (2022), ‘The World and the Left’, New Left Review 137
(Sept/Oct)

4. Fraser, Nancy (2019), The Old Is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born. London:
Verso, p38.

5. Bardhan, Pranab (2022). A World of Insecurity. Cambridge, Massachusetts:

Harvard University Press.

6. Tudge, Colin (2021), The Great Rethink. Pari: Pari Publishing. Jacket copy.

7. Taylor, Peter J, O’Brien, Geoff and O’Keefe, Phil (2020), Cities Demanding the
Earth. Bristol: Bristol University Press.

8. Gehmann, Ulrich and Reiche, Martin, editors (2014), Real Virtuality: About the
Destruction and Multiplication of World. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.

9. Bon Jovi (2010) Greatest Hits. Island Records.

10. Chancel, Lucus et al (2020) World Inequality Report. UNDP: World Inequality
Lab. P11.

11. Gidden, Anthony (1991) Modernity and Self-Identity. Oxford: Polity

12. Stephens, Elizabeth and Cryle, Peter (2017), Normality: A Critical Genealogy.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press

13. Arundhati Roy (2020), ‘The pandemic is a portal’, Financial Times 4 April

14. Horton, Richard (2021) The Covid-19 Catastrophe: What’s Gone Wrong and How
to Stop It Happening Again. Oxford: Polity

15. Webb, Any (2019), The Big Nine. New York: Public Affairs.

16. Nina Schick, Nina (2020), Deep Fakes and the Infocolapse. London: Monoray

17. Kreiss, Daniel (20212), ‘Performing the Past to Claim the Future: Sun Ra and
the Afro-Future Underground 1954–1968’. African American Review 45 1–2
197–203

18. Coetzee, Carli (2016), ‘Afro-Superheroes: Prepossessing the Future. Journal of

African Cultural Studies 28 3 241–244. Special Issue: Afro-Superheroes

19. Nama, Adilifu (2011) Super Black. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
29 Introduction

20. Brown, Gordon (2021), Seven Ways to Change the World. London: Simon
& Schuster

21. Taylor et all, op cit. p10

22. Tudge, op cit., p16.

23. Sardar, Z (2023), ‘Postnormal Imagination’, in Gabrielle Donnelly and

Alfonso Montuori, editors, Routledge Handbook for Creative Futures.
London: Routledge.
TIME IN POSTNORMAL TIMES
Ziauddin Sardar

Where is the future? And how long does it take to arrive?

These eternal, simple questions have acquired new dimensions in postnormal
times. The distinction between the present and the future has become so porous
and diffused that it is now difficult to discern when the present ends and the future
begins. Indeed, the future seems to be omnipresent. Consequently, ‘the category of
the future is losing much of its attractiveness’. [1] Indeed, why bother with the future
when the future is already here as so many advertisements for new and emerging
technologies tell us? A point well-illustrated by an advertisement for Toyota
cars. [2] ‘Dear future’, it begins in a mocking tone, ‘so good to see you’. Apparently,
the car has all ‘the goods’ the future could possibly offer. If the future is already
here, then what is the point in talking about alternative futures, the fundamental
idea of futures studies? Perhaps it is time, says Richard Slaughter, to say ‘farewell
to alternative futures’? [3] There are, he suggests, no alternative macro futures out
there, even though multiple micro future options may exist at all other levels. Poor
future! It has lost much of its shine.
The subtitle of Jorg Friedrichs’ The Future is Not What it Used to Be provides
us with part of the reason: ‘Climate Change and Energy Scarcity’. [4] Climate
change, however, is only one of four, out of a total of nine planetary boundaries
we have breached. [5] The other eight planetary boundaries that regulate the
stability and resilience of the Earth system are: change in biosphere integrity
(biodiversity loss and species extinction), stratospheric ozone depletion, ocean
acidification, biogeochemical flows (phosphorus and nitrogen cycles), land-system
change (for example deforestation), freshwater use, atmospheric aerosol loading
(microscopic particles in the atmosphere that affect climate and living organisms)
and the introduction of novel entities (for example, organic pollutants, radioactive
materials, nanomaterials, and micro-plastics). Of these losses of biosphere integrity,
land-system change, altered biogeochemical cycles as well as climate change have
been breached, increasing the risk of severe damage to the environment and the
planet. This is what Slaughter refers to as ‘global system change’. His other reasons
for discounting alternative futures include the rise of the post-truth fraternity, the
increasing role of the repressed and suppressed history, changes in future studies
itself and the shift in the geological age from the Holocene to the Anthropocene. [6]
All these global changes are markers for postnormal times, where ‘much of
what we have taken as normal, conventional and orthodox just does not work
 34 TIME IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

anymore. Indeed, normality itself is revealed to be the roots of all our ills.’ [7]
Postnormal times is theorised as an in-between period: the old paradigms are
collapsing and new ones struggling to be born. An age characterised by increasing
contradictions, complexity, and chaos (3Cs), with the accent on accelerating change,
and snowballing uncertainties and ignorances of different varieties. Just as climate
change is not merely an issue or an event but also, as Jeff Goodell notes, ‘an era, and
it is just beginning’, [8] postnormal times too is a new epoch.
However, how long is an epoch?
Conventionally geological eras or epochs are measured in millions of years;
minimum they last around three million years. However, the Holocene epoch
just lasted 11,500 years before we entered the Anthropocene, an epoch in which
human activities became the defining force in the Earth’s geological and ecological
processes. [9] When the scale of geological time was established in the nineteenth
century, the boundaries were placed between eras, which corresponded to empirically
observed evidence of mass extinctions in the fossil archives. It is, therefore, reasonable
to assume, given climate change, violations of planetary limits and mass extinction of
insects, that in the times to come, we will be able to observe a clear boundary between
the Holocene and Anthropocene epochs in the rock layers of the Earth.

POSTNORMAL TIMES, HOWEVER, IS NOT AN EPOCH IN THE GEOLOGICAL

SENSE. WE ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT DEEP TIMES OF GEOLOGY OR
COSMOLOGY. RATHER, IT IS MORE AKIN TO HISTORICAL EPOCHS.

History is often related as stories; and there is no single grand story to incorporate
all of world history. So, the general narration of world history is divided into
neat, digestible chunks, such as the feudal epoch or the epoch of exploration, to
aid chronicle uniformity. Epochs are periods of time when there is some sort of
consistency, peoples’ social and cultural experience have some commonality and
coherence, dominant power structures and paradigms are entrenched, and history
seems to be moving in a given direction. Elsewhere, I divided what we may call the
‘contemporary period’, the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-
first, into four divisions: classic, modern, postmodern, and postnormal. [10] Each
division can be seen as an epoch, which changes when social, cultural, and power
structures of society change. Postnormal times mark a turning point from the
combined epochs of modernity and postmodernism to something different that has
yet to emerge. It is strange in that it is an intermediate epoch; and instead of social
and cultural cohesion, it is a period characterised by contradictions and chaos. But
like other epochs, it has a beginning and should have an end.
Like most periods of transitions, postnormal times is an epoch of deep
ambiguity, uncertainty, and rapid change. Moreover, quite naturally, it generates
fear of the future – significantly when the future is associated with the loss of
 35 OVERVIEWS

power, paradigmatic angst, and potential collapse of society, civilisation, and the
ecosystems of the Earth. Part of the fear comes from the fact of the epochal shift
itself and the realisation that return to ‘normal’ is not a viable option. ‘If the epoch
has changed’, says Isabelle Stengers, ‘one can thus begin by affirming that we are as
badly prepared as possible to produce the type of response that, we feel, the situation
requires of us. It is not a matter of observation of impotence, but rather of a point
of departure.’ [11] Stengers fears the ‘Coming Barbarism’, the decline of society into
the world of the Lord of the Flies: a particularly Western notion of humanity which
degenerates into savagery the moment civilisational parameters and controls are
removed. A theme of countless Hollywood movies.
Part of the fear stems from the sheer incompetence and corruption of our
leaders. As Stengers puts it:

If there is nothing much to expect on the part of our guardians, those

who concern and responsibility is that we behave in conformity with
the virtues of (good) governance, perhaps more interesting is what
they have the task of preventing and that they dread. They dread the
moment when the rudder will be lost, when people will obstinately
pose them questions that they cannot answer, when they will feel that
the old refrains no longer work, that people judge them on their
answers, that what they thought was stable is slipping away. [12]

The fear of the future is also generated by the real possibility of collapse as a result
of planetary transgressions, often seen as unavoidable and inevitable – an a priori
given destiny. Slaughter’s writing-off of macro, alternative futures is a product of
this actual dread. Indeed, according to one recking, ‘Our Civilization Will Collapse’
within three decades; ‘the next three of five decades are going to be apocalyptic’; and
‘the 2050s will be the decade of the Final Goodbye’. [13] Bill McKibben concurs. It is
indeed ‘the end of the world as we know it’. [14] Not surprisingly, one is paralysed
with fear; and the future becomes devoid of hope and optimism. If the imminent
Collapse, the Apocalypse (to which we shall turn shortly), is only three decades away
then postnormal times will also end within this period.
What if we work seriously to avoid the coming collapses, return to planetary
boundaries, make peace with nature, abandon vengeful capitalism for a more equitable
economic system, change our lifestyles, transcend our myriads of contradictions,
become adept at dealing with uncertainty, and embrace complexity – that is, learn
to navigate postnormal times? It is a big ask. But not an impossible one given the
extent of our creativity and imagination. Clearly, such major transformations are not
within the ability of a single generation. If we follow ibn Khaldun’s 1377 argument,
it will require four generations to create a new order of things. In which case, the
postnormal period of transition would last a number of generations.
We know that as a general rule, aspirations of the future, dismal or alluring,
speak mostly to our own time as well as reflect our own internal angst and concerns.
36 TIME IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

Future is about time: it is about how we perceive time in our lived present, it is about
memory and anticipation, it is about how time is presented in our worldviews, it
is about how we give meaning and a sense of direction to our lives, and it is about
collective undertakings. Time itself is, of course, all about change. As Felipe
Fernandez-Armesto suggests, ‘no change, no time. You approach or reflect a
sense of time whenever you calculate the possible effect of connected processes of
change.’ [15] Moreover, the rate of change itself shapes your perception of time, and
hence, your notion of the future.

Tomorrow Is Another Day

So, to the age-old question: Is time linear with a single, unrepeatable trajectory, or is
it cyclical without an ending? There are advocates for both options. In monotheistic
religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – time is seen as unidirectional and
linear. The past, present and future follow the straight ‘arrow of time’. There is a
beginning and an end. God began the Creation and will bring the cosmic story to an
end. On the whole, Western thought also sees time as linear but without bringing
God into the equation. Hinduism, on the other hand, presents time as a cycle that
goes through four stages, or the ages of yogas. We are now living in Kali Yoga, the
age of destruction, and trapped in an irremediable process. Buddhism, to a certain
extent, and ancient Greece too, opt for the cyclic version. Some historians, from ibn
Khaldun in the fourteenth century to Arnold Toynbee in the twentieth century, and
a few in between, also subscribe to the cyclic theory of time. History can repeat itself
but, as Marx was said to have noted, the second time it often arrives as farce.
Ostensibly, these two perceptions of time appear to clash. But, as Johan Galtung
and Sohail Inayatullah have argued, genuine microhistories see time as linear
as well as cyclic and transcendental. The function of microhistory is not just
to find meaning in the past but to generate a new potential for meaning in the
future. [16] However, it is one thing to look at broad sweeps of history and quite
another to experience time simultaneously as linear and cyclic in the present –
the proficiency of postnormal times. This is why in postnormal times theory the
future is represented as three tomorrows, which are simultaneously distinct and
diffused: extended present, familiar futures and unthought futures. [17] Time in
the framework of three tomorrows is complex and contradictory, characterised
simultaneously in the singular as well as plural – time and times.
The extended present is a future that is not a future at all in the sense that it is
simply an extension, and overlaying, of the present on to the future. It is a product of
embedded trends and proliferating emerging issues of the present – some cannot be
averted, some are foreseeable, some have gone postnormal. The future in extended
present is mostly a colonised future. Familiar futures bring history and geography,
memory and metaphors, images and imaginings of the future(s) into play. It is
largely a domain of ‘used futures’. [18] The third tomorrow, unthought futures,
takes us outside the box of the dominant, and crumbling, paradigms into a thought
horizon of genuinely alternative possibilities, astonishing creativity and ingenuity,
 37 OVERVIEWS

and ethical imaginations. Unthought futures are not unthinkable. Neither are
they things we cannot expect or anticipate. Rather, they are located outside the
framework of our current and conventional modes of thought; they question our
given assumptions and concepts, ideas, principles, axioms, norms, actions, and
behaviour we have always taken for granted. [19]
If treated in isolation from the other tomorrows, the extended present can be
viewed as linear time. After all, rooted trends and emerging issues do expand and
continue towards the coming years. We know how a particular technology, for
example 3-D printing or synthetic biology, could develop in the near future. Or, as
epidemiologists tell us, how a virus may spread. Simple extrapolation of trends,
including megatrends, are how ‘predictions’ about the future are made; basically,
suggesting that the extended present will continue to extend. However, this analysis
overlooks a vital point: the ‘now’ is not static; the present is itself dynamic and
constantly changing. The extended present is constantly interacting with familiar
futures which are located both in the present and the future. Familiar futures, both
singular and plural, make the ‘now’ dynamic and changing, and by constantly
transforming the extended present change the nature of present time. Present
and future become suffused and time becomes simultaneously linear and cyclic.
‘The extended present’, writes Helga Nowotny, ‘tries to diminish the uncertainty
of the future by recalling cyclicality and seeking to combine it with linearity. The
present is no longer interpreted merely as a part of the way on the straight line
leading to the future open to progress, but as part of a cyclic movement.’ [20] The
present, fluctuating with accelerating change, thus constantly devours the future.
The process is enhanced by current and emerging technologies – such as Artificial
Intelligence, human machine merger, and Space exploration – that shrink the time-
boundary between present and future.
This is a deterministic process. The conventional notion of determinism is that
all events in the present are a product of historically existing causes. Or, to put it
another way, the past determines the present.

BUT IN POSTNORMAL TIMES, IT IS EQUALLY TRUE TO SUGGEST THAT THE

FUTURE ALSO DETERMINES THE PRESENT. IN FACT, THE FUTURE CAN
HAVE MORE IMPACT ON THE PRESENT THAN THE PAST.

Thus, the continuous merging of extended present and familiar futures, linear
and cyclic time, adds another layer to the colonisation of the future. There is a
double whammy: the future is colonised not just through extended present but also
through familiar futures which incessantly feed the extended present to boost the
colonising process.
Unthought futures provide an antidote to this deterministic and colonising
process. The function of the unthought futures is to provide genuine micro and
 38 TIME IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

macro alternative futures external to the dominant and orthodox modes of being,
doing, living, and knowing. Unthought futures are not time-bound: they can occur
in extended present as well as familiar futures and represent the realm of other
structures, other values, and other actions. They can be triggered by ideas and
notions as well as manoeuvres and movements that question and seek to transcend
dominant modes and paradigms. And the unthought futures can also arrive as
events. A pandemic such as Covid-19 was widely predicted. But no one imagined that
a virus, that most biologists do not even consider as a viable form of live, would stop
the twenty-first century, high technology, world in its tracks: stop travel, stop physical
contact, stop economic activities, stop growth, stop progress – indeed, stop time itself.

COVID-19 DEMONSTRATED THAT IT IS ONLY WHEN WE FIND OURSELVES

IN AN UNTHOUGHT FUTURE, THAT WE ARE FORCED TO CONFRONT ITS
FULL IMPLICATIONS.

The unthought futures provide us with a mechanism for reclaiming agency

that the extended present and familiar futures deny. A product of creativity,
imagination, and transformative leadership they are our basic tool for transcending
the complexities, contradictions, and chaotic events of postnormal times. [21]
Unthought futures are about opening up the wealth of possibilities outside the
current framework of thought and action, opportunities so uncommon that they
appear distant and unapproachable, and render them into present realities. They
are meant to move us from wallowing in the pessimism of coming collapse(s), as
foretold by current trends, and becoming something other than who we are in the
present to usher more viable, sustainable, and humane futures. Unthought futures
ought to raise epochal consciousness; and mark ‘the death of time, a poetic and
philosophical expression of the superseding of an epoch by another one’. [22]
In postnormal times, both positive and negative changes can appear rapidly, as
though from nowhere. In terms of positive changes, think of the #MeToo or Black
Live Matter movements. Unthought futures can have similar impact, leading to
profound transformations. Indeed, given the will and appropriate actions, major
transformations can occur within a generation. This suggests the possibility that
postnormal times can be concluded, given the will and determination, in about
a generation.

Time and Implicit Fascism

Postnormal times have had a profound impact on how we experience personal,
lived time. The world functions twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The
global financial markets, from New York to London, Shanghai to Tokyo, Bombay to
Singapore, are connected right round the clock. Global news channels broadcast
twenty-four hours. Social media communicates issues, developments, grievances,
39 OVERVIEWS

and nuisances instantly. Supermarkets and shops are open twenty-four hours a day,
on Sundays, even on religious and other festivals. ‘Time is money’; and our own time
is harvested and monetised by corporations and big technology companies. All this,
‘creates McTime, a permanent present, obliterating time distinction, cancelling
closed-times, night-times, off-times, odd-times, and nodding-off-time’. [23] The
consequent impact on our lives and bodies is quite overwhelming.
Historically, we have lived within structured time, most notably through
religious rituals. Muslims, for example, structure time according to five daily
prayers: dawn, early afternoon, late afternoon, sunset and the night prayer; and
the weekly congregational prayer that also marks the day of rest. Judaism teaches
us about the importance of the Sabbath, a day set aside for rest and worship; and
emphasises the importance of yearlong observances every seventh year, when the
earth rests along with the devotees. We are told in the Bible that God ‘rested on the
seventh day from all His work which He had done’. [24] This was not because God
needed to rest. Rather, to emphasise that rest is required for what He has created in
His own image. Chinese cultures also have designated days for rest and relaxation,
many in the form of traditional festivals related to chronology and the Chinese
calendar. Postnormal times takes a sledgehammer to such structures of times.
People, much like plants and fruit flies, have biological and mental in-built
timers. In postnormal times, our internal timers are seriously distressed by four key
drivers of postnormal change: speed, scope, scale, and simultaneity, representing
a radical departure from the conventional notion of change. Each driver has an
impact on how we as individuals and communities experience time.
Speed plays havoc with how we function as human beings. It affects everything
from how we interact with other people, our relationships, how we keep track of
what is happening in our lives and within our communities, and how we process
information and knowledge. The faster we move, the more difficult it becomes for us
to keep track of the world around us, to grasp the profound changes that are taking
place, to react sensibly and adjust appropriately to these changes. We experience
time as rapid twists and buckles, leading to confusion, frustration, and rage.
Speed can conquer the world and bring instant, unimaginable wealth: tech
oligarchs can make ‘$18 billion in just 24 hours’. [25] But speed is also the nemesis
of the environment. Fast capitalism, fast travel, fast cars, fast food, fast fashion, fast
trees, fast animal husbandry, fast holidays – all have a devastating impact on the
environment and ecology of the earth. If you Move Fast and Break Things [26] you not
only debase culture but also debase time. Moreover, speed forces you to innovate
perpetually, even if it means producing a slight variation of the same product year
after year. You may call it ‘creative destruction’, but as Nowotny notes, it ‘leads to
another problem of civilization: that of obsolescence, the ageing of technologies,
the production of waste. The past cannot absorb the waste fast enough. Through
the creation of more and more new things, there is an inevitable increase of that
which has to be disposed of. Both processes require a change of balance – in an
extended present.’ [27]
 40 TIME IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

Speed is also the enemy of history and tradition; it seeks to perpetually create
things anew, innovation at a breakneck pace is the ultimate goal. This means, notes
Griffith, that ‘there is a nasty, steely connection between speed and fascism. The
Nazis took power and they gave the German proletariat transport (the Volkswagen).
The Nazis also put money into land-speed record attempts. Henry Ford was awarded
a medal by Hitler, who admired his anti-Semitic politics, his speed-products, and
his mono-principle processes.’ [28]
The connection between speed and fascism is best illustrated by the early
twentieth century Italian artistic and social movement that was the first to fetishize
‘the beauty of speed’. The movement wanted to create the world anew, with its
foundations firmly anchored to technology, and rejected art, literature, music,
and architecture of the period. The movement described itself as ‘Futurism’; and
its members came to be known as ‘Futurists’. The Italian futurists desired a future
where speed and technology represented the absolute triumph of man over nature.
They glorified electricity, the car, airplane, machines, and the industrial city. They
despised the human body, peaceful coexistence and particularly women and
anything that could be seen as famine and glorified war, nationalism and white
supremacy. ‘Accelerated movement’, they argued, ‘makes it seem that the traversed
environment advances upon the traveller, rather than the other way round’. In other
words, the future folds back on to the present in ‘a thrilling onrush of visual, tactile,
and aural sensation’ creating an ‘intoxicating sublimity of the moment’. [29]
The godfather of Futurism was writer and poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
(1876–1944), who published his ‘The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism’ in 1909.
Marinetti wanted to erase history, destroy museums, architecture, archaeologists,
antiquarians, libraries. Attack the cities with pickaxes he urged his followers. He
wanted to replace it all with technology that moved with striking speed, banished
work, and enabled ‘crops and forests to spring up with lighting speed.’[30] In their
painting, the fascist futurists, such as Umberto Boccioni, Antonio Sant’Elia and
Luigi Fillia emphasised speed, energy, flight, industrial landscapes and destructive
war and violence. The original Marinetti manifesto was followed by a host of others
on almost everything from clothing, food, smells, wars, and lust – all enveloped in
fascist trappings.
It is only a quick (goose, or in the case of Italian fascists, roman) step, suggests
Griffith, from Matinetti’s futurist manifesto and our current obsession with speed:

Today, the ideology of speed, particularly in its aspect of overtaking

competitiveness, is behind the phenomenon of multinationals, today’s
most fascistic force. Theirs is a politics which brooks no ideological
opposition, a totalitarianism whereby one market leader seeks – by
competition – to destroy competitors, leading to global domination,
demanding uniformity, as speed always does, as fascism always does,
and destroying environments or people who get in the way [31].
 41 OVERVIEWS

Where speed enhances uncertainty and confusion, scope seeks the reduction and
variety of time. Different time zones collapse and we are forced to move in relation
to a single global time. Multinationals work across time zones doing research and
design in one place, manufacturing in another, providing support and services in
yet another, cutting costs and wages, and selling their products across the globe
24 hours.

THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN OFFICE AND HOMES, WORK, AND LEISURE

TIME, ARE DISSOLVED, WITH AN ACCENT ON EFFICIENCY, WHICH
EVENTUALLY REACHES A POINT OF DIMINISHING RETURNS. PRIVATE AND
PUBLIC TIME BLUR. CONSTANT ADAPTATION TO GLOBAL TIME TRAPS US
IN A SPIRAL OF MONOTONY; BOTH THE RHYTHM OF THE BODY AND OUR
PATTERNS OF THOUGHT BECOME PATCHY. WE BECOME SOCIALLY AND
MENTALLY ROOTLESS AS THERE IS NO TIME FOR OUR SOCIAL OR MENTAL
STRUCTURES TO HANG ON TO. INDEED, WE ARE BEING FORCED TO
INCREASINGLY LIVE IN A SINGLE TIME ZONE.

There have even been attempts to standardise ‘internet time’ – for example, with
Swatch ‘beat time’ which divides the day into ‘1000 beats’, each beat equal to one
decimal minute (86.4 seconds). Fortunately, neither the concept nor the watch
associated with it travelled very far.
All of this has an overpowering impact on the scale of the individual. Throughout
history, human beings have proved quite adaptable. When we fly to a different
time zone, for example, we adjust to the new time, overcome our ‘jet lag’, in a few
days. On the whole, evolution has been slow enough to provide our bodies with
relevant mechanisms to develop responses to changing circumstances. But moving
at great speed with global scope is a very recent phenomenon; there has been no
time for evolution to catch and genetically establish the necessary mechanism
for adjustment.
In postnormal times, the passage of natural time – day and night, the tempo
of the week with demarcated time for rest, the cycles of the seasons, the phases of
the moon, the annual motion of the sun through the constellation, the movements
of the star across the heavens, and our connection with the environment and the
cosmos – is replaced with digital time. We lose all connection to our environment
and the cosmos; and imagine the course of life only through speed. As Bodil Jonsson
notes, ‘digital clocks are symptomatic of a drive for precision that is relevant in both
micro and macro cosmos, but tell us nothing about our cosmos’ [32]. Digital time
drains us of all our being; our personal time is no longer ours.
 42 TIME IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

The result is that the effects become overwhelming, since neither you
nor I can function in exponential mode. On the contrary, we are very
much attached to habits, ie steady states. In spite of this, we are
becoming increasingly involved in exponentially changing processes,
and these in turn tend to lead to profound alternations in our
attitude to time. Either we feel that time is running out of control,
or else that the amount of change must have taken longer than it
has. [33]

Our sense of time is fragmented and displaced, leading to alienation from ourselves,
our families and communities, as well as nature and the cosmos.
This brings us to simultaneity, which gives time a qualitatively new dimension.
We are forced to react to a number of different, often contradictory demands – all
at once. The now consists of all the events and developments that are happening
simultaneously and demanding our attention. Crises emerge in clusters requiring
us to deal with them simultaneously. There is a limit to our capabilities for
multitasking; and anxiety, frustration and anger emerge when we cannot cope. As
we learn from relativity, simultaneity is relative. As such, different observers have
different perspectives and perceptions of now. Differences and contradictions are
thus proliferated.
But simultaneity also presents us with an opportunity. As we cannot deal with
simultaneous occurrences on our own, we are obliged to collaborate rather than
compete. A good example is provided by global efforts to develop a vaccine for
Covid-19. Despite entrenched political differences, governments and scientists
across the world worked together – simultaneously – to produce a viable vaccine.
Typically, a vaccine would take several years, if not a decade or so, to be researched,
tested, and approved. However, the short time required to produce the vaccine
also led to research based on simultaneity: phases of research, requiring testing at
different levels, were conducted in parallel. The end results were not only astonishing
but a clear demonstration of what can be achieved through collaboration at the
global level.
Speed and scope are also essential for tackling wicked problems of postnormal
times – from the prevention of planetary collapse to solving the issues of climate
change, from dealing with rampant inequalities to implementing policies of social
justice, from wallowing in decaying paradigms and disintegrating orthodoxies to
creating new paradigms and genuine future alternatives. These urgent problems
require global collaboration and timely approaches.

The End of Times?

Accelerating uncertainties come as standard in postnormal times. As such, time,
as St Augustine feared, and for whom past and future only existed in the now as
memory and expectation, becomes the site of insecurity. Those who find it difficult
to cope with insecurity and uncertainties, look for an anchor: something secure and
43 OVERVIEWS

firm to hold on to in times of turbulent change. We rely on our own beliefs and
dogmas when we try to cope with our inner most insecurities; and where relevant
dogmas do not exist, we invent them!
It is thus hardly surprising that there is a marked increase in eschatological
beliefs and movements in postnormal times. A number of Christian sects,
particularly American evangelicals, firmly hold to the dogma that we have reached
‘end times’, and Jesus will return to bring redemptive history to its ultimate
conclusion. Those who believe in the rapture, Christian Zionists amongst them,
cannot wait for the apocalyptic rapture when the faithful, dead or alive, will rise up
to the heavens to meet the Lord. A similar number of Muslim sects eagerly await the
reappearance of the Mehdi, the twelfth Imam of the Shia, who is said to have gone
into occultation during the early phase of Islamic history. On his return, he will rule
only for a handful of years to restore justice before the Day of Judgement and end of
times. Other religious traditions have comparable dogmas.
It is easy to dismiss eschatology as irrational mumbo-jumbo. But its significance
in an era of uncertainties and insecurities cannot be underestimated. American
evangelicals provide the bulk of support for the Trump presidency in the US. Christian
Zionists, who believe that the formation of the state of Israel is a prerequisite for
the Second Coming of Jesus, have played a leading role in promoting the expansion
of the settlement and the persecution of the Palestinians. Christian Zionists not
only supported and sustained the Trump presidency, but played an active part in
his administration; the most notable being Michael Pompeo, the Secretary of State.
According to Simon Tisdall, Foreign Editor of the Observer, the support for ‘Israel of
Pompeo and fellow Christian Zionists is unconditional and uncompromising. He
once told Israel, Trump was sent by God to save the Jews from the Persians. “I am
confident the Lord is at work here”’. [35]
Apocalyptic thought also played a major role in the formation, and the atrocities,
of the extremist group ISIS, who established an ‘Islamic Caliphate’ in Iraq and
Syria. The former President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, organised a regular
‘International Conference for the Preparation of the Arrival of the Mehdi’ (I know,
I was invited to one!); and conducted most of the state business on the anticipation
of Mehdi’s imminent arrival. Postnormal uncertainties will probably increase both
the number and influence of such apocalyptic movements.
The same can be said about the rampant rise of supremacist nationalism and
fascism in the US, Europe, India, Brazil, and elsewhere. Much of it is the product of
the uncertainties, and the ignorances they generate, of seeping and shifting power –
from the West to the East, from ‘the White Men’ to men and women of all shades and
colour, from monolithic polities to multiculturalism, from the middle classes to the
ultra-rich beneficiaries of globalisation and speedy capitalism, and from patriarchy
and heterosexual normalcy to barging plurality. Those who cannot deal with the
uncertainties of such power shifts seek to reduce the complex reality of postnormal
times to one-dimensional racism, cult of manufactured tradition, fetishization of
weapons and war, and distrust and hatred for all who are not ‘us’.
 44 TIME IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

‘We describe ourselves’, notes Griffiths, ‘when we think we describe time… Our
image of time is totalitarian, because the totalitarianism is in us, but one writ so
large we can hardly read it’. [35] One particular form of fascism we fail to read is
that of technological determinism: the proponents of technological Singularity, the
champions of Transhumanism. The dream here is that accelerating technological
growth will inevitably lead, very soon, to the merging of man and machine, which
will produce an explosion of intelligence, which will produce more intelligence
more and more rapidly, eventually leading to Superintelligence – and Humanity
2.00. According to Ray Kurzweil, the Singularity will happen by 2045, [36]
spelling the end time for Humanity 1.00. The resemblance here with apocalyptic
religious thought is uncanny. Singularity is a form of rapture where God is simply
replaced with technology in pursuit of bliss, perpetual happiness, and eternal life.
Transhumanism, writes Maxwell Mehlman, seeks

to provide hope in the face of death, a measure of control over the

savage aspects of nature, and meaning to its followers’ existence. No
wonder that there is a Mormon Transhumanist Association according to
whose creed transhumanism is a means of realising “diverse prophetic
visions of transfiguration, immortality, resurrection, renewal of this
world, and the discovery and creation of worlds without end. [37]

But the transhumanist dream of union of man and machine also has an established
history in futurist thought going back to the Italian fascist Futurism movement, [38]
which took different forms from 1900 to 1930s. (Notice that a popular American
futures website, which is partnered with Singularity University, is called Futurism.
com, unwittingly echoing a connection with the Italian futurism movement). Like
the transhumanists, the Italian fascist futurists were obsessed with the infusion
of man and machine. Its best delineation comes in Marinetti’s 1909 cyborg novel
Mafarka the Futurist. Mafarka is an Arabian king with imperialist ambition who
creates a mechanical son, Gazurmah, to be his immortal substitute. Gazurmah, born
without a female vulva, is carved out of oak and modelled on an airplane. He looks
dazzling in his enormous, orange cloth wings stretched over a lattice composed of
steel, bamboo, and hippopotamus sinew. Mafarka finds his coarse skin, squared jaw,
ribs of iron, and formidable metallic member alluring; and breathes life into his son
with a lingering homoerotic kiss. But his creation devours him – a fate Mafarka has
foreseen and desired so that he might be reborn in the immortal son. Gazurmah
proceeds to rape and obliterate the earth. Gazurmah is not too far removed from The
Terminator (1984). But while the Terminator is a dystopia, Martinetti’s Mafarka the
Futurist, with its aspirations of autogenesis and immortality and demonization of
women’s bodies, is presented as a distinctive utopia. Fellow traveller, Luigi Colombo
Fillia’s 1929 painting, Spirituality of Aviator, portrays a similar utopia. The aviator is
pictured as a fluid biomorphic shape embedded in a semi-transparent, tilted plane.
Man and machine become one, permeable body with fluid boundaries. The aviator’s
 45 OVERVIEWS

mystical body seems to give birth to an industrial city indicated by smoke gushing
through circular openings, carrying within their stream three small buildings. Fillia
painted a number of other notable pictures where landscape and bodies merge with
technology depicting a ‘religion of velocity’. [39]

TIME AND HISTORY DO MOVE IN CYCLES! FEAR OF UNCERTAIN TIMES,

TOTAL AND BLIND FAITH IN TECHNOLOGY AS A MECHANISM OF
SALVATION, OFTEN SERVE AS A GLUE TO BIND THE FUTURE AND
FASCISM TOGETHER.
Another commonly used weapon in the quest for fascist ideals is the notion of
freedom, a cherished ideal of neoliberals and libertarians. As political theorist Wendy
Brown notes, ‘neoliberal rationality prepared the ground for the mobilization and
legitimacy of ferocious antidemocratic forces in the second decade of the twenty-first
century’ through its unrelenting ‘assaults on constitutional democracy, on racial,
gender, and sexual equality, on public education, and on civil, nonviolent public
sphere have all been carried out in the name of both freedom and morality’ [40].
Freedom is a clarion call for libertarians fearful of losing their entitlements to the
privileges of whiteness, raging against political correctness and everything else –
from government support for the disfranchised, political equality to wearing face
masks in a time of pandemic. ‘This rage in turn becomes the consummate expression
of freedom and Americanness, or freedom and Europeanness, or freedom and the
West’. Hence: ‘Nazis, Klansmen, and other white nationalists gather publicly in
‘free speech rallies’, why an authoritarian white male supremist in the White House
is identified with freedom by his supporters because of ‘political incorrectness’,
and how decades of policies and principles of social inclusion, antidiscrimination,
and racial, sexual, and gender equality come to be tarred as tyrannical norms and
rules imposed by left-wing mobs’. This is ‘what happens when freedom is reduced
to naked assertion of power and entitlement’. [41]
Way back in 1980, the late American social scientist, and a friend of futurist
Alvin Toffler, Bertram Gross, argued that the US was about to be taken over by
a new brand of Friendly Fascism, ‘far more sophisticated than the “Caesarism”
of fascist Germany, Italy, and Japan. It would need no charismatic dictator nor
even a titular head…It would require no one-party rule, no mass fascist party,
no glorification of the State, no dissolution of legislatures, no denial of reason.
Rather, it would come slowly as an outgrowth of present trends.’ [42] In my 1995
paper, ‘Cyberspace as the Darker Side of the West’, I argued that the companies
mining cyberspace would transform into new versions of colonial corporations
such as the British East India Company and Dutch East India Company. [43] Gross
was particularly concerned about ‘new style technocrats’, who during the past
forty years have morphed into ‘tech oligarchs’; cyberspace has turned out to be a
46 TIME IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

gold mine not just for the West but also for the East. With vast wealth, power, and
control over technology, the tech oligarchs, suggests Joel Kotkin, are determined
to impose a neo-feudal order on the world. Their visions are not simply to make
money but ‘to “change the world”, replace the old physical and social structure
with “electronically augmented environment” where everything is determined
by digital code’. [44] This ‘technocratic despotism’, Kotkin argues, is not limited
to the West – but is global. And its cutting edge can be found in China, where the
‘use of artificial intelligence to regulate society and public opinion’ has become
the norm. ‘Sophisticated algorithms are employed to control everything from
legal proceedings to permission for marriage…The regime is also using facial
recognition technology and ‘social credit’ scoring, which includes everything from
credit worthiness and work performance to political reliability. [45]
Postnormal times seem to be taking us back to the future of fascism. Speed,
scope, scale can work simultaneously, to use the words of Jay Griffith, to ‘mould an
implicit fascism’. [46] Notice how rapidly fascism emerged in Myanmar, spread at
speed through social media, and led to the genocide and the flight of the Rohingyas
from the country. Or how rapidly and effectively hatred against Muslims in India is
spread via social media by the Hindu fascists. [47] Or how quickly since 2017, China
has moved and held 1.8 million Uyghurs in ‘the largest incarceration of an ethno-
religious minority since the Holocaust’. [48] Or how quickly the American radical
right and evangelical Christianity became indistinguishable from each other. [49]
In postnormal times, the far right, as Cas Mudde shows, has been ‘normalised’
and gone mainstream. It spreads its ‘pathological normalcy’ over the globe with
great speed reaching in scale to individuals and communities so that no country
is immune from far-right politics. Moreover, the boundaries between far-right
and other ideologies and ideologues, such as the libertarians and neoliberals,
are blurred. [50]

The Broken Arrow

Speed is also the enemy of thought and reflection, of considered knowledge –
anything that takes time to reflect, think through, and mature. In postnormal
times, conventional modes of production of knowledge are radically transformed.
Big Data generates gargantuan information that contains not only Popperian
Objective Knowledge [51] but also fake news, alternative facts, manufactured fake
science, false history, conspiracy theories, the paranoia of anonymous on-line
mobs, and ‘bullshit’ [52] – all of which are incorporated in knowledge. Furthermore,
knowledge is also merged with different varieties of ignorances: vincible ignorance
produced by racist algorithms, destructive advances such as development of
autonomous weapons of mass destruction, and weaponised disciplines; and
invincible ignorance, which is a product of our Unthought – things we never think
about because they are outside the domain of dominant paradigms, disciplinary
boundaries, theories, principles, assumptions, and axioms. Emergent knowledge is
thus shrouded in the smog of ignorance that is not easy to negotiate. [53]
 47 OVERVIEWS

In conventional Western epistemology, ignorance is considered an outlier,

a bad epistemic practice. But in postnormal times, ignorance is not just a partial
shadow but the total eclipse: it covers, surrounds, obscures, and shrouds what could
be regarded as knowledge. Ignorance thus emerges ‘not as a feature of neglectful
epistemic practice but as a substantive epistemic practice itself’. [54] Established
paradigms, now overburdened with ignorance, failing and dying, are thus unable to
produce coherent, inclusive, accounts of the past nor permit clear and viable visions
of the future. We enter the domain of time-slice epistemology where evidence is
based on self-rationalised beliefs and irrationality becomes the dominant theme.
There is, writes philosopher Sarah Moss,

‘NO CONNECTION BETWEEN YOUR PAST MENTAL STATES AND WHAT

YOU CURRENTLY BELIEVE, OR BETWEEN YOUR FUTURE MENTAL STATES
AND WHAT YOU ARE CURRENTLY DOING’. CONSEQUENTLY, TIME IS
EPISTEMOLOGICALLY BROKEN.

But epistemologically broken time still has a tenuous connection between

the past and the future in the here and now – albeit, based on fading paradigms,
ignorance fuelled epistemology that sustains domination and exploitation,
manufactured fields of normalcy that make us think that all is okay, and self-justified
rationality. But in postnormal times, time is also ontologically broken, which
makes the connection between the present – the now – and the future even more
problematic. ‘With the everyday idea of time’, writes C K Raju, ‘the idea of individual
humans as the cause of events is the following. The future comes into existence, and
the choices one makes now decides which future comes into existence. This coming
into existence, and passing out of existence, is fundamental to the mundane notion
of cause; this belief is the basis of action in everyday life.’ [56] But in postnormal
times, where complexity is the norm and we are often on the edge of chaos, there
is seldom a direct cause and effect relationship. As Jordi Serra notes, ‘nowadays
phenomena are the result of complex networks of causality in which many causal
factors are intermingled; in such cases, action on just one element is not only futile
but often also quite dangerous. Action on A triggers myriads of reactions in B, C,
D all the way to Z; and many of these reactions can acquire chaotic proportions at
lightning speed.’ [57] As an effect may not naturally follow the cause, the causal link
between the past and the future breaks down – leading to ontologically broken time.
We are, however, not in the province of total indeterminism. In a completely
indeterminate world, ‘past and present would not decide the future. There would
be no rational way to judge the future consequences of one’s present actions’, notes
Raju. Thus, ‘there would be no place at all for voluntary action’, and ‘it would be
futile to speak about choosing rationally between different futures’. [58] While
epistemologically and ontologically broken time destroys conventional notions
48 TIME IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

of rationality as well as the standard way of perceiving reality, it does not abolish
free will or agency in postnormal times where the accent is firmly on complexity.
In a complex system, each member of the system has the potentials of starting a
chain reaction within the possibility of many different actions: a vegetable trader
who sets himself on fire starts the Arab spring, a video of police abuse starts a
movement, and a shy teenager can give new life to the climate change movement.
Collectively, the set of individual potentials provide agency and create possible
space for cooperative actions. This space is itself dynamic; individual members of
the system come together, interact, learn, produce new learning, and construct new
internal and external relations that lead to further change. Complex systems self-
organise to create a new order. What it means is that we need to see the current
reality as shifting and changing in a complex dynamic: the present is like a flock of
birds moving in unison, in full flight!
But where is the flock of birds going? Without a causal relationship, the present
does not provide us with a route, or guidance, for the future. Given that the future
is unfolding on, and constantly interacting with, the extended present, it is ever-
present; and ceases to be a destination. The future is entrenched in the now: not
simply as trends and emerging issues, but more importantly as a complex, endlessly
changing entity: a product of cyclic time overlapping linear time, an amalgam of
extended present constantly being impacted by familiar and unthought futures, a
compound of broken ontological and epistemological time, infused with knowledge
and ignorance in equal measure, and a continuum of fluctuating contradictory
and chaotic developments. This demands a fundamental rethink of how we view
the future.
A useful metaphor is to think of the future as a garden: a purview to cultivate,
a space to shape an appropriate and healthy environment, a place to cherish. [59]
A garden heals broken time for once established, and continuously and adequately
looked after, a garden has no ‘end’. In the garden there is time for everything:
when to plant, when to water the plants, when to cut the flowers, when to prune
and remove weeds. You have to prepare the soil and make sure it is right for the
kind of plants you want to grow. You have to remove dead plants, cut down a bush
or tree when they begin to suffocate other plants. And when you are all done, you
start all over again. There are linear time and cyclic time in the garden. It may
all look tranquil, but a garden is boundlessly changing. And it has diversity – the
essence of life. There are a variety of hardy perennials that flower year after year.
There are the annuals and the biennials that have to be planted in season. Some
plants that provide various colours of foliage, or hedges and borders, or climb up
fences, or play architectural roles. There are fruit trees, trees that provide fragrant
and colourful flowers and trees that fix the soil and provide shade. There are the
grasses so essential for the lawns. The diversity and time dimension of the garden
is beautifully captured in the poem, ‘Time and the Garden’, by Yvor Winters. The
opening verses read:
 49 OVERVIEWS

The spring has darkened with activity.

The future gathers in vine, bush, and tree:
Persimmon, walnut, loquat, fig, and grape,
Degrees and kinds of colour, taste, and shape.
These will advance in their due series, space
The season like a tranquil dwelling-place. [60]

And what would a garden be without the proverbial birds and the bees? And those
worms and insects that both enrich the soil and require some form of pest control.
And all those wonderful aquatic features with gently streaming water. The thing
about a garden is that all this truly monumental variety of life exists in symbiosis:
nourishing each other and ensuring the overall survival of the garden. But the
garden is also under constant threat from proliferating weeds, pests and plant
diseases, excessive use of pesticides, wildlife, aggressive non-native plants, drought
and, of course, climate change. And new threats emerge all the time!
Like the garden, the future has to be continuously cultivated. And the cultivation
has to be collective – we are all gardeners and protectors of all our futures. The
garden we are talking about is a public garden – open to all, involving everyone. We
all – people from all cultures and perspectives – have to clear the dead and dying
paradigms, notions, ideas, principles and dogmas. New paradigms, notions and
ideas need to be planted. The poisonous weeds of ignorances have to be removed
– again and again. The diversity and plurality of the future has to be ensured and
sustained. Crops for the future generations have to be planted. New and emerging
threats have to be identified and tackled. The process is ongoing without an end
state. And just as gardens retain memory, futures too need to preserve what is good
and healthy in traditions, what provides us with our identity, and ensures our being.
Of course, the metaphor has its limits, and should not be stretched too far. A
garden, even a public one is tamed and restricted in nature. In the garden, change
is slow; postnormal futures, on the other hand, change rapidly and continuously.
Unlike the future, a blooming garden is not subject to the unthought – unless,
of course, the unthought comes as the complete destruction of the garden. But
the essence of the metaphor is clear: futures, like gardens, have to be nurtured
and cultivated constantly and continuously, even when there is a threat of
environmental collapse.

Some of Our Tomorrows

Time is as much a part of the real world as it is a part of our mental constructions;
and the dynamic of the real world often transforms our perceptions. In postnormal
times, speed and accelerating change is distorting both our perception of reality
and our perception of time. Consequently, the future is discounted. We are
presented with potential futures as The Inevitable, [61] a priori given fate that
cannot be escaped. Indeed, the future has been conquered to such an extent that
even dreaming about the future seems futile, as an advertisement for a Honda
 50 TIME IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

e-electric car makes clear. ‘Dreams’, it says, over images of a beatific woman chasing
a speeding futuristic ‘concept car’, ‘it all begins with a blank page’. ‘Ask yourself’,
the advertisement urges, ‘is a dream still even a dream if you can drive it?’. So why
dream about the future when your dreams have already been realised; the future is
foreclosed even before you have imagined an alternative. The fear of collapse, the
real dangers posed by climate change and the violation of planetary boundaries,
lead to similar perceptions of closure. After all, existence is the foremost axiom or
piece of reality which shapes the structure of thinking; and the threats to our own
existence leads to paralyses both in our thoughts and our actions.

WE ARE TERRIFIED WITH THE GIGANTIC NATURE OF OUR PROBLEMS,

WITH POTENTIALLY LOOMING COLLAPSES, WITH THE DEVASTATING
IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE, AND FEEL IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO DO
ANYTHING ABOUT THEM. HENCE, THE WRITING-OFF OF MACRO
ALTERNATIVE FUTURES.

When we see postnormal change moving in our direction, we triumphantly declare

‘the end of history’; when it moves in the other direction, or when we cannot cope
with the uncertainties that change usher, we announce ‘the end of times’. The idea
of obliteration is linked to the perception that we have sinned, made grave mistakes,
and deserve collapse or end of times. ‘It served us right’, says Jean-Claude Carriere.
‘A sense which acceleration obviously makes sharper, for any engine which goes
faster and faster can only blow up in the end’. [62] It all amounts to either self-
induced or scammed abandoning of agency and hope.
Postnormal times does not spell the end of times through potential collapses,
even though the threats are real and urgent. Why? Because positive change can
come at breakneck speed. Consider how much changed in just a few months with
the arrival of Covid-19: time stopped even though the clocks ticked, the Earth rested
for a short time, and the planet began to recover quickly. We have the agency to
usher such timely changes. Indeed, a major function of postnormal times theory is
to focus on agency and generate pathways for navigating our way out of postnormal
times. We need the self-belief that we can actually change things. As for the end of
times through allegedly divine prophesies – well, that will come when the sun starts
its journey to become a supernova.
‘We all want to have known the time of all times, the hinge of destiny, the real
break with the past, the transition with no going back’, says Umberto Eco. [63]
Postnormal times mark that ‘real break’, it is a transition with no turning back. So,
it should not be a surprise that it does mean the end of particular types of time. It is
the end of time for dominant paradigms of modernity, capitalism, postmodernism,
and many associated concepts and notions. Time is up for ‘Western civilisation’ as
51 OVERVIEWS

we have known it, along with the speed-based life of excess it has globalised. Time is
also coming to an end for neoliberalism, libertarianism, and all the other pernicious
isms that the West has imposed on Others throughout recent history. It is the
beginning of the end for obsessive individualism, self-centred notions of freedom,
and ‘the diabolical character of modern liberty’ that seeks Freedom from Reality. [64]
It is the beginning of the end of white privilege (despite the nihilism, fatalism, and
resentment of some white folk). It is the middle of the end of patriarchy. And it is so
utterly painful for some! In postnormal times, there are no unassailable – physical,
conceptual or mental – structures: all can crumble in front of our eyes; and ‘we have
run out of time to build new things in old ways’. [65]
But the old ways continue. Not just in our thought patterns, in our, to use the
words of David Andress, ‘selfish wickedness’, but also in the old ways of imposing
power and values on others and thus exiling their futures to an arid fate. One
effect of accelerating change in postnormal times is the loss of memory. Past and
futures exist in the now as memory and expectation. But rapid change undermines
time as memory. We lose our ability to understand and retain tradition or learn
from history. The life-enhancing tradition of other cultures is either denigrated,
suppressed, or written out of history. A sense of ‘entitlement to greatness’, based on
colonisation and stolen wealth, is used to justify the status quo – not so much out
of nostalgia but, as David Andress points out, from a distorted, demented version of
the past. [66] Time, as a phenomenon of memory, is thus drained of expectation as
well as anticipation.
‘We wrote the script of our time’, says Griffiths, ‘in shorthand. Literally 00. And
gave ourselves short shrift with this shorthand; sold ourselves short.’ [67] To keep
all futures, micro and macro, plural, inclusive, and open to all viable possibilities,
we need to rewrite the script of time, by long hand, with creativity and imagination,
in slow time. This process begins by replacing ‘me’ with ‘us’. So that I, along with all
others, can say: I have time, therefore I am.
52 TIME IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

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56. Raju, C. K. (2003). The eleven pictures of time: The physics, philosophy and politics
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the End of Time. London: Allen Lane p.224.

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the End of Time. London: Allen Lane p.223.

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67. Griffiths, Y. (2004). A sideways look at time. London: Penguin p.125.

SEA GLASS
Liam Mayo

Have you ever walked along a beach collecting shells? In my home, this is one of
our favourite activities. My sons, little buckets in hand, run down to where the
water meets the sand, then, with the beautiful precision-in-chaos so endearing to
children, carefully scour the sand for the shells that capture their attention. There
are rules to this enterprise. We know the shells that are important to the local
ecology need be left alone to replenish. However, those shells that are in abundance
(in our place the pipi shell) are fair game. Oh yes, and any rubbish found must
always go in the bin. Every now and then one of my sons will come across a colourful
piece of glass, brilliantly distinguished, nestled against the white sand. ‘Look Dad!
Look!’ How long the glass has been in the ocean, exposed to the gritty saltwater and
the coarse sands of the seabed, will determine the shape it takes at the shoreline.
Glass that has only recently found its way to the sea is still translucent, fine and
sharp at the edges. Glass that has been in the sea longer is smooth to the touch,
rounded and opaque; almost like a stone, but not quite a stone. Time, quite literally,
shapes the glass. ‘That’s a funny looking shell.’ The first time a piece of glass was
uncovered we talked about it: ‘it’s not a shell, it’s a piece of glass.’ Glass that has
been manufactured in a factory somewhere, by someone, used, then thrown away.
So, is it rubbish? Well, it is rubbish. Then it should be put in the bin. Well, it may
have already been thrown in the bin by someone, somewhere, but it still ended up
back here on our beach. It is beautiful. The colour and the way the sun light reflects
against the irregular contours of the surface. ‘What is glass made of?’ Glass is made
from sand, sand that is heated at incredibly high temperatures and then as it cools
it is shaped into objects that we can use, like bottles, windows, or mobile phones.
‘So, we should leave the glass here on the beach then?’ Well, I guess that depends on
how you look at it.
To be artificial is to be not of nature, to be made by humans. More specifically,
artificiality is to be manufactured by humanity as a means to replicate that which
occurs in nature. Here, I seek to explore the epistemological and ontological
artificialities that currently govern the human condition; the pieces of glass that have
washed up onto the beach of our consciousness. In particular I look at Modernity’s
constructions of subjectivity and objectivity and how ubiquitous technologies are
not only inadvertently undermining the long-held mythologies of Modernity but
exposing the fragility of a society devoid of sanctity at the hands of secularism.
What are we to make of all these objects that surround us? My endeavour is not to
 58 SEA GLASS

add to the profound bodies of work that already exist in arenas of epistemology and
ontology. Rather, my interest is change, and contemporary innovations in Western
thought that make problematic the providences that govern our contemporary
condition. My agenda is to pull on the threads of these interventions as a means to
explore potentialities for a universalistic approach to studying the future. Indeed,
this endeavour is couched in the very notion that humanity is undergoing significant
transformative change – the very nature of change is changing. However, it is my
hope that by corralling some of the epistemological and ontological assumptions
that predicate our view of change, we may be better equipped to navigate this time
of flux. I concede, and will leave you with, the ethical and moral implications of
such a project; with a simple question, with an understanding of the artificiality
of our world, from where do we source the fundamental foundations to compel
humanity through change?
As time is experienced in a sensory matter, it is epistemologically conditioned.
Time is relational and transcendent; we ebb and flow with the tides of change,
we sense it, anticipate it and respond to it. These changes are rhythmic and have
discernible patterns that hold powerful mythic narratives. With these patterns we
may trace the manner with which reality is constructed from one epoch to the next.
Modern time is framed by technology. Technology, for the modernist, has enabled our
evolution out of superstition and irrationality to dominance and universal conquest:
the hunter gather became the agrarian, who became industrialist, who became the
capitalist. Modernist time is linear; as neat as an ice cube. Its foundations are set in
the Enlightenment values of reason, rationality, anthropocentrism, and secularism.

MODERNIST TIME, TECHNOLOGICAL TIME, DOES NOT SEEK TO

TRANSCEND THE PATTERNS OF CHANGE, IT SEEKS TO OVERCOME THEM.
WITH TECHNOLOGY, TIME CAN BE CAPTURED, OWNED, AND CONTROLLED.
THIS IS THE MYTH OF MODERNIST PROGRESS.
Within this account, technology is value neutral, apolitical, and functional.
Advanced technologies mean advancements in progress. Deconstructionists,
with their variety of means for scuttling the epistemological ship, make these
assumptions problematic, pointing out the potentiality for technologies to influence
and subordinate portions of the community. Amongst them, Marxists, critical
theorists, post-colonialist, and feminist scholars place power and the political firmly
on the agenda of technology, articulating how technological determinism favours a
particular worldview – usually that of Western men who preference empirical ways
of knowing the world. Indeed, critiques of this nature gain currency in an epoch
where the ubiquity of technologies means that existence can, for the first time,
imagine itself immaterially socialised in an adjacent reality. This manifestation,
while remaining true to our mythology of progress, implicates notions of selfhood,
59 OVERVIEWS

knowledge, truth, and reality, that are intertwined in the Modernity myth; with
technology those things we once held true grow more complex. This increasing
complexity is powerfully linked to the manner with which we sense time, suddenly
it feels as though time moves faster, decisions are more urgent, consequences more
dire. For the media theorist and writer Douglas Rushkoff, we are experiencing a
narrative collapse brought on by the media and culture all around us. Specifically,
Rushkoff takes issue with the instantaneous and omnipresent forces of social
media that are enabled through ever expanding digital technologies. [1] American
academic Tom Nichols agrees, claiming that what we are witnessing the death
of the expert – ‘a Google-fuelled, Wikipedia-based, blog-sodden collapse of any
division between professionals and laypeople, teachers and students, knowers and
wonderers – in other words, between those with achievement in their area and
those with none’. [2]
The psychologist John Vervaeke locates Rushkoff’s narrative collapse and
Nichols’ death of the expert, firmly within Western culture, rooted in the erosion
of a unified identity once held together by ‘god’. [3] The divine, in Modernity’s
worldview, has become something non-rational and arbitrary, almost absurd; the
minds most secure and meaningful connection is no longer with the world but
with itself. He calls this, the meaning crisis, the collective conditioned response
of anxiety, alienation, disconnection, and disenfranchisement in the face of the
emergent challenges owed to significant societal change. This is a loss of normative
agency and emblematic of the estrangement of individuals from one another and
the infertility of their ecology with the world. In these times of significant change,
according to Vervaeke, we are surrounded by strangers, alone in our intent, acting
with determined purpose in a world that fundamentally lacks it. We have thrown
the glass out, but it has washed back up on our shore and we don’t know what to
do with it.
Futurist and cultural critic Ziauddin Sardar’s postnormal times has provided me
a point of departure in this space. By situating ours as a transitional age, Sardar
has told a story of the failings of the myth of Modernity and, in doing so, speaks
to the visceral uncertainty that captures the collective sense of – ‘what is going
on?’ His litany is that of collapsing worldviews, poised eloquently between the
simple symmetry of ‘post’ and ‘normal’, he articulates precisely that that which
we are experiencing is not normal, or, at least what we expect as normal, but it is
not exactly abnormal either. [4] With postnormal times, Sardar contends, we are
suspended in an uncomfortable space between the no longer and the not yet. This
experience, framed by poetic alliteration (chaos, complexity, and contradiction)
is conceptually pleasing; it provides a frame within which to shade context. And
it is these shadings that help us make sense of change. Globalisation enhances
complexity, stock markets are chaotic, and policymaking is contradictory in the
face of emergent challenges.
There is familiarity here; by emphasising the change of the present – ipso facto –
potentialities of the future are opened. But there is risk too. If the future is both
60 SEA GLASS

the principle for action and the active space for the realization of potentialities,
obligation is suspended. There is an unexplained cognitive dissonance between
changing reality as experienced and change as imagined; the future always seems
like something that is going to happen rather than something that is emergent. In
this context, the future presents an epistemological obstacle to eliciting action in
the present; it is a thing that is rationalised into existence, the secular bastion of
hope that remains afar, an indictor by which we will progress, rather than a call to
action in the present. This is using a modernist lens to fix the failings of Modernity;
if I throw the glass out, it ceases to exist, a problem for someone else, somewhere
else, to worry about, tomorrow. But, with this glass on our beach, in our hands,
the question becomes – as my son prodded with curiosity – what do we do with it?
Indeed, how are we to comprehend these postnormal times?
The cultural theorist Michel Foucault affords perspective here. He reads human
history through the different way’s cultures have developed knowledge about
themselves; through economics, biology, psychiatry, medicine, and penology. [5]
This work is built upon the historian of science Gaston Bachelard’s proposition of
the epistemological break and epistemological obstacle – obstacle epistemologique
and rupture epistemologique – in The Formation of the Scientific Mind. Gaston
connotes the rupture of epistemology as a sporadic moment where accepted norms
are distinctively broken away from. [6] The academic A.T Kingsmith elaborates:
‘the rupture is evasive, fleeting and interruptive, and makes problematic the
epistemological systems of truth, reason, justice, and morality, a re-inscription of
knowledge that branches off into different ways of being and thinking, theorizing
and living’. [7] More than a rejection of the old, a rupture is a break away and a
move beyond. Thus, the future does not arrive in a temporal sense, rather it arrives
chiefly through social fragmentation. Certainly, this approach exposes the very
nature of power and the role of traditional historians, as purveyors of their field
in suppressing social mutations, displacements and transformations, in favour of
the continuity of long-range historical connections. The prototypical example of
the construction of continuity is the manner Western knowledge is constructed
– giving us the neat dotted line from Plato to Descartes to Modernity. Conversely,
Galileo, Newton, Lavoisier, Einstein, and Mendeleev exemplify the discontinuity
between epistemic configuration from one epoch to the next.
This illustrates the nuance between American historian of science Thomas
Kuhn’s paradigmatic shift and the rupture. Kuhn locates the rupture at the edge
of the next scientific paradigm, quarantined from irregularities, whereas the
epistemological rupture wallows in, what Kingsmith calls, the ‘sea of anomalies’. As
such, with each rupture a new epistemological structure emerges, and a re-reading
of reality is required. This is a shift in understanding from that which has been
considered normal, to the discovery and familiarisation of a new normal. This re-
reading of reality is a perpetual affair; it requires prudent, conscious, and recurring
attention. As Paul Eisenstein and Todd McGowan argue in their book Rupture: On the
Emergence of The Political, epistemologies can never be natural or complete, there is
 61 OVERVIEWS

no equilibrium waiting to be discovered, no totality that negates the processes of

change. [8] Rather, what we have is Kingsmith’s sea of anomalies; the tide that rises
and falls, the river ebbs and flows;

‘FROM SITUATIONISM’S IMAGINING OF A WORLD OF RANDOM

MOVEMENTS AND STRUCTURES, TO DECONSTRUCTIONISM’S REALISING
OF THE PERPETUAL MOTION OF BODIES AND IDEAS, TO EMPIRICISM’S
ENVISAGING OF THE INVENTION OF BELIEFS AND HABITS – RUPTURE’S
SHARED POINT OF DEPARTURE IS A PROCESS OF CREATIVITY AND
IMAGINATION THAT BREAKS FROM WHAT IS ASSUMED TO BE TRUE’.
The primary contention of the notion of rupture is that of process. This
process involves memory – the non-lineal ecosystems that drive our, personal and
collective, conditioned responses that are evoked by our senses. As the historian
and futurist Marcus Bussey states, by giving voice to the sense of memory we begin
the emancipatory process of uncovering the manner in which culture and context
has altered, manipulated or crafted our personal and collective sense of the present,
and as such ‘gain a modicum of control [and] become a little less governed by our
environments’. [9] In this way, we frame postnormal times as rupture, rather than
rapture, opening a space for transformation and optimism; this is the peeling back
and opening of opportunities, to new ways of knowing, and indeed new ways of
being. The challenge here is to find ways to inhabit the rupture without falling back
into a secure sense of identity, or nostalgia. This means we have to get comfortable
with being uncomfortable; sensing the rupture is the art of acculturating to flux,
dancing with the dynamics of change. Certainly, even my four-year-old son has
learned that glass should be recycled.
The rupture has ontological implications. Whilst it is the construction of
knowledge in the virtual realm that stimulate the meaning crisis, our imminent
rupture, it is digital technologies, the vast complexity of objects designed, built,
and maintained that enable the transmission of virtuality, which alters the manner
by which we perceive reality. Satellites, submarine cables, antennas, poles, cables,
nodes, routers, desktop computer, laptops, tablets, mobile phones, and modems
have become the access points by which we enter and explore an ever-expanding
realm, stepping from a physical world, steeped in well-defined and predictable
boundaries, into a new realm of pure communication, devoid of clear boundaries,
where rules are continuing to evolve. These objects, the tools of our abstraction,
imply new and frequently abnormal definitions of space, volume, surface, and
distance where connection now defies the traditional meaning of community. The
media theorist Rosanne Stone calls these our ‘prosthetics’, objects of industrial
manifestation whose intimacy with our bodies alters our perception of reality.
 62 SEA GLASS

A great deal of research and development, design and marketing go into

ensuring users seamlessly transition into new objects – adopt their new prosthetics.
Design choices are aimed to de-emphasise function and emphasise the aesthetic
beauty of new technologies; all the while reaffirming essentiality for modern life.
Capitalist mythology buoys us here, as digital technologies become objects of our
desire. Hard, firm, slim, mysterious, curvaceous, spectacles of allure that yearn to be
touched. The aesthetic experience merges with the act of interfacing. This puts an
uncanny spin on the aesthetic experience and new forms of subjectivity emerge. As
the film and media scholar, Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli points out, what characterizes the
new personal and person mediating screens is uncertainty about what constitutes
the screen: it is both a surface and a material infrastructure; a window and a shade;
an interface marked by the presence of an image and an invisible set of processes
that use this same image or interface to disguise its own presence. [10]
This places us in what Foucault called a ‘fictitious position’, where the viewer
transforms the screen into an object, but the mise-en-scene installs the spectator in
the non-place of pure representation of that essential absence, that never ceases
to be inhabited. Thus, the aesthetic experience is altered with digital technologies;
the body is now stripped of its modernist presuppositions as a locus of sensation,
perception, and recollection.

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES, OBJECTS, ARE TOOLS OF ABSTRACTION;

COMMUNITIES ARE MEDIATED BY TECHNOLOGICAL PROSTHETICS OF
PRESENCE, AND THE QUALITY OF OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THESE
OBJECTS REMAINS QUANTIFIABLE THROUGH THE LENS OF MODERNIST
MYTHOLOGY. HOW ARE WE TO RATIONALISE OUR RELATIONSHIP
WITH OBJECTS THAT SEEMINGLY FRAGMENT THE BEDROCK OF OUR
UNDERSTANDINGS OF REALITY?

In his 1919 essay, The Uncanny, Sigmund Freud seeks to conceptualise the
uncanny as feelings of unpleasantness and repulsion, distinct from the traditional
notion of the sublime as an ennobling experience. For Freud, his undertaking is
to untangle the minds relationship with the familiar and the manner with which
rationalist claims to reality are undermined through the uncanny. Throughout,
the distinction between the real and fantastic aspects of the uncanny becomes
increasingly blurred; in the closing Freud denotes the uncanny as an explicitly
real emotion that is nevertheless a response to the objective world, thus making it
ungraspable through the clinical terms imbued through the empirical case studies
of his broader canon of work; an acknowledgement that there are other forms of
knowing and being outside empirical constructs. [11]
63 OVERVIEWS

Back on the beach we examine the piece of glass; is it glass or a colourful shell?
Was it part of a glass bottle or a windowpane? Or something else altogether? Where
was it made and where did it come from? What was its purpose? How did it end up
in the sea? How did it end up on our beach? Where did the sand that constitute its
make-up come from? Where was it supposed to go? Why this colour as opposed
to another colour? Did someone love it before it was discarded? Or did someone
discard it because it was unloved?
Freud’s uncanny is an embrace of the mysticism of the object, or the radical
otherness of reality, bringing into focus the unknown to the knowable, the unreal
to the real. The uncanny, like the epistemological rupture, provides an opening
here, a crack in our conditioning, to pry open and explore deeper. It indicates an
ever-growing awareness of the indistinguishability between fantastic and real
stimulation and provides a conceptual vehicle to investigate our relationship with
the world. The philosopher Timothy Morton argues strongly for the importance
of uncanniness, for allowing space for strangeness in intimacy, in which other
beings can be their strange selves, ‘strange strangers’. [12] For Morton these
beings are everywhere and everything: people, animals, trees, chairs, desks,
sports cars, skyscrapers, and microbes. His goal is to, philosophically, make the
inanimate, animate. [13] [14]
Bussey argues, in parallel, for an anticipatory aesthetic, that generates the space
that is open and co-evolving toward conditions of reciprocal materialisations.
What he is describing here is not the process of Being but the process of Becoming.
We should distinguish between the two. The Enlightenment enterprise was to
universalise a hierarchy of Being: God/Man/Nature and human/animal/mineral.
With this, the advancement of the sciences and the humanities, which, couched
deeply in Kant’s notion of correlationism, built ways of Being on the assumption
that things cannot be realized until they are correlated by the correlator. This
conceptually universalised human perception, from which sets of principles and
values were developed and disseminated that not only affirmed human perception
but reaffirmed the primacy of reality through human knowing alone. This
advancement is perpetuated through the process of which Descartes terms ‘the
severing.’; whereby reality (the human-correlated world) and the real (ecological
symbiosis of human and nonhuman parts of the biosphere) are dislocated and
held at odds by an impermeable membrane quarantining the correlator and
the corralatee. Being human, in this sense, is to sever ties between humans and
non-humans through sophisticated instruments and scientific research of
Modernity. This act of severing has moved us from Palaeolithic cultures through
to Modernity, supporting our subordination of First Nations peoples and non-
humans and providing us the landscape for the colonisation of cultures, ecologies,
and futures. Thus, this way of Being has been domesticated through Modernity’s
civilising process.
Quite conversely, the process of Becoming is more closely aligned to what social
theorist Dianne Coole calls new materialist ontology, ‘a process of materialisation
64 SEA GLASS

in which matter literally matters itself … this is not, then, the dead, inert, passive
matter of the mechanist, which relied on an external agent – human or divine – to
set it in motion. Rather, it is a materialisation that contains its own energies and
forces of transformation. It is self-organising, sui generis. Matter is lively, vibrant,
dynamic’. [15]
Further, and complimentary to my position on the epistemological rupture,
Coole’s materiality is not causally determined; forms are not as guaranteed,
unassailable, or as stable as they might appear. Indeed, like the recurring nature of
the rupture, they need always to be reappraised within any particular context, along
with their underlying ontological assumptions, lest they become reified or taken for
granted. The epistemological manoeuvre of new materialism is that object relations
are thinkable because they are real, even if withdrawn and unknowable. Here, we
are far from the Enlightenment ontologisation of the relationship between subject
and object. The new materialist ontology seeks to animate the human relationship
with matter, to expand our sense of agency so to involve the interplay of human-
non-human in co-creative works of materialisation. If new materialism is moving
to a process of becoming, then our notion of subjectivity too becomes a process:
fluid, pores, open, and coexistent.
Indian social theorist, Ananta Kumar Giri, calls this weak ontology ‘which urges
us to realise that ontological cultivation is not only a cultivation of mastery of the
self, but also cultivation of its humility, fragilities, weakness, and servanthood
facilitating blossoming of non-sovereignty and shared sovereignties… Weak
ontology helps us realise that both identities and differences have inbuilt limitations
and they ought to realise their own weakness as a starting point for communication
and sharing through cultivation of weak identities and weak differences’. [16] This
weakness suggests new possibilities for subject formation. Morton’s notion of the
‘mesh’ is relevant here, as it describes the interdependence and interconnectedness
of all living and non-living things in a way which gives equal value to the holes in
the network and the threading between actors within that network. In doing so,
Morton keeps open a space for the uncanniness of our intimacy with the world and
with other beings.
Morton’s position is one of objective universality; ‘the hard matter of home is
also the surface of some star – at once right there and somewhere, anywhere else.’
He posits that the mesh is ‘vast yet intimate’, it simultaneously extends outward
and inward, with no centre, edges, order, or hierarchy. Morton points to the world
of biology, applying this system of view to lifeforms; lifeforms are made up of other
lifeforms, the theory of symbiosis and lifeforms derive from other life forms, the
theory of evolution. With the mesh, Morton claims, any notions of ‘inside’ and
‘outside’, ‘close’ and ‘far’, ‘large’ and ‘small’ lose their meaning as relative terms. ‘The
world looks as it does because it has been shaped by life forms every bit as much as
life forms have been shaped by their environmental conditions.’ Thus, according
to Morton, we need to find new ways of being together in the world – subject and
object – that go beyond modernist constructs of the self and self-interest.
 65 OVERVIEWS

In the present context, we reflect on our relationship with digital technologies.

I shift my thinking from seeing my mobile phone as a tool, as a device, as a piece
of technology, rather as an object that shares the ‘mesh’ with me. It, along with my
computer, my modem, indeed, every other part of technology that I come in contact
with, all hold space and are part of my universe. They are designed in offices, crafted
in studios, and constructed in factories; they have their own distinct subjectivity,
and they have their own place in the coexistence of my reality; they exist as much
as I exist. When I think of my mobile phone in such a way, its birth in the factory, its
delivery to me in the shop, I am forced to conceive of its death; what happens to it in
death. I may throw it in the bin, it may go into a land fill, indeed it may be recycled,
but it continues to exist elsewhere, out of my purview. Its matter, its energy, its
essence, although in a different embodiment, goes on in our shared universe. In
reflecting upon this, I give voice to the object; the mobile phone exists both in
present time, but also in past and in future time (the mercury in its battery will last
up to 250,000 years).
Yet, object universality, within the confines of Modernity, poses problematic
moral consequences. The synthesis of subject and object, human and object, whilst
claiming equal ontological standing, may be misconstrued as the malevolent
process of reification; the reduction of one entity to another’s fantasy about it,
for example. Critics of new materialism and object orientated ontology point out
that, in this proposed framework, when executed through a quasi-religious and
premodern discourse, human agency is reduced to thing agency. Personal and
political responsibility is difficult to sustain with a flat ontology, they maintain, as
agency cannot be located outside the human sphere, in the material, non-human
world. The philosopher Slavej Žižek, in his book Absoute Recoil, calls this ‘a kind of
spiritualism without gods’. [17]
However, this very critique fails to acknowledge the confines within which
it operates; it is a criticism that continues to reinforce the frameworks that have
been in place from the Enlightenment, and the frameworks that are now failing to
respond to transformative change.

OBJECT UNIVERSALITY IS A QUEST TO EXPERIENCE REALITY

UNMEDIATED BY SIGNIFIERS, TO DO AWAY WITH THE CONFINEMENTS OF
MODERNITY (AND POSTMODERNITY) – KICK OFF OUR SHOES AND RUN
OUR TOES THROUGH THE SANDS OF THE REAL WORLD.

Where Modernity has created distance between us and the things of the world,
new ontological approaches offer us the opportunity to regain intimacy with our
world. Agency here becomes about how we qualify (and quantify) the value of our
relationship with objects; the lens through which we examine ethics and morality
shifts from the agent to the relationship’s agents maintain within one another.
66 SEA GLASS

To achieve this however, I argue, requires a new mythological underpinning to

guide our process of Becoming. We need to undo the rationalism that has sanitized
our view of the world. That is, we should seek to re-mystify the world.
Vervaeke remarks that while it is necessary to feel that the world is consistently
intelligible, it is also necessary to have our sense of the world pulled periodically
from underneath us. ‘Insights emerge from the wreckage of this experience. It
allows our perspective to reframe itself around a fuller appreciation of reality, like
stepping from behind a camera, or losing your footing only to regain it with more
traction’. Without a doubt, the world view of Modernity is collapsing and leaving in
its place a void yet to be filled. This is not to say that Modernity itself is collapsing.
Of course, it may reimagine itself and grow through this period of change. But our
current Modernist lens is becoming increasingly opaque; washed by the salt and
sands of the sea. My endeavour here has been to highlight a variety of ways that
contemporary innovations have sought to reconstitute our ways of knowing and
being in the world.
The way we know and be in the world is artificial; it is made by humans. The
ubiquitous technologies that support this way of being and knowing are also
artificial. We share our world with objects, yet, whilst we approach them as tools,
they will remain outside of us, othered in a manner that subjugates their existence.
What is required is a shift from Being to Becoming. Understanding this, we may
see the current epoch of transformational change as a crack – an opportunity – to
pry open and explore deeper the epistemological and ontological artificialities that
have long governed us. Moreover, it is my hope, that through this understanding,
we may be better equipped to navigate these postnormal times, toward a universal
approach to futures thinking. The question remains, however, understanding the
artificiality of our world, from where do we source the fundamental foundations to
compel humanity through change?
Back on the beach, crouched down in front of my four-year-old son, toes curled
in the soft sand, he looks at the piece of glass laying in the palm of my hand, ‘So, we
should leave the glass here on the beach then?’ I give it back to him, ‘I don’t know’,
I say, ‘What do you want to do with it?’
67 OVERVIEWS

References

1. Rushkoff, D. (2014). Present shock: When everything happens now, New York,
New York

2. Nichols, T. (2017). How America Lost Faith in Expertise: And Why That’s
a Giant Problem. Foreign Aff., 96, 60.

3. Vervaeke, J., Mastropietro, C., & Miscevic, F. (2017). Zombies in Western

Culture: A Twenty-First Century Crisis: Open Book Publishers

4. Sardar, Z. (2010). Welcome to postnormal times. Futures, 42(5), 435–444

5. Foucault, M. (2005). The order of things: London: Routledge.

6. Chimisso, C. (2004). The Formation of the Scientific Mind, by Gaston

Bachelard, introduced, translated and annotated by Mary McAllester Jones.
In: Taylor & Francis.

7. Kingsmith, A. (2017). On Rupture: An Intervention into Epistemological

Disruptions of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Hume. The Journal of Speculative
Philosophy, 31(4), 594–608.

8. Eisenstein, P., & McGowan, T. (2012). Rupture: On the emergence of the political:
Northwestern University Press.

9. Bussey, M. (2016). The hidden curriculum of futures studies: Introducing the

futures senses. World Future Review, 8(1), 39–45.

10. Ravetto-Biagioli, K. (2016). The digital uncanny and ghost effects. Screen,
57(1), 1–20.

11. Freud, S. (2003). The uncanny: Penguin.

12. Morton, T. (2010). The ecological thought: Harvard University Press.

13. Morton, T. (2013). Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the
World: U of Minnesota Press.

14. Morton, T. (2017). Humankind : solidarity with nonhuman people, London

15. Coole, D. (2013). Agentic Capacities and Capacious Historical Materialism:

Thinking with New Materialisms in the Political Sciences. Millennium –
Journal of International Studies, 41(3), 451–469. doi:10.1177/0305829813481006

16. Giri, A. K. (2013). Rethinking Integration. Sociological Bulletin, 62(1), 100–109.

17. Žižek, S. (2014). Absolute recoil: Towards a new foundation of dialectical

materialism: Verso.
THE END OF THE ORDINARY
Elizabeth Stephens

Of all the unexpected things the arrival of the plague brought with it, the distortion
of time was one of the strangest. At the beginning of 2020, as across the world,
cities, and then entire countries, moved into lockdown. Hundreds of millions of
people found themselves suddenly and unexpectedly isolating in their homes.
One of the most remarked open experiences of the pandemic was the widespread
sense that temporality itself had warped. Pandemic time seemed both radically
accelerated and interminably slowed down: ‘Something has happened to time’, as
Arielle Pardes noted in an article on ‘coronatime’ for Wired:

the virus has created its own clock, and in coronatime, there is less
demarcation between a day and a week, a weekday and a weekend, the
morning and night, the present and the recent past. The days blend
together, the months lurch ahead. [1]

This distortion of time has been the subject of endless pandemic memes and jokes.
Some of these play with tense, like the mock complaint: ‘next week has been
exhausting!’ Others play with the disruption of temporality: calendars represented
by celebrity portraits that age decades in months; or which, conversely, are
presented by an identical static pose month after month after month. The instant
and commonplace uptake of the terms Before Times, Plague Times, and After Times is
a further reflection of the radicality of this temporal disruption, and the widespread
sense of an epochal transformation it has brought with it.
In many ways, however, this widespread public perception of a profound
disruption in temporality provides a cultural and discursive focal point for what
is a much more generalised sense of strangeness and disorientation caused by the
upheaval of the pandemic, and the deep sense of cultural unmooring to which it has
given rise. As so many across the world found their lives knocked off-kilter, forced to
adjust to new lives as full-time internauts, pinwheeling through a virtual deep space
of online meetings and classes, it became clear that the pandemic had produced a
crisis not just in public health but in our very capacity to make sense of the world.
The pandemic, then, must be approached as an experience as well as an event. This
experience is one characterised for many by a pervasive and widely shared sense of
strangeness, a much-remarked awareness of its lack of historical precedence, which
has thrown not just ordinary life but the very idea of the ordinary into deep crisis.
70 THE END OF THE ORDINARY

In this article, I want to examine how this sense of weirdness and disorientation
caused by the pandemic has given rise to a discursive explosion in both traditional
and social media whose incidence and significance remain largely unrecognised,
and which focuses on the return and the future of the ‘normal’.
The word ‘normal’ occupies a place so ubiquitous in media discussions about
the pandemic that it would be hard to overstate its discursive dominance. Headlines
and articles speculating on whether things will or should go back to normal after the
pandemic number in their hundreds of thousands (as of July 2020). As Siddhartha
Mukherjee noted in the New Yorker, the future of the normal is the central question
of the pandemic: ‘everyone now asks: when will things get back to normal?’ [2]
Curiously, however, given this discursive centrality, the word normal itself is almost
never described or defined in these articles. Instead, its meaning is simply taken
for granted, as though everyone is so familiar with this word that its meaning
requires no further elaboration. As a result, one of the most dominant discursive
and conceptual frameworks through which the pandemic has been, and continues
to be, discussed and understood remains remarkably vague and outside the sphere
of public scrutiny. Given this, there is a critical value in turning to examine the
specificity of this term and to ask what it exactly means in the various contexts in
which it is being used. The aim of this article is thus to examine and make visible the
work the word ‘normal’ is doing in media discussion about the pandemic, drawing
on both traditional and social media examples. There is a strong link between the
current sense of historical and temporal crises and the discursive proliferation
of the normal in pandemic media commentary which can be best understood by
recognising the particular context from which this current usage has emerged.

This is Not Normal

The current discursive dominance of the normal in media commentary about
the pandemic has its roots in an earlier recent moment of crisis: that produced
by the 2016 US Presidential Election. At a Democratic rally held during the final
weeks of the election campaign, Michelle Obama responded to the then-recently
publicised recordings of Trump boasting about sexually harassing the women
with whom he had come into professional contact with a combination of outrage
and dazed disbelief – a familiar emotion shared by those engaged in a discussions
on the Trump Presidency: ‘I can’t believe that I’m saying that a candidate for
President of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women’, she
told the crowd. ‘Too many are treating this as just another day’s headline. As if our
outrage is overblown or unwarranted. As if this is normal. Just politics as usual’.
She concluded, emphatically, ‘This is not normal. This is not politics as usual. This
is disgraceful, it is intolerable’. This angry rejection of Trumpian values, and the
insistence that his candidacy represented an unprecedented break from the usual
state of affairs in American politics, epitomised reactions to the 2016 election
campaign in the left-leaning media publications and platforms. [3] It has continued
to characterise reactions by the political left to the current US President in the years
 71 OVERVIEWS

since. In the run-up to the 2016 election, headlines and political analysis focused
on whether the current state of affairs in American politics could be described as
normal, not normal or evidence of a dangerous new normal: ‘2016 Isn’t Normal’, the
US News website declared [4]; ‘Don’t Let Donald Trump Become the New Normal’,
the Guardian urged [5]; ‘Welcome to Washington’s New Normal: One Trump Drama
After Another’, The Washington Post warned [6]. Headlines such as these dominated
the election coverage in the traditional media, while the hashtag #notnormal
proliferated in social media commentary.
While the word ‘normal’ here is again rarely defined or described, despite its
evident centrality to the public discussion that took place in traditional and social
media outlets at this time, what was at stake here, as Michelle Obama’s remarks
indicated, was the question of what was, or should be, ‘acceptable’ or ‘tolerable’.

THIS UNDERSTANDING OF THE NORMAL, AND ESPECIALLY ITS LINKING

TO THE ‘ACCEPTABLE’, REPRESENTED SOMETHING NEW IN 2016. THE
SEMANTIC NOVELTY OF THE NORMAL, AS IT WAS USED IN PUBLIC
AND MEDIA COMMENTARY ABOUT THE 2016 ELECTION, PRODUCED A
SIGNIFICANT DISCURSIVE LEGACY, INTRODUCING INTO THE AMERICAN
VERNACULAR WHAT WAS THEN A NEW WORD: ‘NORMALISATION’.

Writers for publications including The Guardian, The New Yorker, and the Boston
Globe all identified ‘normalisation’ as their word of the year at the end of 2016,
as did the Merriam-Webster dictionary website: ‘It will sometimes happen that a
word suddenly appears everywhere. In the wake of the 2016 presidential election,
two such words are currently in the ether: the verb normalise and its related noun,
normalisation’. While the word ‘normalisation’ was of course not new in 2016, as
Mark Peters argued in the Boston Globe, the sudden and emphatic entrance of the
word ‘normalisation’ into popular discourse at the end of 2016 represented a new
and distinct meaning of the word. [7] Where previously the ‘normalisation’ had
been primarily used to refer to the process of making something more normal, in
2016, it was overwhelmingly used to refer to the process of making the abnormal
seem widely acceptable: ‘these days, people are using normalize to mean “shift
our perception of normal to include a thing previously seen as abnormal”’, Peters
explained, ‘rather than “change an abnormal thing to make it conform to a norm”’.
Emily Dreyfuss neatly summed up the conceptual dominance of the normal and
normalisation in the election coverage in an article for Wired magazine, entitled
‘The Normalization of “Normalize” Is a Sign of the New Normal’, which noted that
‘Americans are using [the word] in a different way than they normally do. The
country is normalizing a new use of “normalize”’. [8] ‘Normalisation’ as used in the
context of the 2016 US election thus provided a new word with which to name what
 72 THE END OF THE ORDINARY

was widely perceived as a new dynamic, one that was causing a perceived status quo
to undergo a rapid, radical, and unwelcome change.
The identification of Trump and the Trump presidency as ‘not normal’ and as
something that should not be normalised provided a way to identify, and denounce,
that presidency as ‘unacceptable’ or ‘intolerable’. The word ‘normal’ here thus
named a state of affairs that was perceived to be under threat. As a result, the
2016 US election provoked a sustained and often heated debate about the state of
American politics, in which the word ‘normal’ served as a flashpoint, the name of
a cultural space that was understood to be endangered and under attack. What is
particularly striking about the use of ‘normal’ in this context is the extent to which
it is attributed with a positive value, identified as something to be protected and
safeguarded: ‘we’re quite protective over the concept of normal’, as Jessica Brown
noted of the election on the BBC website. ‘After a big life event, all we want is to
go back to normal. It’s our default, our comfort zone’. [9] The normal as it is used
here refers to something comforting and familiar; an ordinary time that preceded a
current state of crisis and chaos. However, the ‘comfort zone’ named here, it should
be recognised, is that of the political left.

CONSERVATIVE VOICES AND THOSE TO THE HARD RIGHT WERE NOT TO

BE FOUND WRITING IN DEFENCE OF THE NORMAL DURING THE ELECTION
CAMPAIGN OR ITS AFTERMATH, NOR DID THEY APPARENTLY PERCEIVE
THE NORMAL AS SOMETHING UNDER ATTACK.

One of the most striking things about this defence of the normal is that it is
advanced largely by those on the political left, and that it does so immediately
following decades of critique of this term by scholars who largely share this political
affiliation. For until very recently, discussions about the normal, especially by those
on the political left, focused almost exclusively on its negative meanings and effects.
In contemporary critical and cultural theory, for instance, the normal has been the
subject of sustained and detailed critique in recent years. Particularly in feminist
and queer theory, as well as in disability and race studies, the terms ‘normal’ and
‘normativity’ have been widely critiqued as practices of enforced conformity and
standardisation, which naturalise existing and harmful systems of privilege.3 In
order to understand what this has to tell us about the status and significance of
the normal itself in the present day, it is useful to contrast the calls to resist the
normalisation of a Trump presidency cited above with the critiques of normativity
articulated in these fields of contemporary critical theory. Both normalisation, as
used in the media commentary above, and normativity, as used in contemporary
critical theory, are understood as negative dynamics that impede or damage cultural
diversity and inclusiveness. At the same time, however, critiques of normalisation
and normativity are predicated on strikingly different understandings of the normal
73 OVERVIEWS

itself. Calls to resist normalisation in the wake of the 2016 election were made in
defence of the normal: normalisation must be resisted, it was claimed, in order
to prevent damage being done to the normal. That is, the normal was understood
to be harmed by normalisation, whereas normativity often understands norms
themselves as harmful to those upon whom they are imposed. [10]
If, after decades of critique and announcements of its cultural redundancy, the
word ‘normal’ can once again surge into popular use as a culturally central and
vital concept, and if it can be so readily adopted by those on the political left as a
cultural state that needs to be, and should be, protected against the rise of hard-
right and authoritarian governments, then we are dealing with a word whose
meaning is unusually volatile and metamorphic. In current usage, the idea of the
normal and the not normal provide a conceptual spectrum within which to register
a sense of affective and cognitive shock. To lose one’s sense of the normal, to feel
the normal dissipating or transforming around one, is to feel as though the world
itself has gone mad. As David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, marvelled to CNN
immediately after the election: ‘when I hear [Trump] described as not sexist, not
racist, not playing on white fears, not arousing hate, when he’s described in a kind of
normalised way [. . .] I think I’m hallucinating’. [11] In the New York Times Magazine,
essayist and critic Teju Cole compared the aftermath of the 2016 election to the
Ionesco play Rhinoceros, in which a sighting of a rhinoceros elicits first outrage and
disbelief among the townsfolk, then acceptance and, eventually, an epidemic of
‘rhinoceritis’ as one by one all the characters transform into rhinoceroses. [12] Just
as Ionesco’s play, written in 1959, was widely taken as a commentary on the upsurge
of fascism prior to the Second World War, so must contemporary Americans resist
the normalisation of a new and dangerous authoritarianism embodied in the
monstrous figure of Trump, Cole argued.
However, it is important to recognise that not all commentators agreed the
2016 election campaign did represent a break with the normal. We see this in the
(much smaller) pool of commentary that questioned the perception that the Trump
candidacy signalled a significant break or rupture with normal American political
practice or social values, noting that the widespread disbelief in the face of Trump’s
stated views – regarding women, people of colour or people with disabilities –
was mostly confined to a white, progressive, middle class. As Hua Hsu reminded
readers of The New Yorker: ‘racism, sexism, and the other hatreds and phobias
lately on display… have always been normal – for some of us’. [13] The Washington
Post, too, acknowledged that while ‘Donald Trump’s election as president startled
many Americans’, the widespread perception that the ‘illiberal values and policy
positions’ espoused during his campaign were ‘far outside of the United States’
political traditions’ was incorrect: ‘in many ways, Trump represents a return to the
historical norm’ and its ‘set of commitments to hierarchies of race, nationality, and
religion, among others’. [14] The perception that something new and dangerous
was happening to the country, the fear that this represented an unprecedented
break from historical norms or social reality, was thus largely confined to a fairly
 74 THE END OF THE ORDINARY

privileged group. As Courtney Parker West wrote in the Huffington Post, the
shocked reactions of white liberal Americans to the election campaign were itself a
manifestation of white privilege:

spare me the advertisement of just how shocking it all is [. . .]

because some of us – my little black and indigenous ass – [. . .] are
not aghast that presidents who say bogus shit dance their way into
office. We have seen this before. [. . .] I am devastated, but no, I
am not shocked. [15]

These tensions remain in stark evidence in 2020, as the ongoing pandemic

lockdowns have been intersected by the global Black Lives Matter and Indigenous
Lives Matter protests taking place at the time of writing, and which constitute an
important backdrop to the debate about the normal taking place in the context of
media writing on the pandemic. The (re)emergence of the normal as discursively
central to US political discourse in 2016, and the context of widespread cultural
crisis in which this took place, can be directly traced into contemporary media
commentary about the pandemic during 2020. Before doing so, however, it is worth
pausing at an intermediary moment, which arose during the Australian bushfires
that devastated the country at the end of 2019.

Welcome to the new normal, Australia

In July 2019, a series of bushfires began in Australia that would burn uncontrolled for
the next nine months, impacting every state in the country, and causing widespread
ecological devastation. In the months to come, the states of New South Wales,
Victoria, and the Australian Capital Territory would all declare states of emergency.
The summer of 2019–2020 became the most severe fire season on record. By its end,
thirty-four people had died, millions of hectares of land had been incinerated and an
estimated billion animals, including entire populations of endangered species, had
perished with it. Regional areas were impacted most severely, with fires obliterating
ancient sacred sites and destroying regional townships. However, coastal cities did
not escape the effects. For months, the skies over the eastern coast of Australia were
an eerie sunset red all day, an apocalyptically red sky from a science fiction movie,
heralding a bleak future to come. The air was unbreathable, with air pollution
levels ten times over the officially ‘hazardous’ levels. In a foreshadowing of a future
Australians did not yet know what was to come, for many it became necessary to
wear masks to go outdoors, while the medically vulnerable were forced to stay
indoors. The last of the bushfires was extinguished in March 2020. This milestone
went largely unremarked, however, as the country was then heading rapidly towards
a full lockdown due to the pandemic just taking hold in the country.
Although extreme bushfire seasons have been common in Australia since – and
because of – white settlement, and its forced cessation of indigenous cultural burning
practices, the summer of 2019 and 2020 was nonetheless alarmingly far from normal,
 75 OVERVIEWS

as it was widely reported. Bushfires that tore through rainforest – rainforest that had
never burned before – fire fronts that joined together across multiple state lines to
produce megafires and extreme air pollution which were all recognised as something
new. Dangerous signs, indeed, of a changing climate and another environmental
tipping point. The phrase ‘climate grief’ entered the popular Australian vocabulary,
as indigenous communities were forced to deal with yet another devastating effect
of white settler culture: ‘It’s a particular grief, to lose forever what connects you to a
place in the landscape’, Lorena Allam lamented in the Guardian:

our ancestors felt it, our elders felt it, and now we are feeling it
all over again as we watch how the mistreatment and neglect of our
land and waters for generations, and the pig-headed foolishness of
coal-obsessed climate change denialists turn everything and everyone
to ash. [16]

As a result of their extent and impact, the 2019 bushfires provoked an international
debate about the rate and scale of climate change and of the role of government
policy in mitigating this. In the midst of this debate, Australian Prime Minister
Scott Morrison declared, in a widely reported announcement, that such fires were
now the ‘new normal’ to which Australia would just have to adapt: ‘we have to
prepare for the new normal’, he said, arguing that the government response needed
to focus on ‘resilience and mitigation’ rather than the wider issue of climate change
and environmental policy or regulation. [17] Morrison’s statements were widely
reported internationally, as well as within Australia. While the phrase ‘the new
normal’ is one that was in widespread popular use prior to the 2019 bushfire season.
Its meaning in this context marked a pivotal moment in the coupling of looming
crises with a re-evaluation of the normal. The ‘new’ part of this phrase referred to
a set of conditions generally understood to be unpleasant at best and catastrophic
at worst: increased fires and an increased level of environmental devastation in
consequence. The ‘normal’ here referred to a continuation of a status quo in which
Australia continued to enable and facilitate its fossil fuels industry at the expense
of long-term economic and environmental sustainability. By announcing the
fires as ‘normal’, albeit a new and disagreeable normal, government was widely
understood to be rejecting any need for government action or intervention on the
wider issue of climate change. The insistence that Australia would have to ‘adapt’
to climate crisis was simultaneously an assertion that it was possible to adapt to
it. The severity and unpredictability of these fires was thus redefined as part of a
new status quo requiring change and resilience on the part of the populace, rather
than symptomatic of an environmental crisis that would need to be addressed in
policy. This use of the phrase ‘new normal’ resonates with its use in the context of
the 2016 US Presidential Election. The phrase became a subject of debate because
the expectation that such fires were something to which the country or populace
could adapt was widely taken to be an unacceptable or even intolerable response.
 76 THE END OF THE ORDINARY

This can be seen in the way that, rather than reassuring the public with appeals to
normality, Morrison’s description of the fires as Australia’s ‘new normal’ conversely
served to provoke anger and anxiety about the scale and impact of climate change
and concern about the government’s denialism and intractability in addressing this.
In the ensuing debate, echoes of the new meaning of ‘normalisation’ that emerged
during the 2016 election could be heard again. What had formerly been recognised
as extreme was now becoming common. The ‘new normal,’ for which Australia
must prepare itself, was one in which the limits of the acceptable and endurable had
been recalibrated. ‘The recent seasons have firefighters rethinking what should be
considered normal,’ noted the ABC. Similarly, QFES acting deputy commissioner,
Neil Gallant argued: ‘we’ve got to be prepared for a different fire season, a different
range of climate extremes. We’d be not doing our duty if we didn’t at least consider
that’s now the new norm.’ [18] The ‘new normal’, as it was used in this context,
was largely understood to refer to a formative status quo, one whose novelty was
primarily experienced as unpleasant.

THE ‘NEW NORMAL’ HERE NAMED A FAULT-LINE – THE DEBATED

TERRITORY OF ADAPTABILITY. IT IS THIS UNDERSTANDING OF THE
NORMAL, AS A CONTESTED ZONE OF ADAPTATION AND ADAPTABILITY,
THAT WOULD COME TO UNDERLIE MUCH OF THE MEDIA COMMENTARY
ON THE 2020 PANDEMIC.

Weird times – The Coronavirus Pandemic

By the time the novel coronavirus epidemic became a pandemic in March 2020,
then, whatever passed for the normal in popular discourse and culture had been
in serious trouble for some time: ‘As we grapple with uncertainty and upheaval, it’s
clear that our old “normal” will never be recovered’, reflect Milne, Hendriks, and
Mahanty in an article in The Conversation, reflecting on the difficult Australian
summer that was then giving way to the tumultuous year of the pandemic. [19] In
consequence, while discussion about whether we can or should ‘return to normal’
remains ubiquitous in media commentary on the pandemic, and while the desire to
‘feel normal’ again continues to characterise self-representations of the pandemic
experience, in recent months, a mounting critique of the normal has been steadily
gaining traction: ‘“Normal” life failed us’, John Harris declared in The Guardian.
‘On a bad day, our national nightmare now appears so deep and complex as to feel
not just depressing, but insurmountable. Any return to the “normal” that has so
horrifically failed us is unthinkable.’ [20] For Paul Carr, any attempt to ‘return to
normal’ would be ‘inhumane’. Increasingly, it is precisely what we once accepted as
normal that has come to be identified as the very source of the problems that have
 77 OVERVIEWS

brought us to this point of calamity. As Ed Yong summarised in a recent and widely

shared article for The Atlantic, ‘How the Pandemic Defeated America’:

the US cannot prepare for these inevitable crises if it returns to

normal, as many of its people ache to do. Normal led to this. Normal
was a world ever more prone to a pandemic but ever less ready for
one. To avert another catastrophe, the US needs to grapple with all
the ways normal failed us. [21]

Accordingly, a growing number of voices have recently argued that, instead of

seeking to return to the normal, to an ordinary world familiar but toxic, we should
seize this moment of crisis to do away with it entirely: ‘crisis leads to a fork in
the road’, as Jack Halberstam argues. ‘One way rights the balance and leads back
to “normal life”, the other moves in the opposite direction and leads elsewhere
with outcomes that are unknown’ [22]. The upheaval caused by the pandemic
provides the opportunity to reimagine the world, to step into the unknown future
by dismantling the systems of exploitation and extractive capitalism that have
brought us to this moment. In one of the most widely shared early reflections on
the pandemic, the writer Arundhati Roy captured the sense of the momentousness
and promise of this moment for many:

what is this thing that has happened to us? It’s a virus, yes. In and
of itself it holds no moral brief. But it is definitely more than a
virus. [. . .] Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel
and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds
are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to ‘normality’,
trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge
the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible
despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we
have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to
normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with
the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is
a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to
walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred,
our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky
skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage,
ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it. [23]

At the end of a period that has seen a rapid move to the hard right politically in
Australia as well as in the United States (along with many other regions of the world),
while witnessing the increasingly extreme effects of climate change and ecosystem
destruction, the normal has come to name a cadaverous status quo, a wasteland
of dead ecosystems and extractive capitalism. Here, the positivity that accrued to
 78 THE END OF THE ORDINARY

the term ‘normal’ during the turmoil of the Trump election has disappeared. The
normal here is not to be defended or protected; it is instead the source of harm.
Thus, while references to wanting things to get back to normal remain routine to
the point of ubiquity in popular media commentary on the pandemic, where the
word is subject to explicit discussion, it is increasingly understood in negative
terms – as a status quo that is no longer sustainable or endurable.
It may seem, given this, that the concept of the normal is unlikely to survive the
upheavals of the pandemic; that, as a word, it is now likely to fall into redundancy or
disuse. However, it should be remembered that the normal, as a concept, has always
been in trouble; indeed, as we have seen above, it most commonly and insistently
appears not where the status quo is most stable or secure but on the contrary where
it is most troubled and perceived to be in crisis. More than twenty years after the
publication of Michael Warner’s landmark book, titled The Trouble with Normal, the
idea of the normal remains as problematic as ever, [24] yet also as resilient. Indeed,
it is often immediately after the normal has been most subject to sustained critique
and pronounced discursively dead that it surges most forcefully in its frequency of
use and cultural centrality. This can be seen in its abrupt readoption in criticism of
the Trump election campaign and presidency, starting in 2016, and it can also be
seen in current media commentary on the pandemic. That the normal can be so
widely used in both positive and negative ways perfectly exemplifies its semantic
capaciousness and changeability.

THE NORMAL IS A TERM THAT TENDS TO COME TO THE FORE, AND

WHOSE USAGE DRAMATICALLY SPIKES DURING THOSE MOMENTS
IN WHICH ITS MEANING IS MOST CONTESTED, AND WHEN IT IS MOST
PERCEIVED TO BE IN CRISIS.
In our long history of the normal, Normality: A Critical Genealogy Peter Cryle and
I discovered this to be a consistent characteristic of the normal across the modern
period. It is a term that has long been subject to periodic denunciations and a
concept that has often been assumed to be culturally moribund. Yet, it continues
to return to a position of cultural centrality and discursive dominance time after
time. [25] There is an especially strong recourse to the idea of the normal in times
of crisis. The normal provides a conceptual framework in which such crises can be
identified and examined.
Accordingly, this article has sought not to evaluate or adjudicate the merits
of the normal but to examine its use and meaning. It is designed neither to
celebrate nor condemn, but to attend to the conditions of its cultural persistence
and conceptual resilience. What is at stake in this is recognition of the unspoken
terms and assumptions embedded in these debates about the crises caused by the
pandemic, including the uneven racial distribution and effects highlighted during
79 OVERVIEWS

the ongoing Black Lives Matter and Indigenous Lives Matter marches. The sense
of crisis and disruption felt by so many in the present moment, and which is seen
to mark such a definitive break with the past, is not a new experience for many. Yet
the normal remains a weathervane for many, and naming its absence is a way of
marking the limits of what one can cope with or adjust to.
The normal names an ordinary state that has been superseded by a constant
state of emergency and disaster. Especially during moments of crisis, the normal
names a state of comforting familiarity to which many become more attuned when
faced with its absence. In such a context, recognising the centrality of this term, and
attending to the specific dynamics it names in each instance, can help us unpack
the terms in which the current crises caused by the pandemic are being understood
and the extent to which that conceptual infrastructure might come to shape the, as
yet, uncertain futures to which it will give rise.
80 THE END OF THE ORDINARY

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81 OVERVIEWS

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The University of Chicago Press.
AS THINGS FALL APART
Christopher Burr Jones

Broadly, a tension exists between the forces of positive evolution of our species and
planet and the entropic forces of chaos and uncertainty. It draws on the work of
futures studies and assessments of the state of play in the building, maintenance,
and stability of physical infrastructure. Infrastructure is a key indicator of social
commitment to economic and social development in the medium-term future, so
it has emerged as a concern in the research literature [1] and its resilience in the
face of climate change. [2] With some few exceptions, futurists have been reluctant
to consider the consequences of broader societal collapse. [3] While there may be
resistance to take a doom and gloom view, it may be time to consider some of the
broader consequences of Decline and Collapse futures, if for instance, as some have
argued, we have passed a tipping point in the Earth’s carrying capacity. [4] But I argue
that threats to civilisation need to be considered in a broader context, not as an
acceptance of doom and gloom, but as part of a transition to a desirable, sustainable
future. The challenge may be to envision and realise wise, ethical, and good futures
particularly in the face of pessimism about growing environmental degradation.
One central driving force in global weirding is the accelerating warming of
the Earth’s atmosphere, which may continue to rise until it reaches a new state of
dynamic thermal equilibrium, as suggested in Gaia theory. [5] What is presented
here is informed by the futures studies tradition, particularly the alternative futures
typologies, e.g., the Four Futures of American futurist Jim Dator, [6] and shares
many of the other assumptions of academic future studies. [7]
To do this an exploration of the emergence of postnormal conditions –
those global trends or dynamics that behave contrary to expectations, and are
characterised by complexity, uncertainty, chaos, and contradictions [8] – is
necessary. Global forces of change including technology innovation, climate
change, global economics, demography, and social movements drive the growing
levels of complexity, chaos, and contradiction in social and economic systems.
All of these forces make informed decision-making more challenging, but more
urgent. We are now living in a global village, with blurring boundaries, and so
much at stake collectively, our decision-making in terms of implementing the UN’s
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and operationalising the 169 targets must
consider the postnormal times we are in as well as the potential for catastrophe.
Much of the secondary research pertains to the plausibility and possibility of
widespread societal decline and collapse, due to accelerating climate change and
 84 AS THINGS FALL APART

peak complexity. The 2018 ASPA panel titled ‘Accelerated Weirding: Policy and
Administration in Hothouse Futures’ was informed and inspired by the idea of
global weirding first coined by the American environmentalist Hunter Lovins. [9]
In this formulation, global climate change is not solely about heating, although that
is a big part of it, but also about weather extremes and other concomitant natural
events. So, for example, the double hurricane impact on Puerto Rico resulted in
massive electrical system collapse. Abnormal heat waves were measured in the
Arctic as this chapter was written. Freak weather increasingly becomes part of
the normal background of experience. The physical changes in the world are one
outcome of unintentional human experimentation with adding greenhouse gases
to the Earth’s atmosphere, but we may also need to consider the unintentional
experimentation with human, social, and economic systems.

PEAK COMPLEXITY IS AN IDEA, SUGGESTED BY THE AMERICAN

ANTHROPOLOGIST JOSEPH A. TAINTER, THAT MANY PAST CIVILISATIONS
HAVE COLLAPSED BECAUSE THEY REACH A POINT OF SATURATION, AN
INFLECTION POINT, WHERE SOCIAL STRUCTURES ARE NO LONGER ABLE
TO ACHIEVE MARGINAL EFFICIENCY IN THE FUNCTIONS OF SOCIAL,
ECONOMIC, AND POLITICAL SYSTEMS. [10]

If the inefficiencies in those systems grow and are not addressed, they have a
cascading effect, a runaway train, where the problems multiply and social and
political systems ultimately collapse. Thus, this chapter focuses both on the impacts
of global weirding and peak complexity on infrastructure primarily in the United
States. All of these changes are likely to have direct and indirect implications for the
implementation and adoption of SDGs over time.
Dator’s four generic future typologies are: continuation, collapse, discipline,
transformation, which he initially based on images of the future in popular
literature and media, have been used extensively over three decades in strategic
planning and futures research. [11] Extensive literature elsewhere has analysed the
practice and experience of using these alternative futures, but it is important to note
that they are not conceived as necessarily discrete, but rather that one alternative
future could shift or overlap with another. Relevant to this chapter is the tension
between two of the typologies: collapse futures on one hand and technological
transformation futures, on the other.
Collapse futures have a long tradition in dystopian literature that includes the
work of the nineteenth-century English economist Thomas Robert Malthus. The
Population Bomb and other alarmist literature emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, and
the work of the Club of Rome and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on
the Limits to Growth underscored the potential of pollution and resource depletion
85 OVERVIEWS

to threaten the existence of a highly technological civilisation. [12] Science fiction

and Hollywood have taken post-apocalyptic visions to extremes, there being no
small number of late twentieth century movies such as Godzilla, Terminator, The Day
After Tomorrow, and the Mad Max movie series to give nightmares to generations
of children growing up. A classic futures studies text in the Collapse genre, Vacca’s
(1976) The Coming Dark Age, makes a strong case for a civilisational path that follows
Murphy’s Law: whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.
A large and growing literature posits that climate change and industrial growth
threaten, not only humans, but the biosphere as a whole, [13] although there is ample
opposition to doom and gloom views. [14] Catastrophe studies have become a small
cottage industry. A growing list of potential sources of existential risk includes:

• Anthropogenic
• Artificial intelligence
• Biotechnology
• Cyberattack
• Global warming
• Earthquakes due to fracking
• Environmental disaster
• Mineral resource exhaustion
• Experimental technology accident
• Nanotechnology
• Subsidence from oil/water extraction
• Warfare and mass destruction
• World population and agricultural crisis

• Non-Anthropogenic
• Asteroid/comet impact
• Extraterrestrial invasion
• Natural climate change (ice age; ocean circulation stops)
• Cosmic threats (dust, supernova, black holes)
• Geomagnetic reversal
• Global pandemic
• Megatsunami
• Solar irregularity/dimming
• Super volcano

One might ask, what good have these frightening and negative images of the future
done for us? Aside from entertainment, are they not impediments to aspiring to
better, preferred futures?
Some futurists argue that such bleak images of the future not only desensitise
and numb us, but they actually result in angst and depression. [15] Similar arguments
have been made about some of the classic studies on civilisational collapse, such
86 AS THINGS FALL APART

as Diamond’s (2005) Collapse. [16] A strong counterargument can be made that we

are better off preparing for the worst, even if it never comes, particularly when it
comes to life-sustaining functions of the biosphere, such as the atmosphere. If we
can learn lessons about how other civilisations have met their demise, wouldn’t it
be wise for us to be aware of what the potential warning signs might be?
Global civilisation faces a double-threat of peak complexity, a kind of inertia
dragging down political and economic systems, as well as rapid global heating.
These threats collectively create a kind of global weirding that goes beyond the
original meaning of stranger and wilder weather events, and potentially includes
limits to civilisational and societal complexity [17] and then on top of that, forecasts
of 6° C or more of global heating within the next century. [18] Acknowledged as the
seminal researcher on the various reasons for the collapse of complex societies and
civilisations, Tainter posited four concepts that explain the limits to complexity.
According to him, these concepts are:

1. Human societies are problem-solving organisations

2. Social political systems require energy for their maintenance
3. Increased complexity carries with it increased costs per capita
4. Investment in social political complexity as a problem-solving response often
reaches a point of declining marginal returns [19]

Tainter notes that the first three are the underpinnings of the fourth. It could be
argued, given much of the evidence from ‘tribal’ politics, leadership dysfunction,
and the US withdrawal from the world since 2016, that we have reached that point
of declining marginal returns across a range of sectors and systems in modern
society. To be sure, technology and innovation have been the answer to many of
these challenges, but at the same time have created their own vulnerabilities
and complexities. And the author assumes that there is a connection between
infrastructure and the evidence that such systems have reached a point of declining
marginal returns, or as seems to be the case, are in actual decline. It must be
acknowledged that this notion of limits to complexity is challenged by popular ideas
about evolution, where systems tend to respond to entropy by transformation into
more complex forms. Technology innovation, such as super machine intelligence,
may serve to overcome or transcend the limits that Tainter identified in previous
societal collapse. Yet, human civilisation arguably is now more chaotic, complex,
and contradictory than at previous points in human evolution.
The other part of global weirding is based on some of the worst forecasts for the
consequences of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which
may push global temperatures past the point of civilisational sustainability. One of
the more compelling narratives is by the British author Mark Lynas who analyses
the potential consequences of global warming, by degree, by using analogies to
previous periods in the earth’s geological history. [20] Because Lynas adopts a very
straightforward yardstick for the potential consequences of accelerated warming,
 87 OVERVIEWS

this is a recommended text for public administrators to get a sense of the scope
of the potential changes ahead. Extending the analysis of the English scientist
James Lovelock who argued that we already are past the tipping point towards
driving the planetary system to a new thermodynamic steady-state, [21] similar
to the temperature range in the Carboniferous era, Lynas argued that even at 3 °C
above the baseline, the US (and by extension, many other parts of the world) will
experience severe drought, dust bowls, and extreme heat events. The UN Paris
climate accords had aimed to cap greenhouse gases that would allow no more
than 2 °C rise in temperature, but carbon dioxide projections for the near-term will
place us at 3 °C at a minimum. Given the potential for even greater temperature
shifts, communities, leaders, and institutions need to prepare for the worst. And
these additional stressors and challenges must be reconciled in planning for and
implementing the goals and their 169 targets.

THE FINAL NAIL IN THE CIVILISATION COFFIN MAY BE THE INABILITY OF

GOVERNMENTS TO ADEQUATELY RESPOND TO THE GLOBAL
WARMING CHALLENGE.

Dator argued that the coming problems of peak oil, environmental catastrophe,
and global economic and fiscal collapse are all bad enough, but that government
intervention has been, and will be, insufficiently focused on the longer term to
respond in time [22] to raise consciousness about the need to prepare for global
weirding, so that we can work our way through it, hopefully not just to survive, but
to flourish as a species.
The purpose of this discussion is to consider the implications of global weirding
and the constraints complexity puts on the SDGs and what critical infrastructure
is required to help better inform public administrators and first responders. For
example, how will the likelihood of more frequent catastrophic weather events,
drought, wildfires, dust storms, and other consequences of thermal stress and the
implications of the limitations on complexity have for the implementation of the
SDGs? This is an attempt to raise consciousness about the interconnected forces
weaving together environmental challenges and human society. A great deal of
our resilience in the face of such catastrophes will depend on our ability to prepare
and plan for the worst and to imagine and envision desirable futures. Communities
arguably need to engage in ‘what if’ exercises to explore the topography of futures
where remediation may be too late, and adaptation the only solution to accelerated,
global heating. Because our collective ability to move social justice and climate
change initiatives forward depends on the external environment, we need to
consider that milieu as we prioritise and operationalise the SDG targets.
The theoretical framework for this study arises from both the traditions of
hermeneutics and post-structuralism, particularly critical theory, in deconstructing
88 AS THINGS FALL APART

structures of power within contemporary society. These theories form the bedrock
of much of the work of the last few decades on critical futures, integral futures, and
causal layered analysis. This research also adopts the assumptions of academic
futures studies including the ideas: that a single future cannot be predicted,
that there are multiple possible futures, that the images in people’s heads have a
role in determining which futures become the present, and that the future is not
predetermined. [23]
The academic discipline of futures studies posits that there are probable, possible,
and preferred futures, and that trends are not destiny. [24] However, the Gaia theory
argues that solar evolution over billions of years is destiny, our understanding of
the physical evolution of our sun is that it has increased its intensity over billions of
years, and will continue to increase its radiation output into the far distant future. In
spite of solar evolution and output that is now 30% more than when life began, the
Earth’s biosphere has managed to maintain the optimal temperature range for the
existence of life. Over the last 10 million years or so, that thermal balance has been
maintained during cycles of glaciation that have stabilised the earth’s temperature
between cold and warm cycles entrained to orbital mechanics, the Milankovitch
(orbital forcing) effect. Unfortunately, the key regulatory system, the carbon dioxide
geological cycle and the addition of other greenhouse gases will likely disrupt that
homeostasis. Lovelock argued that the most likely planetary system response
will be to find a higher state of thermodynamic equilibrium, possibly the global
temperatures that were common during the Carboniferous era, over 300 million
years ago.
The average planetary temperature is currently 16 °C; it was 20 °C during the
Carboniferous. One challenge is that we are pushing carbon dioxide levels in
the atmosphere even higher than they were during the Carboniferous, so Lynas
speculates that even 6 °C is possible – painting a gloomy picture of the consequences
of much more than 3–5 °C increase in average global temperature. And one of the
major problems is the lag time, the nature of feedback loops that means that once
the changes begin, they can accelerate in a vicious negative feedback loop. [25]
The classic example in global weirding is the potential release of methane in the
Arctic, melting methane solids in the ocean, and greater rates of decomposition in a
warming world. All of those release potent greenhouse gases that could potentially
pose existential threats if accelerating warming becomes ‘a runaway train’.
The postnormal theoretical framework holds that our prospective futures
are likely to be characterised by complexity, chaos, and contradiction. [26] This
framework is congruent with a critical theory standpoint, acknowledging the
complexity of a highly technological global civilisation, and making problematic
the structures of power that extract resources for the rich, plunder the earth, and
fail to share these riches equitably. The critical theory tradition appears to have
had an influence in postcolonial social movements, intentional communities, slow
growth, no growth, and regrowth discourses. The systems view of the Gaia theory,
and the challenge of maintaining marginal returns both align with the suggestion
 89 OVERVIEWS

from the postnormal times discourse – that we have to understand phenomenon as

complex objects within a complex web of relationships.
Another key concept in addressing apocalyptic images of the future is also the
suggestion of the work of the Dutch futurist Fred Polak that images of the future
of individuals have a collective impact on the direction that societies take. [27]
Societies with apocalyptic eschatology tend to be less successful, and those with
more open-ended or optimistic End Times had greater longevity. There is the danger
of negative wishful thinking, to acknowledge an obvious danger. How might this
be reflected in the state of the built environment and physical infrastructure that
supports basic functions of transportation, communication, and the provision of
basic goods and services?

IT IS WIDELY ACKNOWLEDGED THAT THE US HAS AGING INDUSTRIAL

INFRASTRUCTURE THAT IS IN NEED OF REPAIR OR REPLACEMENT.
IN OTHER WORDS, EVEN BEFORE WE CONSIDER THE THREATS OF
ACCELERATING WARMING, WE ALREADY FACE SIGNIFICANT CHALLENGES
PROVIDING ADEQUATE INFRASTRUCTURE FOR THE
COMING GENERATIONS.

It has been estimated that simply to upgrade highway, seaport, and airport basic
infrastructure will cost in the neighbourhood of $6 billion. Some parts of the basic
infrastructure, such as water and plumbing in older urban areas are in a state of crisis
or collapse, such as in Detroit. Demographic changes, such as flights to the suburbs
have exacerbated funding and scale challenges. Neglect and weather impacts have
also taken their toll on infrastructure. Other structural shifts have reduced the
power of unions, corporate and financial power have grown, and governments face
growing opposition from conservatives and a limited government ideology that has
altered spending priorities.
What are the major aspects of infrastructure that public managers and
administrators should consider, when planning for crisis events? Those include
various parts of the transportation system, planes, trains, and automobiles and
their platforms-- airports, rails, highways, and bridges. Basic infrastructure also
obviously includes energy distribution, water, sewerage, solid waste disposal, and
communications networks. It helps to see each of those systems within the context
of levels of analysis – how they serve individuals, families, neighbourhoods,
communities, states, countries, and regions. Ultimately, understanding how those
systems can be optimally nested to protect resilience and sustainability could help
offset many of the challenges ahead in adapting to climate change and civilisation
in decline. Will we continue to grow community, counter trends that appear to
fragment social institutions and build greater complexity into local structures, or
 90 AS THINGS FALL APART

revert to tribalism? That question may only be answered over the course of time,
over the next century or so.
How can public administrators and political leaders prepare for 6° C of change,
civilisational stress, and postnormal conditions driven by complexity, chaos, and
contradiction? The threats to infrastructure have been fairly clearly identified,
the types of events, and driving forces behind the threats. Hurricanes, as we have
learned again in the past hurricane season, can produce extreme flooding, storm
surge, and wind damage. Three major storms to hit the United States was typical
this last season, but it is argued they will be more common and severe in the future.
The frequency of extreme events becomes more likely. Serious, and widespread
drought would be expected above 3° C, accompanied by dust storms, worse than the
dust bowl of the 1930s in the Great Plains.

THE CONSEQUENCES FOR AGRICULTURE ARE LIKELY TO BE SERIOUS.

EXTREME HEAT EVENTS WILL LIKELY BECOME MORE COMMON, AND
AS THE OVERALL HEAT INDEX CONTINUES TO CLIMB, THERE WILL BE
ADVERSE EFFECTS FOR WORKERS, ALREADY EVIDENCED IN TEXAS
AND FLORIDA. MAINTAINING HEALTHY TEMPERATURE ENVIRONMENTS
INDOORS WILL ALSO BE CHALLENGING, AND GREATER USE OF AIR
CONDITIONING WILL ONLY ADD TO ENERGY CONSUMPTION AND CARBON
DIOXIDE IN ENERGY PRODUCTION.

The ASCE’s 2017 report on the state of US infrastructure was a gloomy report.
Virtually all of the twenty-six elements were worse than the previous 2013 report.
Additional literature documents the specific threats faced by elements of the
infrastructure menu. Major studies have addressed some specific geographic and
political regions, for example Alaska, [28] South Africa, [29] threats to specific
demographics and communities, [30] and community/agency resilience [31] in the
face of disaster and climate change related events.
Aviation received a D grade – among the worst scores given out. Recent research
has addressed the consequences of sea level rise, weather issues, runway damage,
and the likely need for lighter loads as temperatures rise. [32] Bridges received a
C+. [33] Larsen et al. addressed the particular needs of Alaska, for example, with
bridges challenged not only by sea level rise and coastal erosion, but also a decline
in permafrost. [34] Permafrost soil failure also impacts pipeline footings as well.
Dams earned a D and received special attention, along with levees (earning a D) in
both the National Research Council and ASCE reports. [35] Potable drinking water
received a D from ASCE and the continuing problems of lead contamination in
Detroit and other Rust Belt cities underscore the challenges of urban replacement of
91 OVERVIEWS

aging infrastructure, compounded by the challenges to freshwater due to drought,

pollution, and declining sources of aquifer water. [36] Energy infrastructure was
graded D+. [37] Burke recently addressed challenges to the aging energy grid,
but noted the emergence of smart grid technology that could help transform that
sector. [38] Hazardous waste also earned a D+ and Inland Waterways a D. [39]
Parks and Recreation earned a D+ and national parks are already facing damage
and challenges directly related to changing climate. [40] Ports scored a relatively
good C+ but are among the facilities most at risk from sea level rise and hurricanes
and possibly terrorist attacks. Rail improved from the previous assessment and
earned a B grade. [41] Roads, earning a D grade, are particularly important given the
dependence of communities, particularly in rural areas, on roads for many aspects
of life and are particularly vulnerable to climate change and weather damage. [42] In
the same vein, the facilities and infrastructure that round out the list have similarly
poor scores: Schools – D; Solid Waste – C+; Transit – D; and Wastewater – D +. [43]
Former Department of Homeland Security director Jeh Johnson recently stated
that one of the biggest threats to national defence and homeland security was
aging infrastructure and climate change. The ASCE 2017 report puts that claim in
sharp focus and provides a map of how to improve those elements of our national
infrastructure. [44] The estimated gap to bring US infrastructure up to par is
estimated at $2 trillion. And to maintain all of it in optimal condition will require
annual investments by federal and state governments to the tune of $206 billion
per year. [45] Until those investments are made, our infrastructure will continue to
deteriorate, and it could cost more in the long run to fail to maintain what we have.
Postnormal times may very well mean the collapse of the federal government’s
ability or willingness to respond adequately to infrastructure funding needs,
and the responsibility may fall increasingly on states and local government. This
trend of decentralisation, might be positive, if it can enhance local resilience and
adaptation. [46] State and county leaders and administrators should consider the
relative vulnerability of consumers and elements of infrastructure. [47] Similarly,
those leaders can share and pool knowledge with each other and with federal
leaders in response to disaster and recovery. [48] A large body of knowledge and
cross-sector approaches exist in risk management and preparedness that can
inform decision-making in the aftermath of events stimulated by accelerating
climate change and civilisational stress and decline. Insurance pools, and other
funding strategies, such as crowdsourcing, and new fees may need to be considered
to support infrastructure projects.
In terms of facing the future, political leaders and public administrators need to
plan for the worst but also engage communities to envision their preferred futures,
and vision the sustainable cities and communities they would like to inhabit. The
best way to build resilience is to raise consciousness and build shared understanding
of the challenges, risks, and responses to accelerating change. Administrators,
planners, and first responders should practice for multiple catastrophes and collapse
scenarios. The year 2017 provided a good example of multiple major hurricanes,
92 AS THINGS FALL APART

widespread wildfires, and continuing drought, much more likely to be the norm in
postnormal times. Experience shows that preparedness for emergencies pays off.
The role of technology has been understated in this chapter, but also has the
potential to be transformative. One of the very weaknesses of civilisation, following
Tainter, may well be solved by the artificial intelligence, [49] or what Gidley calls
super machine intelligence. [50] The dilemma of maintaining complex systems
in the face of the limits to complexity may well be mitigated by neural networks,
super machine intelligence, and expert systems. A rapid transition into a solar
and renewable energy economy could also have significant positive impacts on
infrastructure. For example, automated control systems and smart grid technologies,
efficacious decentralisation, and tax incentives could empower individuals,
families, and communities. It has also been argued that widespread environmental
catastrophes could be the wake-up call to galvanise widespread social movements
to counter the fossil fuel economy and end the destructive behaviour of consumer
capitalism. In any case, it looks like we are in for a dramatic ride into the future,
whether in the form of autonomous electric cars or horse and buggies.
In the face of Collapse, potential limits two, complexity and postnormal times,
why not just ‘party until the End’, bury our heads in the sand, or give up envisioning
and realising sustainable futures? One answer is that sustainability is not a lifestyle
choice, but rather an inevitable requirement for co-evolution with our planet. If
the projections of the Club of Rome and Limits to Growth are reasonable forecasts
based on the assumptions of growth, growing pollution, and resource depletion,
then arguably at some point we will reach a steady state. The models argue that
the current macro-economic assumptions are unsustainable, so at some point,
collective behaviour changes will be necessary, but not necessarily sufficient to
avoid major human catastrophe.
One key to transformation into a more stable civilisation or bridge through the
decline and/or collapse is envisioning preferred, sustainable futures. [51] Defeatism
and escapism are inevitable facing the challenges of infrastructure and global
weirding, but as the American activist Joanna Macy noted, hope and optimism are
tools to cope with the depersonalisation and anomie that come from the dangers
that confront us. [52] While it may not be an immediate solution to the crisis in
infrastructure, the empowerment of individuals and communities to envision and
create better futures is one way to instil hope and optimism for the future. There
is an abundant literature and numerous examples of such futures planning across
the globe. [53] The World Futures Studies Federation and Teach the Future are both
organisations that are promoting futures education at all levels, from professionals
to kids. Teach the Future offers free resources, for example, to K–12 educators for
foresight education. Projects across the globe, from favelas in Brazil to children in
Africa and futures labs in Europe are deliberately trying to reach the youth of today
to build more responsible leaders for the future.
Engaging in the SDGs is clearly another way to model that wisdom by addressing
environmental and social equity and justice. The SDGs do not currently have
 93 OVERVIEWS

high visibility, but there is obviously a direct relationship between the support of
physical infrastructure, both in the US and the world at large, and society’s ability
to implement the goals and their targets. Without adequate infrastructure, the
likelihood of attaining those goals diminishes. Conversely, an understanding of
humankind’s aspirational goals beyond the struggle for infrastructure is also a key
to sustaining hope and optimism for the future. Setting higher goals reminds us
that infrastructure is a means to higher ends.

IMPLEMENTING THE SDGS AND ENVISIONING PREFERRED FUTURES

CONVERGE AS PARALLEL PROCESSES OF SEEING THE POTENTIAL FOR A
MORE EQUITABLE AND JUST SOCIETY AND HELPING PROVIDE THE
MEANS TO HELP MANIFEST THOSE VALUES.

Postnormal times is by definition a transitional period between normal times,

so part of the project of seriously addressing climate change mitigation, and not
just adaptation, in the global climate regime is a fundamental change in worldview.
The project of the SDGs and their targets is to begin moving some of the values
embedded in social equity and justice to the forefront, ahead of the exigencies of
scarcity economics and the current system of growth at all costs. Certainly, political
leaders and public administrators will be required to deal with the unfolding
crises that will likely peak during the mid-century, but must not lose sight of the
longer-term goals of establishing sustainable development values and practices
as a baseline for the social and economic goals for humanity and planetary
health. However, it just may be the case that the aphorism ‘things will get worse
before they get better’ is true, but we cannot neglect or disregard our collective
responsibility for future generations. Infrastructure, particularly, represents that
kind of investment in the long-term future that will either make it harder or easier
for future generations to envision and build preferred, sustainable futures. We need
to engage policymakers, communities, and individuals in envisioning those good
futures at the same time that we promote and implement the SDGs. It is especially
important to engage young people in the visioning of those good futures, to give
them hope and ownership of the future that they will inhabit. Realising the SDGs
by 2030, and beyond, will require not only financial and human resources, but also
a commitment to creativity, imagination, and the will to make better, good futures.
94 AS THINGS FALL APART

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ADVENTURES IN
POSTNORMAL TIMES
Jerry Ravetz

The evolution of science now proceeds at an accelerating pace. To appreciate how

science is changing, an historical perspective is ever more necessary. Otherwise,
those with experience just content themselves with moans that ‘things aren’t what
they used to be’, forgetting that, as the old Yorkshire song goes, they never bloody
were. In my own struggles with, and writing on science, going back well over six
decades, I have attempted to think historically. Roughly, that means understanding
the conflicts of the present in terms of the unresolved contradictions inherited from
the past. This heuristic works very well in some political cases, notably Ireland and
Israel/Palestine. I have attempted to apply it to science; and I might as well apply it
to my own work – the better to move forward.
My 1971 book, Scientific Knowledge and its Social Problems, highlighted my initial
concerns about science. [1] The formative problem of the book was expressed in
the slogan: ‘the activity of modern natural science has transformed our knowledge
and control of the world around us, but in the process, it has also transformed
itself; and it has created problems which natural science alone cannot solve’. I had
accumulated problems and discontents with the standard account of science on
very many issues, and I identified the key contradiction as the passage from Little
to Big science, or from academic to industrialised science. But, as it happened,
my knowledge of industrialised science was extremely limited. I had valuable
experience of reflective research in scientific and arts disciplines, and I had a
very precious historical understanding derived from my academic work. I could
write a very insightful account of the craft work of science, including some quite
original material on the obscurities at the foundations of theoretical science. But
on industrialised science, I had little more than experience of a rapidly growing
university and a deep political commitment, originally Marxist, then shaped by
activity in the anti-nuclear campaign. Also, I already had enough experience of the
corruption of good causes, so I was not uncomfortable to find similar phenomena
in science. However, there are two significant absences from the book. One is that
I did not know of the warnings about science in President Eisenhower’s Farewell
Address, written by political scientist and speech writer, Malcom Moos. That text
could have defined, and justified, the critical programme of my own book. But no
 100 ADVENTURES IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

one in the radical science movement in Britain ever mentioned it; perhaps it was
assumed on the Left that nothing that Eisenhower had said could be worth looking
at. The other, unrelated but also interesting, point is that my language reflected a
lack of awareness of the feminist approach, in that I referred to scientists as ‘men’.
I don’t have a huge burden of guilt over this, as the book was written before the
explosion of radical feminist thought; but it is worthy of remark in the cause of
historical accuracy.
In the ensuing sixty years, the social problems of scientific knowledge have
grown and proliferated, now perhaps more quickly than their solutions. Internally,
the challenges of quality assurance, described euphemistically as a ‘reproducibility
crisis’, reveal a corruption in the transmission of the tacit knowledge in the craft
skills on which that knowledge depends. The management of uncertainty is
crippled by the persistent faith in numbers as nuggets of truth, revealed both in
the ubiquitous pseudo-precise quantities and in the unresolved disputes over the
techniques of statistical inference. In the external relations of science, the core
myth of the beneficence and benevolence of an infallible natural science, creating a
fountain of facts for human welfare, is increasingly frayed.

THE ENLISTING OF THE SYMBOL OF SCIENCE IN POLICY DEBATES LEADS

INEVITABLY TO THE POLITICISATION OF SCIENCE ITSELF, AND THEN TO
THE CONFUSION AND HENCE CORRUPTION OF ITS NORMS. SIMPLISTIC
POLICY CRUSADES INVOKING SCIENCE, DEMONISING ALL WHO
WITHHOLD UNCRITICAL SUPPORT, THREATEN THE INTEGRITY OF SCIENCE
AS NO OVERT ATTACK EVER COULD.
Even in the 1960s, I had an insight into a possible solution: a ‘critical science’
modelled on the philosophies of the French Enlightenment. In my later collaboration
with philosopher of science, Silvio Funtowicz, our 1990 book, Uncertainty and Quality
in Science for Policy, established the basis of a reform of quantification, in the NUSAP
(Numeral, Unit, Spread, Assessment, and Pedigree) notational system – now widely
used in climate science, hydrology, medical research, and risk assessment. [2] In the
Epilogue to that book, we made clear that this technical reform was a key to the
reform of knowledge as manipulated by a new secular priesthood. A few years later,
we developed the notion of postnormal science (PNS), with it simple diagram and
mantra: ‘facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high, and decisions urgent’.
Postnormal science opened windows to the new realities of science. There are
now many movements for the reform and rejuvenation of science. These work on
many fronts, including transparency, ethics, and democratisation. There is even
a renegotiation of the Cartesian boundaries on reality, as science now shows that
whales and trees think and communicate, perhaps even with us. But, as yet, there is
101 OVERVIEWS

no direct confrontation with the forces that are transforming science into a debased
instrument of policy and profit.
Postnormal science has now become a movement of some significance. It has a
history which is well documented in the back issues of the journal Futures, thanks
largely to Ziauddin Sardar, the journal’s former editor. Our paper, ‘Science for the
Postnormal Age’, is the most cited paper in the history of the journal. [3] It should
be remembered that when it was first announced, the field of radical critique
of science was barren. The Utopian-anarchist imaginings of Paul Feyerabend,
Austrian-American philosopher of science, had become an historical curiosity. The
Marxist critics of the 1960s and 1970s were reduced to a tiny sect. Even to challenge
the prevailing orthodoxy, that all policy problems could be reduced to comparisons
of precise quantities, was itself a radical act. For my earlier writings, I recalled
Lenin’s term ‘Aesopian language’, as a way of getting past the censor. The radical
message of our study of quantities was well hidden in our Epilogue of Uncertainty
and Quality in Science for Policy. [4] But our censor was in our intended readers – the
science and policy communities – so we had to be very tactful indeed. In describing
postnormal science we sneaked in the politics through the technical term ‘extended
peer community’. And we were careful not to challenge the puzzle-solving ‘normal
science’ on its own turf; we just said that now there are big problems where facts are
uncertain and decisions urgent.
This caution served us well; we did not scare off potential supporters who were
privately worrying about the way that the official pretence of certainty was harming
science in the difficult policy-science domains. The growth in readership and
influence from the original defining paper was steady and organic, and the paper
eventually achieved great prestige. A time-lag of roughly a generation is not bad,
for a radical idea. But I have been aware, for quite some time, that this restricted
perspective will eventually render the original doctrine obsolete. Whether a
renewal will come from within the PNS movement, remains to be seen. But the
terms ‘corruption’ and ‘power’ never appear in the early writings, and quite soon
they will need to be incorporated in any analysis of science that hopes to be relevant.
It is personally gratifying to see scholars mentioning PNS without citing
any sources. It shows that PNS has become a meme! It is now taking its place in
a variegated and rapidly growing movement for reform in science. It is scarcely a
decade since a prominent mathematician called for a boycott of a leading publisher
because of their particularly rapacious publication policies. This was the ‘spring’
for science. Not long after, the problem of quality, which had long been festering,
was thrust upon both scientific and lay publics. By the mid-2010, the persistence
of discriminatory practices based on ethnicity and gender became an issue within
science as in other institutions. With all these campaigns, science has joined
the human race. The mystique of the Scientist as a dedicated, white-coated,
bespectacled, middle-aged male is gone forever.
But the last decade or so has also seen other radical changes. Accelerating
change, globalisation, instant communication, and interconnectivity, and many
102 ADVENTURES IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

other factors led my friend, Ziauddin Sardar, to the notion of Postnormal Times
(PNT). Sardar showed speed, scope, scale, and simultaneity as driver of change,
generating contradiction, complexity, and chaos. It was not just science that had
gone postnormal, Sardar argued, but many other spheres of human activity from
politics to governance, economics to finance, social relations to communication. [5]
Indeed, postnormality had become the spirit of our time, where facts tended to be
contradictory and disputed, values are not just contested but are also in constant
flux, stakes impact the planet as well as communities and individuals, and decisions
have existential dimensions. PNT too has a simple mantra: ‘we live in an in-between
period where old orthodoxies are dying, new ones have yet to be born, and very few
things seem to make sense’. [6]
There is a fruitful tension between my postnormal science and Sardar’s
postnormal times. It is really quite common in the development of radical and
intellectual movements for the earlier critics to be overtaken by those coming
later. The Protestant Reformation had Erasmus and then Luther; the French
Enlightenment had Fontenelle and then the Encyclopaedists. The French Revolution
had Condorcet and the Gironde, and then Jacobins and Robespierre. Mid-nineteenth
century Russia had Hertzen and then Chernyshevsky, with his fateful slogan ‘what
is to be done?’ Of course, the radicals did not always shape history their way; after
Luther came the turmoil which persisted for more than a century and left Germany
in ruins; France went from The Terror to Napoleon; and the Russian revolution
produced Lenin and Stalin. If there are indeed some radical defects in our science-
based civilisation, we should be aware that they will not simply be put right with
piecemeal social engineering. So, we need to be aware of historic errors and ensure
that history does not repeat itself.
My own thinking on these issues provides a bridge between the two sorts of
postnormal analysis. Some years ago, I realised that my early study of Marxism had
left me with a very powerful insight: contradiction. I developed this in a couple of
papers in the noughties, working on the ‘characteristic contradiction’ of a complex
system. The papers received very little notice. It is heartening to see that postnormal
times brings contradictions to the heart of its analysis, along with complexity. There
are several topics on which a fruitful dialogue between PNS and PNT could now be
opened. For example, the role of ignorance in contemporary modes of knowledge
production. The possibility of a real decline of science is hardly ever discussed,
even among those who warn of the dangers of technology going out of control. Yet
history teaches us that excellence of any sort cannot be maintained indefinitely
in any local milieu. A Japanese scholar, using primitive data-processing methods,
established a seventy-year cycle of scientific excellence, with centres moving
through Italy, England, France, Germany, and the US. There are already strong signs
of senescence in American science. Could Chinese science take over after American
science? We consider how ‘classical’ Greaco-Roman civilisation gave way to the
‘Hellenistic’ of the Eastern Mediterranean, itself soon blending with the flourishing
Islamic cultures. Could we now be witnessing an analogous development, with
 103 OVERVIEWS

emerging foci of creativity, each with their own characteristics, in the mainland and
in the ‘Confucian diaspora’, both practicing Feng Shui? That could be an emerging
paradigm, which would go with the shifts in power from the West to the East. Time
will tell. Perhaps a renaissance of Islam will be next in the queue for greatness.
Until quite recently, I had been taking a rather relaxed view of my relations with
Sardar. PNS has been, in historical context, a window to the new world of science.
PNT, by contrast points out how it could all go horribly wrong unless we learn to, as
its champions put it, ‘navigate’ our way out of postnormal times. The difference in
style and affect was so total, that they could co-exist comfortably. Quite suddenly
I have realised that we are actually well on the way from PNS towards PNT. I am
still trying to make sense of it all. So far, I have a collection of themes that require
serious attention.

A MANIFESTATION THAT WE ARE MOVING AWAY FROM PNS AND

TOWARDS PNT IS WHAT WE CAN CALL ‘CRUSADING SCIENCE’. THERE
IS AN APOCALYPTIC VISION OF IMPENDING DOOM, A CALL TO URGENT
ACTION, A DAMNING OF CRITICS AS ‘DENIERS’ (ECHOES OF THE
HOLOCAUST), AND A CITATION OF EVIDENCE THAT IS NOT MERELY
POLICY-BASED BUT POLICY-SHAPED.

We have grown accustomed to the apocalyptic declaration of the collapse of the

environment, starting in the 1960s with the population bomb, then global freezing,
limits to growth, global warming, resources exhaustion, climate change, and now
climate emergency. This crusade now shares public concern with the Covid-19
pandemic, for which we face repeated lockdowns, health passports, and perpetual
vaccinations. Such declarations not only paralyses agency and hope but have other
serious problems. But this is not the place for detailed critiques of these campaigns.
I will only make observations based on my own special interest: the management
of uncertainty. For climate sensitivity, the crucial link between increase in CO2
concentrations and the rise in global temperature has an error-bar of +50%, in other
words a factor of three. This huge gap in policy-sensitive knowledge persists in spite
of decades of scientific resources being thrown at the problem. In policy terms it
means that the consequences of an increase in CO2 can be anything between totally
benign and totally catastrophic, and we cannot know until it starts, or does not
start, to happen. This annoying feature of the emergency remains concealed in full
view; for the mainstream of politics, media, and science, it does not exist.
There is a similar situation with Covid-19. It is known that the mortality rates
vary enormously with age and pre-existing illnesses. When an old person, already
sick, dies, does this count as a Covid death? In the UK, it is quite simple. For the
published statistics, so long as a person has tested positive within the previous
 104 ADVENTURES IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

four weeks, it counts as a Covid death. Any death with Covid is logged as a death
from Covid. The possibility that they were moribund anyway and that Covid was
irrelevant, does not appear in the published numbers. And then these are presented
to the public daily, with no indication of their uncertainty. Of course, the rate of
incidence and mortality from the disease varies strongly; but vital statistics with
no hint of their uncertainty and quality are seriously weakened as contributions
to knowledge and policy. Indeed, the closer one looks at the statistics for Covid,
on issues like masks and testing, the more it becomes like one of Sardar’s ‘smog of
ignorance’ – where ignorance is deeply embedded in what we regard as trustworthy
knowledge. [7]

IT COULD BE ARGUED THAT IN THE IMPORTANT ISSUES IN THE POLICY

DOMAIN, SCIENCE HAS BEEN SUBJECT TO HIJACKING BY EXTERNAL
INTERESTS, THEMSELVES WITH A MIXTURE OF IDEOLOGICAL AND
COMMERCIAL MOTIVATIONS.

There is little doubt that this has already happened to a serious extent in
pharmaceuticals. To the extent that this analysis is correct, we face some really new
theoretical questions. We are familiar with the political and ethical problem of the
applications of science to harmful or even evil ends. The H-bomb and Silent Spring
showed dramatically that the classical optimistic view of scientific advancement
needed revision. But even in those cases, there were extenuating circumstances:
the basic scientific research was done by persons who were competent and
well-intentioned. Now, by contrast, the research effort itself has arguably been
compromised. The crucial evidence for a ‘hockey stick’ of global temperatures
included a time-sequence where two completely different data sets were
surreptitiously pasted together; this was the notorious ‘Nature trick’. More recently,
at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the academic computer simulation model
that was crucial in convincing the UK government to do lockdown was revealed to
have no documentation of its code, so that it was impervious to scientific criticism
until a team of industry experts was brought in to sort it out. We might consider this
as an innovative scientific methodology – ‘solipsistic science’. And the communal
aspect of science, with open, collegial debate between opposing viewpoints, has
largely been replaced by the exclusion, even banning of critics, with the slogan ‘the
science is settled’.
It has all happened with such apparent suddenness, that we are now scrambling
around looking for an explanation. Part of the answer will be found in the unresolved
social problems of scientific knowledge. Among these, quality assurance is prime.
As I discovered in the course of writing my old book, and later found support in the
work of W. Edwards Deming, there is an essential ethical element in the operation
of quality assurance. As I had previously learned from my Atlantic City tram driver,
105 OVERVIEWS

wherever there’s a system there’s a racket to beat it. Without a commitment to

quality in a community of practice, no amount of regulation, however strong the
incentives and sanctions, will be able to enforce it. Who guards the guardians? This
general commitment depends crucially on the stature and behaviour of the leaders,
and their success in imparting it to every new generation. I saw that the transition
from ‘little science’, where supervisors could be mentors to their students, to
‘industrialised science’, where sheer numbers made that impossible, presented a
deep challenge, which would need new sources of commitment for its resolution.
All this helps to explain how important areas of science can be taken over
so easily, whenever it was to someone’s advantage to do so. With the loss of
commitment consequent on industrialisation, compounded with the confusion
of methods, old-fashioned criteria of quality fell into abeyance. The situation was
made worse by the belief that science is automatically self-correcting; people in
key positions then lowered their guard. In their recent article, ‘Policy Making in
the Post Truth World’, Steve Rayner and Daniel Sarewitz, have pointed out that
contemporary science, with its focus on complex systems, has another hazard. [8]
With so many ‘confounding variables’ in any experimental situation, the ‘feedback
loop’ whereby ideas are tested, becomes an ever complex and lengthier process. As
a result, quality-testing is delayed and compromised; and so inferior work survives
longer, perhaps indefinitely longer, and the identification of ‘shoddy science’ is
rendered ever more problematic.
The quality problem has been compounded by the rise of statistics. Particularly
in the study of complex situations, statistical methods are the only barrier against
the ubiquitous pitfalls of inference. But statistics does not provide a new alchemy,
whereby the ore of raw data is infallibly converted into the precious metal of
scientific facts. The techniques themselves are vulnerable to quality problems, with
incompetent misuse and malevolent abuse common on a large scale. Worse, it has
been found that in some fields the scientists don’t even know that their corrupted
techniques are wrong! There are even deeper levels to the problems, which I am
only beginning to explore. The perennial debates among statisticians have gone
to a new level, with some now warning that the standard tests of significance are
seriously misleading. Teachers of statistics might now be wondering what to put
into the curriculum! We might say that statistics has lost the ‘paradigm’ which
uniquely defined good practice. For me, the situation is evidence of an inherent
contradiction of/in modern science: namely the founding fantasy that quantitative
knowledge is both simple and necessarily true. The way out of postnormal times
will not be straightforward.
For me, it is all summed up in a public display in Berlin of a ‘carbon clock’ which
shows how much time there is left before our ‘carbon budget’ is exhausted and
global warming sets in seriously. The Mercator Research Institute describes it: ‘that’s
how fast the carbon clock is ticking’. It displays the remaining time to the nearest
hundredth of a second and the remaining quantity of CO2 to the nearest ton. [9]
This is a beautiful example of mathematical gibberish; to express this hypothetical
106 ADVENTURES IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

global quantity of carbon budget to one part in a trillion is as near to nonsense as a

grammatically expressed statement can come. The explanatory text describes the
numerous uncertainties that affect the estimate; but it has occurred to no one that
the precision is unnecessary and misleading. And I am sure that most readers of
this essay will not see that there is a problem; and it is in this misperception that I
see the real civilisational problem: our modern-scientific mathematical language
does not distinguish between good sense and pernicious nonsense.
Such a state of affairs is definitely beyond postnormal, but equally perhaps not
yet PNT. Is there a key attribute whereby it could be named and thereby identified?
Certainly, not all of science has been hijacked. Nor has it all become ‘promotional’,
with policy-shaped evidence, like the science of weight-loss diets or anti-ageing
face creams. Perhaps its strength lies in its great variety; thus, we still have the mass
of academic researchers enjoying a huge variety of sources of support, leaving room
for critics to make their invaluable contribution as an ‘extended peer community’.
There are also the important movements for reform, ranging from citizen and open
science, through to reproducibility, research integrity, decolonising research, and
similar radical movements. So, can we identify a particular branch of science where
the matured contradictions are salient and threatening?
I would like to consider biomedical science, as the integrated research arm of the
sickness industry. In the US, this is a very large element of the cash economy, and its
performance is generally accepted as low-quality. The contradictions are clear to all:
much of the world’s best research in the causes of disease benefits from generous
public and private benefactions there; but the absence of a healthcare system was
cruelly exposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. We might even apply a concept from
what I now call ‘cacologic systems theory’: in that, the principal subsystems have
effectively broken away from the main system and pursue their own ends, even
though this selfish policy by each, effectively dooms them all. The corruptions of the
American big pharma industry, including its tamed regulators, were clearly exposed
in the opioids scandal. A single paper from the 1970s was the official, accepted
evidence for their safety for all the subsequent decades, until the mounting toll of
addiction and death forced a review. Who knows what other abuses are flourishing
out there, noticed only by the fringe of critics who are ignored or denounced? Indeed,
there are even agencies that provide any result that is desired by their clients. But the
claim of systemic corruption in science is, as yet, very rarely made.
If policy-related research is truly in a state of vulnerability to manipulation, then
what sort of counter-force could there be? It is less likely to be found within the
formal institutions of research. What about external groups? Serious critics tend to
be very marginal thinkers or activists. But the elements of a mass base are mainly
found on the Right, where commitments are rather more about identity than
science. On that side there will be a dearth of elite institutional expertise for all the
structural reasons I have mentioned, in addition to the weight of accepted scientific
argument. Hence, by default populists and demagogues will be more prominent,
thereby furnishing another argument against them by the mainstream.
 107 OVERVIEWS

This situation raises a number of paradoxes, which I believe are significant

for our understanding of the crisis as it matures. The original formulation of PNS
mentioned the ‘extended peer community’; in PNT it is replaced by polylogues,
but both emphasise different legitimate perspectives and ways of knowing, akin to
the working of a democratic society, characterised by extensive participation and
diversity. Examples of this are community activist scientists mobilising against
obvious abuses. Lois Gibbs, the American environmental activist, who brought
global attention during the 1980s to the environmental crisis at the Love Canal
Homeowners Association, is an example. Her efforts led to the creation of the US
Environmental Protection Agency’s Comprehensive Environmental Response
and Compensation Liability Act, now used to locate and clean up toxic waste
throughout the US. Another is Erin Brockovitch, who, despite formal education in
law, took successful action in 1993 against California’s Pacific Gas and Electricity
Company – the company’s cooling tower system was dumping various toxins into
drinking water. But popular-science campaigns are not always so totally simple.
Sometimes, indeed, the academic science is correct and the populist outsider is
a charlatan and adventurer, like the Soviet agronomist Lysenko. The May 2021
local elections in Madrid was resoundingly won by a right-wing candidate for
her defiance of government orders to lockdown. It seems that the experience
of the dreaded disease was not sufficiently intense to overcome the pleasure at
conviviality of Madrid’s citizens. Could this flaunting of populist rejection of science
be a harbinger of a sustained revolt? Sometimes I play with a scenario where the
Northern Hemisphere soon has a succession of three cold summers. This could
well be a random fluctuation, quite consistent with an overall warming trend. But
it would be seized upon by the deniers as a refutation of the dire predictions. In
the debate, the mainstream could then be seen to be in the position of welcoming
confirmations while rejecting refutations of their theory, a methodology which Karl
Popper had identified as pseudo-science.

GIVEN THE RIGHT-LEFT SPLIT ON THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY, THIS

SITUATION COULD LEAD TO EXTREME COGNITIVE DISSONANCE AMONG
THE PROGRESSIVE TECHNO-ELITE, REMINISCENT OF THE EFFECT ON THE
OLD LEFT OF THE SOVIET INVASION OF HUNGARY IN 1956.

Perhaps we are heading towards postnormal times with its contradictions,

complexity, and chaos. The appropriate response would be to get ready for another
style of science, with its appropriate social and conceptual base, to take the lead.
We might look for a clue to the necessary innovation in identifying what has been
absent from science as we know it. A candidate for that element is non-violence.
In his Oval Office, the Forty-Forth President of the United States, Barack Obama,
had memorials for three (nonWhite) heroes of non-violent social change. Where
108 ADVENTURES IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

is science in this inspiring scene? For me, it is conspicuous by its absence, just as
nonviolence is conspicuous by its absence from any discourse on science. I concluded
my radical social analysis in scientific knowledge with an invocation to charity,
taken from Francis Bacon. Now we might speak of a postnormal consciousness of
non-violence, realised in practice through mercy and compassion, thus taking us
back to Sardar’s own expression of the essential commitment.
109 OVERVIEWS

References

1. Jerry Ravetz, Scientific Knowledge and its Social Problems, London: Oxford
University Press (1971), p9.

2. Silvio O. Funtowicz and Jerome R. Ravetz, Uncertainty and Quality in Science

for Policy, London, Springer, 1990.

3. Jerry Ravetz and Silvio Funtowicz, ‘Science for the Post-Normal Age’, Futures,
25/7 735–755, 1990.

4. Silvio O. Funtowicz and Jerome R. Ravetz, Uncertainty and Quality in Science

for Policy, London, Springer, 1990.

5. Ziauddin Sardar ‘Welcome to Postnormal Times’, Futures 42 435–444, 2010.

See also: Ziauddin Sardar, The Postnormal Times Reader, IIIT, London, 2017.

6. Ziauddin Sardar, ‘Welcome to Postnormal Times’, Futures 42 435–444, 2010.

7. Ziauddin Sardar, The smog of ignorance: Knowledge and wisdom in

postnormal times, Futures 120, 2020.

8. Steve Rayner and Daniel Sarewitz, ‘Policy Making in the Post Truth World’,
Breakthrough Journal, 13, pp. 15–44, 202.1

9. The Mercator clock can be found at: https://www.mcc-berlin.net/en/research/

co2-budget.html.
THE PERFECT
POSTNORMAL STORM
Christopher Burr Jones, Jordi Serra del Pino, and Liam Mayo

Ziauddin Sardar welcomed us to postnormal times a decade ago in a germinal 2010

article that proposed a new theoretical approach to provide a better understanding
of how change is unfolding in the twenty-first century. [1] Sardar’s initial description
of postnormal times theory generated substantial interest within the futures studies
field [2] and criticism [3]. Sardar responded to criticisms and, further, presented a
timeline of how various civilisational artifacts such as meaning, truth, knowledge,
world order, and governance have been transformed over time from the classic
period to modern, postmodern, and then to contemporary postnormal times. [4]
Sardar and fellow futurist John A. Sweeney further developed the concepts,
exploring the temporal topography and possibilities of change over time. [5] The
Postnormal Times Reader emerged in 2017 with twenty new and reprinted articles
that added to the postnormal times body of analysis and knowledge. Postnormal
times analysis has been further explored by futurists and others across a range
of subjects and disciplines: agriculture; art and design; conservation biology;
creativity; education; epistemology; evaluation; futures studies practice; global
change/weirding; intelligence services; Islam; science education; and sociology. [6]
Over the past few years, the number of events, issues, and cases that support
postnormal times theory have grown rapidly. We argued in a 2020 blog series that
the current COVID-19 pandemic and ripple effects are a perfect example of emergent
postnormal times phenomena.

No More Normal
Sardar characterised postnormal times as ‘an in-between period where old
orthodoxies are dying, new ones have yet to be born, and very few things seem to
make sense’. Bauman and Mauro put it this way: ‘we are hanging between the “no
longer” and the “not yet” and thus we are necessarily unstable’. [7] We are thus
living in ‘a transitional age, a time without the confidence that we can return to any
past we have known and with no confidence in any path to a desirable, attainable,
or sustainable future’. A common and persistent meme of the pandemic in the mass
media, press, and social media is ‘when will we get back to normal?’ Everything has
been disrupted by the pandemic, but is a return to normal even possible or desirable?
 114 THE PERFECT POSTNORMAL STORM

It seems clear to us that the accelerating rate of change in contemporary times

has had something to do with it, as has our ability as individuals to communicate
with millions of people at the speed of light due to the spread social media. We live
in a globalised world that is interconnected and interdependent in numerous ways.
News and information, as well conspiracy theories and misinformation, spread at
astonishing rate; we are primed to act and interact in an instant. All these actions,
interactions, and interconnections at every level, from local to global, at nearly
every moment of our lives, constantly and perpetually, generate a change that is
outside of previous human experience – postnormal change. A convenient way to
think about it is to consider the four letters S of change: the speed, scope, scale, and
simultaneity of change (4Ss). The overall acceleration of change is a direct product
of combined force of the speed with which change occurs; the global scope of this
change; the fact that this change can scale down to individual levels and scale up;
and that these aspects of change occur with increasing simultaneity. The 4Ss define
the dynamics that generate postnormal change. The postnormal times conditions
are both part and parcel to the emergent Covid-19 pandemic.

POSTNORMAL CHANGE DOES NOT INTRINSICALLY PRODUCE

POSTNORMAL PHENOMENA, BUT IN AN INTERCONNECTED, GLOBALISED
WORLD, WITH A MULTIPLICITY OF SCALES, ACCELERATING SPEED, SCOPE,
AND SIMULTANEOUSLY INTERACTING ELEMENTS WITH NONLINEAR
FEEDBACK LOOPS, THE CONSEQUENCES MANIFEST IN COMPLEXITY,
CHAOS, AND CONTRADICTIONS (THE 3CS).

Contradictions come to the fore and enhance the complexity of social,

technological, and economic systems. These systems are wholes far greater than
the sum of their parts; they exhibit properties of emergence and cannot be analysed
in terms of their parts but only be understood in complete, unabridged form; and
the myriad interacting components self-organise to produce new patterns and
structures. Complexity and contradictions then generate positive feedback loops
leading to chaos. It is when the complexity, contradictions, and chaos emerge
together that postnormal phenomena become visible.
Together the 4Ss and the 3Cs constitute the basic pillars of the postnormal
times theory and are complemented by two other aspects: rising levels of
resulting uncertainty and ignorance, which vary in kind, but generally grow in
tandem as postnormal phenomenon develop and mature. Over time, the extent
of ignorance and uncertainty can expand or deepen dramatically. Over longer
time frames and across greater scales of change, ignorance, and uncertainty can
accelerate. Postnormal phenomena generate and are deeply embedded in growing
uncertainties, which in turn produce a variety of ignorance. We use the three
115 METHODOLOGY

tomorrows scenario planning and scenario building approach (addressed in other

articles and essays in this issue), each of which has a particular type of ignorance and
uncertainty, as described by Sardar and Sweeney. Three tomorrows are where futures
studies meet postnormal times analysis in attempting to explain postnormality. We
argue that to deal with uncertainties and gaps in our knowledge, we need to expose
our individual and cultural biases. We have to consider uncomfortable, unthought,
and/or unimagined futures, to help re-examine our basic assumptions, ideas,
values, narratives, and worldviews. We need to show humility. Postnormal events
and issues cannot be controlled or managed – they can only be navigated.
The Covid-19 pandemic is a postnormal phenomenon/hyperobject because it
satisfies all of the postnormal criteria: complexity, contradictions, and chaos, and
their handmaidens – the speed, scope, scale, and simultaneity of accelerating change.

Speed
The contagion spread incredibly fast. The first confirmed case was on 17 November
2019, five months later, there were 2.5 million confirmed cases and more than
167,000 deaths. At the time of this writing, global cases were reportedly 26.4
million, with 870,000 deaths. [8] Given the shortage of test kits, undercounting
early in the pandemic, and data collection and reporting inconsistencies, the real
figures are probably much higher. Similarly, the economic impacts were swift – US
equity markets lost roughly 40% of their value between mid-February and late-
March 2020; the technology heavy Nasdaq market regained most of that value in
two months. These were rapid and historic shifts. Lockdown policies had almost
immediate consequences for employment: US unemployment numbers doubled
from 3.3 million to 6.6 million in the third week of March. [9] Misinformation and
conspiracy theories also spread at the speed of light. Social media have played a
central role in accelerating the speed of active responses to video records of police
murders and brutality. Protests have occurred in the wake of the pandemic, both
on the right and left, but most notable are the protests against police brutality in
the United States and related anticolonialism protests, internationally. [10] The
pandemic itself will be the fastest-growing global pandemic in human history. The
ripple effects have moved equally fast.

Scale
Global 2020 infection maps graphically demonstrate the spread, first from Wuhan,
through land transportation systems, then globally thanks to air travel systems
through clusters of infection: parties, ski trips, and conferences. Currently, only a
single African country and geographically isolated Pacific Island countries have
no detected cases. It is just a matter of time until they too report local infections.
Thanks to globalisation and interconnections, it will be the most widespread global
pandemic in human history. The only continent spared thus far is Antarctica. In the
United States, Midwest states that largely avoided outbreaks in March are seeing
surges in cases as this was written.
116 THE PERFECT POSTNORMAL STORM

Scope
The combination of a comparatively high degree of infectiousness, undetected
transmission by asymptomatic individuals, and our lack of knowledge about the
virus made human confinement the best option to fight further spread. Some
countries have been more successful than others, and intrastate and international
travel continue to pose challenges to contain the coronavirus. The world’s economy
and global supply chains have been under great stress. After starting in China,
Covid-19 triggered cascading effects. The scope is so vast and immediate that threats
to industrial capitalism and liberal democracy are potentially far greater than the
2008 global recession. Tens of thousands of small businesses and restaurants have
closed in the United States, and likely multitudes more, globally. Industrialised
nations initially spent billions of dollars/euros on unemployment and wage/
unemployment subsidies. There are possibly serious downstream consequences
for future generations burdened with the debt incurred. Or will debt simply be
forgiven, in national and international jubilees? While it is impossible to predict
the outcome, the scope of these disruptions will echo through the lives of young
people today. Reconceptualising, or reforming, the global market economy, is
perhaps one of the main outcomes of this pandemic. It has had an impact on almost
every individual, in every community across the planet; there is no telling what the
mid- or long-term effects will be. The World Health Organization (WHO) projects
that a widespread Covid-19 vaccination is not likely to be available until the middle
of 2021.

Simultaneity
The pandemic has altered billions of lives. Initially, communities learned how to live
indoors, and during the early 2020 lockdown, many cities looked like ghost towns.
Wildlife crept back into urban spaces and nature had a short reprieve from human
activities. Control of the coronavirus spread was effective in some places that led,
in late spring, to cautious reopening. The rules were often ignored. There were
notable successes, but simultaneous nonconformity – particularly risky behaviour
by adolescents and young adults – that caused outbreak clusters and resurgence
into the summer of 2020. Meantime, global supply chains were disrupted and the
shortcomings of production and distribution of personal protective equipment
(PPE), much of it manufactured in China, raised questions about reliance on global
distribution systems. Retail and manufacturing similarly suffered, and many
businesses have restructured to use local resources and suppliers. New wrinkles in
our reliance on globalisation were easier to see. A new set of economic relationships
may be unfolding and beg the question: How much of our present arrangements
will survive and recover after Covid-19 runs its course, assuming we can achieve
widespread vaccination? Will the direct short-term impacts on the economy and
the rippling secondary and tertiary impacts, to which we are not currently paying
attention, transform economic and technological systems? What will the long-
term consequences be of joblessness, isolation, masking, economic disruption,
 117 METHODOLOGY

housing, generational (age cohort) impacts, education, travel, and transportation

realignments? Telecommunications technology, the internet, and instantaneous
communication provide greater awareness and ignorance about all of these things,
at the same time.
Arguably the Covid-19 pandemic has all of the expected characteristics of
postnormal change, but what made it a postnormal event? The 4Ss describe the
changing nature of change itself, but Sardar’s original study argued that postnormal
times emerge as a result of the growing complexity, chaos, and contradictions within
human systems – the 3Cs. More than being the driving forces or characteristics of
postnormal times, they are also postnormal enablers – intrinsic factors that need to
combine or overlap in order to trigger postnormal phenomena.

COMPLEXITY, CHAOS, AND CONTRADICTIONS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A

FACTOR OF LIFE, BUT THEY ARE CONVERGING AND FEEDING EACH OTHER
NOW IN HUMAN SOCIAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL SYSTEMS IN WAYS THAT
ARE UNIQUE, UNPREDICTABLE, AND INCREASINGLY NONLINEAR.

Complexity
Complexity is the property of a system that has multiple components that interact
in many ways. Complex systems exhibit behaviour based on the interaction of
these components. Some properties that complex systems feature include: self-
organisation, nonlinearity, emergence, feedback cycles, and adaptation. Growing
complexity will require a better ‘understanding of the dynamics of intertwined
human and planetary systems’. [11] To grapple with the postnormal aspects of
complexity, consider plurality of diverse elements in the Covid-19 system and their
interconnections.
The pandemic was a result of several elements acting synchronously in response
to the emerging coronavirus. First, a large Chinese diaspora spread across the world
after 1850. Second, the timing of the emergence of the pathogen coincided with
the Chinese Lunar New Year. Third, continuous national and international travel
and transportation systems. Those latter systems spread the virus at astonishing
speeds. Fourth, the pandemic has had impacts across a whole range of sectors of
the economy: from international finance to health services, employment, food
production, and manufacturing. The pandemic has exacerbated system stress by
restricting travel and freedom of movement upon which the systems originally
depended. Business and public organisations have adapted, and there has been
some cost savings for corporations, but the use of Zoom meetings and remote
employment contribute complexities of their own.
Over the January 2020 Chinese New Year celebrations, millions of Chinese
travelled from the far corners of the Earth to return home to celebrate with families,
in what is among the largest annual population movements across the planet.
 118 THE PERFECT POSTNORMAL STORM

Diffusion maps of the virus across China show how widespread and complex air,
rail, and road transportation made viral transmission unavoidable. This tapestry
of multiple interconnections made the spread of the virus inevitable, despite the
apparently effective lockdown measures in Wuhan, and the surrounding region,
because the virus was already loose in the world. The spread in the Americas was
primarily via Europe and followed a similar diffusion pattern of clusters, super-
spreader events often involving long-distance travel. The outbreaks in eldercare
facilities obscured the fact that young people can be asymptomatic hosts.

COMPLEXITY, AS A FEATURE OF MODERN LIFE WAS A PRIORI, A GIVEN,

WELL BEFORE THE PANDEMIC. ONE OF ITS EMERGING LESSONS MAY BE
THAT FRAGMENTED, SELF-GOVERNING POLITICAL SYSTEMS ARE POORLY
ADAPTED TO A PLANETARY CIVILISATION.

The liberal democratic concept of personal liberty may be incompatible with

maintaining public health. To make matters worse, the global system is not even
close to a system of governance, it is still a Wild West of nation-states not unified, but
separated by territorial integrity, tenuous sovereignty, and a lingering attachment
to the Peace of Westphalia. With roughly 200 separate countries, not to mention
the thousands of cities, states, and territories in the mix, connectivity is sought even
more desperately to respond to the scientific, economic, social, and political needs
of the pandemic and the problems/challenges it will generate in our futures.
Another factor adding to global complexity is China’s growing financial muscle
and status as the world’s second largest economy and growing military power.
What will economic contraction mean for its Silk Road Initiative and infrastructure
projects around the world? In any case, system complexity has been fuelled by the
success of the Chinese economy and the huge demographic shifts from rural villages
to megacities. China has become an increasingly mobile society. Making things even
more complex, China has become a critical player in the global supply chain. Before
the pandemic, China produced more PPE than the rest of the world combined.
The concurrent New Year’s celebration and mass travel increased system
complexity. The complex mix of unitary, federal, and confederal states, the WHO, and
leading experts often took (and continue to take) disparate responses in restrictions
of movement and epidemiology tracking. China is criticised for taking draconian
steps, while South Korea is praised for taking a democratic but communitarian
response. When we began writing our blog, in May 2020, Italy, Spain, and the United
States seemed to respond “too little, too late” to avoid serious casualties. The United
States is now the record holder for the highest caseload, over 11 million, and nearly
250,000 dead. The United States, Spain, Iran, and parts of Latin America were active
hotspots at the time this was written.
119 METHODOLOGY

Chaos
The second C in postnormal analysis is seen as the feature of dynamic nonlinear
systems that exhibit disproportionate inputs and outputs; the Covid-19 pandemic
has shown chaotic behaviour in many ways. Indeed, the fact that we know so little
about the virus has not helped, but its high rate of infection (R0) and asymptomatic
carriers have resulted in a wide range of responses leading to a large variance
in results. Differences in geography, climate, and community infections have
continued to make it hard to identify patterns. It is increasingly clear, however, that
asymptomatic transmission by younger people is prevalent, how the virus spreads,
but the long-term consequences of the disease are troublesome. For example,
long-term pulmonary and coronary complications affect many survivors, along
with brain fog, circulation problems, and other side effects of the disease. [12] It
remains to be seen what the longer-term medical and healthcare needs will be (even
at the end of 2023) for people, especially young people, who survive with deeper
underlying damage to their bodies. The pandemic has been like an event where
thousands of butterflies begin to fly simultaneously, without anyone noticing them,
and they then unleash a series of hurricanes far too powerful to be mitigated.
Chaos was particularly evident in the first two months of the global pandemic,
with the initial reluctance of China to accept the Wuhan outbreak, then immediate
lockdown. The lack of science and knowledge led to mixed messages about mask
effectiveness, and WHO officials did not always appear to agree with nation-
state spokespersons. The intricacy (complexity and contradictions) of systems
and messaging of surveillance and communication channels and media were
revealed. The overlay of social media complicated matters more, with confusion
about conspiracy theories, basic facts, and then presidential and prime ministerial
fake news. The EU came to face the realities of decisive leadership on one hand,
and the re-emergence of hard borders, on the other hand. Sovereign decision-
making and reliance on supply chains hampered manufacture and distribution
of basic protective gear, and leaders sent mixed messages to consumers about
appropriate behaviour. Vaccine production has also been compromised by short-
term capitalism and a lack of strategic, long-term responsibility for the possibility
of pandemic. Ironically, contagion war gaming and roleplaying has been widely
used in academic and foreign policy settings, but apparently no one at the top paid
attention or cared enough to respond in time. Response to the pandemic reflects
the complexity of the global milieu. For example, in the United States, leaders at
the local level, governors, and city mayors have been making the more aggressive
and effective science-based policies to prevent the spread of the coronavirus (like
in Italy, where some mayors have personally enforced the confinement). There has
been widespread criticism of the former US president for a lack of consistent and
effective leadership in responding to the crisis – his campaign continued to refer
to the pandemic in the past tense, despite the growing case numbers, appearing to
hope that the whole thing will just go away!
120 THE PERFECT POSTNORMAL STORM

Contradictions
The contradictions in the wake of this crisis are obvious. Efforts by politicians to
downplay the crisis and avoid panic in many cases have made it worse. Long held
values get in the way; the values of economic production, jobs, and continued
growth contradict community health and physical well-being. The pandemic will
illuminate, like no other, the direct relationship between androcentric values,
particularly economic values, and the rest of the planet. Preliminary figures already
demonstrate the improvement in the quality of air, water, and atmosphere due to
the economic slowdown. Covid-19, some say, may be Mother Earth’s rejoinder. [13]
The pandemic brings a host of other contradictions to the forefront. It has been
driving a centrifugal globalisation dynamic, but forcing a centripetal, inward spiral
with travel restrictions, surge lockdowns, isolation, safe distancing, and masking.
Some are even calling for economic deglobalisation in a ‘waning hyper-globalisation
era’. [14] The question is, while some countries seem to be doing well, so far, will
they be able to make it through a global recession or depression? Projections for a
fall resurgence in the Northern Hemisphere are dire, not only for the pandemic but
for the growth of hunger and homelessness barring more economic stimulus and/
or unemployment compensation (now at a standstill in the US). A global food crisis
is emerging. [15] Social distancing reinforces the importance of close-community
networks, yet it is also lethal for local retail as it lacks the structure to deliver, while
Amazon and the like are making record profits. [16]
The pandemic may provide growth opportunity for some sharing economy
firms (Globo, Uber, and Airbnb), on the other hand, the impact on gig economy
workers is less clear. Unemployment may drive more individuals into the sharing
and gig economies. [17] The new business models may suffer the consequences of
riders and drivers getting sick, homeowners going bankrupt, and the vicissitudes of
the general economic and employment crisis. The pandemic calls for effective and
inspiring public and private leadership, leadership that has been sadly lacking and
characterised by fructuous ideologues worldwide (with few dignified exceptions)
that enable or encourage authoritarianism and the rise of strong men who go
unchecked. The internet and telecommunications now make it possible for people
to stay in touch with friends and family near and far, and for many professionals
to carry on more-or-less ‘as usual’. But it will also accelerate growth of cyber-
infrastructure, the automation process, and will likely leave millions unemployed.
Perhaps the most poignant contradiction has been the moral dilemma – the
tension – between saving lives or saving jobs. Or even worse: killing people that
do not respect confinement (a measure originally designed to keep them safe)
as in the case of the former President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte, who
ordered lockdown violators be shot. [18] As shocking or worrying the emerging
pandemic contradictions may seem to be, the main lesson is that the contradictions
only increase the postnormal nature of the phenomenon. How are we going to
cope, as individuals, communities, and societies as things become more and
more postnormal?
 121 METHODOLOGY

The staff, fellows, researchers, and directors of our Centre, the Centre for
Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies (CPPFS), are particularly concerned and
disturbed about the likelihood that the Covid-19 will have its greatest impact on
the most vulnerable and marginalised people on the planet; our primary concern is
decolonising futures. [19] In industrialised countries, it is clear that the elderly and
marginalised are expendable. There appears to be great media attention and public
gratitude to “first responders” and yet we, collectively, and our leaders are allowing
hundreds if not thousands of nurses and doctors and other healthcare workers to
succumb to this pandemic. The general public might not have been able to foresee
Covid-19, but environmental scientists, epidemiologists, and other experts as well
as futurists forecast the inevitability of zoonotic pandemics to follow in the wake of
MERS, SARS, H1N1, and Ebola. However, now that the event has begun to unfold as a
postnormal phenomenon (the WHO only declaring an end to the Covid-19 pandemic
emergency as of 5 May 2023), we need to learn to navigate it.

OF COURSE, THE BEST WAY TO NAVIGATE A STORM IS TO BE ABLE TO

ANTICIPATE AND FIND THE COURSE THAT CAN TAKE US AWAY FROM IT,
AND THIS IS WHY FUTURES STUDIES ARE IMPORTANT. HOW CAN WE
NAVIGATE THIS CRISIS? HOW MUCH DO WE NOT KNOW ABOUT CURRENT
COVID-19 CRISIS? AND HOW ARE GOING TO DEAL WITH OUR IGNORANCE?

Navigating the Pandemic

What is known about SARS-CoV-2? Researchers appear to know where it originated,
how it spread, and have a rough idea of its contagion levels. [20] We know that the
spread of the coronavirus has been matched by the spread of information, and
misinformation, about the virus and the disease Covid-19 through social media
networks, which have exacerbated levels of anxiety and clouded clarity in decision-
making at every level. We know that governments have made decisions to lock
down communities to enact social distancing to mitigate against viral spread, while
the business sector suffered the loss of customers and workers, and many industrial
and service sectors have been damaged. Tourism and the travel industries have
been hard-hit, as have retail trade, but impacts in other sectors are minimal or
mixed. [21] The global economy is in decline, yet global equity markets have seen
both volatile lows and recent highs that seem illogical in the face of economic
uncertainty. Healthcare workers, across the globe, are now on the front line of
the gravest existential threat to humanity in a century. Global warming and social
inequity movements have been eclipsed by the global pandemic.
How can individuals and organisations better navigate the emergent global
Covid-19 crisis? We suggest that it is essential to address these two questions:
 122 THE PERFECT POSTNORMAL STORM

(1) How much do we not know about the Covid-19 pandemic and its consequences
at this point in time? And depending on the answer to that question: (2) How are we
going to act based on determining what we do not know but still need to find out?

Manufactured Normalcy Field

Cognitively, human minds excel at normalising whatever happens. Our brains tend
to reject contradictions and anomalies when we experience cognitive dissonance.
It is an evolutionary biology advantage that allows individuals to adapt quickly
to external change, but it becomes a hurdle when one needs to be open to a wide
range of possibilities, particularly novel ones. The writer and consultant Venkatesh
Rao’s notion of a cognitive manufactured normalcy field aligns with postnormal
adaptation to the impact of normalcy in our thoughts and behaviours. [22] The
manufactured normalcy field is the ontological construct, a hyperobject, that
reaffirms normalcy despite disruptive external change. The manufactured normalcy
field is not intrinsically positive or negative, but an adaptive strategy that may need
recalibration in the face of rapid change or the accumulation of uncertainty and
ignorance in postnormal creep. The manufactured normalcy field tends to reinforce
conventional linear thinking and induction as the best strategy to deal with the
‘normal’. Covid-19 entails deeper layers of uncertainty that cannot be overcome
with plain ignorance. The normalcy of concerts, spring break, teen parties, bars, and
large weddings in many societies is challenged by recommendations or mandates
to wear masks, social distance, and the new norms of public health policy.

Postnormal Shifts
Postnormal theory has argued that the greater the influence and convergence
of complexity, chaos, and contradiction within a phenomenon, the greater the
uncertainty. Yet, uncertainty is not unidimensional, simply by increasing in size,
rather as the 3 Cs overlap each other, uncertainty grows in phase changes: postnormal
creep. Postnormal creep is the specific process any event or phenomenon follows
when developing its postnormal potential and has a material aspect (uncertainty)
and a cognitive aspect (ignorance).

THE MORE POSTNORMAL CREEP PROGRESSES, THE GREATER

UNCERTAINTY BECOMES AND DEPENDING ON THE DEGREE OF
UNCERTAINTY, OUR INDIVIDUAL IGNORANCE BECOMES MEASURABLY
DEEPER AND/OR WIDER.

Once postnormal creep reaches a certain threshold, there can a postnormal

tilt – a readjustment to the manufactured normalcy field – or a phase change – a
postnormal burst. We argue that Covid-19 has features of all of those manufactured
normalcy field adjustments and is multi-layered with cross-sectoral, temporal (old
123 METHODOLOGY

and new characteristics), and cultural adjustments. The postnormal creep and
adjustments are widespread in the emergence of SARSCoV-2 and the resulting
Covid-19 pandemic, which provides further proof that Covid-19 is a postnormal
‘perfect storm’. Arguably, the global pandemic, considered as a hyperobject, has
become a postnormal burst.

Levels of Uncertainty
Continuing to unravel the effects on the manufactured normalcy field, postnormal
time theory describes layers of uncertainty from shallow to deep. Challenging this
normalcy are the underlying driving forces of change in the twenty-first century, the
tsunamis of change including demographics, economics, globalisation, technology,
and the environment/climate change. These tsunamis are the underlying dynamics
accelerating global change. What propels any major force into the postnormal
space is the accelerating speed, scope, scale, and simultaneity of changes to those
forces and the concomitant complexity, chaos, and contradictions that follow. The
driving forces and postnormal dynamics demonstrate a consistent pattern of creep.
How creep leads to burst is best understood through the interplay and combination
of growing degrees of ignorance and uncertainty.
Uncertainty in postnormal theory and analysis is a measure of our capacity to
realise what is going on, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Uncertainty also
builds, following the trajectory of the postnormal creep. In the case of SARS-CoV-2,
researchers knew very little at the beginning, but pundits and some political leaders
seemed to assume it would be like any other coronavirus and did not express
concern about it. At this point, leaders and individuals faced surface uncertainty
and most people assumed that our accumulated knowledge would carry us through
the outbreak. Public leaders could use what was learned in the flu pandemic of
1912, or perhaps the polio epidemic. The novel coronavirus was understood to be far
more aggressive and more lethal than had been thought.
SARS-CoV-2 behaved in unfamiliar ways, and it took time for researchers to
uncover the mysteries and quirks of the coronavirus, as a pathogen: by then the
progressive postnormal creep moved into deeper territory: shallow uncertainty.
Some observers wondered if the pandemic and the resulting economic crisis
might shake the very foundations of modern institutions or question collective
assumptions about globalisation, capitalism, of institutions like the EU, and the
idea of materialistic growth itself. [23]
As human societies plunge deeper into the pandemic, we may need to ponder
if humanity will sink even further into a state of deep uncertainty. Because the
pandemic has occurred in the midst of already emergent postnormal phenomenon,
the creep contributes to the existing depth of uncertainty about accelerated global
warming, growing wealth and equity imbalances, and a host of other hyperobjects
and wicked problems that threaten civilisation or human survival. Social justice
movements (e.g. Black Lives Matter) and the growing power of women (e.g. #Me
Too) have similar transformative potential and could be accelerated or dampened
124 THE PERFECT POSTNORMAL STORM

by the pandemic. Other uncertainties abound: discoveries about the ubiquity of

microplastics in the environment and plastic pollution were serious before 2020,
but the demands for PPE and safe food handling have resulted in a dramatic growth
in plastic uses. [24] The consequences of this development and myriad others create
ever greater uncertainty about the health of the planet and environment. Some of
the concerns are existential. [25] Assessing the kind of uncertainty humanity faces
is just part of the equation: postnormal times theory posits that individuals and
organisations should evaluate how that uncertainty is measured and processed and
then plan how/work to compensate.

Layers of Ignorance
Also important are the depths of ignorance that result from growing uncertainty.
In postnormal times theory, the layers and depth of uncertainty are mirrored by the
depth of our individual and collective ignorance. Ignorance is not only what it is
that we do not know but also what we ignore. It is the cognitive side of postnormal
creep, and it grows to/corresponds with each degree of uncertainty. Each level of
uncertainty aligns naturally with a level of ignorance. The levels of ignorance are
as follows: plain, vincible, and invincible ignorance. Take surface uncertainty:
although future outcomes may be unclear, decision makers should have a fairly
good idea of the direction outcomes may take and what kind of impacts are likely. In
a state of surface uncertainty, previous experience really does help us to anticipate
what might come next. Research indicating widespread coronary damage, even
in non-hospitalised Covid-19 survivors, should lead us to expect to see greater
incidence of heart problems and healthcare costs downstream. Researchers have
learned from past pandemics and earlier crises and can gather relevant data, process
useful information, and distil the knowledge to get society through the current
crisis. This top level is plain ignorance and it is the cognitive approach humans are
best at: mechanisms like linear thinking, dichotomy, induction, and specialisation
work beautifully here and give reassurance that knowledge can serve to reduce
uncertainty. The pandemic cannot be really managed by business as usual or by
‘standard operating procedures’ (SOP). Many Western cities had no contingency
plans for a pandemic simply because they had no memory of one. At the beginning
of the pandemic, cities and provincial governments may have believed they suffered
from surface uncertainty but, in fact, were in shallow uncertainty territory.
Growing uncertainty, shallow uncertainty, required recognition of the deeper
state of ignorance: vincible ignorance. New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell never
considered cancelling or curtailing Mardi Gras in late February nor did US federal
agencies raise concerns. The mayor knew how to respond to hurricane threats but
not to Covid-19 spreading across the planet. Mardi Gras seeded Louisiana’s first
wave of Covid-19. Plain ignorance was overwhelmed by uncertainty, and the mayor
was facing vincible ignorance. The state of vincible ignorance demanded that
policy makers address what was unknown. In strategic decision-making, nothing
should be taken for granted. Accepting the assumption that Covid-19 was like a
 125 METHODOLOGY

mild flu likely cost tens of thousands of lives. [26] At the level of vincible ignorance,
individuals and groups are forced to both acknowledge cognitive shortcomings and
expand awareness by integrating all accessible and available knowledge. To respond
to a pandemic, governmental responses cannot rely upon medicine alone but need
to integrate epidemiology with health systems management, logistics, psychology,
network management, and engineering. Response needs in the longer term may
include resources or capabilities not even being considered currently.

BECAUSE THE LAG IN DETERMINING LONGER-TERM NEEDS IS A CENTRAL

CHARACTERISTIC OF VINCIBLE IGNORANCE, LEADERS AND PUBLIC
HEALTH OFFICIALS HAVE TO ACCEPT THAT THEY LACK THE PERSPECTIVE
OF SUFFICIENT TIME TO PROPERLY ADDRESS THE CURRENT SITUATION.

As humanity leans deeper into the pandemic, it seems increasingly likely that
many lifestyle changes will be permanent, as the SARS impact in many parts of
Southeast Asia and the acceptance of mask wearing. Some changes could go far
deeper as economic disruptions continue to worsen as hunger and famine grow.
The deep uncertainty component of the Covid-19 phenomena will require us to
engage in addressing the last kind of ignorance, invincible ignorance. Invincible
ignorance requires that we turn to our own epistemological structures, paradigms,
narratives, and worldviews and ask if they are hindering our comprehension
of the situation. Invincible ignorance is a kind of ignorance that requires that
individuals examine the foundations of their worldviews to consider whether
they are hindering our ability to grasp the Big Picture – the scope of the crisis and
its consequences. Covid-19 seems, again, to be a perfect example of a postnormal
phenomenon. If globalisation dynamics boosted the spread of the virus, can/should
we collectively or individually (boycott Amazon?!) try to change the dynamics? If
present supranational structures have failed, we need to collectively develop new
ones; if national governments cannot cope, they must be reformed or replaced.
At this deepest level of ignorance, it is not what can be learned from the pandemic
experience but what we have to unlearn to better respond to the next pandemic
(or pick the environmental catastrophe of your choice!). If current capitalist logic
compels us to choose between saving people or saving the economy, then perhaps
it is time to take a hard look at the extent to which the old ways (the ‘old normal’)
were not sustainable or humane. As the imperfections of the system are laid bare, it
may require our species to take a good hard look at our invincible ignorance deficits
and not only imagine better futures but continue to work on realising wiser futures.
This level of ignorance also suggests that we need to anticipate and engage with
unthought futures to explore the unknown unknowns, to consider wildcards and
even catastrophes. Resilience will require thinking ‘outside the box’.
 126 THE PERFECT POSTNORMAL STORM

Back to Normal?
As researchers, we argue for a multi-layered analysis of the levels of uncertainty
in and ignorance about postnormal phenomenon and to apply the right kind of
ignorance depending on the phenomenon being explored or scenario being built.
The challenge is identifying which level of uncertainty to address and then apply
the right depth of ignorance for analysis. This is a demanding challenge. The
postnormal literature has dedicated considerable attention to what constitutes
‘normal’; it seems increasingly clear that when trying to sharpen our individual and
organisational anticipatory capabilities, ‘normal’ can be a big liability. Normalcy
resists the consideration, and the wider use, of alternative future approaches; it
even restricts what is acceptable in the present. A point made in a number of blogs
and posts in the spring peak in Covid-19: ‘we will not return to normal because
normal was the problem’. [27]

MAINTAINING A BUSINESS-AS-USUAL APPROACH, IN THE FACE OF

ACCELERATING CHANGE, IS POSTNORMAL LAG, WHEN INDIVIDUALS AND
ORGANISATIONS PERSIST IN APPLYING OLD RECIPES TO NEW
SITUATIONS, WHILE PRETENDING THAT THEY WORK IN SPITE OF
MOUNTING EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY (THINK CLIMATE
CHANGE DENIAL).

Covid-19 has shown several examples of this: every time a government has
declared that there was nothing to worry about; or when they said that their health
system was more than ready to face SARS-CoV-2; when they declared that the
measure that worked in one place ‘would not work in our country’; when they kept
stating that the country had already reached the peak (for days and days); and when
they promised that their measures will keep the economy ready to go as soon as the
confinement is over. Lag is one of the more dangerous aspects of the manufactured
normalcy field, when individuals and organisations ‘bury their heads in the sand’,
when the accumulation of anomalies in the Kuhnian sense push the paradigm
toward collapse. [28]
The continuation of postnormal lag can potentially lead to burst, to collapse,
or transformation – a phase change. But before that, there is another possibility,
an intermediate postnormal phase change – postnormal tilt. Postnormal lag may
result from failed corporate and government leadership – not entirely new – but it
appears that some leaders really do believe that decisions they make and directions
they give are best in the absence of scientific and public health evidence. Moving
beyond plain ignorance to acknowledge even deeper deficits and challenges to our
knowledge, postnormal science is required to expand the boundaries of what we
do not know and to expand our epistemological universe. Culture and governance
127 METHODOLOGY

differences provide different outcomes. China’s domestic Covid-19 strategy suggests

that the postnormal lag can be beaten. Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Denmark,
Germany, and Andorra took approaches to the early pandemic in effective ways,
both in terms of public health and their economies. Either they had the capacity to
see the real potential impact of the pandemic or realised that a business-as-usual
approach would not do.
The effect of a correction to the manufactured normalcy field is the postnormal
tilt. It is modelled on the effect one feels when a modern bus stops at a curb
and lowers hydraulically. The idea is that when the manufactured normalcy field
can be altered in ways that we may actually experience the emerging postnormal
nature of a rapidly developing event or issue. No matter how compelling or
pervasive the manufactured normalcy field, humans do have the capacity to
go beyond ontological and epistemological constructs and see phenomena for
what they really are. The growing body count of the Covid-19 pandemic makes it
painfully clear that adjusting the manufactured normalcy field is a very difficult
thing to do.
Postnormal creep processes come to an end. According to Sardar and Sweeney,
this is the postnormal burst, ‘when the system goes totally postnormal and there
is no place to hide’. [29] We have argued that the postnormal creep is expanding
and extending and that tilt may have normalised the manufactured normalcy
field somewhat. For example, working remotely and home-schooling are
increasingly seen as the ‘new normal’. Larger systems are still behaving within
the expected parameters of corporate capitalism and nation-state power appears
to be reasserting itself. Although lifestyles have clearly changed, some of them
likely to be permanent, there are still places to hide from postnormal times. Some
organisations, and presumably systems, are adapting and thriving. High technology
and space development growth continue relatively unrestrained.
When it fully arrives, the postnormal burst should both signal the end of
postnormal creep and force the manufactured normalcy field to reset as the
accumulated uncertainty is resolved, one way or another. The things researchers
do not presently know will be discovered and resolved: the true SARS-CoV-2
infectiousness, including its incidence and virulence; its lethality; the Covid-19
pandemic’s total effect on the economy; and the actual impact of the pandemic on
our lifestyles and our normal, ordinary activity. All these questions, so uncertain
now, will become facts that we will be able to gather, measure, and process with
plain ignorance. Even the remaining peripheral unknowns will fall under surface
uncertainty. Right now, a burst might seem to be a bad thing. But it may also mean
that individuals and organisations will become fully conscious of the situation,
with little or no lag in the face of the new evidence, and we will gain experience
and capacity to respond to future coronaviruses or other zoonotic outbreaks. Ebola,
Zika, MERS, and SARS are reminders this is unlikely to be either the last or worst
zoonotic pandemic. We may need to learn relatively fast, collectively, institutionally,
and individually to respond to the next outbreak.
128 THE PERFECT POSTNORMAL STORM

The uncertainties, the ignorances, and the postnormal conditions driven by

accelerating change have set the stage for unfolding postnormal phenomena. The
Covid-19 pandemic has been a postnormal perfect storm because the pandemic has
illustrated all of the key features and functions of postnormal times, and the creep
and tilt that lead to eventual postnormal burst. The extent of socioeconomic and
political changes in the future is addressed elsewhere on the three tomorrows of
Covid-19. The pandemic has legitimised addressing taboo subjects and brought
serious social justice and equity issues to the surface. The basic assumptions
about liberal democracy, the rule of law, what constitutes truth and facts – all are
under scrutiny.
For postnormal times analysis to have significance, the work will need to
engage more fully and deeply with scenario building and planning. Organisations
need to more fully engage in imagination, creativity, and envisioning preferred
futures, such as the transmodern and now transnormal aspirations championed
by Sardar. We also need to better engage in the metaphysical and spiritual
dimensions of postnormal times in order to come to grips with the meaning of these
transformations. The pandemic has caused great losses, to lives and livelihoods,
and we need to come to terms with our grief and pain, to honour the people and
activities we no longer have with us, but also celebrate the opportunity and gifts
that have arrived unexpectedly.
Our intention here was to not only discuss the pandemic as a postnormal
phenomenon but also to lay the groundwork for understanding the future monkeys
of chaos, black swans, and elephants in the room, and proliferating jellyfish
events that have been driving our social and technological systems to postnormal
burst, prior to the current pandemic. Improving our collective understanding of
postnormal times and the forces at work will be required to survive and even thrive
in postnormal times. The challenges we are likely to face due to global warming
may make zoonotic pandemics feel like one of the least of our problems. That could
not be illustrated more graphically than the massive forest fires in the US Pacific
Northwest at this writing. Multiple catastrophes are a likely harbinger of the future.
The drivers of postnormal change are inexorably compounding complexity, chaos,
and contradictions, further accelerating our ignorance and the uncertainty of it all.
However, we now have tools to better understand and challenge the assumptions of
the old normal, navigate emerging postnormal times, and chart a course to a more
resilient, equitable, and wise, transnormal civilisation.
129 METHODOLOGY

References

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Ziauddin Sardar, The Postnormal Times Reader, IIIT, London, 2017.

2. Gary, J. 2010. “Toward a New Macrohistory: An Ex- tension to Sardar’s

‘Postnormal Times’.” Futures 43: 48–51. doi:10.1016/j.futures.2010.04.033;
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3. Cairns, G. 2017. “What is Postnormal When There is No Normal? A

Postdichotomous View of the Histories of the Past, Present, and Future.”
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S. 2010. “Alliterative Logic: A Theory for Postnormal Times.” Futures 43:
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Futures: A Rejoinder to Ziauddin Sardar.” Futures 42: 617–624. doi:10. 1016/j.
futures.2010.04.021; Gidley, J. M. 2010. “Postformal Priorities for Postnormal
Time: A Rejoinder to Ziauddin Sardar.” Futures 42: 625–632.; and Kapoor, R.
2010. “Is There a Postnormal Time? From the Illusion Of Normality To The
Design for a New Normality.” Futures 43: 216–220.

4. Sardar, Z. 2015. “Postnormal times revisited.” Futures 67: 26–39. doi:10.1016/j.

futures.2015.02.003.

5. Sardar, Z., and J. A. Sweeney. 2017. “The Three Tomorrows of Postnormal

Times.” Futures 75: 1–13. doi:10.1016/j.futures.2015.10.004

6. Coventry, D. H. 2015. “Postnormal Thinking: The Need for a Better

Understanding of What Oil Vulnerability Will Mean for Australian
Agriculture. Building Productive, Diverse and Sustainable Landscapes.”
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Third Text 32, no. 5–6: 705–719. doi: 10.1080/ 09528822.2018.1548835; Colloff,
M. J., I. Fazey, R. Gorddard, G. M. Mace, W. B. Foden, M. Dunlop, I. C. Prentice,
J. Crowley, P. Leadley, and P. Degeorges. 2017. Transforming Conservation
Science and Practice for a Post- normal World. Conservation Biology 31, no. 5:
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Times: The Future of Creativity and the Creativity of the Future.” Futures
43: 221–227.; Çepni, E. 2017. “Transforming Education for a Transition into
Human-centered Economy and Post-normal Times.” Cadmus 3, no. 3: 24–41.;
Mayo, L. 2020. “The Postnormal Condition.” Journal of Futures Studies 24, no.
130 THE PERFECT POSTNORMAL STORM

4: 61–72.; Schwandt, T. A. 2019. “Post-Normal Evaluation?” Evaluation 25, no.

3: 317–329.; Fuller, T. 2017. “Anxious Relationships: The Un-marked Futures
for Post-Normal Scenarios in Anticipatory Systems.” Technological Forecasting
& Social Change 124: 41–50. doi:10.1016/j. techfore.2016.07.045; Jones, C.
2019. “When Things Fall Apart: Global Weirding, Postnormal Times, and
Complexity Limits.” Building Sustainability Through Environmental Education,
edited by L Wilson and C. N. Stevenson. Hershey: IGI Global.; Sweeney, J.
2017. “Global Weirding.” The Postnormal Times Reader, edited by Z. Sardar.
London: Centre for Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies: 203–210.; Serra,
J., and Z. Sardar. 2017. “Intelligence in Postnormal Times.” World Futures
Review 9, no. 3: 159–179.; Muzykina, Y. 2018. “Confronting Postnormal
Times.” ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326732118;
Gilbert, J. 2016. “Transforming Science Education for the Anthropocene –
Is It Possible?” Res Sci Educ 46: 187–201. doi:10.1007/s11165–015- 9498–2;
and Bussey, M. 2018. “Afterword: Beyond a Materialist Sociology.” Beyond
Sociology, edited by A. Giri. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan.

7. Bauman, Z., and E. Mauro. 2016. Babel. Cambridge: Polity Press.

8. Retrieved 4 September 2020: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/

world/coronavirus-maps.html.

9. Yglesias, M. and Molla, R. 2020. “New data says the unemployment rate
surged to 4.4 percent in March – but the truth is worse,” Vox 3 April. https://
www.vox.com/2020/4/3/21205830/march-unemployment-rate-data-
misleading.

10. https://carnegieendowment.org/publications/ interactive/

protest-tracker?gclid=EAIaIQob ChMIpd7-4-bQ6wIVx0XVCh15-
gyJEAMYASAAEgLc9fD_BwE.

11. Schultz, W. 2016. “A Brief History of Futures.” World Futures Review 7, no. 4:
324–331.

12. https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-clusters-linked-to-asymptomatic-
younger-cases/a-54293037.; https://health.clevelandclinic.org/covid-19-can-
also-damage-your-heart-not-just-your-lungs/.

13. https://www.onlynaturalenergy.com/avenger- planet-is-the-covid-19-

pandemic-mother-natures-response-to-human-transgression/.

14. https://www.project-syndicate.org/videos/covid-19-deglobalisation-what-
will-the-post-pandemic-world-look-like.

15. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/global-food-chains-disruption-
covid19/.
131 METHODOLOGY

16. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/08/26/worlds-
richest-billionaire-jeff-bezos-first-200-billion/#692397e74db7.

17. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RakpejJT6bc.

18. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/02/philippines-duterte-threatens-to-shoot-
lockdown-violators.html.

19. https://www.cppfs.org.

20. For a skeptical view see: https://www.thenaked-scientists.com/podcasts/

naked-scientists-podcast/where-did-covid-come.

21. https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-insider/press-releases/ibisworld-
monitors-the-coronavirus-impact-on-industries-around-the-world/.

22. Rao, V. 2012. Welcome to the Future Nauseous. Ribbonfarm: Experiments in

Refactored Perception. http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2012/05/ 09/welcome-
to-the-future-nauseous/

23. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/ coronavirus-covid19-business-

economics-society-economics-change.; https://www.city-journal.org/covid-
19-european.

24. Retrieved 7 September 2020: https://www.ft.com/content/d5e27b1f-ba5a-

4445-a329-1802cf70d619.

25. Ord, T. 2020. The Precipice: Existential Risk and The Future of Humanity. New
York: Hachette Books.

26. https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/19/faster- response-prevented-most-us-

covid-19-deaths/.

27. https://www.odi.org/blogs/16815-covid-19-we- won-t-get-back-normal-

because-normal-was- problem.

28. Kuhn, T. S. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Rev- olutions. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.

29. Sardar, Z., and J. A. Sweeney. 2017. “The Three Tomorrows of Postnormal
Times.” Futures 75: 1–13. doi:10.1016/j.futures.2015.10.004
THE POSTNORMAL
LANDSCAPE
Philip Spies and Chris Jones

The Chinese government initially remained silent about corona influenza incidents
that occurred in the country in November 2019, but finally, on 31 December 2019,
informed the World Health Organization (WHO) about the cluster of SARS CoV-2 flu
cases in Wuhan, a city with about 11 million citizens, and the cultural and economic
node of central China. By 5 January 2020 there were fifty-nine cases, ten days later
282 cases, and thereafter infections spread like a wildfire worldwide.
The ‘Covid-19 pandemic’ was not only characterised by deadly flu infections as
it progressed, but more particularly also by large-scale control-driven disruption.
The lockdown measures for infection control cut people off from their workplaces,
their friends, their families, and their recreation facilities. Supply chains crumbled,
businesses went bankrupt, and unemployment increased. Social and political
unrest coupled with growing poverty and famine have caused further disruption,
especially in poor countries. By mid-2020, the disruptive control measures of
governments created a chaotic world. Nations became inward-looking, thereby
disrupting international political and economic relations. This (self-created)
disruption continues today and seems to become more irreversible the longer
it lasts. The hour has now also arrived for the twenty-seven-year-old ‘New South
Africa’. Major changes lie ahead for the country and its people.
Was the pandemic really that unexpected? With hindsight and reflection,
people suddenly began to realise that warnings about the possibility of disruptive
global flu pandemics were already published decades ago. Why was this not
taken seriously at the time? This is one question that is addressed in this article.
However, there is another question that first needs to be answered: Why has this
pandemic disrupted the existing world order to the extent that people now struggle
to find solutions?
Prevention is better than cure: future awareness (‘memory of the future’ [1])
could have led to better planning and more informed management of the Covid-19
pandemic. Good forward planning thirty years ago would have resulted in less
confusion, disruption, and economic damage today. Unfortunately, the social and
economic consequences of managing this pandemic are going to disrupt our lives
even more, and for longer, than would have been the case if we only had to deal with
134 THE POSTNORMAL LANDSCAPE

the flu infections on their own. In retrospect, previous pandemics, such as the Great
Influenza Epidemic of 1918, are predominantly remembered in terms of the number
of people who became ill and died. This one will be remembered differently, because
it led to the disintegration of existing world systems.
The ultimate social and economic consequences of this pandemic are
incomprehensible today, and this causes great confusion. It is a wave that cannot
be controlled, at best it can be navigated. Three futures researchers at the Centre
for Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies (CPPFS), Del Pino, Jones, and Mayo, as
highlighted in this edited collection describe the Covid-19 pandemic as a ‘perfect
postnormal storm’. This article discusses some aspects of their views and applies
them to the South African situation.

The World System

The rapid technological and industrial development over the past sixty years
– especially the revolution in information, communication, and transport
technology – has produced a world-system of interdependence between countries,
between people, and between people and nature. Since 1972, systems thinkers have
regularly issued warnings to the world community about the serious consequences
of unbridled growth and ‘progress’ within a limited, closed world ecosystem. Over
fifty years stress built up in this ecosystem, and the quality of the atmosphere, the
earth’s limited natural resources, and sensitive ecology have been subjected to
growing risks. Nature started pushing back harder and harder against exploitation
and misuse, and people became vulnerable to the unintended consequences of
their mindless actions. Metaphorically speaking, today we are ‘space travellers’ on
‘Spaceship Earth’ within which our actions and the consequences of our actions
take place in one interdependent whole. [2]
The disruption of the Covid-19 lockdown pushed the world community to a
tipping point in 2020: a prospect that Meadows et. al anticipated forty-nine years
ago. [3] In 1972, they called upon people to take note of and respect the interactions
in the ‘great whole’ that supports their existence and wealth. But at the time, even
they did not foresee the fragility of global manmade systems. Only since the 1980s
have the complex dynamics of human systems become the subject of focused
inquiry among researchers who specialise in ‘soft’ systems.
Government actions against the Covid-19 pandemic are now exposing just
how fragile manmade systems are – just as global warming and the disappearing
ozone layer have made governments more aware of the fragility of natural systems.
No matter how hard you may try to restrict the transmission of infections, it
is impossible to control the feedback chain reactions caused by social and
economic disruptions. Unfortunately, no solutions can be gained from specialised
knowledge, because good specialists are usually not good systems thinkers.
Nor do we know what lies beyond the tipping point, and that makes goalsetting
substantially impossible.
 135 METHODOLOGY

The Crisis
In their first article entitled ‘The Postnormal Perfect Storm’, Del Pino and colleagues
describe the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic as Postnormal Times (PNT).
They describe PNT as an “in-between period” during which old ways are dying out,
and new ways have yet to be discovered, and very few things make sense to people.
The Italian journalist Ezio Mauro describes PNT as: ‘we are hanging between the
“no longer” and the “not-yet”’. [4] It is a transition period in which people begin to
realise that they cannot return to the previous dispensation, but do not know which
future route is feasible, sustainable, and desirable.
The chaos of PNT has probably also been conditioned by the rapid pace of
technological and social change that has built up systematically since the 1960s.
Since the 1980s, the information, knowledge, and transport revolution has brought
billions of people and millions of institutions from around the world together in
one global ‘roller coaster’. Alvin Toffler notes in his 1970 book, Future Shock, that the
speed of change is accelerating to such an extent that people are struggling to adapt
to it. He calls the affective and cognitive implications of this ‘future shock’.

THE INTRINSIC NATURE OF INNOVATION HAS ALSO CHANGED OVER THE

PAST FORTY YEARS. INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE TECHNOLOGY HAS
BROUGHT A NEW DIMENSION TO THE FORE THAT IS CHARACTERISED BY
THE SCOPE, SPEED, AND DIVERGENCE OF INNOVATION.

In other words, innovations in information and knowledge technology were not

only rapid and repetitive in nature, but they also produced an extensive chain
reaction of innovation metamorphoses for, and in, new application landscapes.
This has made the innovation process increasingly complex, while people’s expert
abilities struggle to keep up with its systemic implications.
As mentioned, modern scholars are excellent specialists in their particular
disciplines or fields of study, but often fall short when it comes to practical/general
application of their knowledge within complex systems. Knowledgeable but
‘narrow-minded’ people can, with good intentions, produce harmful unintended
consequences because they do not know what they did not know. [5] If every person
does their best in narrowly focused ways in their individual supposed worlds, the
integrity of the real world will be systematically dismantled, because one or two
elements of an interdependent whole are changed out of harmony with the whole.
This disintegration is essentially an entropy process that can build up tension to a
tipping point. A perfect storm is thus brewing, so to speak, while the ‘navigators’ of
society struggle to read the broad ‘weather patterns’.
It is now very clear that the Covid-19 pandemic has morphed into an extensive
phenomenon with two interactive dimensions: a pandemic dimension interacting
with a broad socio-political dimension. This creates confusion stemming from
 136 THE POSTNORMAL LANDSCAPE

decisionmakers’ poor insight and understanding of the spill-over consequences

of lockdown: the pandemic as a disease is better understood (however poorly) as
the systemic consequences of its management. Moreover, superficial and one-
dimensional news reports (including fake news), inappropriate information
systems (manifested in incorrect and/or contradictory information), a lack of
relevant research results on both levels, and general ignorance about all facets
of the new phenomenon, further confuse the issue – especially because this
phenomenon is developmental in nature, i.e., it is a continuous state of becoming.
People’s actions, reactions, and interactions to address the problem – locally and
globally – are constantly evolving and have consequences for virtually every level
and every facet of our global society. This is a transformative chain reaction that
produces new, previously unfathomable outcomes and disruptive phenomena. Del
Pino and associates call this evolutionary chaos ‘postnormal change’. [6]

POSTNORMAL CHANGE INVOLVES EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING, QUICKLY

AND SIMULTANEOUSLY: IT IS A ROLLER COASTER. IT TRICKLES DOWN
FROM THE WHOLE TO THE PERSONAL LEVEL.

It disrupts the big scene of world order and economies, as well as the small scene
of people’s way of life, existence, thinking, and psyche – to then move again in a
circular motion from the small scene to the big scene. Postnormal change does not
produce clear outcomes, because each outcome in turn gives rise to further changes
until the process is finally played out. While this happens, apparent outcomes (or
logical clarifications) are supplanted by contradictions that further confuse people,
because they cannot make sense of it.
It is well known that a system is much more than the sum total of its various
parts – and also that the outcomes of systemic activity are phenomena from
interactions and not cause-effect outcomes. The Covid-19 pandemic has produced
complex systemic problems that cannot be anticipated, explained, or understood by
ordinary logic. Complexity is a characteristic of systems with extensive components
and elements that interact with each other in many ways and have the abilities
of self-organisation and self-creation. The confusion that arises from Covid-19 is
due to this. As a postnormal phenomenon, it cannot be analysed; it can only be
approached in its entirety by trying to understand the supporting circumstances
it produces.

A Postnormal Phenomenon
Because postnormal phenomena self-organise and produce ‘contradictions’, they
cannot be controlled or managed but only navigated – by trying to understand the
phenomena in all their contradictions and then making choices and finding the
best routes to possible (and desirable) alternative outcomes. Of course, another way
137 METHODOLOGY

out is not to react to postnormal events, but to avoid the issue and wait the storm
out. But then you can wash up in a strange world. Because there was no learning
experience, the new circumstances can be equally incomprehensible and difficult
to master.
How can one read this phenomenon? To start with, it is necessary to identify
the blind spots and gaps in existing knowledge, as well as the reasons for
these blind spots and gaps. This involves aspects such as people’s underlying
assumptions, paradigms, ideas, values, ​​ and worldviews that influence their
perception, thinking, and behaviour. Due to inappropriate worldviews and gaps
in their existing knowledge, decisionmakers’ constricted actions can produce
unintended consequences. For example, the old order is built on global integration
while the strategy to curb the Covid-19 pandemic causes the dismantling of
global integration. Efforts by politicians to avoid, delay, or remain silent about
the crisis to avoid panic ultimately exacerbated its impact. Establishing lasting
solutions to the pandemic requires the dismantling of ideological differences,
cooperation between stakeholders, and strong, innovative leadership, but there
are worldwide signs of ideologically driven centralism and self-centred populism
in managing the situation. In South Africa, this has led to a strengthening of
race-based government support and even to greater corruption and new criminal
networks. [7]
Entrenched aspirations, values, and
​​ ideologies also sometimes stand in the way
of implementing lasting solutions to the economic problems created by the Covid-19
disruptions. In South Africa, for example, the government’s pursuit of interracial
wealth-equality through race-based affirmative action rules and workers’ union
activism, do not consider the impact of such actions on unemployment. On the one
hand, this can become an obstacle to the development of South African industries
and businesses (with associated higher unemployment), and on the other hand, it
can give rise to trafficking, corruption, and other criminal activities that increase
social and political instability. Long-term support for those who lost their jobs
due to the pandemic could produce a dependency syndrome and eventually poor
human resource utilisation and poor economic growth. And, with continued high
population growth and immigration towards South Africa, the number of people
in need would increase systematically, because the South African economy cannot
create enough jobs.
Therefore, curbing the number of deaths due to the Covid-19 pandemic in South
Africa must be weighed up against the deadly long-term consequences of Covid-19
lockdown measures – consequences such as endemic unemployment, famine, and
the possibility of social and political unrest in the country. This crisis, to an extent
like no other, also highlights the contradictions between people-centred objectives,
especially economic objectives, and the ecological sustainability of life on earth.
South Africa’s energy sector is highly dependent on coal-fired electricity generation.
Moving away from such an environmentally abusive energy system is becoming a
commercial and ecological necessity for the country. Preliminary global figures
138 THE POSTNORMAL LANDSCAPE

already indicate an improvement in the quality of air, water, and atmosphere due
to the global economic slowdown: Covid-19 seems to have given Mother Earth the
chance to breathe again. But in the case of South Africa, the problem of transforming
an entrenched energy system is compounded by the economic impact of Covid-19
on the country.
The most painful contradiction is the moral dilemma when a decisionmaker
has to choose between saving lives or saving jobs – which is ultimately also about
survival, or worse – killing or assaulting people who do not adhere to lockdown
rules (a measure originally intended to keep people safe), as in the case of President
Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, who ordered the shooting of offenders of
lockdown regulations. [8]
Pandemic management will always deal with such inconsistencies and
unintended consequences, and the longer a pandemic lasts, the greater the
possibility that more such dilemmas will emerge. This inevitably leads to increasing
uncertainty in decision-making. Hence, (metaphorically speaking) good navigation
systems are necessary in stormy times. Scouts must be placed in the right places and
have good scanning systems that can see the hazards on the way forward timeously.
The question, however, is how can this be done in practice? To answer this, we must
first determine how much we do not know about a strange situation such as the
Covid-19 pandemic, as well as its consequences. [9] Depending on the answer, we
can then discuss how we should deal with it.

Recognising Uncertainty and Ignorance

Del Pino and associates begin with a well-known systems studies point of departure,
namely, the more complex a phenomenon is, the greater the intertwining of
processes and the number of accompanying interactions. [10] This means that in this
respect the extent of the change is only one of the indicators. Complex changes lead
to uncertainty about the endpoints because the process is characterised by division
(or branching) of processes, development from processes, overlapping of processes,
and change in the nature of processes. This creates a chaos of uncertainty, which
systematically moves towards a phase change: a process that Nicolis and Prigogine
characterise as ‘self-organisation’: a phenomenon resulting from neighbouring or
local interactions between the elements of a complex system. [11]
There is also the possibility of guided self-organisation by the management
of so-called ‘strange attractors’. In socio-economic transformation, information
management, value management, and learning processes, among others, can give
rise to new collective insights, paradigm shifts, and worldviews that can serve as
strange attractors for guided self-organisation. A later discussion on a cognitive
homeland and cognitive dissonance is related to this.
Del Pino and associates call the deployment of uncertainty during postnormal
change ‘postnormal creep’. They consider this creeping movement to be typical
of any post-normal change process. It systematically involves more variables as it
evolves and changes, therefore, becoming more complex over time. Consequently,
 139 METHODOLOGY

the further this creeping movement progresses, the greater and deeper the
uncertainty becomes, until it reaches a tipping point by itself and can undergo a
phase change. This postnormal uncertainty is characterised not only by the number
of unanswered questions, but, according to Del Pino and associates, also by three
types of uncertainty arising from three types of ignorance.

PEOPLE BECOME INSECURE WHEN THEY DO NOT HAVE THE ABILITY TO

DETERMINE WHAT IS GOING ON. GREATER CLARITY IS SOUGHT, BUT THE
POSTNORMAL CREEP CONSTANTLY SHIFTS THE GOALPOSTS, WHILST
UNCERTAINTY GROWS AND DEEPENS.
For example, in the beginning, people knew little about SARS-CoV-2; many
accepted that it was like any other coronavirus, and were not too worried about it.
They revealed a so-called ‘surface uncertainty’, because they believed that there was
enough knowledge available somewhere to deal with the problem but felt uncertain
about how and where that knowledge could be found.
During their surface uncertainty, experts still believed that the social and
economic situation that would arise from Covid-19 would not really be that different
from previous situations and that it would be sufficient to focus on and combat
just the infections. Particularly in the first phase of the pandemic, there was great
ignorance about the serious disruption that would result from combating Covid-19.
It also took time for people to understand the mysteries and indistinctness of the
SARS-CoV-2. When it was discovered with shock that the new coronavirus was much
more aggressive and deadly than previous ones, lockdown with all its unpredictable
consequences was decided on as an emergency action. When the consequences of
lockdown started to unfold, people began to realise that their current knowledge
about pandemics could not provide answers to the chain reactions set in motion
by policy decisions. They then experienced so-called ‘shallow uncertainty’: an
uncertainty that forced them to look below the surface of the current knowledge
landscape, to ask other questions, and seek new solutions.
The eventual realisation that the ‘solutions’ put in place to combat Covid-19 were
shaking the foundations of the existing world order, led to people experiencing a
third level of so-called ‘deep uncertainty’. People suddenly realised that their lives
beyond the Covid-19 pandemic were also threatened: that the sustainability of the
world community’s prosperity, and even people’s survival, has been jeopardised by
the management of the pandemic.
Although it is necessary to understand these three types of uncertainties, this
is not sufficient. Uncertainty must be managed, and this is only possible when
the kind of ignorance that underlies uncertainty, is understood. Del Pino and
associates’ PNT theory postulate that each level of uncertainty is related to a specific
type of ignorance.
 140 THE POSTNORMAL LANDSCAPE

When confronted with a viral pandemic crisis, the first (and most natural)
approach is to fall back on scholarly knowledge gained from earlier apparently
similar pandemics. However, if it is a new type of (so-called ‘novel’) virus, such as
SARS CoV-2, that presents new patterns of infection, it can initially be wrongly
postulated that one is only dealing with ‘plain ignorance’. Plain ignorance
presupposes that all that is needed is to bring together existing knowledge with
greater dedication. It is a cognitive process that experts feel comfortable with
because it is well known: it includes methods such as case studies, established
theories, deductive research, cause-and-effect thinking, right-or-wrong thinking,
and the bringing together of all specialised knowledge. This approach provides
peace of mind for surface uncertainty, as with initial attempts to manage the
Covid-19 pandemic when it was still developing.
When it was discovered over time that SARS CoV-2 is something completely
different and that established practices cannot deal with it effectively, people began
to realise that they would have to dig deeper for solutions. For example, many
Western cities have no contingency plans for a pandemic like Covid-19, simply
because they have never experienced it before, e.g., Del Pino and associates noted
that the mayor of New Orleans knew how to respond to a hurricane threat, but not
to the Covid-19 pandemic. The initial failures in pandemic management caused
shallow uncertainty, with the realisation that creative thinking, stronger efforts
in new directions, as well as hard work are needed to find the right solutions to
the problem. It was assumed that the Covid-19 pandemic presented a problem of
‘vincible ignorance’.

VINCIBLE IGNORANCE MEANS THAT EXPLICIT ATTENTION MUST BE PAID

TO WHAT PEOPLE ARE IGNORANT OF, IN OTHER WORDS, SEARCHING FOR
NEW KNOWLEDGE LANDSCAPES AND TECHNIQUES. IN THIS SITUATION,
NOTHING IS TAKEN FOR GRANTED, WHILE PERCEPTIONS OF EXPERTISE
AND IGNORANCE ON THE SUBJECT ARE WEIGHED AGAINST EACH OTHER
THROUGH DIALOGUE.
For example, the assumption that Covid-19 is just like a mild flu has cost thousands
of lives. People were then forced not only to acknowledge their existing ignorance,
but also to reinforce their knowledge of the phenomenon by compiling all accessible
and available knowledge in public discourses, as well as launching new research
projects for a vaccine (or vaccines). This determined that not only new vaccines and
medicine are needed, but also better knowledge of, among others, health system
management, logistics, psychology, network management, and engineering.
An important consequence of these initial efforts is that people started to realise
that there are huge gaps in their existing knowledge landscape. They suddenly
141 METHODOLOGY

understood that the Covid-19 pandemic is multifaceted and complexly systemic in

nature, and that it creates all sorts of problems worldwide, forcing people to change
even their thinking and lifestyles. People feel ‘deeply uncertain’ because existing
knowledge cannot offer them good solutions. They feel ‘invincible ignorance’.
Therefore, they become discouraged in the face of inability to manage the Covid-19
pandemic with all its implications efficiently and effectively.
Feelings of invincible ignorance arise from thinking within the established
knowledge landscape. Therefore, the solution lies outside and beyond that
knowledge landscape. The search for solutions can move through four levels:
Initially a scoping of the knowledge landscape of experts and decisionmakers
is necessary to determine how this hinders their ability to interpret the Covid-19
pandemic correctly. Second, helping people to acknowledge and manifest their
feelings of invincible ignorance, opens the door to examine attitudes, worldviews,
and paradigms. This helps to determine why people approach and formulate a
problem in a certain way. Third, since the Covid-19 pandemic has spread rapidly
globally, it only makes sense to research the underlying dynamics. Fourth, an
investigation of culture and institutions is needed: if current cultural practices and
social and economic institutions have failed, the reasons for the failure must be
investigated and new practices and institutions developed.
However, just developing new skills is not enough. We also need to determine
what should be learned and done differently. If market-oriented capitalism forces
decisionmakers to make choices between saving people or saving the economy,
it is necessary to consider whether some aspects do not pose a danger to the
sustainability of society. As the imperfections of the old order are exposed, it
may require further investigation of shortcomings in accepted practices and then
weighing them up against new feasible and desirable alternatives.
Good change management requires innovative and forward thinking. To
sharpen this ability, one must determine what ‘normal’ in people’s worldview
is. People tend to be attached to normal, which limits their ability to adapt and
consider new alternatives. As stated in a slogan during the riots of October
2019 in Santiago, Chile: ‘we will not return to normal, because normal was the
problem’. [12]

Our Cognitive ‘Homeland’

Del Pino and associates note the excellent ability of the human brain to normalise
anything that happens as an obstruction to innovative thinking. [13] Normalisation
is beneficial when people have to adapt to a situation quickly but becomes an
obstruction when totally new possibilities need to be considered. They also refer
to Venkatesh Rao’s idea of ​​a ‘manufactured normalcy field’ to emphasise the inertia
of fixed views of reality. [14] This manufactured normalcy field (MNF) is a cognitive
‘homeland’ to which people want to flee when they are confronted with changing
realities – back to their usual way of life, thinking, and doing things. This is not
in itself detrimental when dealing with ordinary problems, but the MNF causes
142 THE POSTNORMAL LANDSCAPE

conventional ways of thinking and actions to dominate when disruptive changes

require innovative thinking and actions.
The urgent need to manage the Covid-19 pandemic caused great uncertainty
among ‘cognitive homeland people’ when they discovered that this is not just a
problem of ordinary ignorance and that they have to leave the homeland as soon
as possible. This emotion, or feeling, emerged after an attempt was made to deal
with the pandemic in the usual way. Del Pino and colleagues describe the lag that
accompanied this attempt as ‘postnormal lag’. [15] Postnormal lag is a persistent
behaviour in new situations despite increasing evidence that perceived solutions
tend to produce new problems. For example, it is postnormal lag when governments
and organisations persist with carbon practices, despite clear evidence of climate
change and global warming due to the carbon economy. When governments, in
terms of their past experiences (and in all honesty), persisted in doing the same
things and then declared that their health care systems were fully prepared for the
Covid-19 pandemic, when in fact the opposite was true, it is also a postnormal lag.
A postnormal lag is also indicative of weak, and even failed, transformative
leadership. Weak leadership often manifests in cases where a long period of even
change is suddenly interrupted by a disruptive phenomenon. Leaders are also just
people who are accustomed to living calmly within the normal course of events.
They tend to follow the familiar route, even when movements suddenly change
course. Their persistence in following this route can lead to two mutually supportive
organisational pathologies called ‘defensive avoidance’ and group thinking if they
do not realise, and acknowledge, that the new situation makes the usual way of
doing things, invalid. [16]
The process of transforming the MNF is called ‘tipping point management’ –
which also underlies the development of strange attractors. This is when new
insights and perceptions are systematically stimulated by decisionmakers through
a variety of management practices such as undirected environmental exploration,
heuristic learning processes, dialogue, and causal layer analysis. [17] [18]
Like so many other things in life, postnormal creep tends towards an endpoint.
In PNT theory, this moment is known as ‘postnormal burst’. This not only indicates
the end of the creeping movement, but also forces the MNF to migrate to a new
view of reality. Adaptation to a new view of reality can, as already mentioned, be
managed systematically, and Del Pino and colleagues propose three metaphors that
can help people diagnose the reasons for adaptation problems, namely the Black
Elephant, Black Swan, and Black Jellyfish. [19]

Cognitive Dissonance
The introduction to this article notes that there were warnings about the possibility
of disruptive flu pandemics decades ago. The question is asked: why was it not
taken seriously at the time?
One explanation for this is cognitive dissonance among leaders, experts, and
in society in general. Cognitive dissonance is a state of confusion in thinking, what
 143 METHODOLOGY

people believe, and people’s attitudes towards a new situation when it is necessary
to make creative decisions and change their approach to the situation. A first and
overarching explanation for the occurrence of cognitive dissonance is summarised
in the problem of escaping from a MNF. Next, three symptoms of cognitive
dissonance and the underlying reasons are briefly described.
The metaphor Black Elephant is based on the well-known metaphor ‘elephant in
the room’, which refers to something that everyone knows about, but no one wants
to talk about. Black elephant is applied by Vinay Gupta to an event that experts
foresaw, and considered highly probable, but, for convenience’s sake, put out of
their minds. If that event finally occurs, they downplay it as a Black Swan. [20]

A BLACK ELEPHANT IS ONE EXAMPLE OF DEFENSIVE AVOIDANCE OF

ACTION, BECAUSE IT CAN DISRUPT EXISTING POWER RELATIONS, OR GIVE
RISE TO THE PERCEPTION THAT ACTION IS SIMPLY TOO INCONVENIENT
OR TOO EXPENSIVE AND SHOULD THEREFORE BE AVOIDED (AND THE
PROBLEM IGNORED).

When the bomb finally explodes and people are forced to pay attention to the
crisis, the consequences are greeted with surprise and disbelief as unforeseen or
unexpected. By then it is usually too late to prevent serious damage.
Black elephants are also supported by narrow (non-systemic) thinking and
group thinking within the (indifferent) wider society that tends to be nonchalant
so that people can get on with their lives. The premise is that there is no need
to fix something that is not yet broken – even if the prognosis of a developing
catastrophe is clear to everyone. For example, in South Africa a rigid economy,
weak race relations, very large inequalities in income and wealth, divisive politics,
rising unemployment, and poverty, predict a high probability of national collapse
in the near future – unless something drastic is done about it with the cooperation
of all our citizens. Expert observers recognise this, and informed people can sense
it, but the developing catastrophe is expelled from South Africans’ manufactured
normalcy field or cognitive homeland.
Cognitive dissonance can also be related to a breakdown between the cognitive
(comprehension), affective (emotional), and conative (willpower-driven) dimensions
of people’s thinking. This classification has its origins in research in Germany in the
nineteenth century, but, according to the American psychologist Ernest Hilgard, is
still used today by psychologists who investigate the connection between people’s
thoughts, emotions, and actions. [21] It has been indicated elsewhere that it is
possible to strengthen this link through good leadership and well-ordered, tipping
point management. [22] Therefore, the black elephant phenomenon is also a
symptom of poor transformative and ethical leadership, including poor planning
144 THE POSTNORMAL LANDSCAPE

processes. An intertwined power-political game (the ‘power system’) often plays a

major role if politicians maintain dissipated thinking and dissipated behaviour in
societies or organisations to advance their political objectives.
For effective action, good prognosis is essential, but not sufficient, and therefore
black elephants emerge.
The Black Swan metaphor was created by Nasim Nicholas Taleb with reference
to events that emerge unexpectedly from outside the observation landscape. The
underlying message of the black swan (outlier) metaphor is: What you do not know
is often much more relevant than what you do know. [23]
Taleb’s warnings relate to invincible ignorance: you do not know what you do
not know or should know. He explains this situation with reference to the discovery
of black swans in Australia when it was still firmly believed in Europe that all swans
were white. A black swan is described by Taleb as a highly disruptive event that lies
beyond people’s knowledge, conceptual landscape, and expectations – to such an
extent that, if someone were to refer to this, they cannot comprehend it, or at least
firmly believe that it is a total impossibility. Taleb adds that, when this happens,
people tend to give good explanations as to why it was ‘foreseeable’ and ‘predictable’
in hindsight. In other words, they suddenly become ‘smart’ by reflecting on the past.
If people in hindsight believe that a black swan was previously foreseeable and
predictable, then why not also in foresight? The obvious answer is that you did not
know in advance what you did not know. Our expertise is only a small aspect of our
much greater ignorance – as the Bible puts it: ‘for we know in part, and we prophesy
in part …’. (1 Corinthians 13:9) Only when a Black Swan appears can you, through
research and backcasting, begin to discover how and why certain things happened
as they did – and begin to realise the extent and nature of previous ignorance.
Experience can be a good teacher for those who want to learn.
However, good foresight is possible today through good futures research. The
aim of futures research is to improve people’s ‘memory of the future’ and prognostic
ability: something that is not possible by simply trying to predict the future. Over the
past fifty years, futures researchers have developed a knapsack full of methods that
can help curb the possibility of black swans: methods such as undirected futures
exploration, causal-layered futures exploration, trend-impact analysis, cross-
impact analysis, scenario planning, systems analysis, and heuristic questioning.
The possibility of black swans increases when a business’s or a country’s future
research weakens.
Black Jellyfish is a metaphor created by Del Pino and associates to identify
normal phenomena with ‘postnormal potential’. Black jellyfish refers to normal
phenomena which, through systemic interactions with other normal phenomena,
can suddenly change in nature, also in the reach of impact. [24]
The reason for this is twofold. First, changes in one or two elements of a system
can trigger a chain reaction that produces large disruption with a ripple effect.
Second, entropy can play a role if different elements within the system respond
unilaterally (out of harmony) to changes. The disillusionment and great disruption
145 METHODOLOGY

caused by the Covid-19 pandemic worldwide is due largely to black jellyfish

phenomena that have emerged from countermeasures. Therefore, it is a good
example of how one-dimensional and short-term decision-making by management
or authorities during major crises, lead to unintended adverse consequences. Black
jellyfish is, therefore, a metaphor for an outcome of poor decision-making that
can ultimately have worse consequences than either a black elephant or a black
swan. The consequences of reactionary decision-making in combating the Covid-19
pandemic are clear evidence of this.
Lack of systems thinking in controlling and managing pandemics or other
similar crises can result in more dire consequences than the crisis itself would have.

A Guide to A New Cognitive Homeland for South Africans

The manmade consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic are a product of sixty years
of unequal progress in the world characterised by:

1. The systemic integration of peoples through business, economic, social,

political, and resource utilisation networks through which prosperity growth
has been produced primarily for the benefit of the affluent;
2. Unbridled population and industrial growth that has built up systemic overstress
in a closed world system (natural and social);
3. A disproportionate explosion in technological innovation that has benefited
rich countries significantly more than poor countries;
4. Consequently: unbalanced industrial and prosperity growth in a closed world
system in which 10% of the world population accumulates 80% of the world’s
wealth while the externalities, such as atmosphere and marine pollution, due to
some of their exploitive practices, is shared by all;
5. 80% of the world population is caught in a low-level poverty trap due to a
(endemic) technological handicap, dwindling natural resources, and high
population growth, while rich countries are dealing with low population growth,
aging population, and new technology;
6. Utilisation of natural resources is overstrained by both greed and a need for
survival. In rich countries this is the result of high-level consumer economies,
a drive towards uninhibited prosperity, and industrial practices that pollute
particularly the atmosphere and oceans. In poor countries overstress is mainly
due to natural resource dependent survival economies that threaten the
sustainability of their scarce natural resources;
7. As a result of these social and economic imbalances, the old global normal was
probably unsustainable and awaiting a shock, such as the Covid-19 pandemic,
which set in motion a global restructuring of which the end result is still a
mystery to everyone;
8. We now live in postnormal times – an in-between period in which old ways
are dying out, new ways have yet to develop, and very few things make sense
to people.
 146 THE POSTNORMAL LANDSCAPE

If the world situation at the beginning of 2020 was unsustainable, then the situation
in South Africa was even more so. South Africa was already in deep trouble
politically, socially, and economically in March 2020 when the Covid-19 bomb also
exploded here. The sources of economic progress that served South Africa so well
since the country’s economic awakening in 1880 – agriculture and mining – have
lost momentum, especially since the 1980s. After the 1990s, industrial development
could no longer provide the kind of impetus to South Africa’s economic development
that it did from the Second World War to the 1980s. Besides, the contribution of
manufacturing to South Africa’s gross domestic product has fallen from 21% to
6% since 1990, which should be a source of great concern for every South African.
Manufacturing and construction are the natural employment destinations for
South Africa’s large, poorly trained workforce because agriculture and mining are
no longer able to rise to the occasion.
A Gordian Knot of issues are facing South Africa, including: a low to negative
economic growth-rate, a large and growing debt burden, an overloaded (and
apparently politically-entrenched) civil service, high and still rising unemployment,
a fiscal abyss with a dwindling tax base, increasing demands for social support, while
the ability of the unemployed to ultimately take care of themselves is hampered by
poor education and a dysfunctional educational system.

SOUTH AFRICA’S BUNDLE OF CRISES CALLS FOR CREATIVE, INNOVATIVE

THINKING. BUT THE COUNTRY CONTINUES TRYING TO FIND SOLUTIONS
WITHIN THE BOUNDARIES OF THE OLD COGNITIVE HOMELAND OF A
RESOURCE-BASED ECONOMY, INTERGROUP CONFLICT, AND RACE-BASED
POLITICS. IN SHARP CONTRAST, THE REAL WEALTH OF ANY TWENTY-
FIRST CENTURY COUNTRY LIES IN THE CHARACTER AND SKILLS OF ITS
PEOPLE AND IN BUILDING STRONG SOCIAL CAPITAL.

South Africa’s National Development Plan (NDP) is now over ten years old
(launched in 2012). It is an excellent diagnosis based on a comprehensive analysis
and clear problem identification. However, as far as implementation is concerned,
the focus is insufficient, and, as it stands, it will be extremely difficult to execute. [25]
The current government’s proven inability to implement plans is a problem, but it is
doubtful whether any other government (as a central government) would be able to
carry out the plan successfully. The NDP will probably be easier to implement from
the local level up to the national level, than by a top-down approach.
The current approach of the South African government is ideologically
centralist. In addition, there is a tendency to occasionally come up with something
unexpected such as President Cyril Ramaphosa’s vision to launch the World
147 METHODOLOGY

Economic Forum’s Fourth Industrial Revolution in South Africa, while it would be

better for the country to rather look at a development strategy for the manufacturing
and construction sectors. Another unexpected development is Radical Economic
Transformation with its assumption that South Africa’s wealth lies in money and
goods, while it lies in the quality of its people and its social capital.
Moreover, a centralist approach to development in South Africa will be difficult
to implement, because true people-centred democracy has, as elsewhere in the
world, come under great pressure over the past twenty-eight years. Representative
politics has been replaced by what South African legal scholar, Koos Malan calls
a “politocracy”, where political parties have become bureaucratic institutions
in which service to a party has replaced service to voters. [26] Due to this, South
African politics has probably become an enemy of the country’s future.
South Africans have not yet managed to escape from their pre-1994 (apartheid)
cognitive homeland. The country has, therefore, been living in postnormal times
(PNT) for twenty-eight years, which took on a new, even more confusing, meaning
in 2020 with the Covid-19 pandemic. South Africans currently experience a deep
uncertainty about the way forward and a feeling of powerlessness and invincible
ignorance about where the solutions lie. In the meantime, informed persons know
what the end will be for South Africa if no effective and urgent action is taken to
find solutions outside (and beyond) existing South African world views, paradigms,
attitudes, and ideologies. In other words, there is a black elephant in South African
boardrooms that must be challenged head-on, otherwise things can go very wrong
going forward. We no longer have the luxury of time or a drawn out postnormal
creep (which brings the black jellyfish into play) and the postnormal lag that is
characteristic of behaviour that keeps returning to the old cognitive homeland
must be avoided. It is time to rise above divisive thinking, divisive attitudes, and
divisive politics, to carry out well-designed, tipping point management processes
and then devise new, sharply focused plans with new attitudes and thinking.
South Africa’s endemic problems of corruption and crime are partly the
symptoms of divisions within the country. There are signs of polarisation due to
social inequality and wide-spread poverty, which create fear of survival within both
rich and poor communities. In-group perceptions of the others that dehumanise
outsiders (albeit only in their collective psyche) indicate an absence of communal
empathy that is essential for building a strong society. Dehumanisation is a
destructive social pathology that blocks community building and the development
of strong social capital.
Crime and corruption need to be addressed through administrative means, but
this alone is by no means sufficient to put the country on a development path. People
must learn to see and understand what is really going on in South Africa, otherwise
old thinking and values ​​dominate. People’s perceptions and values ​​can become
the (previously discussed) foreign attractors that can help steer developments in
this country in a positive direction. South Africans’ great trek today should be to
a new cognitive homeland in which a new awareness, new worldviews, and strong
148 THE POSTNORMAL LANDSCAPE

values g​​ ive impetus to society building. They must discover new ideals together and
work together to realise those ideals. New symbols of unity are needed to serve as
continuous direction indicators for the way forward. Society building requires that
individuals and their communities be the most important role players in a renewal
process, and not the state or a political party. Therefore, any renewal process should
start from the bottom up: from personal initiatives and from local communities,
which then spread upwards and cascade like a different kind of viral infection, which
floods the South African landscape with creative, compassionate renewal actions.
149 METHODOLOGY

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futures studies as a profession. World Futures Review, July 26, pp. 308–319.

23. Taleb, N.N. 2007. The black swan: the impact of the highly improbable. London:
Penguin Books.

24. Del Pino, J.S., Jones, C. & Mayo, L. 2020. The Covid Chronicles. The Postnormal
Perfect Storm Part 1: https://postnormaltim.es/insights/postnormal-perfect-
storm-part-1 [16 May 2020]. Del Pino, J.S., Jones, C. & Mayo, L. 2020. The
Covid Chronicles. The Postnormal Perfect Storm Part 2: https://postnormaltim.
es/insights/postnormal-perfect-storm-part-2 [16 May 2020]. Del Pino,
J.S., Jones, C. & Mayo, L. 2020. The Covid Chronicles. The Postnormal Perfect
Storm Part 3: https://postnormaltim.es/insights/postnormal-perfect-storm-
part-3 [21 May 2020].

25. National Planning Commission, Republic of South Africa. 2012. National

Development Plan. https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/Executive%20
Summary-NDP%202030%20-%20Our%20future%20-%20make%20it%20
work.pdf.

26. Malan, K. 2011. Politokrasie: ʼn peiling van die dwanglogika van die territoriale
staat en gedagtes vir ʼn antwoord daarop. Pretoria: PULP.
POLYLOGUES
Ziauddin Sardar

Shaping tolerant futures requires us to be more accepting of others, to understand

other cultures, ethnicities, worldviews, on their own terms, from their own
perspectives and experiences. This a big ask in a globalised world that is fractured,
fragmented, full of strife and conflict, and deeply divided. Indeed, we find ourselves
facing irreconcilable views and perspectives, numerous positions that are logically
inconsistent – a world full of contradictions.
Contradictions are one of the major driving forces of our contemporary,
postnormal times of accelerating change, realignment of power, upheaval, and
uncertainty, where trust and confidence in conventional ways of doing things
is rapidly evaporating: ‘we live’, I have stated, ‘in an in-between period where old
orthodoxies are dying, new ones have yet to be born, and very few things seem to
make sense’. [1]
One particular reason why things make little sense is that almost everything we
encounter is complex – not amenable to simple, or to age-old established solutions,
or orthodox ways of solving problems. A complex system has many components
that change and interact in multiple ways. Its properties and behaviour cannot
be explained by the mere addition of its parts; these emerge when the parts of
the system interact with each other. Complex systems are thus dynamic, with
extensive uncertainties, and numerous legitimate perspectives. Moreover, a
complex, interconnected, and networked world with instant communication
and prompt reactions, is prone to positive feedback that escalates things rapidly
to the edge of chaos. This is why we find ourselves in a turbulent, chaotic world
of political upheaval, cultural wars, and social strife. Complex problems require
complex approaches; this is called the law of requisite variety. And contradictions
cannot be resolved; they can only be transcended. This means that linear and static
approaches to understanding the present and shaping the future are becoming
increasingly irrelevant. We need to focus instead on the dynamic interconnections
amongst complexity, contradictions, and chaos of postnormal times; and develop
new approaches to navigate astonishing diversity, contradictory possibilities, and
chaotic potentials. This is where polylogues – dynamic, multiple dialogues – enter
the equation. [2]
The notion of polylogue was first developed in 1977 by Bulgarian-French
philosopher Julia Kristeva, to represent ‘multiple logics, speeches, and existences’.
As a literary critic, Kristeva is interested in the interrelationship between texts. [3]
154 POLYLOGUES

How ‘texts’ – language, discourse, literature, paintings, designs, logos – talk to each
other and shape meaning; what, in the technical language of cultural studies, is
called ‘intertextuality’. Later, Austrian philosopher, Franz Martin Wimmer, used
the concept to overcome the Eurocentrism of contemporary philosophy. Analysing
polylogues from an intercultural perspective, Wimmer argues that philosophical
thinking, as a continuous, ever-present activity, needs to involve thoughts and ideas
of different cultures, giving equal voice to all. [4] For Wimmer, polylogues are not just
about mutual understanding but also about mutual criticism and enlightenment; it
is about coming closer to some kind of appreciation of universality.
But polylogues are not just about contemporary philosophy escaping its
western solitude. Neither is it just about arid ‘texts’ dynamically engaging with
each other. They are also about ushering positive change in the real world, here and
now. Polylogues are about, as I have stated elsewhere, ‘creating new physical and
mental spaces where diversity, pluralism, and contending perspectives are present
on their own terms but also deeply invested in engaging others in creating and
sharing information and knowledge’. [5] From the futures perspectives, polylogues
serve as an approach for transcending contradictions, appreciating complexity,
and bringing us back from the edge of chaos by producing fresh synthesis and new
knowledge that can help us navigate postnormal times.
We need polylogues of various scope and scale, operating at different levels. At
the most obvious level, polylogues connect minds: people from diverse communities,
different worldviews, cultures, ethnicities, identities, perspectives, backgrounds,
disciplines, and views come together to explore common problems. This not simply
an exercise in being nice but acceptance of necessity and willingness to redistribute
power. The emphasis shifts from toleration – accepting each other – to the necessity
of making visible what has previously been shrouded in obscurity: the meaning
of a particular culture or perspective to the bearers of that culture or outlook.
What also happens to conventional power structures should not be underscored.
Not only is power taken from the formerly powerful, so as to be democratised by
the participants, but also the power of ideas to discipline and colonise is at least
called into question, if not entirely impeached. The embrace of polylogue places
self-description first, however destabilising that may be to cherished ideas of the
dominant system of knowledge.
The knowledge dimension of polylogues is important. Polylogues are needed to
take us forward from the decaying and increasingly irrelevant dominant paradigms,
and systems of knowledge accumulated by and through the lens of modernity. By
bringing different forms of knowledge production together – modern, traditional,
indigenous – and according them equality and respect, polylogues can usher
inclusive paradigms and pluralistic ways of knowing. They take us beyond the
world of binary logic of black and white, zero and one, to Kristeva’s ‘multiple logics’
where a complex issue can be expressed as true, or false, or both, or none. A space
is created for perhaps, and maybe between, the stark conformist alternatives of
certainty and denial.
 155 METHODOLOGY

By giving equal importance to knowledge systems of non-Western civilisations

and cultures, including indigenous cultures, tacit and intuitive method, reason and
revelation, polylogues could promote the realisation that in a diverse and dynamic
world, there are many ways to be human. And different, but equally important,
ways of knowing, being and doing. Polylogues are not just about engaging with
others but, more importantly, listening to others.

OTHERS ALSO INCLUDE NATURE AS WELL AS THE EARTH, THE ABODE OF

OUR TERRESTRIAL JOURNEY, AS EQUAL PARTNERS IN OUR DISCOURSE.
JUST AS WE HAVE TO LEARN TO LISTEN TO EACH OTHER, WE HAVE ALSO
TO LEARN TO LISTEN TO NATURE.
Modernity has marginalised nature just as it has marginalised and written off
traditional and indigenous cultures. The consequences are everywhere: from the
arrival of the Anthropocene era (where human activities have a direct impact on
the ecology and geology of the planet) to loss of biodiversity, the depletion of the
rainforest, potential mass extinction of insects, ocean acidification, industrial and
agricultural modes of production that have polluted oceans, rivers and atmosphere,
to feeling and experiencing climate change in real time (with astonishing
temperature rises, epic fires and floods on a Biblical scale), right to the Covid-19
pandemic. Without nature as a full participant, polylogues would be truncated.
And so, we arrive at the most enigmatic aspect of polylogues: the multiple
dialogues with the Self. Our alienation with nature has alienated us from our own
multiple selves. Our selves have become distorted, and hence fear all others, whether
we perceive the others as people, cultures, lifestyles, nature, ways of knowing,
cosmologies, or the sacred. The distorted self sees itself as fixed: unchanging, in
control, with absolute certitude, and possessing a monopoly of truth. Such a self
cannot engage in polylogue simply because it does not recognise two simple facts:
that individuals, like cultures, change and transform continuously and constantly
shifting their perceptions and outlooks; and that our own happiness and enrichment
depends on the happiness and enrichment of others. So, meaningful polylogues
can only commence with the recognition of our own changing, multiple selves.
Polylogues are based on the premise that we are not just different, but our
difference depends on, and is connected to, all other different cultures and
communities. Our survival as individuals, communities and cultures, and the
endurance of our planet, depends on embracing difference in all its numerous
forms. It involves different voices talking simultaneously to each other and Others.
This, I would argue, is perhaps one of the most reliable pathways to
tolerant futures.
156 POLYLOGUES

References

1. Sardar, Z. ‘Welcome to Postnormal Times’, Futures 42 435–444 2010; also

appears in Sardar, Z. (ed) The Postnormal Times Reader (London: IIIT, 2017)

2. Chen, H. ‘The Concept of the “Polylogue” and the Question of “Intercultural’

Identity”’, Intercultural Communication Studies, vol. XIX, no. 3, 2010, pp. 54–64

3. Kristeva, J. Polylogue (Paris: Seuil, 1977)

4. Wimmer, F.M. ‘Cultural Centrisms and Intercultural Polylogues in

Philosophy’, International Review of Information vol 7, 1–8 2007; Wimmer,
F.M. Essays on Intercultural Philosophy (Chennia: Satya Nilayam
Publications, 2002).

5. Sardar, Z. and Sweeney, J.A. ‘The Three Tomorrows of Postnormal Times’

Futures 75 1–13 2016.; also appears in Sardar, Z. (ed) The Postnormal Times
Reader (London: IIIT, 2017)
ENGAGING COMMUNITIES
IN POLYLOGUES
Liam Mayo, Caroline Osborne, Marcus Bussey, and Timothy Burns

How local governments engage communities through significant global change has
become a central issue for councils, urban planners, and policy makers worldwide.
Some local governments in Australia have recognised this and are undertaking
to explore non-traditional forms of community engagement. These new forms of
engagement seek to go beyond the jurisdictional legislative requirements. They
aim to both amplify the characteristics and values deemed core to their respective
communities and imagine alternative futures to which communities may
collectively aspire.
The Sunshine Coast Council (SCC) and the University of the Sunshine Coast
(USC), based in South East Queensland Australia, have undertaken a collaborative
research project to investigate multi-modal approaches to community engagement
that grows social capital and increases local capacity as a way to address complex
world challenges. This project posits that society is now operating and evolving in
the context of postnormal times, and the research seeks to explore the notion of
polylogues as a way to elicit ‘ongoing discourses on the present and futures’. [1] In
this sense, the research demonstrates how polylogues may be mobilised through
community engagement, as operationalised with the structure of local governance.
Within a framework of anticipatory action learning, the ongoing research
is exploring the utility of postnormal times as a cultural, social, and political
theory that contextualises change in the present. It aims to mobilise polylogues
around local solutions to complex problems, and in doing so investigate emergent
manifestations of subjectivity. The research schedule was recently disrupted by
the Covid-19 pandemic. However, this disruption provided an opportunity for the
project to pivot toward an examination of online platforms as a mechanism for
councils to engage with and support their communities through a shared existential
crisis.
This chapter is divided into four sections. First, the discussion of uncertainty will
be framed from the perspective of postnormal times, in particular, how polylogues
may be used as a means to navigate our transformational epoch. Here, the role of –
and emergent challenges to – local government in engaging communities through
uncertainty will be explored. The second section outlines how the present research
158 ENGAGING COMMUNITIES IN POLYLOGUES

is more deeply exploring methodologies for effective engagements through periods

of uncertainty. Here, we propose that community engagement mechanisms innate
in local government provide an operating framework within which the notion of
polylogues may be further expounded. The third section offers an overview of the
impacts the Covid-19 pandemic had on the research project, and the manner with
which the research team moved to explore digital engagement methodologies as
a result. The closing section provides a discussion around a consolidation of the
research and potentialities for future research in this space, specifically, the impacts
that omnipotent digital technologies have on subjectivity and the implications this
has on traditional notions of engagement.

The Context
Sardar argued that postnormal times is the in-between period when the
conventional distinctions between facts, values and politics no longer hold sway. [2]
Reflecting on this, Mayo proposed that the uncertainty of postnormal times is a
consequence of humanity’s inability to move beyond a manufactured normalcy that
perpetuates a familiar sense of the present. Our desire for stability and certainty,
to de-emphasise change and make all things normal, perpetuates a cultural
crisis, which itself nurtures ignorance and fosters uncertainty; the distinguishing
characteristics of the postnormal condition. [3] Thus, Bussey concluded that,
when faced with the overwhelming uncertainty of contemporary change, humans
are overcome by a postnormal paralysis – a gridlocking of our social, cultural and
ecological processes. [4]
Sardar’s major contention is that we need to be aware that we cannot manage
and control postnormal times, only navigate through them. He argued that we need
to negotiate our way out of postnormal times toward a new normal. [5] According
to Alfonzo Montuori, this requires imagination and creativity, and an awareness of
the complexity of interdependencies and networks within which we function. [6]
Expanding on the thought, Sardar noted that a diversity of thinking, combined
with the ability to see the world in all its plurality – including multiple perspectives
– will ensure the imagination and creativity of the collective is not only captured,
but fostered and nurtured. [7] In collaboration with John A. Sweeney, he went on
to argue that we must move from dialogues to polylogues: ‘the creation of new
physical and mental spaces where diversity, pluralism, and contending perspectives
are present on their own terms but also deeply invested in engaging others in
creating and sharing information and knowledge’. [8]
Sardar and Sweeney’s notion of polylogues is akin to the concept of extended
peer communities described by Jerry Ravetz and Silvio Funtowicz who, in their
work regarding postnormal science, undertook to interrogate the scientific
realm through the lens of mathematical risk. [9] They argued that it had become
universally understood that the pursuit of discovery was no longer the principal
motive of the scientific realm. Instead, after centuries of achievements and the
steady advancement of humanity’s certainty in knowledge and control, science
 159 METHODOLOGY

had become a bastion to remedy the pathologies of the global industrial system
of which it forms the basis. Postnormal science (where postnormal times finds its
foundations) was conceived as a means by which questions of value and power may
be made explicit in scientific research. In this regard, Funtowicz and Ravetz were
advocating for nonexpert stakeholders, those groups whose concerns and values
are usually considered external to the scientific process, to be included as a way to
democratise scientific research – both its inputs and outputs. These extended peer
communities, it was proposed, may lead toward the integration and absorption
of localised knowledge, which may shape areas of study and bring about more
collaborative and responsive modes of research. [10]
In many ways, Funtowicz and Ravetz were foreshadowing ruptures across the
disciplines of modernity to come; an acknowledgment that reductionist enquiry was
becoming insufficient for understanding and interpreting an increasingly complex
and chaotic world. Sardar and Sweeney’s polylogues seek to rethink deeply-held
traditions and practices of knowledge production and dissemination as a way to
navigate postnormal times. [11] Polylogues – conceptualised in both the business
and community sectors – encourage multilevel communication, collective sense-
making and a co-creation of meanings to examine varied viewpoints, withholding
decision-making until shared agreements are reached and deep reflections
enacted. [12] In this way, rather than a cascade down of information and knowledge
from those in authority or those in positions of hierarchical power, polylogues move
new ideas from the local level, informed by lived experience or wisdom, upward in
a way that ensures ownership of solutions are shared by all.

THIS REQUIRES AN APPROACH TO LEADERSHIP THAT IS COLLABORATIVE

AND SHARED: TRANSFORMATIVE LEADERSHIP THAT ACKNOWLEDGES THAT
EVERYONE CAN LEAD, AND EVERYBODY, WHETHER CONSCIOUS OF THEIR
AGENCY OR NOT, CONTRIBUTES TO AND CO-CREATES THE WORLD WE LIVE IN.
Therefore, polylogues are a devolution of decision-making responsibilities and
an evolution of a cadre of sense-makers and cocreators. Polylogues, by providing
participants the opportunity to express their opinions and co-create solutions
through negotiation, become a focal experience that concurrently satisfies many of
the existential dimensions of human experience. [13] Sardar and Sweeney argued
that polylogues in postnormal times should find ‘better and more egalitarian ways
to share what and how we know’ and ‘continuously seek out collaborative and
dynamic means to craft and share our stories’. [14] In this way, the postnormal
polylogue is an aspirational process that, when applied to a system, collegiately
embraces and values diverse opinions, while embracing commonality toward
a shared and co-created future.
160 ENGAGING COMMUNITIES IN POLYLOGUES

Communities and Local Governance

Anchor institutions such as local governments and universities, as leaders
of their communities, have a key role to play as conveners and facilitators of
opportunities to engage, collaborate and co-create. [15] Community engagement,
is a term used interchangeably for similar yet distinct concepts, such as public or
citizen participation and community consultation or collaboration. Community
engagement is also broadly used across a range of disciplines, including but
not limited to public health, business and strategy, marketing, community
development, urban planning, natural resource management, youth, aging,
and education. In some cases, community engagement may be conflated with
the distinctly different purposes of communication, such as promotion or
recruitment efforts.
Clear themes emerge from the literature regarding community engagement.
These themes emphasise the value placed on a variety of outcomes that are achieved
through the delivery of good community engagement projects: diverse knowledge,
existing community assets, and ways of knowing; [16] the co-creation of mutually
beneficial outcomes and responses to shared challenges and opportunities through
collaboration and participatory approaches; [17] the role collaboration plays in
supporting greater trust, reciprocity, and social capital to sustain partnerships and
relationships; [18] and evidence that learning, knowledge, and relationships can be
transformed through a feedback loop of teaching, research, and engagement with
the broader community. [19]
In Queensland, community engagement is acknowledged as a critical
mechanism of local governance, through the provisions outlined by the Queensland
State Government under Section 4 of the Local Government Act 2009. Specifically,
Queensland local government organisations are obliged to adhere to the principles
of transparent and effective processes and decision-making in the public interest,
democratic representation, social inclusion, and meaningful community
engagement. [20]
While local government organisations in Australia have a legislative obligation
to engage with their communities, the effectiveness of these processes to build
trust and legitimacy, and enhance community decision-making, is variable. The
literature suggests that there are clear gaps in how to embed the voice of the
community from participatory and deliberative community engagement into
decision-making processes. [21] How local government currently understands
community engagement, relative to their role and responsibilities, to the state
and their broader communities, is an important one. While local government has
a legislative obligation to conduct community engagement, it could be argued
that the participation of a characteristic proportion of community members may
also represent a proxy method for local government to establish a social license
to operate. Defined by the French ethicists Geert Demuijnck and Björn Fasterling,
social license to operate is broadly used in the business sector to describe tacit
consent by society, established typically through consultation and engagement
161 METHODOLOGY

with stakeholders, that indicates that their activities are considered as legitimate
in the eyes of society. [22] In this way, community engagement is one mechanism
that local government uses to establish consent and legitimacy of their community
(or social license to operate) for their projects, policies, or activities. However,
this approach to community engagement and participation undermines the vital
importance of authentic community voice in shaping democratic and participative
decision-making, particularly in the face of significant uncertainty.
In addition to their legislative obligations, local government organisations
across Australia also undertake a wide range of community planning and
development activities by working with the community to provide programs that
offer people opportunities to connect, to build their capacity and take steps to
improve their wellbeing and quality of life. Over the past forty years, the scope of
local government functions has expanded to incorporate a growing range of these
community services, [23] with community services now nationally accounting for
33% of total local government expenditure by purpose, and 13% of Queensland
local government expenditure. [24]

Emergent Challenges to Community Engagement

It has long been the argument of governance theorists that many of the most
important challenges now facing governments (central and local) require
collective consideration and action by communities. [25] Theories of participatory
democracy, deliberative democracy, and social capital assert that citizen
involvement has positive effects on democracy: it contributes to the inclusion
of individual citizens in the policy process, it encourages civic skills and civic
virtues, it leads to rational decisions based on public reasoning, and it increases
the legitimacy of both the process and the outcome. [26] To enhance decision-
making, best practice community engagement deploys a variety of methods to
engage stakeholders to enhance the greatest possible rate of participation and
democratic representation. [27] Increasingly, creative approaches to engaging
multiple publics, through multiple methods, are part of the current landscape of
engagement practice. [28]
Thus, community engagement has the capacity to be transformative. Its
commitment to long-term relationships, emphasis on diverse and existing
knowledge and community assets, co-creation, collaboration, trust, and
reciprocity, we argue, are complementary and provide an operating framework
from within which the notion of polylogues may be more acutely enacted. In this
way, community engagement is a mechanism for local governments, to not only
facilitate the transitionary epoch of its communities, but to reimagine its role
in providing transformative leadership through the complexity and chaos of
postnormal times.
Yet the primary assumption of community engagement, particularly from the
perspective of local governments, is that the people that community engagement
mechanisms function to engage are the residents from the geographical area
162 ENGAGING COMMUNITIES IN POLYLOGUES

governed by the council or city authority. This premise is grounded in the

assumption that those who live in the local government area (or who pay rates
or taxes in the geographical boundaries of the city authority) have the right to be
engaged in decision-making pertinent to that community.
There remains a significant challenge to this, however: in a world where reality is
so heavily mediated through the digital realm, the traditional unitary notion of the
humanist subject – the community resident – is destabilised. This raises questions:
‘who are the residents that the community’s local governments govern?’; ‘In what
spaces do these residents live, work, and play?’; and, most importantly, ‘How do
these residents construct themselves?’.

Subjectivity in Flux
Sweeney highlighted how our ‘infectious connectivity’ has impacted our way of
being in the world. He argued that it is the radiant screen of our digital devices that
affects us most, now meaning ‘humanity is itself an open interface’. [29] American
theorist and artists, Rosanne Stone noted that this ‘prosthetic sociality’ implies new
definitions of space, volume, surface, and distance. The medium of connection, she
argued, ‘defines the meaning of community’. [30] Philosopher and feminist, Rosi
Braidotti argued that the relationship between the human and the technological
other has changed radically with the contemporary technologies of advanced
capitalism; technological construct now mingles with the flesh with unprecedented
degrees of intrusiveness, whilst the human-technological interaction increasingly
blurs boundaries of modernist constructs of subjectivity. [31] This is at odds with
normative notions of subjectivity traditionally perpetuated by government and
regulatory structures. We now have a disembodied subjectivity that muddles
with whereness because in cyberspace ‘you are everywhere and somewhere and
nowehere, but almost never here in the positivist sense’. [32] Because of this, the
Australian sociologist Camilla Mozzini-Alister argued, we are confronted more and
more by the ‘desire for omnipresence’, the desire for simultaneously inhabiting
distinct space-times – for concurrently inhabiting the physical body and the digital
realm. [33] Mayo argued that this abstraction of self across each of these spaces, itself
a symptom of postnormal times, is so severe that time as an experiential part of the
human condition has altered. [34] As such, postnormal times signals subjectivity in
flux, an important consideration that must be addressed in any exploration into the
development of polylogues.

Postnormal Indicators
Postnormal times emits four key indicators which the present research project
identifies and is working with. First, an acknowledgement that the current epoch is
transitionary; characterised by significant change. This change cannot be controlled
or mitigated, simply navigated. Second, that in the face of significant change, our
cultural conditioning seeks to down-play change and reaffirm long-held notions of
control and certainty. This conditioning aggravates the effects of the transitional
 163 METHODOLOGY

and further exacerbates a collective sense of uncertainty. Third, in navigating

this change, polylogues provide spaces and opportunities for the diversity of
agendas to come together to negotiate outcomes toward shared futures. One of
the most powerful mechanisms to navigate uncertainty and facilitate polylogues,
is community engagement mechanisms deployed by local governments. Finally,
these collectively have implications for the manner with which subjectivity is
constructed and dealt with by local governments. How subjectivity is changing and
how community engagement methodologies, in turn, need to evolve to capture
emergent forms of subjectivity, is also being explored through the research.

Engaging Communities through Uncertainty

Reflecting on the literature review, the project team developed the following shared
statement to outline how both partner institutions define community engagement,
and each understand their commitment to it as a regional anchor institution:

Engagement is how we actively connect and collaborate with the diverse

voices and knowledge in the community. Through engagement, our
actions are transformed by the values, creativity, and aspirations
of communities, as we respond together to shared challenges and
opportunities. By driving innovation and co-creation in our community
engagement approach, greater trust, reciprocity, and social capital
are fostered. This supports community leadership, decision-making and
sustainable partnerships that deliver stronger and more connected
communities.

The present research investigates and expands on the notion of postnormal

polylogues. Following the development of a regional partnership agreement
between SCC and USC, an arrangement exists for further exploration into how place-
based community engagements may be utilised by anchor institutions, as leaders
in their communities, to elicit polylogues in uncertain times. The partnership aims
to leverage the collective service roles of USC and SCC to provide activities and
resources that: grow community capacity through wider community involvement
with education, research, and activities; grow joint collaborative initiatives to
strengthen local capital through economic, social, and cultural impacts; and
encourage participation in mutual and inspiring projects that address issues of
local importance and policy challenges.
Within this, a project team consisting of staff from SCC and USC will oversee the
delivery of place-based community engagements targeting four desired outcomes:
the growth of social capital within the Sunshine Coast region, the expansion of
jointly sponsored public forums and activities, an increase in the local capacity to
address complex world challenges, and the investigation of models for community
engagement that incorporate futures approaches. Each of these outcomes will be
facilitated through a multitude of engagement methods (to name a few: World
164 ENGAGING COMMUNITIES IN POLYLOGUES

Cafe, The Art of Hosting, Un-conferencing) as a means to measure and assess the
outcomes from each method.

Problem and Objectives

SCC and USC are both principal stakeholders in the ongoing quality of community
engagement across the Sunshine Coast region. This means understanding the
context in which engagement occurs and the drivers and opportunities present
in the engagement process. The research partnership will provide insights into
governance issues, contextualised by postnormal times, with a focus on developing
community engagement methods that include the diversity and plurality of
voices, in an authentic and perpetual manner, as conceptualised by the notion of
postnormal polylogues. In addition, the research seeks to add knowledge to the field
of futures studies and strategic foresight, by utilising the conceptual framework of
postnormal times to explore and understand the experiences of individuals and
communities on the Sunshine Coast. To date, no substantive empirical research
into postnormal times has been identified. As an emerging conceptual framework
in the futurist toolkit, it is clear that postnormal times requires acute academic
interrogation. This will not only validate its rigor and locate it as part of broader
scholarship but provide insight and practical tools to be added to the gamut of
futures methods. Reflecting on our four key postnormal indicators, the research
problem is framed as presented in Table 1.

Table 1. Framing the research problem using postnormal indicators.

Postnormal indicators Research objectives

A transitionary period characterised Contextualising and making sense of

by significant change that cannot be change in the present to lay the foundations
controlled only navigated for navigation

The desire to down-play change in An exploration into how local governments

the face of change leads to a collective may provide certainty to their communities
sense of uncertainty through periods of uncertainty.

In navigating this change polylogues Community engagement, as a mechanism

provide conceptual spaces and of local government, is an opportunity to
opportunities for the diversity of test the notion of postnormal polylogues.
agendas to come together to negotiate
outcomes toward desired futures

In postnormal times subjectivity is An investigation into emergent

in flux manifestations of subjectivity in
postnormal times
165 METHODOLOGY

Method
The research project is couched in an anticipatory action learning framework, an
epistemologically participatory process that seeks to generate practical knowledge
through a reflective practice. [35] Here, all those involved in a research project
are the participants, who identify the problem, propose interventions, assess the
outcome, and reflect in on the research problem and process iteratively through the
course of the research. [36] New and different initiatives or solutions are invited and
introduced into the project, tested, and reviewed, in an iterative and consultative
manner. Sometimes, initiatives that show merit take a life of their own and become
new initiatives adjacent to the core research project. The framework for this model
is presented in Figure 1.

Figure 1. The anticipatory action learning process.

INTERVENTIONS

REFLECTIONS

NEW INITIATIVE

Desired Outcomes
Our research goal is to elicit institutional change, both across SCC and USC,
specifically in the manner with which community engagement is approached. The
research team are seeking to permeate out, across both institutions, a culture of
imagination that stimulates creativity. In this way, the project team are actively
seeking opportunities for interventions that may be nested within operational
activities. By doing so, they facilitate and provide resourcing, and support
operational activities, that articulate how community engagement approaches,
when contextualised by postnormal indicators, may grow social capital through
encouraging community collaboration and in initiatives that address issues of local
importance.
166 ENGAGING COMMUNITIES IN POLYLOGUES

Impacts of Covid-19 – Pivoting

In response to the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, and ensuing community
lockdowns, SCC developed the #CovidKindness campaign, an online social media
campaign that aimed to connect communities and foster social cohesion through
periods of social isolation and uncertainty. The campaign commenced on 20
March 2020 and ran for six weeks. Each week a different theme was promoted with
accompanying resources and tools for the public to engage with. The six themes
were ‘stay connected’, ‘stay informed’, ‘stay healthy’, ‘stay playful’, ‘stay creative’, and
‘stay neighbourly’.
The #CovidKindness initiative was an entirely online engagement program,
conducive to the ‘stay home’ directive in place during the pandemic and provided
an opportunity to identify learnings and recommendations for the future. As an
online engagement program, the #CovidKindness initiative primarily used online
communication methods. The predominant platforms used were social media
(specifically Facebook) and the SCC website. Other platforms included direct email
communication to existing contacts and traditional media outlets. After the initial
launch of the campaign on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram on 20 March, the
primary social media platform used was SCC’s Facebook page.

Preliminary Results
Overall, the #CovidKindness campaign had a surprising reach (over 28,000 hashtag
mentions and potential impressions of over 201 million, globally, in the first three
weeks). Table 2 highlights the total reach figures from the different platforms
employed through #CovidKindness.

Table 2. The total reach figures from the different platforms employed through
#CovidKindness. Across all platforms March 20–May 10, 2020.

Timeframe Facebook Media SSCC webpage

March 20–May 10, 2020 219,055 359,221 9,332

Evidence of tangible, grass roots, neighbourly engagement was provided through

a #CovidKindness stories competition via the SCC webpage and community
engagement portal. In total, thirty stories were submitted highlighting people’s
creative efforts to care for and connect with each other during the societal
lockdown period.
Within the anticipatory action learning process, deliberate reflection
was undertaken to consider new possibilities that emerged as a result of the
#CovidKindness campaign and Neighbourly Stories competition. This led to an
adjustment and further exploration of using online methods to support community
capacity and connections. The result was the Building Better Communities (BBC)
 167 METHODOLOGY

online learning opportunity. BBC was a free, six-week opportunity to learn the
fundamentals of community building, open to all Sunshine Coast residents and
facilitated by Community Praxis Co-op, a local co-operative that works within
communities to build capacity pertaining to community development practices.
This course is normally presented in face-to-face sessions and the participant
number is limited to twelve people. It was agreed to pilot the course online utilising
Zoom and SCC’s ‘Have Your Say’ online engagement portal, as a private members’
forum and document library. This increased participation potential from twelve to
eighty. In total thirty people registered for the course. Through further conversation
with course participants, it was agreed upon completion of the online learning
that it would be advantageous for participants to meet in person once lockdown
restrictions were eased. This was to solidify connections and continue to foster
what had begun online into potential physical, collaborative community actions.
The reach numbers of the #CovidKindness campaign, the creativity of the
neighbourly stories and the effective agility of the digital BBC course highlight the
accessibility of online engagement processes, the potential to reach larger numbers
of local residents and the ability to use online platforms to facilitate positive social
impact. They also offer glimpses into how agile online engagement can lead to
meaningful in-person connection and collaboration.

CLEARLY DIGITAL ENGAGEMENTS ARE AN EFFECTIVE FIRST RESPONDER

TO A CRISIS OF A LARGE SCALE; A RAPID AND EFFICIENT TOOL TO
COMMUNICATE TO A WIDESPREAD AND DIVERSE COMMUNITY.

Digital engagements, often mediated through social media platforms, also offer
space for the facilitation of discourse, a back and forth between the local government
and their community. This has potentiality to open space to ignite agency during
periods where people may feel overwhelmed by postnormal paralysis, and as
such, requires further investigation. The seeming swift and widespread success
of the #CovidKindness campaign, accompanied with the ongoing uncertainty of
the Covid-19 pandemic, instigated a pivot in the research project, with a view to
better understanding how online engagement mechanisms may be used in place of
traditional forms of engagement.

A Short Literature Review of Digital Engagement

A literature review presented a summary of five core themes. The first is that digital
engagement has not replaced traditional methods of community engagement. In
fact, the opposite is true. Online and physical engagement practices complement
and strengthen each other, allowing for greater reach and feedback. [36] The
emphasis is that multi-modal engagement practices lead to better outcomes. [37]
While digital methods can be effective in gaining broad feedback, it can lack the
 168 ENGAGING COMMUNITIES IN POLYLOGUES

ability to understand specific nuance or to investigate sentiment more deeply. [38]

Furthermore, digital engagement, disconnected from traditional engagement
methods and considered strategic plans, can actually create unhelpful platforms
for dominant voices to drive decision-making in a particular direction. [39]
Therefore, online and traditional engagement methodologies must be
considered equally.
The second core theme is that digital engagement can enhance local
government’s capacity to engage broadly across their region. The online realm
can open access for the public to offer comment, feedback, or ideas efficiently and
effectively. [40] From this point of view, it is a cost-effective way to increase public
participation. [41] Equally, the literature highlights concern that engaging purely
in online settings risks alienating and excluding hard-to-reach groups, such as
First Nations communities, culturally and linguistically diverse groups, and other
vulnerable people. [42]

THE DIGITAL DIVIDE CAN ALSO BE EXACERBATED BY GEOGRAPHY AND

INFRASTRUCTURE LIMITATIONS. THESE CONCERNS CAN, IN PART, BE
MITIGATED THROUGH ENSURING A PERSON-CENTRED DESIGN FOCUS
AND CONTINUING TO BUILD STRONG RELATIONSHIPS AND NETWORKS
WITH THE COMMUNITIES. [43]

Thirdly, one time or short-term engagement supported by long-term integrated

plans will be far more effective than one-time engagements responding to squeaky
wheel issues. [44] Digital methods provide incredible responsiveness and flexibility,
but when utilised, disconnected from broader plans and relational networks, will
not readily lead to long term effective engagement outcomes. [45] Therefore,
considered corporate plans and person-centred engagement design leads to
enhanced online participation outcomes.
Fourth, the literature suggested that an internal barrier to online engagement
was an unsupportive organisational culture. [46] However, this barrier could be
overcome through a commitment to capacity building of staff (including effective
resourcing), a consistent approach and commitment to community engagement
across the organisation, and legitimate executive understanding of and “buy-in” to,
online engagement practice. [47] These actions will lead to improved engagement
practice, but also to a more involved citizenry and stronger community perceptions
toward council. [48]
And finally, a growing interest and investment in Smart Cities infrastructure is
enhancing digital engagement opportunities. The Smart Cities concept, however, is
more than infrastructure. It includes smart technologies, smart people, and smart
governance. [49] The challenge and opportunity from the Smart Cities framework
169 METHODOLOGY

for online engagement is that it improves accessibility to various platforms and

information, which can lead to more direct interaction with elected representatives
and more focused or challenging feedback. [50] Therefore, effective online
engagement will necessarily sit within considered participatory and deliberative
governance structures and intentions that provide a genuine opportunity for
citizen participation, in respect to influencing important decisions.

Online Community Engagement Survey Results

With this foundation, the research team undertook an online community survey
to ascertain: 1) how they could best reach the community digitally; 2) whether
digital communities were as important as physical communities; and 3) the reasons
why people use digital media. During May and June 2020, Sunshine Coast Council
invited community feedback on their digital engagement preferences via an online
survey. In total, 704 survey responses were received.

Findings of most note include;

• Social media platforms are significantly engaged with: 96.73% used Facebook
and 66.34% used Instagram to engage.
• 77.84% of respondents considered online communities as important as the
physical communities they live in. Respondents view online communities as an
important complement to the physical communities they live in, particularly
concerning the way digital methods have helped people stay connected.
• The top 5 preferences for online engagement were: social media platforms
(73.7%), surveys (66.6%), polls (48.9%), online forums (35.7%) and blog and
article discussions (35.7%).
• People appreciate online forms of engagement, particularly when they are
easy to use and access, are not limited to certain times of the day, and allow the
participant to control what information they engage with.
• 77.7% of respondents said they feel they can trust online content, but people do
take steps to verify the information.
• The SCC website rated highly as a source for information about the community
but needs to be up to date to remain trusted by users.
• SCC was considered by 82.39% of respondents as a trustworthy source of
information.
• Respondents suggested they were generally comfortable sharing their opinions
online depending on the topic, the safety of the platform for the user and the
ease of providing feedback.

Participation in the survey and the subsequent findings highlight a strong appetite
and interest in online community engagement. Coupled with encouraging
overlaps between the survey findings and literature review, it inspired further
reflection to consider a balanced strategic way forward for the Regional Partnership
Agreement between SCC and USC and their future engagement practice. Lessons
170 ENGAGING COMMUNITIES IN POLYLOGUES

from this survey and the #CovidKindness campaign indicate that through periods
of postnormal change, people actively embrace forms of communication and
community that were taken for granted in less disruptive contexts.

Reflections
Reflecting upon SCC’s Covid-19 inspired pivot, a number of questions arise that
might assist in forwarding SCC’s online community engagement agenda:

1. What level of investment is the organisation willing to consider in ensuring the

most effective and balanced mix of online and offline community engagement?
2. What organisational, structural, operational, and strategic planning adjustments
are necessary to ensure the organisation is well positioned to elicit the most
beneficial outcomes from online community engagement?
3. In what ways could the organisation strengthen its capacity in online
engagement that ensures improved accessibility, participation, collaboration,
and representation?

Indeed, these may inform the manner in which local governments (globally) may
seek to form their online engagement agenda. The literature and survey results
confirm that online engagement should be complemented by other engagement
methods. Multi-modal engagement continues to be widely recognised as best
practice, and facilitates broader, more inclusive reach that is more likely to connect
with those who are not as well accustomed to the online environment. Diverse
methodologies will also lead to more and improved feedback, which in turn can
strengthen the outcomes of the engagement. Supporting the implementation of
diverse methodologies, the existing partnership between SCC and USC will help
to strengthen practice, reputation and credibility in community engagement, by
assisting in critically investigating innovative engagement methods, frameworks
and evaluation. SCC is well placed to lead the facilitation of such partnerships by
leveraging council’s expansive community engagement opportunities.

Further Research
However, our initial findings following the Covid-19 research pivot alludes to a
more significant change occurring at the human level. While the rupture that is our
postnormal times may be attributable to how digital culture disrupts traditional
forms of knowledge creation and dissemination, the ontological impacts are
as equally profound. [51] Braidotti argued these new forms of subjectivity are a
complex assemblage of the human and non-human, planetary and cosmic, given
and manufactured, which require major re-adjustments in our ways of thinking. [52]
The human subject, both porous and supple, with the ability to expand and
contract rapidly across a multiplicity of time scales and spaces, has concurrently
gone beyond Foucault’s biopolitics, the intersection between the biological and
political; [53] through Haraway’s cyborg, the intersection between the biological
171 METHODOLOGY

and technical; [54] and into Braidotti’s posthumanism, the displacement of the
traditional humanistic unity of the subject. [55]
Emergent forms of subjectivity have ontological implications as well: as
the boundaries between the subject and object blur, the very notion of being
is problematised. This new materialist turn enriches, rather than hinders the
discussion of the subject and their relationship to community, government, and the
world. [56] By way of example, as we investigate notions of subjectivity, should we
not too investigate the conceptions of community, for the community is all at once
the subject and the collective; the voice of one and the voice of many; unified and
diverse; subject and object.
Any further research that seeks to understand how governments engage citizens
must first address the postnormality of subjectivity. As subjectivity is expanded,
along with notions of self, the manner with which governments regulate, engage,
and understand their communities is mutating. How these new notions of the
relationship between subject and object are understood and in turn engaged with,
remains embryonic. Philosopher Timothy Morton argued that art and nature are the
new secular churches in which subject and object can be remarried. [57] Polylogues
have the same potentiality.

Conclusion
There is little doubt that humanity is now experiencing a period of increased and
accelerating change. Global trends indicate that rapid growth and the effects this
has on urbanisation means that cities will become the nucleus of this change and, as
such, increasingly important in leading the way communities respond to and adapt
to the change before them. Yet the manner with which local governments engage
their communities through this change remains in flux. Covid-19, exemplary of
postnormal times, has illustrated how the manner with which communities are
engaged needs to be re-examined. SCC and USC have partnered to more deeply
explore methodologies for effective engagements: through the conceptual lens of
polylogues – through periods of uncertainty. It has articulated how, through the
Covid-19 pandemic, the research has sought to pivot to respond to the needs of the
community. In pivoting in this manner, the researchers have opened new space
for enquiry that seeks to interrogate the very nature of subjectivity in flux. This
subjectivity in flux, as we have discovered, has deeper implications toward Being
in the world.
172 ENGAGING COMMUNITIES IN POLYLOGUES

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FOUR SCENARIOS FOR THE
THIRD ROCK FROM THE SUN
Christopher Burr Jones

For two decades, there has been growing discourse about the name of the rock
strata that will be associated with Homo sapiens in the future geological record. The
present age we live in bears witness to a great tension between humans and nature.
Hidden within this conflict is the ominous contradiction between humanity’s
dependence on natural resources and their neglect and misuse of the Earth’s goods.
Even the idea of Earth being something deserving of fair treatment and respect is
a hot item for debate. Going forward we are left to wonder if the lens of artificiality
may provide insight to the futures of Homo sapiens’ relationship to nature.
Geologists have labelled the last approximately 11,650 years as the Holocene epoch.
Following what has commonly been referred to as the last ice age, this period has
been noted as a time of warmth and glacial retreat. During this period, a burgeoning
proliferation of species, notably that of humans, has occurred. Rise of civilisations
and technological advance have largely been at the mercy of nature’s will, but more
recently, a more contemporary debate has questioned how even footed was the
fight between humanity and nature. Has humanity’s impact on the globe changed
the tide of Earth’s geological progression and is this impact reaching the point of
irreversibility? Will the artificial be the final straw in this struggle?
The Anthropocene neologism was popularised after the year 2000 to describe
what will follow the Holocene geological era. [1] Human impact on the planet
is being deposited in ocean sediments and is recorded in deep ice cores from
Greenland and Antarctica. The evidence of our industry and chemistry will be there
for eons of future geologists to uncover, including radioisotopes from nuclear bomb
testing, trace metals from early smelting in the Bronze Age, and layers of plastic.
The evidence of human use of fossil fuels will be revealed in future rocks. Nature,
and her legacy of human detritus, will remain indefinitely intertwined.
The Anthropocene will likely contain a record of our increasingly artificial
world, our artificial turf, satellites, breasts, hips, and now artificial intelligence. That
is particularly true because even our reality is open to question. Are we living in
our solipsistic dreams, in the Matrix, or a nightmare? In modern society we can feel
the dissonance between what we think is real, and alternative, or artificial facts and
truths that compete with our beliefs. We face a serious crisis when the boundaries
 178 FOUR SCENARIOS FOR THE THIRD ROCK FROM THE SUN

between the real and the artificial are deliberately confused and obfuscated.
Nevertheless, that trend continues.
The Anthropocene emerged as a concept about the same time as postnormal
analysis. That is no surprise given that postnormal analysis argued that the
acceleration of change, the speed, scope, scale, and simultaneity of changes within
technological, social, political, demographic, economic, global, and environmental
systems are increasing because of our complex, technological, communications,
transportation, and information systems. Not only does the speed of change tend
to increase, but also its sweep and scope grow larger, scale grows to planetary and
global levels, and all of these things are happening at once. These dynamics of
change lead to system level changes that are characterised by greater complexity,
chaos, and contradictions. These drivers and characteristics collectively describe
the postnormal times in which we live.

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL SYSTEMS THAT SEEMED NORMAL OR STABLE NO

LONGER BEHAVE THE WAY THEY USED TO. THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT
ROUTINELY IGNORES POLITICAL NORMS, AND OTHER LEADERS AROUND
THE WORLD HAVE FOLLOWED SUIT.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, transportation, supply chains, and educational

systems were disrupted. Not all systems are postnormal, but increased complexity
and the speed of change pose threats to system normalcy. Some systems can go
almost postnormal overnight, black swan events, which were once considered
to be unlikely, occur. The economic consequences of Covid-19 are a case in point.
Postnormal analysis argues for types of postnormal behaviour, such as this Covid-19
postnormal burst. [2] Resistance to postnormal drivers creates lag, and concomitant
pressure and influence from other systems creates postnormal creep. [3]
Central to postnormal analysis is the idea that there are deep structures that try
to convince us that homeostasis is normal. The built environment, for example,
conforms to nature. Cities grow up around harbours and the confluence of rivers,
but give lie to the wildness of nature. Interstate highways cross over fault lines,
but when they collapse, for example the Loma Prieta earthquake that caused the
collapse of the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge, the normalcy field also collapses.
These deep structures are called the Manufactured Normalcy Field (MNF) and
there is debate about whether these fields are physical, psychological, or even
metaphysical. [4] Nevertheless, the postnormal disruption is occurring within the
MNF and the drivers and characteristics alter or disrupt the normalcy we believe
we experience. For example, a MNF is created by a relatively small, aerodynamic
aluminium tube, or commercial airliner, that travels in the stratosphere at 600
miles an hour, at 35,000 feet above the planet surface. That is not normal, but
our culture, our travel patterns and behaviour, our short but rapid evolution as a
179 METHODOLOGY

species now considers that unremarkable. In postnormal times, it is not simply that
what was normal is changing, but the very nature of change itself is changing. The
phenomenon of postnormal times is not something that has occurred in a vacuum,
but indeed is the continuation of a historical circumstance that has been creeping
about for some time now.
The scope and speed of change have been the focus of futurist thought for half
a century, or more, particularly within the realm of our technological prowess.
Futurist Walter Truett Anderson argued that because our species has now learned
to control evolution, it has become our ethical and moral responsibility to take
firm, but reluctant control over the progress of the biosphere: it is now our job To
Govern Evolution. [5] He forecast the emergence of a biopolitics that recognises our
responsibility, having gained such power over genetic and species evolution. He
acknowledged the growing discourse on the rights of living things. His work follows
the argument of the late John Platt, physicist and futurist, who posited that we face
an acceleration of evolution. [6] He showed that across a range of aspects of evolution
– encapsulation, energy use, defence, communication, and other dynamics – how
our species is poised for one of the greatest transformations in four billion years of
planetary evolution.
In the subsequent three decades, the acceleration of the change drivers of
evolution have increased in speed, scope, scale, and simultaneity. Moreover, our
technological sophistication and development of space technologies has expanded
the scope and sphere of human reach. There has been continuous human habitation
on orbit above Earth for almost two decades, and within a few more decades,
humans are likely to begin inhabiting the planet Mars. We are a migratory species,
and as anthropologist Ben Finney and others have argued, our diaspora into the
solar system and beyond is likely part of our story as a species. [7]
What does this bode for the Earth, a living organism, a cybernetic, self-
regulating system? To what degree does a system need to be artificial, mediated by
homo sapiens in order to survive over the very long-term future? To begin with, how
did we get to see the earth as artificial?
It is no coincidence that the transformation of mother Earth into machine
coincides with the Renaissance and industrial revolution. Early cities developed
by filling in swamps and channelling rivers and streams, and creating harbours
and dams. We began the transformation of Earth to machine by building canals
to improve the efficiency of human transportation of goods. This metaphor for
human transformation was likely behind the interpretations of nineteenth
century astronomer Schaparelli’s Martian canals and likely reason for the
eager acceptance of such a possibility. [8] The early industrial phase of human
development is very evident in the place where I live, near the Erie Canal in
Western New York. The development of the steam engine and railroads further
transformed the planet to the extent that it is now crisscrossed with steel rails, and
now asphalt and macadam roads. Elon Musk would like to build transcontinental
tunnels if we will let him.
 180 FOUR SCENARIOS FOR THE THIRD ROCK FROM THE SUN

The innovation and development of transportation technologies are a good

case in point of the growing speed, scale, and scope of change. We have gone from
foot travel to the use of the wheel and draft animals, to railroads and steamships,
airplanes, supersonic jets, rockets, rail guns, and have launched interstellar
spacecraft. We have conquered the planet with the use of maps, and now with GPS
and remote sensing earth satellites. The number of low Earth orbit satellites is likely
to increase by one hundred orders of magnitude in the next few years thanks to the
burgeoning private space launch industry.
We have become very effective at moving water around the planet, and storing
it artificially. The development of the US Southwest is largely due to water diversion
from the Colorado River and other sources. The California Central Valley and Yuma,
Arizona have been transformed into agricultural breadbaskets thanks to large-scale
diversion of water and irrigation. Other bodies such as Mono Lake and the Ural Sea
have been nearly drained by human diversion of water to cities and agriculture.
The relationship between human beings and the Earth has moved from something
relatively mutual, akin to a mother’s loving relationship to a child towards the child
becoming a parasite upon the mother.
We appear to be at a civilisational turning point, where the tensions between
nature and human activity are likely to have serious consequences. And yet, there
are those who see technology and the artificial as simply another expression
of nature.

AS HUMANS, WE ARE PART OF NATURE, SO WHO IS TO SAY THAT

ARTIFICIAL IS BAD. BAD FOR WHOM? OUR CURRENT PARADIGM PLACES
HUMANS ON TOP, BUT WHAT IF THAT IS NOT THE FUTURE WE WILL
INHERIT?
Complexity, chaos, and contradiction grow from the increasingly blurred
distinctions and boundaries between natural and artificial, between human and
machine. We may pine for simpler or more stable times, but since the beginning
of modern civilisations, we have longed for the Golden Age, the paradise before
modern times. We are now faced with a plethora of choices spanning the spectrum
of organic/historic ways and a synthetic, cyborg future. The pathways to paradise
and oblivion are not necessarily clear.
The tension between the philosophies of critical posthumanism and
transhumanism is one example of the dichotomy between natural and artificial.
Critical posthumanism argues for co-evolution with other species, and the planet,
and machines, but not in the interests of humanity. Posthumanists such as Donna
Haraway have argued for a blurring of boundaries between homo sapiens and our
animal kin, as well as seeing cyborgs as an expression of the power of being the
Other. [9] Transhumanists, on the other hand, see a bright future of machine and
181 METHODOLOGY

artificial realities – an oncoming Singularity with transformational change – with

the potential of longevity and immortality, uploading of one’s personality and
memories, and human-machine synthesis or symbiosis. [10] Kurzweil provides an
insightful analysis of post- and transhumanism. [11] If either philosophy drives a
paradigm shift or worldview change, the potential impacts upon other species and
planetary system will be massive.
To help us better understand the impact of the artificial on humanity and Earth
we should extend our lens of analysis into the future (say 2200 AD) and explore
the potential realities before us. The four alternative futures presented here attempt
to capture the spectrum of possible artificial Earths, that is, planetary futures that
include some form of homo sapiens. They are presented in order of least artificial to
one of the most artificial futures of Earth imaginable. Following each scenario is a
brief analysis of the trends and events we are witnessing today that will set us on a
trajectory towards something resembling one of these potential Earths.

Scenario 1: Dark Mountain (Earth: 1% artificial)

Dark Mountain imagines a reduction of human population to three million people,
the estimated number of humans on the planet before the rise of permanent
settlements and regional civilisations. Humans returned to a Palaeolithic lifestyle.
Settlements are temporary and move often, agriculture is limited to horticulture
and gathering. Cultural norms restrict and suppress innovation, creativity, and
development of technology, particularly metallurgy and energy use. Dark Mountain
societies are subsistence economies, largely organised similarly to primitive
communism, with limited personal ownership of material goods. The values of the
society are largely organised around collective myths that celebrate the animal,
ecological, and human co-evolution and interdependence.
This scenario in mind, we must ask, what trends are leading us towards this
nomadic future society?
The overall trajectory of progress and machines is increasingly uncertain and
hardly universally accepted. Since the early Industrial Revolution, workers have
thrown tools and clogs in the cogs of industry and the word sabotage has roots in
rage against the machine. An ongoing back-to-nature movement persists. The green
meme has had various manifestations as futures scenarios or images over time.
The concept of Earth as a living system, for example, has been around for centuries,
in modern history, the environmental movement has ranged from the early
conservation movement, public interest conservation advocacy, Greenpeace, Earth
First!, to eco-radicals, and now anti-globalists and degrowth activists. Mainstream
and conservation environmentalism may have been more accommodating of the
machine. That might be illustrated today by the “mixed-use” of national forests and
US Bureau of Land Management lands with dirt bikers, hikers, snowmobilers, and
skiers mixing in the backcountry.
Dark Mountain takes green values to an extreme and is likely to be unfamiliar
territory – a hard-to-imagine place for most folks used to electricity, indoor
182 FOUR SCENARIOS FOR THE THIRD ROCK FROM THE SUN

plumbing, and regular meals. However, it pictures a civilisation that rejects most of
the assumptions of post-industrial civilisation. It is extreme, but concentrates the
trends toward an authoritarian (non-innovative) society.
The roots and branches of the scenario come from a wide range of literature,
scholarly writing, social movements, and social action. The mass migration of
humans from rural areas and villages to cities is a continuing trend. On the other
hand, it appears humans are alienated from nature and look for connections with
nature, such as pet ownership, parks and green spaces, and vacations outside of the
city. However, urban living affects some people aversely resulting in what has been
described as nature deficit disorder. Doctors are ordering nature experiences as a
treatment for stress and depression.
Social movements over the last half-century have also contributed to this
meme, from Earth Day and the emergence of the modern environmental movement
with mainstream and radical green fringes, to the emergence of Green parties in
Europe, Earth warrior groups such as the Sea Shepherd Society, the Rainforest
Action Network have now been joined by Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future, the
Sunrise Movement, and the Extinction Rebellion. Anti-growth and anti-progress
movements also need to be taken into consideration: Occupy Wall Street and antifa
(anti-fascist) activists in the US are examples of social movements dissatisfied with
the Continued Growth paradigm.
Dark Mountain is a possible, if low probability alternative future. On the other
hand, the social structures and organisations served the species well for 200,000
years or longer, so they cannot be ruled out. The one existing meme or theory is
a reasonable candidate, the return to hunter-gather societies. While improbable,
and extreme, it does align with the skills and cultures of indigenous people who
are currently being overwhelmed if not exterminated. Dark Mountain is a variant
of the Four Futures’ Disciplined Society alternative future and is suggested by the
dark ecology movement and Dark Mountain manifesto. The aim is to return to
migratory hunter-gatherer societies and leave industrial society behind. It would
make eco-radical groups, like Earth First!, look tame. Reducing Earth’s population
deliberately by three orders of magnitude is improbable, but nuclear war, genetic
warfare or pandemics could lay the groundwork.
Dark Mountain pictures the success of antinatalism movements of the mid-21st
century, most notably the Human Extinction movement and softer forms of birth
control and population reduction. The broad social movement aligned with trends
in growing numbers of human deaths over time (particularly since the beginning
of the Industrial Revolution), falling fertility rates, rise in suicides and opiate
addiction, and depression. What was a fringe philosophy found fertile ground in a
world increasingly characterised by suffering and mental illness.
Various religious traditions note the clear connection between birth and death,
suffering and life, and the bondage to the material world that imprisons our divine
nature or spiritual being. Notably, Norwegian metaphysician Peter Vessel Zapffe
argued that consciousness is over – evolved in our species and we are burdened by
 183 METHODOLOGY

the knowledge, unlike any other species, that we are destined to die. [12] Argentine
philosopher Julio Cabrera explored the ontological challenges of birth that makes
us manufactured and used, the ultimate manufactured normalcy field. [13] We
begin the process of dying within seconds of being born, we are afflicted by physical
pain, mental willpower or its lack, and the creation of positive values (normalcy
fields) that must constantly be engaged lest we fall back into depression, according
to Cabrera. [14] Other key issues, according to South African philosopher, David
Benatar, is that the balance of good and bad things is tilted towards the presence of
pain and suffering and our experience of it in the world. [15] The empirical evidence
of death and destruction over the last thousand years is staggering.

DEATHS OVER THE LAST MILLENNIA NUMBER IN THE BILLIONS:

NATURAL DISASTERS, STARVATION AND MALNUTRITION, PLAGUE AND
EPIDEMICS, DISEASE AND ACCIDENTS, MASS KILLINGS, POLITICAL
KILLING, GENOCIDE, GENITAL MUTILATION, AND SUICIDE. THE GROWING
COLLECTIVE AWARENESS OF THIS RESULTED IN A SERIES OF INDIVIDUAL
AND COLLECTIVE ACTIONS THAT DRAMATICALLY REDUCED HUMAN
POPULATIONS OVER JUST A FEW CENTURIES.

From a postnormal analysis standpoint, the first alternative future is a return

to the ‘normal’ that characterised human existence for most of the million years
before the dawn of agriculture some 12,000 years ago. Dark ecology argues that
it is not industrialisation that is destructive, but settled agriculture ‘civilisations’
that are the source of human misery. A long period of hydraulic civilisations
constituted a kind of new normal until the industrial revolution. Arguably there
have been punctuated periods of normalcy, but postnormal change has gone
through its agricultural, medieval, industrial now high technology postnormality.
Dark Mountain reduces the artificial to the impacts of human migrations, tool use,
and horticulture. Fire use becomes the largest source of human alteration of the
environment.

Scenario 2: Collapse (Earth: 5% artificial)

Collapse is one of the most popular images in literature and movies. Teen fiction has
produced a number of dystopian and post-apocalyptic futures, such as Hunger Games
and Divergent. Wikipedia lists nearly two-dozen potential existential threats to
humanity and the program on existential threats addresses a wide range of cosmic,
terrestrial, and anthropomorphic threats. This alternative future follows the logic of
a disruption of Earth’s thermodynamic equilibrium over the last million years or so.
The position of Earth’s continents, tectonics, and the orbital cycles identified by the
184 FOUR SCENARIOS FOR THE THIRD ROCK FROM THE SUN

mathematician Milutin Milanković have produced recurring cycles of glaciation.

If anthropomorphic changes disrupt the Milanković cycle, Earth’s temperature
could rise to a higher thermodynamic steady state. [16] That might look like the
Carboniferous phase some 50 million years ago when Earth’s average temperature
was 20° higher than today. This is the runaway greenhouse scenario that is the basis
for exploring the impacts of 6° C or more increase in Earth’s temperature [17] and
the results described in JG Ballard’s Drowned World. [18]
This future could unfold quickly, but more likely may take centuries. As climate
change journalist David Wallace-Wells argued, we are already facing cascades of
catastrophe and this future in which everything that can go wrong, does go wrong,
human systems unravel quickly in the face of growing natural systems failures. In
this scenario, the forecasts of ocean and permafrost methane release were vastly
underestimated, and glacial melting in high altitudes, Greenland, and Antarctica
accelerated. [19] Coasts are flooded, there are mass migrations inland as well as
across the oceans. The tropics become inhospitable to human habitation, and
human populations are forced towards the poles.
There are massive failures in food production, warfare over dwindling water,
migration, and failures of human bureaucratic systems. Eventually, only Antarctica
is habitable, with some subterranean cities, domes in high mountain areas. At its
conclusion the warming process does not totally exterminate humans, but 5% of
the planet is artificial.
So, what can we see today that is setting us on a course for Collapse?
Civilisational collapse has been a recurring image of the future. Dutch futurist
Frederick Polak noted the number of civilisations and societies that had negative or
apocalyptic eschatology, whose images of end times were dark and violent. [20] The
history of those societies suggests that those dark images are likely to have been self-
fulfilling prophecies. The current convergence of six or seven cultural civilisations
into a global civilisation may provide us with positive as well as apocalyptic
tendencies. In any case, apocalyptic images have been a product of speculative
and science fiction, fantasy, a twentieth century characterised by two world wars,
genocide, and mass killing at greater scales than any time in history. The Cold War,
the threat of nuclear annihilation, nuclear weapon strategist and futurist Herman
Kahn ‘thinking the unthinkable’, [21] and now a long list of potential existential
threats face us at the beginning of the twenty-first century. [22] Khan’s nuclear war
scenarios were dramatic and thought-provoking, but Italian writer Roberto Vacca’s
concern about a coming dark age put Collapse on the futures map. He imagined
modern society as so complicated (built on a ‘house of cards’) that gridlock one
afternoon sets off a cascade of catastrophe that becomes the beginning of the end
of civilisation. [23]
His speculative fiction parallels the very real research of American anthropologist
Joseph Tainter who analysed the collapse of complex societies and found that a
large number collapsed due to climate change or resource exhaustion, but many
if not most collapsed due to complexity. [24] At some point, marginal efficiencies
 185 METHODOLOGY

used to manage growth failed to work. Growth seems to have limits. This may have
implications for postnormal policy. Efficiencies in bureaucratic processes may have
improved over time thanks to technological innovation, Taylorism, and process
improvement, but may be near it’s carrying capacity. Artificial intelligence and
algorithms presumably are part of the answer in the continued growth mode, but
the externalities of industrial growth are now coming back to bite us.
Extinction threats and extinction studies are a growth industry. The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the UN raised the alarm
about the need to reduce carbon emissions by 2030 to avoid catastrophe by 2050. [26]
Global heating at the poles is creating further uncertainty given the impacts on
Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets that are already in motion. Even if we are able to
avoid a 3° C increase over the baseline in global average temperature, sea levels are
likely to rise hundreds of feet in the next one hundred to two hundred years.

EXISTENTIAL THREATS ARE NOT LIMITED TO HUMAN ACTIVITY EITHER.

WE LIVE ON AN ACTIVE PLANET WITH A BIOSPHERE AND OCEANS THAT
HAVE PREVIOUSLY EXPERIENCED UP TO SEVEN MASS EXTINCTION EVENTS.

Some may be due to impacts of asteroids or comets, or more likely biological

and chemical catastrophes in Earth’s oceans. We still know very little about our
planet’s history, but would do well to consider that life is sometimes fragile and
messy business.
The collapse scenario is a logical extension of Murphy’s Law to the accelerating
dynamics of change and system characteristics in post-normal times: everything
that can go wrong, will go wrong. That was the premise of Vacca’s dismal future and
perhaps our luck as a species has run out. [26] Nevertheless, there will likely always
still be some artificial facet of nature, as long as humans or our near relatives are
still around.

Scenario 3: Hybrid Gaia (Earth: 50% artificial)

Hybrid Gaia is a highly artificial world, but driven by a totally different worldview
than today. It is driven by critical posthumanism, where human-centred ethics
and mythology are replaced by respect and cooperation with other species rather
than dominance and exploitation. The model is a blend of Haraway’s Chthulucene
and Lovelock and Appleyard’s Novocene, a cybernetic union of biology, machines,
artificial intelligence, and creativity that remake the world, both organic and
inorganic, in a dance, a symphony of co-evolution on a small planet in a violent
cosmos. [27]
This scenario assumes a rebound from coastal flooding and inundation due
to the melting of Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, and a rapid shift to a green
economy, beginning with initiatives launched by governments at the turn of the
 186 FOUR SCENARIOS FOR THE THIRD ROCK FROM THE SUN

millennium, but resisted well into the middle of the twenty-first century. A global
consensus emerged principally around universal healthcare and disease prevention
in the wake of pandemics and environmental refugee migrations into the twenty-
second century. Artificial intelligence, automation, and the transition away from
global to regional supply chains and circular economy enabled the radical shift in
the political economy to an abundance economy and wealth levelling strategies.
Incomes over one million dollars were taxed at 100% globally by 2150.
Cities are either greened up with vertical farming or built from scratch as
energy-efficient arcologies. The idea began by Italian architect Roberto Soleri was to
create dense structures at human scales to minimise the distance travelled between
work, home, and entertainment and services, to sequester industrial activities
belowground, and reclaim space given to automobiles. [28]
The worst of climate catastrophes have been surmounted and mitigated,
and despite the deaths of hundreds of millions from warfare and climate related
starvation, the global population stabilises around 8 billion. The principles of
Gaia 2.0 are internalised in governance, consumption, and economics, with vast
reduction in the use of fossil fuel – based pesticides and fertilisers. Drones are used
to more efficiently pollinate, and apply fertilisers and nutrients to individual plants.
Industrial agriculture is replaced by cooperatives and most people are involved in
some level of community gardening and food preparation.
Space exploration is replaced by Earth and Ocean exploration, by spiritual
and self-actualisation pursuits. Space development is limited to near Earth orbit
remote-sensing and telecommunications, but culture has begun to focus inward
rather than outward. The economics of scarcity inherent in capitalism is replaced by
abundance economics supported by robotics, automation, and a leisure society that
enables people to engage in community development, gardening, arts and crafts,
and democratic participation in decision-making and governance. One model is
the planetary society featured in the James Hogan’s novel Voyage from Yesteryear
where the colony planet economy is based on individual competence and service
rather than growth and industry. [29]

THE WORLDVIEW HAS SHIFTED FROM ACQUISITION, CONSUMPTION, AND

MATERIALISM TO COEXISTENCE WITH NATURE. MOREOVER, IT EMBRACES
THE REALITY OF HUMAN DESTRUCTION AND DOMINATION OF OTHER
SPECIES, AND ATTEMPTS TO BOTH ATONEMENT FOR AND CELEBRATION
OF SPECIES AND ECOSYSTEMS LOST TO HUMAN DEVELOPMENT.

At the same time it allows for the exploration of genetic futures in seeing human
exploration of genetic possibility, but informed by other moral values. Freeman
Dyson famously argued that we should embrace genetic play the same way we
187 METHODOLOGY

developed computers by playing with the technologies as well as the games on

them. [30] This is like Haraway’s five generations of clones with butterfly genes
whose life mandate is to stand with and help sustain the monarch butterfly. [31]
Genetic play and manipulation are seen as ways to become liberated of
anachronistic mental models about what it means to be human. Efforts are effective
in re-establishing extinct species, particularly the megafauna (mastodons, sabre
toothed tigers) that existed during early human existence, and entire communities
of Neanderthal and Denisovan and other archaic human species, as well as hybrids.
Education and child-rearing radically altered. Children raised in cohort groups with
multiple, non-biological parents.
What is happening today to revive Gaia theory and deliver us to the Hybrid
Gaia Earth?
Framing useful scenarios depends on a number of factors, including plausibility,
coherence, and comparable elements across alternative future scenarios. Alternative
futures are arguably most helpful when they collapse contradictory or conflicting
driving forces, because they clarify some of the reinforcing characteristics of drivers.
Of course, the future is not likely to eliminate contradictions – one of the lessons
of postnormal policy – but it is sometimes valuable to take things to their extreme
conclusions. That is clearly the case with the scenarios presented in this analysis.
Looking for the driving forces, emerging issues, and trends leading to a post-
human paradigm and civilisation one microcosm of that future may be the
annual Burning Man Festival, now in its thirty-sixth year, held in a desert playa
in the northern Nevada wilderness. The festival is named after the iconic wooden
structure sacrificed to flames every year. As many as 70,000 people now attend, and
Black Rock City is built each year from scratch and then removed from the desert,
leaving ‘no trace’.
There is an emergent culture and value system in the Burning Man phenomenon,
some visible, explicit, and other aspects hidden or more deeply embedded. The
stated rules from the official website are:

• radical inclusion
• gifting
• de-commodification
• radical self-reliance
• radical self-expression
• communal effort
• civic responsibility
• leaving no trace
• participation
• immediacy

Beyond the rules, there are other obvious and not so obvious assumptions about
the temporary, mobile pop-up culture that characterises the built environment of
188 FOUR SCENARIOS FOR THE THIRD ROCK FROM THE SUN

Black Rock City. There are some clear contradictions between the libertarian and
communitarian tenancies of participant organisations and individuals. My sense
is that these rules represent two divergent aspects of posthumanism, what Nayar
has described as critical post-humanism, on one hand, and transhumanism on
the other. [32] These rules, however, may to some degree inform both evolving
alternative futures represented in this paper. Burning Man rules represent post-
normal values in contrast to liberal industrial capitalism, in spite of the fact that
increasingly Silicon Valley and Hollywood elites are becoming entangled in the
phenomenon.
It does seem that the values embedded in the Burning Man rules are
representative of a shift in worldview that could be manifested in political redesign
away from neoliberal representative democracy. Burning Man and other intentional
communities are trying to create the space to innovate, and certainly colonies
on Mars and space settlements will have enough distance from current cultural
structures to experiment and innovate in political design and social structures.
There appear to me to be at least two major streams in the broad green movement,
a moderate organic green movement closer to the mainstream, and a radical
natural green movement. The former envisions a blend of modern technology
and particularly renewable energy and abandonment of fossil fuel use. The latter
holds that the problems of modern society began during settled agriculture, and
advocates for a vastly smaller human population that would adopt hunter-gatherer
practices more consistent with society before settled civilisation.
While transformational, the Hybrid Gaia alternative future is perhaps one of the
more likely futures, either due to the threat of Collapse or as a result of cascading
climate catastrophes over the coming century or two. Unlike the conservation
movement and much of the liberal environmental movement today, deep ecology
would be a driving force in the philosophy and worldview – the idea that all parts of
nature have intrinsic value, even rocks, and that humans are not special or any more
valuable than other aspects of nature. This philosophy has clearly influenced or has
been adopted by radical feminism and other parts of progressive social movements.
This future also has roots in the Gaia theory that the earth is a living organism,
a complex, cybernetic system that has regulated the atmospheric composition,
temperature, and habitability for life on the planet.
Gaia is relevant to the discourse on the tension between natural and artificial,
because human generated by-products and activities are beginning to have a
significant impact on the landscape, on the oceans, and atmosphere. Humans
cannot deviate very far from large-scale geomorphic processes, or we will threaten
the regulatory structures that maintain conditions for life on the planet. Therefore,
our introduction of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, species extinction, and
altering of ocean chemistry are transforming the planet in unexpected ways. The
evidence suggests that our interference with feedback processes may potentially
raise average global temperatures far in excess of nominal forecasts by the IPCC,
academies of science, and climate agencies across the planet.
 189 METHODOLOGY

Scenario 4: Dyson’s Children (Earth: 99% artificial)

The late physicist Freeman Dyson, for a thought experiment, imagined a
technological civilisation advanced sufficiently to capture all of the energy produced
by its sun. Physical structures that approach this ideal have been described in
science fiction as Dyson spheres. [33] Dyson’s structure was first described in Olaf
Stapleton Star Maker and has become a popular concept in science fiction. [34]
More recently, astrophysicists have begun planning space telescope observations
for extrasolar civilisation Dyson spheres. [35]

DYSON’S CHILDREN IS THE ALTERNATIVE FUTURE WHERE ALL THE

DREAMS OF TECHNO-OPTIMISTS AND POST HUMANISTS COME TRUE. IF
THE PREVIOUS SCENARIO WAS INWARD LOOKING, THE PRO-ARTIFICIAL
VISION IS OUTWARD LOOKING AND TRANSFORMATIONAL WITH RESPECT
TO TECHNOLOGY.

It is the product of not one, but many Singularities, from advances in machine –
mind interfaces, genetics, artificial intelligence, space development, and many
other technological dimensions see quantum leaps in control over nature. Human
science achieves godlike control over medicine through molecular and nanite robot
prevention, repair, and disease defence. Cancer is effectively cured, and longevity
increases dramatically, with the likelihood that genetic flushing technology can
extend lifespan.
Low Earth Orbit habitations, a growing lunar settlement, and asteroid mining
barely dented the growing population pressures and horrors of sea level rise, but
the mass movement to Mars (remember the old saw ‘Mars or Musk!’) and then
Venus by 2200 was still not enough to reduce social blowback. One current scheme
is to download one billion minds onto quantum computers to send them on colony
ships to be decanted into cloned bodies on the nearest earth-like planets in 100
solar systems.
The surface of the earth is effectively artificial, with geoengineering projects
that regulate the Earth’s temperature (space reflectors, deep ocean circulation
pumps). Much of the Earth’s surface is effectively managed by 2200.
Extreme climate change and species destruction required of her more human
intervention to avoid total environmental disaster. Remaining wilderness areas are
more like large parks and zoos. Nearly all arable land is devoted to post-industrial
agriculture or megacities, Earth’s population is twenty-five billion with one billion
on Mars and space settlements. Forests are planted, maintained, and harvested by
drones. Most sources of human protein are now produced in factories, grown from
cultures, and are indistinguishable from the fish, poultry, or beef produced two
centuries earlier. Almost all food is genetically modified in some way (GMOs are OK!)
 190 FOUR SCENARIOS FOR THE THIRD ROCK FROM THE SUN

Tesla-GE by mid-twenty-first century dominated the space and automobile

sectors and established the first solar power satellites in Earth orbit that began
producing energy, particularly for the developing world. That marked the beginning
of the end for fossil fuels as an energy source, and the perfection of fusion and a
Singularity in the manipulation of magnetic fields had almost immediate impacts
on transportation and energy transmission. Coupled with those advances and
quantum computing, general artificial intelligence became increasingly important
in managing the complex and sometimes contradictory systems supporting human
life on the planet. Fortunately, there was a concerted effort to limit the development
of what was once called “super machine intelligence.” It was decided that sentient
machines posed too great an existential threat to human consciousness.

WORK ON CONSCIOUSNESS AND HUMAN POTENTIAL WAS ALSO AN

ESSENTIAL PART OF THE DEVELOPMENTS OF THE TWENTY-SECOND
CENTURY, WHILE ATTEMPTS TO USE CRYONICS TO SAVE BODIES OR
BRAINS FOR FUTURE REANIMATION UNIFORMLY FAILED, UPLOADING
CONSCIOUSNESS, OR AT LEAST ONE’S MEMORY AND PERSONALITY HAS
BECOME POSSIBLE, EVEN EASY.

Of course, the social and legal implications of having two copies of oneself have
remained challenging, and especially now that cloning not only body parts but
entire adult bodies are also possible.
The diaspora to outer space is accelerating, with the colonisation of Mars
and Luna, with a domed settlement on Venus devoted to terraforming our sister
planet. The asteroid belt and Jovian systems have growing numbers of miners and
explorers. Rumours continue to circulate that alien artefacts and technology have
been discovered on more than one of the larger asteroids. That coincides with a
number of private ventures that have already launched or will soon send colony
ships to nearby habitable earth-like planets. Some are generation ships, and others
have plans for sending most of the colonists in cryo-sleep/hibernation. Humanity
seems intent on taking its species to the stars. Already, genetic alteration has been
occurring on Mars and Luna to better adapt humans to non-trust real gravity.
What justification do we have for the total artificialisation of the Earth and our
becoming Dyson’s Children?
Transhumanism is the flavour of posthumanism that potentially evolves
from or is transformed from the present Continued Growth future, with ample
illustrations in Hollywood movies and corporate advertising. It sees technology as a
means to improve humans, to expand our abilities, reduce our vulnerabilities, and
go beyond the limitations of human minds and bodies. This image of the future is
popular in mass media and particularly in Silicon Valley. Advocates for this future
191 METHODOLOGY

are those who are extending the limits of longevity, seek to be able to use cryogenics
to someday rejuvenate brains that have succumbed to injury or disease, upload
human minds or personalities to computers, create artificial humans or androids,
clone humans, and otherwise enhance human bodies with direct brain – computer
interfaces, and augment humans with other types of technology.
These visions of alternative futures are supported by the advances in technology,
particularly genetics, molecular biology, robotics and automation, computers,
telecommunications, and space development. Collectively, they support arguments
for a coming Singularity, a supposedly transformational scientific event or period
when a quantum leap in human or scientific capabilities is reached. It might be
the development of an entirely new biological species, the emergence of super
intelligent machines, or some unforeseen development that will have significant
implications for the continuation of homo sapiens as we are currently configured.
As noted previously, these trends are consistent with the observation that evolution
is accelerating (Platt 1981), and with the emergence of postnormal times [36].
Barring climate catastrophe, this leads to plausible alternative futures scenarios of a
high technology transformation. The potentiality of these potential Earths and the
artificial nature of civilisation is becoming less a plausibility and more a probability
nearing the order of fate or destiny.
Artificial civilisations were categorised by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev
who created a scale of advanced technological civilisations: [37]

• Type I civilisation, a planetary civilisation, that can use all the energy available
on its planet.
• Type II civilisation, a stellar civilisation, that can use all of the energy of its sun.
• Type III civilisation, a galactic civilisation, that can control the energy of an
entire galaxy.

The Kardashev scale has also been the subject of science fiction and astronomy,
particularly the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) programs. [38] Along
the same lines, astronomer Carl Sagan argued for a scale related to the information
available to the civilisation, aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin argued for a scale
measuring the spread of civilisation across space, rather than its control of energy,
and mathematician John Barrow reversed the scale downward, basing his scale
on our ability to manipulate increasingly smaller scales and dimensions. [39]
The striking notion is that humans are manipulating nature at ever larger and
ever smaller scales, extending the boundaries of natural and artificial reach into
our reality.
The scales going in both directions are reminiscent of the Powers of Ten
exercises and videos that tend to reinforce the anthropic principle, that we are
ideally positioned for technological and consciousness evolution given our material
and evolutionary “sweet spot.” We have been extremely successful as a species, in a
relatively short time, geologically speaking. On one hand, our evolutionary biology
192 FOUR SCENARIOS FOR THE THIRD ROCK FROM THE SUN

niche expanded thanks to our tools. More recently, according to the historian Yuval
Harari, myth-making gave our species more reasons to use tools accelerating the
use, sophistication, and complexity of our tools over the last dozen millennia. [40]
Our technological sophistication has lagged considerably in our political, social,
and economic systems. We appear to hang on to Newtonian myths and metaphors
that glorify the machine. We appear not to have passed into the postindustrial
worldview suggested in Alvin Toffler’s Third Wave: we are still embedded in what
he called industreality. Politics, particularly in the USA, is mechanical: it is still
governed by checks and balances, separation of powers, and industrial mass
education. Even the word “govern” is borrowed from the governor mechanism on a
steam engine. [41] Our politics have not caught up with the metaphors and memes
of the digital, electronic, photonic, and quantum age.
In spite of the evidence that other models of knowing and reality exist, relativity,
quantum interpretations of reality, and organic biological paradigms that question
the machine metaphors continue to be marginalised. However, there are emerging
shifts on the periphery, for example, neural networks and quantum computing that
may be points of departure from our lingering industrial and Newtonian models
of reality. As it has throughout history, reality changes and the new reality that we
will see in the not too distant future is becoming increasingly irreconcilable by our
present models. The mechanistic and organic are not simply being superseded, but
morphed into something that is equal parts hopeful as a continuation of human
progress and nightmare in facing the potential end of the human race. Either way, it
appears the notion of artificial is becoming more and more natural by the day.
Our planet and its surface environment are as artificial as ever. Will it always be
so? The Earth is being remade, in a sense, but the jury is out on whether the creative
destruction of Mother Earth will be beneficial only to humans, to most of Earth’s
species, or only the hardiest insects and microorganisms that will exist long after
we go extinct. Will we end up closer to nature, whether we want to or not? These are
among some of the great conundrums of postnormal times. Will our futures lean
to a posthuman or transhuman existence? Hopefully, we will come to our collective
senses and our collective wisdom to envision and actualise preferred futures,
not those driven by corporate greed, ideological certainty, or worse, cultural and
political whims. I want my grandchildren to inherit futures that we set in motion
over the next decade or two that give them hope and opportunity to make their
own decisions about the complexion of artificial and natural in their own lives. I
worry that an increasingly artificial planet will leave them impoverished rather
than liberated and transformed. But I hope that we will not make it too easy for the
future geologists to label this epoch.
193 METHODOLOGY

References

1. Edwards, L. (2015). What Is the Anthropocene? Eos 96.

2. Jones, C., Serra del Pino, J., & Mayo, L. (2021). The Perfect Postnormal Storm:
COVID-19 Chronicles (2020 Edition), World Futures Review, 13/2, 71–85
DOI: 10.1177/19467567211027345; Sardar, Z. & Sweeney, J. A. (2017). The
Three Tomorrows of Postnormal Times. Futures 75, 1–13 DOI: https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.futures.2015.10.004

3. Jones et al, 2021 Op. cit. Sardar & Sweeney 2017, Op. cit.

4. Rao, V. (2012). Welcome to the future nauseous. Ribbonfarm: Constructions in

Magical Thinking. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2012/05/09/welcome-to-the-
future-nauseous/

5. Anderson, W. T. (1987). To Govern Evolution. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

6. Platt, J. (1981). The Acceleration of Evolution. The Futurist. World Future

Society: 14–23.

7. Finney, B. R., & Jones, E. M. (Eds.). (1986). Interstellar migration and the human
experience (Vol. 4). University of California Press.

8. Canadelli, E. (2009). “Some curious drawings”. Mars through Giovanni

Schiaparelli’s eyes: between science and fiction. Nuncius: Journal of the History
of Science, 24(2).

9. Haraway, D. (2017). Staying With the Trouble, Making Kin in the Chthulucene.
Duke University Press.

10. Bostrom, Nick. (2016). Superintelligence. Oxford University Press.

11. Kurzweil, R. (2005). The singularity is near: When humans transcend biology.
Penguin.

12. Zapffe, P. W. (2011). A Biosophical Perspective. Ecophilosophy in a World of

Crisis: Critical Realism and the Nordic Contributions, 73.

13. Cabrera, J. (2018). Discomfort and moral impediment: The human situation,
radical bioethics and procreation. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

14. Cabrera, J. (2018) Op. cit.

15. Benatar, D. (2006). Better never to have been: The harm of coming into existence.
OUP Oxford.

16. Lovelock, J. (2015). A Rough Ride to the Future. The Overlook Press.

17. Lynas, M. (2008). Six degrees. Our future on a hotter planet. National
Geographic Society.
194 FOUR SCENARIOS FOR THE THIRD ROCK FROM THE SUN

18. Ballard, JG (1962) Drowned World. Harper Press.

19. Wallace-Wells, D. (2019). The Uninhabitable Earth. Tim Duggan Books.

20. Polak, F. (1973). The Image of the Future. Elsevier Scientific Publishing
Company.

21. Kahn, H. (1984). Thinking about the Unthinkable in the 1980s. Simon
& Schuster.

22. Ord, T. (2020). The Precipice: Existential risk and the future of humanity.
Hachette Books.

23. Vacca, R. (1973). The coming Dark Age. Doubleday.

24. Tainter, J. A. (1988). The Collapse of Complex Societies. Cambridge University

Press.

25. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2021). Summary of the 54th

Session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the 14th
Session of Working Group I: 26 July – 6 August 2021. 9 August 2021. 12/781.
enb.iisd.org/climate/IPCC/IPCC-54-WGI-14

26. Vacca, R. (1973). The coming Dark Age. Doubleday.

27. Lovelock, J. & Appleyard, B. (2019). Novacene. Penguin Books.

28. Grierson, D. (2016). Unfinished Business at the Urban Laboratory-Paolo Soleri,

Arcology, and Arcosanti. Open house international.

29. Hogan, J. (1982). Voyage to Yesteryear. Double Day.

30. Dyson (2007) Op. cit.

31. Haraway’s (2017) Op. cit.

32. Nayar, P. K. (2014). posthumanism. Polity Press.

33. Dyson (2007) Op. cit.

34. Stapleton, O. (1937) Star Maker. Gateway.

35. Zackrisson, E., Korn, A. J., Wehrhahn, A., & Reiter, J. (2018). SETI with
Gaia: The observational signatures of nearly complete Dyson spheres.
The Astrophysical Journal, 862(1), 21.

36. Platt, J. (1981) Op. cit.

37. Kardashev, N. S. (1964). Transmission of Information by Extraterrestrial

Civilizations. Soviet Astronomy, 8(2), 217–221.
195 METHODOLOGY

38. Galantai, Z. (2006). After Kardashev: Farewell to Super Civilizations.

Contact in Context, 2(2); Gray, R. H. (2020). The Extended Kardashev Scale.
The Astronomical Journal, 159(5), 228.

39. Barrow, J. (1998). Impossibility: Limits of Science and the Science of Limits.
Oxford University Press; Sagan, C. (2000). Carl Sagan’s cosmic connection:
An extraterrestrial perspective. Cambridge University Press; Zubrin, R. (2002).
Entering space. Teora Eds.

40. Harari, Y. (2014). Sapiens. Random House.

41. Toffler, A. (1980). The third wave. Bantam books.

BUILDING SCENARIOS IN
POSTNORMAL TIMES
Jordi Serra del Pino

Even though postnormal times theory was conceived by futurists and meant to be
used for futures studies projects, the futures community at large had little faith that
it could be used to truly do futures work. Some argued that it was more about the
present than the future, others that it was actually a postmodern approach under a
new disguise, while a few noted that the theory did not really offer a way to engage
in futures research. That seemed to change with the 2016 publication of “The Three
Tomorrows of Postnormal Times” by Ziauddin Sardar and John A. Sweeney. The
authors presented the Three Tomorrows as the first postnormal method. [1] Yet,
despite their best intentions, the Three Tomorrows are not, strictly speaking, a
method; and they cannot be. If we understand a method as the ordering of several
techniques to achieve a particular purpose, the Three Tomorrows are not it; but they
can work as an approach. In the following pages I will present a structured process
to use the Three Tomorrows for building future scenarios, a three-stages process for
building postnormal future scenarios using the Three Tomorrows. As an approach,
the tomorrows provide guidance and insight as to which particular method can be
applied to every case, or tomorrow, while keeping theoretical and methodological
consistency in line with the postnormal principles. They act as an epistemological
structure that offers both orientation and support regarding how to proceed and
which technique to use when building scenarios within Postnormal Times Theory.
But before getting into the actual construction of the scenarios, it is necessary to
understand that, in postnormal times it is not enough to improve our comprehension
of reality if we are not equally and simultaneously capable of upgrading our
ability to process this understanding. The executive management professional
Venkatesh Rao’s concept of the manufactured normalcy field (MNF) plays a key role
in this process. Rao essentially postulates that our mind is continuously working
to normalise any situation we find ourselves in. [2] Beyond this, the MNF has
developed a set of cognitive strategies, developed by humans over many centuries,
that have become problematic when we try to understand (and anticipate) change
in a postnormal context. In synthesis, what happens in postnormal times is that
a particular phenomenon will increase its postnormal potential by raising its
complexity, its chaotic behaviour and its contradictions through a development
 198 BUILDING SCENARIOS IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

known as postnormal creep. Once the creep is set, there is little chance of avoiding
or mitigating it and every chance of accelerating and/or aggravating it. The odds of
being able to manage it properly depend on understanding the development and
its effects; however, what frequently happens is that the MNF makes it extremely
difficult to perceive the scale and implications of what is occurring. Climate change
is a good example of this; just consider all the time that has been spent on trying to
deny it and discredit it, pretending that what was happening was normal. Claiming
that what we were experiencing fell within the bounds of normalcy became the
best way to prevent more effective action sooner. Such a response is much harder
to maintain when using the three tomorrows as it forces us not only to improve
our capacity to perceive reality, but our capacity to process and make sense of what
we perceive as well. Not only that, but such a complacent normalcy also makes us
question the foundation of our conclusions.

THE THREE TOMORROWS APPROACH ALLOWS US TO EXPERIENCE AND

ENGAGE WITH CHANGE AS IT TAKES PLACE. CRUCIALLY, THE
TOMORROWS APPROACH GIVES US DEEPER AND MORE SOPHISTICATED
SCENARIOS BECAUSE WE PROGRESS THROUGH THE CHANGE FROM ONE
TOMORROW TO THE NEXT.

The First Tomorrow

Futures research resembles the various other kinds of academically rigorous
investigation. First, we establish a goal: a question to be answered or a hypothesis
to verify. In order to attain that objective, we start by identifying the most relevant
field or fields of inquiry to the object, and then we compile information and data
that are potentially pertinent or useful. At this point, we try to gather knowledge
that will allow us to reach our objective. In many cases, that will entail resorting
to similar cases or analogous situations that could accelerate the process. If you
think about it, ultimately, the intention is to extract the necessary knowledge on
the basis of experience (whether our own or someone else’s). And this means that
we are working on the premise that what is going to happen is similar, comparable,
or equivalent to other cases that have already been experienced. In other words, the
past is the source of knowledge about the future.
This has been and remains the standard and most used way in which we
generate new knowledge. It is also the departing point for learning, and within
postnormal times theory, it is conceptualised as plain ignorance. In the postnormal
approach, ignorance is not solely the lack of knowledge; it is also the embodiment
of our cognitive structure at any given time, including the relation between what
is known and what it is not. And there can be no doubt that plain ignorance has
199 METHODOLOGY

allowed us to come a long way. The problem lies in the way in which plain ignorance
produces knowledge and the intellectual tools it uses in the process. Let us examine
four of the main ones:

1. Linear thinking: linearity was born the day our ancestors discovered that certain
events preceded others. In some cases, this was a valuable discovery which gave
them a competitive advantage. Linear thinking led us to the development of
causality, and this in turn allowed us to explain and predict. But in a context
that becomes ever-more complex, linearity, finding a univariate cause and
expecting it to provide us the explanatory keys we seek can be, if nothing else,
risky. Additionally, this kind of approach is prone to intellectual rigidity or even
arrogance, the Maltese physician Edward De Bono was one of the first ones to
pinpoint it. [3] Similar conclusions have been derived in other fields: physicians
James S. Hernandez and Prathibha Varkey emphasize the shortcomings of this
approach in medicine, [4] while complexity and management expert Thomas G.
Johns poses a similar case for management. [5]
2. Induction: the inference of a general category on the basis of a limited
observation. Being able to extract a universal principle from the examination of
particular cases allowed major advances in science. The problem has arisen when
we lost sight of the fact that the observation that is at the root of the induction
is limited and as such, open to being rendered false by another improved or
more extensive observation. Hume signalled the problems of induction in his
1739 book A Treatise of Human Nature: ‘if reason determined us, it would proceed
upon that principle that instances, of which we have had no experience, must
resemble those, of which we have had experience, and that the course of nature
continues always uniformly the same’. [6] He makes a more relevant case for
Futures in the later 1748 work, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: ‘we
have said that all arguments concerning existence are founded on the relation
of cause and effect; that our knowledge of that relation is derived entirely
from experience; and that all our experimental conclusions proceed upon the
supposition, that the future will be conformable to the past’. [7] In other words,
our knowledge derived by induction is contingent, and all the more so in a world
that is evermore chaotic with seemingly insignificant changes leading to major
impacts and turnarounds.
3. Dichotomous thinking: a notion based on two premises: firstly, that our object of
analysis is composite of two parts that, jointly, cover all the object’s possibilities
and secondly, that these two parts are mutually exclusive. Thus, the implication
is that when something is true or right, the opposite must be false or wrong. And
just because of that, analytical effort is cut in half. Once one part is established,
it follows that the other part must be the opposite. This reasoning worked
quite well when our understanding of the world was simpler, Newtonian, and
the cosmos worked on the basis of action and reaction. But today we live in a
quantum world and things no longer are or are not, as sometimes they can also
200 BUILDING SCENARIOS IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

be both or neither – even all the above simultaneously! In fact, evidence for this
can be seen in the broad prevalence of contradictions nowadays.
4. Specialisation: as accumulated knowledge grew more and more, some way
to order or classify knowledge became necessary. Not only that, but different
kinds of people have also focused in distinctive intellectual fields and thus,
be it by interest, affinity, or enforcement, most of us have traded scope for
depth. The point here is that this cognitive arrangement made it easier for an
analysis approach in which objects are decomposed into its constituting parts.
Something that, in turn, lets us examine each of them in great detail but, very
frequently, in a rather decontextualised manner. An exercise that could be akin
to trying to make sense of a forest by studying each one of its trees discretely. For
the nineteenth century French philosopher August Comte, specialisation was
the sine qua non condition of progress (although it could also endanger social
cohesion). German philosopher Max Horkheimer, one of the main members of
the “Frankfurt School,” articulated a strong criticism to specialisation, objecting
that ‘the danger of focusing on technical minutiae is that researchers become
insulated from one another and lose the ability to use one another’s resources.
The result is a lack of unification and overall direction’. [8] Yet, it cannot be
forgotten here that specialisation works extremely well within a linear thinking
perspective, and both reinforce each other making it harder to consider
alternative approaches or ways of thinking.

The use of some (or all) of these pillars of plain ignorance may be problematic in a
postnormal change context. And despite this, plain ignorance is still the dominant
(and often the only) way of researching. But can we rely on plain ignorance in
postnormal times?
This question cannot be answered with a simple yes or no. Firstly, we must
examine in which situations plain ignorance might be valid. Clearly, if we are
faced with a situation that is objectively similar to another that occurred in the
past or somewhere else, knowledge obtained in those analogous events may be
useful and valuable. In those situations where the evolution of the object under
examination is incremental, it may also be useful to analyse previous change. As
such, plain ignorance may be a suitable way of tackling those situations in which
we know enough to predict the direction and, up to a certain point, the impact of
the change we are experiencing. In postnormal times theory, this combination of
comprehension and incomprehension is characterised as surface uncertainty. This
is the kind of uncertainty that may be experienced upon the imminent launch of
a new iPhone or regarding the result of the next election. There will be things we
do not know, but the situation and what we know about it will allow us to establish
a working hypothesis of what is likely. Under the conditions of plain ignorance
we must rely, as much as possible, on empirical evidence. Thus, all estimates of
future phenomena have to be based on (past and present) data and information.
This, however, makes the first tomorrow prone to produce scenarios that include
 201 METHODOLOGY

a great deal of continuity with regard to the present. And this is precisely why this
tomorrow has been given the name of the extended present.
In order to make the three tomorrows more accessible to students, I started
drafting some instructions that, after extensive testing, evolved into the process
that I am presenting here. The three stages are meant to help people using the
tomorrow by a recurrent procedure: firstly, what are the key items we have to focus
in every tomorrow; secondly, the triggering questions that will indicate how to do it
and; thirdly, the scenarios’ steps to actually build them. In the case of the extended
present, we address the key items with the first instructions:

1. What do we know about current change and the present situation?

2. What do we not know about current change and the present situation?
3. Therefore, what do we need to learn about current change and the present
situation?

The extended present dwells in plain ignorance; therefore, learning is the required
action here. Still, it is not always easy or evident how to address these items; this
is why some triggering questions, the second stage, may help us to get started for
extended present:

1. Where is current change heading?

2. What is going to be the impact of this current change?
3. How big is this impact going to be?

In order to address the items and answer the questions presented, there are several
methods that can be used.

MAINTAINING THE EXTENDED PRESENT LOGIC, WE HAVE TO FOCUS ON

THOSE TECHNIQUES THAT SEEK TO GENERATE KNOWLEDGE ON THE
BASIS OF INFORMATION ABOUT THE PRESENT AND THE PAST.

The obvious example is trend analysis. The analysis of time series can provide useful
information regarding the direction and dimension of change. Despite its apparent
simplicity, trend analysis remains a hugely popular method in futures analysis and
beyond because of its deep-rooted compatibility with the mechanisms of MNF: it is
based on a linear approach, and it is consistent with inductive (as it is rare to have
access to a complete temporal series, extrapolation is often necessary), specialised,
and dichotomous approaches. It is a good place to start futures research. Trend
analysis has a long and wide tradition in futures, evidenced by the sheer number of
authors who have included this as one of their referenced methods. To name a few:
Wendell Bell, [9] Joseph F. Coates, [10] Eleonara Masini, [11] Ziauddin Sardar, [12]
202 BUILDING SCENARIOS IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

Jordi Serra, [13] and Kess van der Heijden [14]. Many others have also added trends
in their methods taxonomy: Peter Bishop, Andy Hines, and Terry Collins [15], Lena
Borjeson, [16] and Mats Lindgren and Hans Bandhold [17]. Naturally, cases may
arise for which no data is available; then, a qualitative approach will be required.
But the aim will be the same: to seek and distil answers about the future based
on the lessons of the past and the present. To do this, we will be able to use other
methods such as surveys, in-depth interviews, focus groups, and even Delphi.
Delphi also has a long and distinguished list of mentions, being another core
method in futures work: Bell, [18] Coates, [19] Martha J. Garrett, [20] Masini, [21]
Sardar, [22] or Serra [23]; although, the best historical view of Delphi is probably the
one by Andrew Flostrand, Leyland Pitt, and Shannon Bridson. [24]
In any case, when the need arises to refine the results obtained via extrapolation
(especially extrapolation of trends analysis), we might contemplate the use
of another group of methods. For example, if we are able to determine, with
reasonable certainty, what the two most influential trends are, with regards to the
investigation at hand, then we can cross compare them using a 2 × 2 matrix (also
named the Schwartz or the Global Business Network (GBN) approach), which will
provide us with four possible outcomes (we could also cross compare the two trends
which present us with the highest uncertainty, but this process will take us to the
subsequent tomorrows beyond the extended present, as we shall see next). If we
want to combine more variables, other methods can be included that will allow
us to pass from a univariate approach to one that is multivariate such as a cross
impact analysis, [25] structural analysis, [26], morphological analysis, [27] or, if we
focus on the behaviour of human groups, a set of actors. [28] In all of these cases,
the selection of variables is critical, and the estimation of their behaviour is even
more salient.
The point is that once we have obtained the information, we can begin the actual
building of the scenario. The process’s last stage, scenarios steps, offers a path to
build the extended present:

1. Use the trends you have identified to project change.

2. Look for the combination of trends with high-impact potential.
3. Build the future stories that lead to each scenario.

In my experience, extended present scenarios are not a real challenge for students or
researchers. The first tomorrow is so connected to standard research procedures that
all sorts of scholars can master it relatively quickly. It is worth noting though that the
extended present is the only tomorrow that has a singular name. This is intentional
to denote that these kinds of scenarios are rooted in the idea that the future is a
projection of the present. But it also signals its main problem: using experienced
change to anticipate future change entails assuming that the forthcoming change
will maintain the direction, speed, and momentum of that preceding change. And
this simply does not happen. If there is one thing we have learned in futures, it is
 203 METHODOLOGY

that the least likely future is the one in which nothing changes. Therefore, we can
establish an inversely proportional relationship between continuity and probability
of occurrence. But the fact is that we are also in postnormal times, and if we accept
that change is accelerated, expansive, incremental, and simultaneous, expecting
the future to move within the parameters of the extended present is deeply naïve, at
least beyond the short term.
And this is why we must progress towards another tomorrow that is able to
include a higher level of change, the familiar futures.

The Second Tomorrow

The main difference between the first and the second tomorrow is its willingness to
explore more disruptive situations. We are no longer looking for indicators or any
basis for connecting the future to the present. Now, the working assumption is that
the future will (in whole or in part) be different and new. This premise will inevitably
place us beyond the scope of surface uncertainty, initially at least, because we will
no longer be able to determine, with any level of certainty, which direction change
will take. We will know even less about what its impact might be. These parameters
place us squarely within the territory of shallow uncertainty and require us to change
how we work because plain ignorance will be of no use here.

IF WE ACCEPT THAT WE ARE FACING SOMETHING NEW, TO WHAT EXTENT

WILL OUR PAST EXPERIENCE OF OTHER EVENTS BE ABLE TO HELP
US? AT BEST, PARTIALLY. MOST LIKELY, THERE WILL BE GREAT DOUBTS
REGARDING WHICH FIELDS OF KNOWLEDGE ARE RELEVANT OR WHAT
DATA OR INFORMATION WE SHOULD BE LOOKING FOR.

In these cases, trying to rigidly apply a plain ignorance approach to a situation of

shallow uncertainty could cause bigger problems or lead us to conclusions that
are profoundly wrong, or at least problematic. Another approach is required, and
that is why we must resort to vincible ignorance. Vincible ignorance, as opposed
to plain ignorance, requires us to undergo a prior step: to become aware of our
ignorance. In other words, vincible ignorance cannot be applied unless we
are conscious of what we do not know. Therefore, before heading off to find
references, information, or data, it is necessary to spend time considering what
parts of the subject under examination we know, or are known, and what parts
we do not know or are unknown. Subsequently, we will need to establish what
kind of obliviousness we are dealing with. It may be that a particular behaviour
is inexplicable from an economic outlook but perfectly understandable from a
psychological or biological viewpoint. In this first case, our cognitive perspective
will have to expand to incorporate other disciplines, theories, methods, or ideas in
 204 BUILDING SCENARIOS IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

order to overcome the initial ignorance. But we may also come across situations
that are so recent that no perspective whatsoever can be gained in order to
appreciate the full extent of the situation. In this case, there will no option but to
accept that we lack experience, and we will have to speculate as to how it might
evolve and what impact it might have. For example, we do not fully know what the
long-term impact of climate change, or of the introduction of self-driving vehicles
in cities, will be, but we can produce reasoned speculation about them. We can
use insight from other sources, like transition studies, to see how changes have
developed in the past on the basis of some comparable criterion. And we can also
study how this possibility has been viewed in art, design, or science fiction. We
must take into account that very often the first explorations of new possibilities
(whether technological, social, or cultural) come from artists, designers, or
peripheral activists of various kinds. The use of imagination has very bad press
when it comes to envisaging the future, probably because it forces the MNF beyond
its comfort zone. However, the fact is that we are only just beginning to realise
that imagination and intuition are other ways of generating knowledge which, in
the case of the future – and possibly because they transcend plain ignorance – can
work well. In any event, we must always bear in mind that the MNF constantly
tends to move back to its comfort zone, its default setting of plain ignorance and
surface uncertainty; and this is why we will not be able to operate within the new
parameters (shallow uncertainty and vincible ignorance) unless we have completed
the preliminary stage of gaining an awareness of our ignorance (or, more to point,
of our level of ignorance).

AND GIVEN THAT THE MAIN OBJECTIVE OF THIS TOMORROW IS TO BE

ABLE TO DESCRIBE SITUATIONS OF PROFOUND CHANGE, IT IS OFTEN
VERY USEFUL TO RESORT TO REFERENCES THAT HAVE BEEN MADE
POPULAR BY THE MEDIA, THE ARTS, OR SCIENCE FICTION.
Many people may find it difficult to understand, intellectually, the implications
of the interaction between human beings and artificial beings, but they may be
able to make a more emotional connection thanks to films such as Blade Runner
(the 1982 film and the 2049 sequel), Her, or Robot & Frank. The fact is that we are
subjected to a constant barrage of future images, and there is nothing wrong with
taking advantage of them in our pursuit of a more profound understanding of the
consequences of certain future options. This is why the second tomorrow is called
familiar futures; because there is often a certain familiarity with the future that is
presented (artificial intelligence, post-human beings, flying cars), but it is partial,
noncritical, and in most cases, disempowering. Familiar futures seek to use that
knowledge base to promote a broader and more profound reflection on the possible
effects of these changes or situations.
205 METHODOLOGY

A new tomorrow, yet a familiar starting point. Once again, the first stage of our
analysis begins with listing the new key items that need to be met:

1. Where does novelty come from?

2. What other perspectives, theories, or disciplines do we need to bring in?
3. How can we enhance our awareness?

Awareness is the key word in familiar futures; we need to abandon the rigidity of
plain ignorance and be open to new inputs and perspectives, and in order to get
us in the right mindset, we can proceed to the second level with a new batch of
triggering questions:

1. How can we expand our comprehension of change?

2. What new elements or ideas can we or do we need to bring in?
3. Where can we get these new elements or ideas from?

In order to find the answers, we will have to resort to new methodological tools. But
– and this is very important – we should not discard or repudiate preceding trends.
The results of the first tomorrow may be an excellent basis for developing second
tomorrows. We simply have to try to work out where the weak points in the previous
scenarios are, or rather, what are the postnormal weak points? For example, do the
scenarios of the first tomorrow adequately reflect the complexity of the analysis’s
subject? Have we managed to capture the tapestry of relationships or connections
between the various components of the scenario? Or have we oversimplified the
situation? Another point: have the aspects with the highest potential for chaotic
behaviour been identified? Has it been possible to determine in what circumstances
the system under analysis may experience a chaotic leap? This is something that
an extended present finds very hard to do because it takes itself right where it does
not want to go. Finally, a relevant point from a postnormal perspective: do the
preceding scenarios contain contradictions? This may be more difficult to detect
because, in principle, a scenario ought to be consistent and coherent; nevertheless,
many extended presents are based on logic that is unsustainable or contradictory in
the long run. In other cases, the contradiction will be implicit or simply the result
of not taking into account the possibility that the change will accelerate, expand,
increase, or happen simultaneously to other phenomena. In all of these cases, it
will be relatively easy to build a second tomorrow using the first tomorrow as a base.
Fortunately, there is no shortage of methods to introduce novelty or to disrupt
trends in futures. Trend analysis may be enriched by trying to identify emerging
issues. Jim Dator may be the main promoter of the use of emerging issues
analysis, [29] but the work of Javier Carbonell, Antonio Sánchez-Esguevillas, and
Belén Carro provides a more contemporaneous approach to analysing emerging
issues. [30] Yet, the important question when dealing with new things is to assess
their potential impact. And, to estimate this impact, we can use techniques like the
206 BUILDING SCENARIOS IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

futures wheel, originally conceived by Jerome Gleen and Theodore Gordon, [31] or
the middlecasting as proposed by Dennis List. [32] In some cases, it may be that
our attention ought to, perhaps, be on pursuing the most uncertain or disruptive
aspects of our investigation. In this case, a 2×2 matrix using Peter Schwartz’s
approach or a morphological analysis [33] (Guy Duczynski’s insights can also work
very well here). [34] Nevertheless, here we have to understand that the game has
changed. Instead of trying to ground estimates on empirical evidence, the aim is
to argue for speculations on the basis of any possibility that may occur (no matter
how improbable). Evidently, qualitative methods can also function in an optimum
manner here: interviews, surveys, Delphi and even in approaches that are openly
participatory: future workshops, focus groups, and a variety of other, creative
techniques. Finally, it may turn out, initially at least, that it is difficult to articulate
alternatives to the extended present. In such a case, it may be useful to resort to
incasting archetypes, as defined by the Manoa School. [35]
Whatever methods we decide to use, it should be able to respond to the triggering
questions and, in doing so, provide the elements to build scenarios. In this case, the
third stage of my process proposes the following scenario building steps:

1. Look for emerging issues that convey a substantive or relevant impact for
previous trends or scenarios.
2. Look for alternative ideas or perspectives from other disciplines or fields.
3. Reassess the relevance or validity of the extended present trends:
a. Under the impact of those emerging issues.
b. From the perspective of other disciplines or theories.
4. Generate new scenarios based on greater departures or disruptive impacts.
Familiar futures can be more difficult for people with a more rigid mindset
and very easy for imaginative and creative participants. However, they usually
denote the boundaries of what we deem as conceivable. Over the years, we futurists
have learned that, despite our best efforts, some future options are seldom truly
included or considered in our stock of scenarios. Something that the American
critic Fredric Jameson captured in his famous quote: ‘it is easier to imagine the end
of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism’. [36] The point is that, in a fairly
systematic and implicit way, we tend to prefer or privilege certain future images
at the expense of others. It is not unusual to find ourselves in situations that have
previously been considered to be unlikely, if not directly impossible, to happen, and
despite everything, they occur. How is this possible? Can our futures knowledge be
so defective to let us make such blatant mistakes? Or are we so dim-witted that we
fail to see what is in front of our eyes? To resolve these problems is precisely why the
next tomorrow – unthought futures – exists.

The Third Tomorrow

The third tomorrow, unthought futures, allows us to deal with certain questions
that the extended present and familiar futures cannot resolve:
 207 METHODOLOGY

1. Identifying and then properly dealing with these preference mechanisms,

which are implicit and integrated in our cognitive systems and which end up
privileging certain future options.
2. Being able to process those situations that go beyond shallow uncertainty and
cannot be resolved with vincible ignorance while never overlooking the fact
that the MNF always seeks to process any question via its default settings (plain
ignorance and surface uncertainty), something which we judged to be risky for
the previous tomorrow and which now is nothing short of reckless.

TO ADDRESS THE FIRST SITUATION, POSTNORMAL TIMES THEORY HAS

DEVELOPED THE POSTNORMAL MENAGERIE, A COMBINATION OF ITS OWN
AND BORROWED CONCEPTS, TO CONFIGURE A SYSTEM THAT ALLOWS
COGNITIVE BIASES TO BE DETECTED.

There are three members in the postnormal menagerie:

1. The first is the black elephant, first cousin of the elephant in the room. According
to the CPPFS, this refers to ‘events that are highly likely and widely predicted that
are usually ignored either by many or by society as a whole’. [37] As such, black
elephants are used to recognize those cases where preferences (whether positive
or negative) are allowed to prevail over reason. To a certain extent. they describe
those situations where, more or less explicitly, we choose to think in a particular
way with regard to the future because it is less contradictory with our future
preferences. Once again, the case of climate change is relevant, and another
good example was the scarce credibility given to forecasts of the 2008 financial
crisis. Even though both situations were preceded by numerous warnings, some
of which were based on extensive empirical evidence, many people preferred
to believe that they would never happen, and when they started to occur, many
appeared surprised and spoke of black swans. It should be understood that
black elephants work because, once again, they fit with the MNF. Ultimately, we
believe them because they are consistent with what our field defines as ‘normal’.
2. The second member of the postnormal menagerie is the black swan, a concept
coined by Lebanese American analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book of
the same name. Black Swans are things totally outside and way beyond our
observations (...) they are not perceptible or articulated, even by experts; they
appear as ‘outliers’ and come ‘out of the blue’. [38] They are the proverbial
exception, except that they no longer serve to prove the rule, but rather signal
the shortcomings and cracks in the rule. A little like those extreme values that
traditional futures studies schools would advise us to disregard because they
were just ‘noise’. Now, we know that they may be indicative of deeper or less
 208 BUILDING SCENARIOS IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

visible questions that need to be tackled. What happens is that, as opposed to

elephants, with swans, there is little or nothing to be seen, even if we try really
hard. We are instead talking about the opposite, voids or gaps, failures or glitches
in the system, elements that do not fit, absences, or silences that clash with the
whole. They are often the direct result of cognitive short-cuts, of believing that
our knowledge is errorproof and of allowing the MNF to convince us that what
we have in front of us works according to plan or within the bounds of normality.
3. The third and last member of the postnormal menagerie is the black jellyfish.
The animal that alerts us to phenomena and events that have the potential of
going postnormal. That is, events which, in certain circumstances, may undergo
sudden and exponential escalation like jellyfish, challenging our knowledge
and prior behaviour. [39] Their essence is the appearance of normality, of things
we think we know and understand but which turn out to be more complex and
uncertain than we expect. Jellyfish warn us of the dangers of our intellectual
arrogance, of taking things for granted or believing that we have the situation
under control. Under this view, black jellyfish allow us to identify which elements
or situations may be more sensitive to the effects of postnormal change.

Thus, the main feature shared by all members of the postnormal menagerie is
their resolute opposition to uncritical acceptance of any notion of normality.
Ultimately, what may be deduced is that the idea of normality is, of itself, toxic from
a postnormal viewpoint.

IN ORDER TO TACKLE THE SECOND QUESTION – PHENOMENA WHICH

FALL BEYOND SHALLOW UNCERTAINTY AND VINCIBLE IGNORANCE – THE
POSTNORMAL TIMES THEORY ESTABLISHES THE NEED TO CONCEIVE
OF A NEW KIND OF UNCERTAINTY THAT ALLOWS US TO CONCEPTUALISE
THOSE SITUATIONS OR EVENTS FOR WHICH WE HAVE NO ANSWERS
AND IN THE FACE OF WHICH WE ARE SOMETIMES NOT EVEN ABLE TO
FORMULATE THE QUESTIONS.

These are questions such as the emergence of (genuine) artificial intelligence

(that which is self-conscious), the collapse of the European Union, the rise of
global fascism, or a new mass extinction. The common trait running through all
these questions is that no sooner do we begin to perceive them than they split into
multiple ramifications and impacts which demonstrate how little we understand
them and/or how unreliable the little we think we know about them is. We are
facing deep uncertainty, but unlike previous uncertainties, which may be seen as a
quantitative gradation with regard to what we do not know about the subject under
209 METHODOLOGY

examination, deep uncertainty is not just simply the fact of knowing very little;
it also has a qualitative aspect. In other words, it affects the value or reliability of
what we think we know, and this is connected to another postnormal times theory
nuclear concept, the unthought. Originally conceived by the Algerian philosopher
Mohammed Arkoun, the unthought refers to what lies beyond the situations
or axioms of our worldview. [40] Even so, it should be pointed out that it is not
unthinkable, but it is difficult to comprehend because it is beyond the realm of
our imagination, which is in turn determined by our worldview. For instance (and
following the previous example by Jameson), for a convinced capitalist, the end of
capitalism is an unthought, not because he cannot conceive of such a possibility,
even hypothetically, but because a significant part of the construction of his
worldview is based on the principles of capitalism. Likewise, a true believer cannot
truthfully consider that God does not exist; it may be an argument in a theoretical
debate, but it cannot be something he countenances with all of its implications. If we
consider it carefully, we realise that the conclusions of all kinds of futures works are
often conditioned by implicit unthoughts, which by not having been made explicit,
become transparent, invisible to criticism. Questions such as the superiority of
science over other forms of knowledge, the inevitability of the laws of market forces,
the omnipresence of heteropatriarchy, the intrinsic evil of terrorists (and that they
are never us), and so on. The deep uncertainty associated with these examples often
does not derive from what we do not know about them, but precisely from what
we believe to know about them and, also, from a rigid inability to conceive credible
alternatives in the form of future scenarios.
How can we face this uncertainty? Firstly, by accepting that both shallow
uncertainty and plain ignorance are not going to be enough, and that a new
approach, invincible ignorance, is needed. And as in the case of the uncertainties,
this is not just a difference of degree, but once again a qualitative shift. Normally,
when we first tackle an issue, we will use a plain ignorance approach (remember,
the MNF default mode) and just try to learn whatever we do not know. At a posterior
stage, and maybe because we are aware of a postnormal creep, we may find
ourselves willing to advance towards the approach of shallow uncertainty; then, we
will have to determine the limits of our knowledge, consider alternative sources for
the generation of new knowledge and if all this fails, find ways to speculate in a
reasoned manner, vincible ignorance. But when we reach invincible ignorance, it
is an entirely different game, and it is no longer about being aware of the scope of
our understanding, but rather about asking what it is that we truly comprehend.
The one thing that we cannot forget is that the MNF will bestow any fact that can
be empirically corroborated with huge credibility, making sensorial perception the
main criterion for accepting any information. However, when we arrive at the third
tomorrow, it is vital to ask oneself this question: do we think what we think because
of what we see, or do we see what we see because of what we think?
This is not a word game. The more we know about how our mind works, the
more we discover about its ability to make us believe things that are not real. This
210 BUILDING SCENARIOS IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

is the basis of prestidigitation, and it works because our brain is always trying to
save energy. Thus, if our perception is in line with our MNF, it will be much more
difficult to fight that perception, no matter how mistaken it may be. Furthermore,
by the mere fact of being social beings, with our culture engrained in a specific
social context, many of the implicit axioms and premises of our worldview will
be the basis of the unthoughts that affect our futures analysis. And this is why, in
invincible ignorance mode, most of the times, the problem is not so much what we
do not comprehend, but rather what we actually think we understand. Therefore,
having reached this point, we have no option but to call into question that part of
our knowledge that prevents us from making progress. In order to emphasize that
this third tomorrow requires a deeply different way of engaging with it, it has been
labelled unthought futures.
And how can unthought futures scenarios be developed? As usual, the proposed
process will start in its first stage by identifying the key items in this tomorrow:

1. Are we under the effect of a cognitive bias?

2. Could it be that our worldview’s implicit assumptions and axioms are limiting
our capacity to anticipate the future?
3. Is there a part of our knowledge that we need to unlearn?

If we accept that our knowledge is part of the problem, we need to be ready to

question and deconstruct it. But this kind of reflection can be hard for some people.
Therefore, the triggering questions, the second stage, propose a more circular
approximation to unlearning:

1. Are the trends, emerging issues, and scenarios we have used so far tuned with
this new reality and change?
2. Could it be that our worldview somehow limits our future perspective?
3. Are we, consciously or unconsciously, leaving out any future options?

There is not an easy way to directly answer these questions. But I have found that
the application of the postnormal menagerie helps, and it does not really require
the use of a particular method. It is more a matter of retracing our steps and seeking
to discover if some of the preceding scenarios may contain black elephants, black
swans, or black jellyfish. If we believe they do, then the question is to focus on
establishing in what way the existence of one of these animals alters our previous
conclusions; what possibilities they require us to include or to discard. In most cases,
the postnormal menagerie will allow us to enrich or enhance the sophistication of
the preceding scenarios and even generate new sub-scenarios that may expand our
perspective.
But in order to detect the unthoughts at work in our scenarios, we might need
specific techniques. In this regard, the postmodern methods of genealogy and
deconstruction may be useful to demonstrate or expose the implicit parts of our
 211 METHODOLOGY

worldview, or to put it another way, the sources of our unthoughts. Again, there is
no shortage of futurists that have engaged in the application of postmodernism
to futures, but Sohail Inayatullah is an obvious choice. He not only pioneered this
endeavour, but he also later developed causal layered analysis, a technique that
can be very useful here. [41] This layered analysis allows for a progressively deeper
exploration of the roots of our position with regard to the future evolution of any
given subject. Having said this, we cannot ignore that most postmodern methods
are very effective for critical analysis, but frequently, they are not equally suitable
for building scenarios. In other words, these techniques can help us to identify the
unthought, but once we have managed to detect it, using other techniques may
be more operative. For example, if an unthought is characterized as a ‘what if…?’,
then List’s middlecasting might work very well. [42] In other cases, it may be good
to contemplate new alternatives in a morphological analysis. Or, if it helps us to
understand how a specific agent might react, a set of actors may be improved. In
other words, this is not so much about there being specific methods for exploring
the unthought, but rather about incorporating the unthought into our scenarios.
At this stage we may be in disposition to build the scenarios that in my process
would be the third stage with the following steps:

1. Identify the unthought in the previous tomorrows.

2. Articulate the unthought as a divergent futures hypotheses.
3. Use the menagerie to double-check against cognitive bias.

It is not uncommon that the development of a new tomorrow provokes the need to
reform or change the previous one. I do not forbid it, but it is not really necessary.

THE FUNCTION OF THE FOLLOWING TOMORROW IS NOT TO REFUTE THE

PREVIOUS ONE. EACH TOMORROW ALLOWS US TO CAPTURE A
DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE OR SHARD OF THE FUTURE. IT IS BY HAVING
ALL OF THEM, ACTUALLY MANY OF EACH, THAT WE CAN HAVE A MORE
COMPREHENSIVE PERSPECTIVE OF THE FUTURE.

What is shocking from an extended present viewpoint may be logical from an

unthought futures one and vice-versa. At the end of the day, the only real legitimation
of the three tomorrows is if they really let us attain a more comprehensive and
insightful perspective of what may happen next and how we can best navigate
postnormal times.
My teaching and lecturing work prove that despite the three tomorrows
not being a method, it works very well as an approach. As such, the tomorrows
provide a structure within which it is easier to build each scenario; they define an
212 BUILDING SCENARIOS IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

epistemological framework that allows us to select the most suitable methods in

accordance with both the object and each tomorrow’s logic. As an approach, the
tomorrows are not only useful in tackling the generation of scenarios, it provides a
way to analyse how these scenarios have been created as well. In other words, they
do not just determine the best way of deciding how to generate the scenarios; they
also help us to understand why our scenarios will go in particular directions, and
most importantly, how we can acquire a deeper understanding of the future. In a
typical postnormal dynamic, the three tomorrows require us to examine both our
perception of reality and the cognitive processes we use to comprehend this reality.
Finally, the progress from one tomorrow to the next tomorrow is not just a way of
increasing the sophistication of our future anticipation; it is also a suitable way
of understanding and foreseeing postnormal creeps, and as such, the tomorrows
become a holistic way of studying the evolution of any subject.
The three tomorrows’s last function is to aid us in transcending or elude the
notion of normal in our futures analysis. Normalcy is problematic for two reasons:
First, it tends to obscure and hinder the influence of the MNF and will nudge our
conclusions in a particular direction (the one that fits the most with our MNF). And
because we will see it as ‘normal’, it will make it a lot harder to uncover if we are in
shallow or deep uncertainty.
Second, because normalcy becomes the Trojan Horse for slowing down,
silencing, or side-lining the crucial debates on the future. What better way of
avoiding a future option than to denounce it as abnormal? The concept of normal is
too influential, too biased, too overvalued (often implicitly), and tends to conceal a
particular status quo. And the fact is that a futures analysis that cannot criticize or
put forward alternatives to the status quo that does not live up to its name.
The three tomorrows do not preclude the addition of new methods that can be
developed in the future or the use of disruptive knowledge. It simply gives a path to
engage in futures in these postnormal times. My proposed three stage process goes
a bit further by providing a workable manner to use the three tomorrows in futures
research. By moving from key items to triggering questions and then the steps
to build scenarios, the process offers an accessible way to build scenarios within
a postnormal perspective.
213 METHODOLOGY

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26. Godet, Michel, and Philippe Durance. 2011. La Prospective Stratégique,

Paris: UNESCO

27. Duczynski, Guy. 2017. “Morphological Analysis as an Aid to Organisational

Design and Transformation.” Futures 86: 36–43.

28. Godet, Michel, and Philippe Durance. 2011. La Prospective Stratégique,

Paris: UNESCO

29. Dator, Jim. 2009. “Trend Analysis vs Emerging Issues Analysis.” In HRCF
Futures Theories Methods. Accessed August 11, 2020. http:// www.futures.
hawaii.edu/publications/futurestheories-methods/TrendVsEIA2009.
pdf; Dator Jim. 2018. “Emerging Issues Analysis: Because of Graham
Molitor.” World Futures Review 10 (1): 5–10.

30. Carbonell Javier, Sánchez-Esguevillas Antonio, Belén Carro. 2015. “Assessing

Emerging Issues. The External and Internal Approach.” Futures 73: 12–21.

31. Gleen Jerome C., Theodore J Gordon, eds. 2009. Futures Research Methodology
– Version 3.0. Washington, DC: The Millennium Project
215 METHODOLOGY

32. List Dennis. 2004. “Multiple Past, Converging Presents, and Alternative
Futures.” Futures 36 (1): 23–43.

33. Schwartz Peter. 1991. The Art of the Long View. New York: Currency Doubleday

34. Duczynski Guy. 2017. “Morphological Analysis as an Aid to Organisational

Design and Transformation.” Futures 86: 36–43

35. Dator Jim. 2009a. “Alternative Futures at the Manoa School.” Journal of
Futures Studies 14 (2): 1–18.

36. Jameson Frederic. 2003. “Future City.” New Left Review 21: 65–79 p.76

37. This quotation and the next ones are taken from the CCPFS’ Postnormal
Times website. Specifically, the references to Postnormal Menagerie
come from https://postnormaltim.es/essentials/menagerie-postnormal-
potentialities.

38. Taleb Nassim N. 2007. The Black Swan. New York: Random House.

39. Sweeney John. 2017. “Infectious Connectivity: Illustrating the Three

Tomorrows.” In The Postnormal Times Reader, edited by Sardar Ziauddin.
London: The Centre for Postnormal Policy & Futures Studies.

40. Arkoun Mohammad. 2002. The Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought,

London: Saqi Books.

41. Inayatullah Sohail. 1998. “Causal Layered Analysis: Poststructuralism as

Method.” Futures 30 (8): 815–829.

42. List Dennis. 2004. “Multiple Past, Converging Presents, and Alternative
Futures.” Futures 36 (1): 23–43.
THE SMOG OF IGNORANCE
Ziauddin Sardar

All our knowledge brings us nearer to ignorance,

All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

T S Eliot, ‘Choruses from The Rock’

When T S Eliot published his pageant ‘play with words and music’ in 1934, the world
was in a different place: politically, culturally, technologically, and in almost every
other way. But even between two World Wars, there was ‘endless invention, endless
experiment’ and ‘endless cycles’ of change and ‘progress’. Yet, we could distinguish
the difference between information and knowledge, and knew that wisdom, even
if we could not actually pin it down, was something to truly be desired. Indeed,
discourses of knowledge and wisdom go all the way back in history to Plato and
Aristotle and classical Muslim civilisation.
For Plato, knowledge was something to be searched for and acquired. Hence,
in ‘Socratic Dialogues’ we have Socrates searching for truth, and the meaning of
such notions as justice, goodness, and virtue. Knowledge had to fulfil three criteria:
it had to be justified, true, and believed. Aristotle saw knowledge, as philosopher
of religion Barry Kogan puts it, ‘as the knower’s complete appropriation of the
intelligible content of the known, which is of course its form or structure. The
appropriation, in fact, is carried to the point of identity. The knower is what he
knows’. [1]
In Muslim civilisation, the conceptualisation of knowledge was a major
intellectual activity from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries, spurred by the fact
that knowledge (ilm) and related terms such as observation, reason, reflection,
study of natural and social phenomenon occur in some 750 verses in the Qur’an.
Muslim philosophers, such as ibn Rushd, al-Ghazali, ibn Sabin, and ibn Hazm,
 220 THE SMOG OF IGNORANCE

who were obsessed with the notion of knowledge given its religious significance,
produced over 500 definitions of knowledge from a plethora of pluralistic
perspectives – human knowledge and Divine knowledge, scientific knowledge and
spiritual knowledge, propositional knowledge and knowledge as practice, attitude,
and/or doubt. [2] For ibn Rushd, knowledge is a combination of sense perception
and ‘intellectual intuition’; an amalgam of essence and being. [3] Al-Ghazali
suggested true knowledge reveals the reality of things as they are and transforms
the knower. [4] Ibn Sabin defines ‘knowledge as that which clarifies the truth and
gives information without leaving (the need for) anything to be investigated’. [5] Ibn
Hazm saw knowledge as the certainty of a thing as it is; a knowledgeable person
epitomises four cardinal virtues: justice, understanding, courage, and generosity. [6]
The exploration of wisdom too has a long history, particularly in Eastern cultures.
Confucius told us that we may learn wisdom by three methods: first, by reflection,
which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; third, by experience, which
is the bitterest. He also regarded wisdom as one of the ‘universally recognised
moral qualities of men’. [7] In Islamic theology, wisdom – hikma – is a key term
occurring a number of times in the Qur’an. It is seen as the best of all virtues given
by God to ‘whom He wills, and whoever has been given wisdom has certainly been
given much good’ (2:269). Not surprising that a legion of theologians, Sufi mystics
and philosophers discussed wisdom at great length. Ibn Sina put the definition of
wisdom in verse:

The soul is like a glass lamp, and knowledge

Is light (giving fire), and the wisdom of God is the oil.
If it is lit, you are alive,
And if it is darkened, you are dead. [8]

Al-Farabi defined wisdom as ‘power of excellence of deliberation and production

of the things which are most excellent and best in what is done to procure for a
man a really great good and an excellent and noble end, whether that is happiness
or something which is indispensable for obtaining happiness’. [9] Al-Ghazali
argued that knowing by itself was not enough; wisdom was necessary to act
morally and distinguish right from wrong. Wisdom is also needed to go beyond
sensate knowledge based on speculation and ignorance. Mullah Sadra talked
of ‘transcendent wisdom’: knowledge was a mode of existence; wisdom takes a
quantum leap to another dimension. [10] Other Sufi mystics illuminated the notion
of wisdom through deep spiritual explorations, such as Ibn Arabi’s The Bezels of
Wisdom, or moral stories, such as Rumi’s Masnavi.
Unlike knowledge, wisdom has received scant attention from contemporary
scholars and thinkers. It is interesting to note that the Wikipedia entry on wisdom
contains no contemporary citations! Indeed, the British philosopher Nicholas
Maxwell argued that wisdom has been largely forgotten. Most of the problems of
academia – fossilised disciplines, bunker mentality, inertia of institutions – are an
 221 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

indication of the absence of wisdom. The late British philosopher Mary Midgley,
who was seriously concerned with the (lack of) social responsibilities of scientists,
concurred. Wisdom that is valued and loved, Midgley suggested, is difficult and
requires time to search for. [11] She considered wisdom to be an ‘intellectual virtue’
with flawless moral dimensions. [12] Wisdom integrates and unifies the knowledge
and values of a person, it cannot be abused, and a wise person cannot be immoral.

IN MODERN TIMES, DEFINITIONS, THEORIES, AND APPROACHES TO

KNOWLEDGE HAVE COME UNDER CONSIDERABLE SCRUTINY AND HAVE
BEEN A MATTER OF INCESSANT DEBATE. PLATO’S CLASSICAL DEFINITION
HAS BEEN FOUND WANTING; AND A NUMBER OF PHILOSOPHERS,
INCLUDING EDMUND GETTIER, ROBERT NOZICK, KEITH LEHRER, THOMAS
PAXSON, AND SIMON BLACKBURN, HAVE ADDED EXTRA CONDITIONS.
The second half of the twentieth century, questioned the objectivity of scientific
knowledge with the publication of Jerome Ravetz’s attack on ‘industrialised
science’ in his boldly titled 1971 book: Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems.
Science was facing a string of social and ethical problems, Ravetz argued, its
ideological foundations had eroded, it was becoming ‘vulnerable to corruption’,
and quality control was being seriously compromised. [13] There followed a heated
debate between the supporters of what the Austrian British philosopher Karl
Popper called Objective Knowledge and those who emphasised the subjective side
of scientific knowledge such as philosophers Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend:
the various sides of the arguments are well presented in the celebrated book,
Criticism and Growth of Knowledge, edited by the philosophers Imre Lakatos and
Alan Musgrave. [14] The debate was intensified with the postmodern onslaught
on knowledge beginning with French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard’s, 1984
book The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Postmodernism produced a
string of disciplines and subdisciplines, not just critical theory but also sociology
and anthropology of knowledge, as well as the academic movement of social
construction of knowledge. [15] Under postmodernism, not just knowledge but
truth itself became relative, and reason too lost its lustre. Fayerabend insisted that
it was time to say Farewell to Reason. In Laboratory Life, French philosopher Bruno
Latour and British sociologist Steve Woolger showed that subjective concerns were
not altogether absent from ‘the construction of scientific facts’. [16] What came to
be known as ‘Science Wars’ followed with all sides taking an entrenched position on
science and knowledge and the issues remain unsolved! [17]
While Popper worried about the growth of knowledge and introduced his theory
of falsification to ensure its progress, knowledge itself was said to be moving from
linear to exponential growth. The American architect and futurist Buckminster
222 THE SMOG OF IGNORANCE

Fuller noted that knowledge doubled every century but, by the end of the Second
World War, knowledge was doubling every twenty-five years. [18] Along with
knowledge, information too was increasing rapidly: during the 1980s and 1990s,
terms such as ‘information overload’, which itself has a long history, and ‘information
glut’ began to gain common currency. We had entered an ‘information age’.
Information theory, first created in the 1950s to bridge mathematics, engineering,
and computer science, now proliferated through a string of disciplines and fields
including cybernetics, systems sciences, cryptography, and communication. The
old fashioned ‘computer science’ now became ‘information and communication
technologies’; and computer science departments rebranded themselves as
computer and information science departments. It was against this background
that the notion of Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom hierarchy first appeared.

DIKW Hierarchy
The idea that data leads to information, which leads to knowledge, which in turn
leads to wisdom was introduced by the organisational theorist Russell L. Ackoff, a
management consultant, in his 1989 paper ‘From Data to Wisdom’. Ackoff argued
that there was a causal and hierarchical relationship between the concepts. [19]
Through a process of filtration, reduction and transformation, data, which was
in plentiful supply, moved upwards to information, knowledge, and, eventually,
wisdom which was almost non-existent. Ackoff’s formula has been presented both
as a pyramid and as a linear progression.

WISDOM

KNOWLEDGE

INFORMATION

DATA

DATA INFORMATION KNOWLEDGE WISDOM

Data came in three varieties: fact, signal, and symbol. Information was processed,
organised, structured, sequenced, and arranged data that provided relevance and
context, and could be objective or subjective, functional or symbolic, and it resolved
uncertainty and provided order. ‘Data’, Ackoff explained, ‘are symbols that represent
223 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

the properties of objects and events. Information consists of processed data, the
processing directed at increasing its usefulness. For example, census takers collect
data. The Bureau of the Census processes that data, converting it into information
that is presented in the numerous tables published in the Statistical Abstracts. Like
data, information also represents the properties of objects and events, but it does so
more compactly and usefully than data’. [20]
In this scheme, knowledge was processed, analysed, or synthesised information
that could be procedural, propositional, experiential, philosophical, objective,
or subjective. It provided theoretical, practical, or experiential explanation or
understanding of a subject. Together information and knowledge increased
efficiency but not what in management terms is called ‘effectiveness’: that is doing
the right thing. For that one requires wisdom. Ackoff saw the difference between the
two in terms of development and growth. You do not need value to grow; but value
is needed for development which requires information, knowledge, understanding
as well as wisdom. Efficiency can be automated; but not effectiveness.
Wisdom, noted Ackoff, ‘involves the exercise of judgment’; it cannot be
programmed. While ‘we are able to develop computerised information-, knowledge-,
and understanding-generating systems, we will never be able to generate wisdom
by such systems. It may well be that wisdom – which is essential for the pursuit of
ideals or ultimately valued ends – is the characteristic that differentiates man from
machines’. [21]
Ackoff’s Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom (DIKW) scheme has been
severely criticised for being too simplistic. American logician Martin Fricke
suggests it is anchored in positivism, [22] Information and communication scholars
Max Boisot and Agusti Canals argue that the two terms, data and knowledge, are
‘unwittingly brought into a forced marriage by having the term information act as
an informal go-between’. [23] British information scientist Jennifer Rowley suggests
that the distinction between the terms is not adequate. Others have suggested the
hierarchy is unsound and methodologically undesirable. [24] Yet, DIKW scheme has
survived extensive criticism and has become the standard model in information
management, information systems and knowledge managements, and information
library science literature. It can be found in textbooks on management, information
systems and knowledge management. And, for the purpose of our analysis, it
provides a good starting point and template to show how data, information, and
knowledge are being radically transformed in postnormal times and what it implies
for wisdom. [25]
Evidently, DIKW does not deal with ignorance. But ignorance has been a silent
partner of both knowledge and wisdom. It was recognised as an integral component
of knowledge in Greek philosophy as exemplified in the famous Socratic paradox:
I know that I know nothing. Both Plato and Aristotle argued that we can make
bad choices out of ignorance, and ignorance was a major hinderance to sound
judgements. For classical Muslim scholars, recognition of ignorance was a key
component of wisdom. The Muslim sage, al-Sijistani, who wrote a book on wisdom,
 224 THE SMOG OF IGNORANCE

declared: ‘suffice it for the value of knowledge that the one lacking it boasts of it; and
suffice it for the worthlessness of ignorance that the one who knows it shies away
from it’ [26]. Al-Sijistani, much like al-Ghazali and ibn Khaldun, regards ignorance
as a limitation of reason. Often, we are led by the wonder of reason to overlook our
ignorance. Ibn Hazm associated ignorance with the three capital vices of inequality,
cowardice, and avarice. [27]

THE ENLIGHTENMENT BANISHED IGNORANCE. BUT IT HAS RETURNED

WITH A VENGEANCE MORE RECENTLY – NOT LEAST BECAUSE OF
IGNORANCE PERPETUATED BY CERTAIN CORPORATIONS: DENIAL OF
HARMS BY SMOKING, ASBESTOS, LIVING IN CLOSE PROXIMITY TO
NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS, DENIAL AND SUPPRESSION OF CLIMATE
CHANGE SCIENCE, AND THE REJECTION OF EVOLUTION BY CREATIONISTS.
In modern science, ignorance often emerges through the suppression of what Steve
Rayner, a scholar of science and civilisation, calls ‘uncomfortable knowledge’ –
knowledge that does not support dominant theories and hypotheses or cannot deal
with complexity or ‘wicked problems’, which is excluded from policy debates. [27]
Yet, ignorance is a natural product of every advance in knowledge; it comes, ‘after
knowledge’, [28] the more we know the more our ignorance comes to the fore. ‘Even
as knowledge knows no bounds, so does ignorance’. [29]
We can define ignorance, as is the convention, simply as lack of knowledge.
But that does not take us very far as ‘there are many sorts of ignorance as there are
sorts of things to be ignorant about’ which makes it ‘difficult to obtain a taxonomy
of ignorance. For the realm of ignorance is every bit as vast, complex, and many
faceted as that of knowledge itself’. [30] Nevertheless, the German sociologist
Matthias Gross offers a threefold taxonomy. Nonknowledge: lack of sufficient
knowledge which is acknowledged for future planning. Negative knowledge:
acknowledging about what is not known but ignored or considered dangerous. [31]
Extended knowledge: ‘new knowledge based on planning and/or research with
nonknowledge’ which ‘can lead to new ignorance by uncovering limits of the
newly gained knowledge’. [32] The emphasis here is on the relationship between
ignorance and knowledge.
In contrast, postnormal times theory deals with ignorance per se. Ignorance
is associated with increasing uncertainty and with complexity, contradictions,
and chaos – the 3Cs’ of postnormal times – and categorised as Plain, Vincible,
and Invincible. [33] Plain ignorance is not just the absence of knowledge but also
common prejudices like anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, deliberate manufacture
of falsehood and lies, denial of established truth or scientific research, and their
weaponization. Plain ignorance can also arise in complex or contradictory
225 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

situations, with different actors making contradictory demands or perceiving ‘truth’

from different perspectives. Vincible ignorance has three basic components. The
knowledge that there are things we do not know, such as how consciousness works,
or why dreaming is important, or why moths are attracted to light. Constructed
misrepresentation based on knowledge, which would not only include Rayner’s
‘uncomfortable knowledge’ but also Orientalism, epistemological bias of western
disciplines, [34] literary ignorance, ignorance generated by rigid disciplinary
boundaries, and the weaponization of disciplines. [35] Ignorance that requires
knowledge that can only be acquired in the future, such as the impact of genetic
engineering on society or geoengineering on the planet. It is vincible because
it can be overcome, overtime, with serious, conscious effort; and what we do not
know in the present we may know in the future. Invincible ignorance is unknown
unknowns; things we do not know we do not know. It is essentially a product of our
Unthought: what lies outside our central mode of thinking, beyond the parameters
of our confined imaginations, external to the dominant paradigms of all our
disciplines. It is invincible because it cannot be tackled with existing, conventional
tools of our worldviews. ‘It is the ignorance that compels us to action with a false
sense of confidence in existing paradigms and modes of knowing, being and
doing. We can only grapple with invincible ignorance by questioning our axioms,
by critiquing our basic and long cherished assumptions, by totally rethinking our
worldview’. [36]
The movement of ignorance from the periphery to the centre of knowledge
production, as well as the emergence of postnormal times, has, and continues
to drastically alter the relationship between data, information, knowledge, and
wisdom. The beginning of the twenty-first century saw major shifts in the DIKW
scheme. It all began with the arrival of big data.

Big Data
The S-curve for data had been rising steadily over the twentieth century. In his 1961
book, Science Since Babylon, the American historian of science, Derek de Salla
Price, showed that scientific knowledge, and hence scientific data, was growing
exponentially. Concerns about increasing quantities of data were regularly expressed
during the 1960s and 1970s – particularly after the emergence of Algorithmic
Information theory with merged information theory and computer science. But the
first use of the term data appeared in an August 1999 paper by Steve Bryson and a
team of fellow computer scientists entitled ‘Visually exploring gigabyte data sets
in real time’. [37] Bryson and his colleagues pointed out that powerful computers
were generating data of around 300 gigabytes which researchers were finding
difficult to handle. The numbers were just too large. But it wasn’t just researchers
and scholars who were producing data. Individuals too were generating raw data.
In 1999, original data created by individuals and stored on paper, film, CDs, DVDs,
and magnetic tapes hit 1.5 exabytes, around 250 megabytes per person. And it was
growing rapidly: there was an explosion in the quantity, and sometime quality, of
226 THE SMOG OF IGNORANCE

available, and potentially, relevant data. In 2003, the estimated data humanity had
accumulated had reached approximately 12 exabytes. [38] By 2007, stored data
was estimated to be 300 exabytes. ‘Between them’, observes Matthew D’Ancona,
‘Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Amazon – the “Big Five” – outstrip by a
huge margin all the databanks, filing systems, and libraries that have existed in
human history’. [39] Big Data had arrived.
But big data is different from the conventional data which basically consisted
of facts, signals, and symbols; or as knowledge management scholars Thomas H.
Davenport and Laurence Prusak define it ‘a set of discrete, objective facts about
events’. [40] To begin with data on a humongous scale enables us to gain new insights
and create new values that radically change markets and organisation, relationship
between individuals and communities, and citizens and governments. The era of
big data, ‘challenges the way we live and interact with the world’ and ‘overturns
centuries of established practices and challenges our most basic understanding of
how to make decisions and comprehend reality’. [41]
A good way to see the difference between conventional notions of data and
big data is to compare a page from an old Atlas and Google Maps. The data on the
atlas fulfils the criteria of the old definition: it consists of names, ‘sets of characters,
symbols, numbers’ and ‘visual bits’ represented in the raw form. It is discrete,
static, and localised. The Data on Google Maps contains all the necessary symbols,
signals, and facts but provides a whole range of new facts: weather condition, how
long a journey takes by various means, and indicates what goods and services
are available in the area you are exploring. The map adjusts itself as you change
your position (walk or drive) and updates itself almost instantaneously. And it is
available throughout the planet at all times. In contrast to the data on the page
of the old atlas, the big data that drives Google Maps is dynamic, instantaneous,
global, and complex.
Big data also captures what we have conventionally not regarded as data. To
the conventional varieties – facts, signals, symbols – big data captures behaviour,
emotions, actions, and attitudes as raw data. Consumer behaviour is captured as
data routinely collected by online shops. Mood and emotions in images, videos,
audio, and other digital media can be recognised and inventoried as data. Whereas
laborious surveys gathered data on attitudes, now it is instantly acquired simply by
clicks. All of our interaction on such platforms as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, our
language and expressions, our likes and shares, are turned into data.
Indeed, almost every aspect of what makes an individual truly individual, a
community, the fundamental properties that define their identities are quantified
and seized by big data. In short, big data incorporates the essence of individuals,
groups, and communities.
Data, as we have known for centuries, can also be made up. In the most extreme
case, says Daniel Levitin, researchers ‘report data that were never collected from
experiments that were never conducted. They get away with it because fraud is
relatively rare among researchers and so peer reviewers are not on the guard. In
 227 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

other cases, an investigator changes a few data points to make the data more closely
reflect his or her hypothesis. In extreme cases, the investigator omits certain data
points because they don’t conform to the hypothesis, or they select only cases that
he or she knows contribute favourably to the hypothesis’. [42] To this type of data
manipulation, we can add a string of new entrants.

AS THE BRITISH JOURNALIST PETER POMERANTSEV NOTES, ‘WE LIVE IN

A WORLD IN WHICH THE MEANS OF MANIPULATION HAVE GONE FORTH
AND MULTIPLIED, A WORLD OF DARK ADS, PSY-OPS, HACKS, BOTS, SOFT
FACTS, DEEP FAKE, FAKE NEWS, PUTIN, TROLLS, TRUMP’. [43]
There are a whole variety of fakes: fake news and ‘alternative facts’, fake science
manufactured, for example, by climate deniers and anti-vaxxers, alternative,
none the less fake, history promoted by white supremacists in US and Europe and
Hindu nationalists in India, fake individuals on Facebook, and fake followers and
‘likes’ on numerous social media platforms harvested by bots. Not to mention the
vast network of conspiracy theories – there are even conspiracy theories about
conspiracy theories – which are essentially political in nature and advanced to
promote ideological objectives. [44] All this is scooped up as data in Big Data.
Lies and falsehood have existed since the beginning of history; and propaganda
has become more and more sophisticated over time. But in the post-truth age
lies have taken a quantum leap. Lies have been industrialised, incorporated: an
ever expanding industry now exists ‘to create and disseminate fictious public
policy “facts” on behalf of business and ideological interests will to pay for them’
– designed and strategically coordinated ‘to hide the truth, confuse the public,
and create controversy’. [45] Indeed, there are specific media outlets devoted to
propagating lies. The American Fox News serves as ‘a conduit for conservative lies
and propaganda, manipulating the political process on behalf of the Republicans
Party and right-wing organisations’; the breadth of lies the network spreads is truly
‘astonishing’. [46] The Russian RT network does the same on behalf of President
Putin and his administration. In Britain, as the former editor of The Guardian,
Alan Rushbridger notes, newspapers like the Telegraph, Express, The Sun and The
Daily Mail routinely spread ‘front-page falsehoods’ and journalists on these papers
have turned propagandist. [47] Then there are countless online platforms, from
‘InfoWars’ to ‘Breitbart News’, whose sole function is to spread lies.
It is not unusual for politicians to lie but the lies have not only become
omnipresent but have also changed in nature. ‘The traditional political lie was
designed to cover up an unpalatable fact’, writes the French British political analyst
Catherine Fieschi. There was contrition when they were caught, and often a public
racking. But contemporary political lying, which Fieschi dubs ‘populist lying’,
is ‘designed to be seen – it is the opposite of cover up’. It is lionised, employed
228 THE SMOG OF IGNORANCE

as sedition, and used as an open declaration that ‘the liar will stop at nothing to
“serve the people”’. Lies are used to demonstrate that the populist politicians are
authentic and ‘instinctively connected to the experience of “the people” who are
authentic’. [48] Lies are paraded to demonstrate the audacity of the politician; he or
she rejoices in the falsehood itself.
In addition to ubiquitous lies, there is also bullshit. In his celebrated short essay
‘On Bullshit’, American philosopher Harry Frankfurt points out that liars and truth
tellers are both playing the same game: the latter accepts the authority of the truth
and responds to it, while the former refuses to accept its authority. Both care about
their respective positions. But a bullshitter does not reject the authority of the truth
– he does not care at all. Frankfurt regards bullshit as much more dangerous – ‘the
greater enemy of truth’. Bullshit often emerges when a person speaks on a topic with
limited or no knowledge; a common occurrence in democracies where everyone is
required to have an opinion on everything. But there is also a deeper source for the
spread of bullshit: ‘various forms of scepticism which deny that we can have any
reliable access to an objective reality, and which therefore rejects the possibility of
knowing how things truly are’. [49]
Big Data does not differentiate between facts and ‘alternative facts’, truth or lies,
knowledge or bullshit, news or fake news, politics or conspiracy theories, legitimate
concerns of dissidents or the paranoia of anonymous online mobs, genuine comedy
or racism and bigotry masquerading as ‘earthy humour’, irony, and sarcasm. All
is shovelled up. As such, Big Data is a repository for plain ignorance: blatant lies,
obvious bullshit, and all the dark paraphernalia we find on social media, online
platforms, and other digital apparatuses. Big Data serves as an engine for plain
ignorance – enticing it, generating it, and multiplying it geometrically.
All this means that Big Data is far removed from the conventional notion of
data as defined by Ackoff: ‘symbols that represent properties of objects, events
and their environment’. It is essentially a postnormal phenomenon. The main
drivers of postnormal times – the 4S’s – are clearly exhibited by Big Data: Speed (it
is instantaneous), Scope (it is global), Scale (it reaches not just the individual level
but also extracts the very essence of what makes an individual truly unique); and
Simultaneity (it works simultaneously across all aspects of human and planetary
life). As such, Big Data incorporates the 3C’s of postnormal times. It is complex:
interconnected and networked. It is contradictory: it accumulates widely diverging
truths, falsehoods, behaviours, orientations, ideologies, and worldviews. And
it is chaotic: there is constant potential of feedback loops leading to chaos. Big
Data radically changes the nature of information which acquires a gargantuan
dimension.

Gargantuan Information
As big data processes, organises, categories, and orders information instantaneously
and simultaneously across a number of fields, the conventional distinction
between data and information dissolves. It is transformed both quantitatively and
 229 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

qualitatively. The sheer magnitude of information that is constantly gathered on a

global level is truly dumbfounding. The subtitle of American historian of science
James Gleick’s, 2012 book, The Information, sums up the situation: A History, A Theory,
A Flood. [50] But more than a flood, information has now acquired gargantuan
dimensions.

‘WITH INFORMATION’, NOTE INTERNET GOVERNANCE SPECIALIST VIKTOR

MAYER- SCHÖNBERGER AND JOURNALIST KENNETH CUKIER, AS WITH
PHYSICS, SIZE MATTERS.

Hence, Google is able to identify the prevalence of the flu just about as well as
official data based on actual patient visits to the doctor. It can do this by combing
through hundreds of billions of search terms – and it can produce answers in near
real time, far faster than official sources. Likewise, Etzioni’s Forecast can predict
the price volatility of an air plane ticket and thus shift substantial economic power
into the hands of consumers. But both can do so well only by analysing hundreds of
billions of data points. [51]
The qualitative transformation is just as profound. If information is data
processed to provide meaning, as conventionally defined, then what meaning
is it actually conveying? The meaning gargantuan information conveys is that it
can be bought and sold: in other words, information is nothing more or less than a
commodity. And as a commodity, information acquires three main properties that
differentiate it from all other products and services. It can perform contradictory
functions: it can be used by people holding divergent views to support their
arguments and justify their positions. It is all consuming and does not differentiate
between, say, private or public domains. And it can be reproduced, passed on, and
proliferated ad infinitum at (almost) zero cost. Moreover, gargantuan information
evolves continuously from interconnected local and global networks. It is therefore
complex. As such, far from reducing uncertainty it actually increases uncertainty.
Gargantuan information has two additional dimensions. The first emerges
thanks to the instruments of ‘surveillance capitalism’. Surveillance apparatuses –
cameras, drones, CCTV, gait recognition technology (that can recognise individuals
from their shapes, movements, or silhouette from up to 50 metres away, even if their
face is hidden) – record every movement, every action, every gesture, of a person.
Racial profiling pins down the race and ethnicity of a person. Thus, gargantuan
information can record:

• Biology – the natural physiology, function, and development of a person

• Race – the physical characteristics of a person
• Ethnicity – the cultural identity of a person
• Orientation – the religious, political, sexual, and health of a person
 230 THE SMOG OF IGNORANCE

In other words, it collates and commodifies the absolute reality of individuals,

groups, and communities – or even their very being. How gargantuan information
imbibes the beings of individuals is well summed up by Consumer Report:
‘welcome to the age of ordinary objects that stealthily spy on us – from inside our
cars, our homes, and our office. That smartphone game you play in a waiting room,
the mobile app that gives you a weather forecast, the photo you share with online
friends – all have the ability to reveal intimate details about your life.’ [52] The
smartphone knows where you are and where you have been, what you bought and
what you did, and who you were with and what you ate and did when you were
with them. Surveillance technology charts your every move and every gesture. The
logical consequence of the entrapment of being in gargantuan Information can be
glimpsed from China where surveillance technology is being employed to monitor
citizens on a mass scale. In addition to an estimated 170 million CCTV cameras –
the equivalent of one for every twelve people in the country, flocks of robotic birds
equipped with high-resolution cameras, and gait recognition is being used to
observe citizens. The extensive surveillance network feeds into the country’s social
credit system, which gives citizens a ranking based on their behaviour. If you get a
low ranking, you suffer the consequences: anything from being turned down for
government jobs to denial of desired schools for your children.

THE SECOND DIMENSION IS ANOTHER LAYER OF IGNORANCE –

VINCIBLE IGNORANCE. UNLIKE PLAIN IGNORANCE, WHICH IS LARGELY
MANUFACTURED, THIS NEW LAYER IS BOTH CONSTRUCTED AND
INTRINSIC TO THE NATURE OF GARGANTUAN INFORMATION.

It is socially constructed not just to distort truth and justify erroneous beliefs,
but to promote political and ideological goals; and it works just as well as a
work of scholarship as one of fake news. In gargantuan information, there is no
such thing as causality; there are only simple correlations, which can be used to
validate everything and anything. Mass racial profiling, for example, can be used
to reinforce racial stereotypes. The behaviour, movements, needs, and gestures of
migrants can be analysed, structured, and ordered in the form that can be used to
demonise them. The way governments can control, manipulate, limit, or suppress
access to information can leave the citizens in a state of complete ignorance; the
citizens may not even be aware of their ignorance. The denial of truth itself becomes
a form of information that generates more correlations that further enhances
ignorance. Indeed, a nation state can construct ignorance to specifically make its
citizens docile and compliant. Gargantuan information continuously produces
predictions and forecasts on problems and issues we face today but whose potential
answers can only be discovered sometime in the future – that is, information on
known unknowns, which can be true or false but can be taken as knowledge.
231 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

Much of scientific research is based on investigating, hypothesising, and testing a

known unknown. But gargantuan information masks the known unknowns and
continuously projects predictions and forecasts based on complex correlations. It
thus reinforces current trends, amplifying our prejudices, and pushes us towards
disturbing futures. Vincible ignorance can be overcome provided we are aware of
its existence. But gargantuan information makes it difficult to recognise; and since
gargantuan information is a product of interconnected, complex systems, complex
strategies are required to overcome it.
Big data and gargantuan information have radically transformed modes of the
production of knowledge as well as the nature of knowledge itself.

Emergent Knowledge
Knowledge is no longer what it used to be. Given that the structure of information
has radically transformed, the hierarchical and linear distinction between data and
information is evaporating, and far from increasing certainty, information actually
increases uncertainty. Knowledge itself is set to transform fundamentally. To the
conventional sociological definition, ‘knowledge is any set and every set of ideas
and acts accepted by any one or another social group or society of people – ideas
and acts pertaining to what they accept as real for them and for others’, [53] we
must now add big data driven information as ‘a collective process that emerges
as discordant symphony of humans, machines, violent and non-violent histories,
symbols, and algorithms, not to mention our fantasies about the future’. [54] It is
‘discordant’ because the process of generating knowledge is complex and full of
contradictions: big data incorporates all the elements of plain ignorance – the lies
of the post-truth age, fake news as well as deep fake, fake science, and fake history
– into the knowledge system; and gargantuan information transforms vincible
ignorance into knowledge, racism, xenophobia, politically and ideologically
motivated constructions about citizens and other people are correlated as
knowledge patterns and structures. As such, the notion of ‘consensual knowledge’,
‘the sum of both of technical information and of theories about it that command
sufficient agreement among interested actors at a given time to serve as a guide
to public policy’ is increasingly becoming obsolete. [55] The modernist idea of
autonomy of knowledge – ‘the conviction that some beliefs do not stand in need of
any explanation, or do not need a causal explanation’ is simultaneously enhanced
and disbanded: the autonomy now belongs to AI which generates knowledge solely
on the basis of patterns and correlations. [56]
We describe big data and gargantuan information driven knowledge as emergent
because it is a product of interconnected, networked, evolving components: that is
to say it is a complex system, that can spontaneously generate order, adaptation,
feedback loops. Emergent knowledge has no borders: it is intrinsically multi-,
inter-, and transdisciplinary; it is simultaneously global and local; it codifies both
the external and internal features of its subjects and objects. It incorporates and
commodifies both the essence and being of individuals, groups, and communities.
232 THE SMOG OF IGNORANCE

It is contradictory and chaotic. And it can produce totally new manifestations of itself
– which cannot be predicted, or indeed bear any relation to its component forms.
Emergent Knowledge is an amalgam of three distinct but interconnected components.
First: what we may (still) call true knowledge – that is, objective knowledge
as defined by Popper that can be verified again and again and survives the test of
falsification. [57] There will still be scientists working in laboratories collecting data,
processing it into information, testing hypotheses, developing theories, and solving
puzzles within paradigms, and publishing in refereed journals. Researchers will still
gather data in conventional ways to produce new insights: such as the work done
by the Climate Accountability Institute to show ‘how fossil fuels companies have
driven climate crisis despite knowing dangers’. [58] Much of clinical work is still
based on the DIKW system. Data is often a clinical measurement and a descriptor, for
example, heart rate = 50 beats per minute (bpm). It has to be contextualised; a heart
rate of 50 bpm gives some information to the clinician about the child. The clinician
structures and organises this information as knowledge and provides written
guidelines for treatment. What is different is that the availability of large amounts
of data enables the clinicians to look for information and relationships that may
not be obvious. Often, datamining in medical datasets reveal large amounts of ‘new
knowledge’. And in the future, Scottish anaesthetist Paul Cooper suggest, ‘mining
of large, complete, well-structured datasets to reveal previously unrecognised
knowledge is likely to become important as the gold standard of double-blinded
randomised clinical trials in discovering medical knowledge’. [59] There will always
be journalists of integrity, with appreciation of truth and objectivity, who will stand
against all that is false. As such, emergent knowledge will preserve a core of what
is – historically seen as – true, real, objective, rational.
Second: what we may call toxic knowledge – that is knowledge based on plain
and vincible ignorances as well as emerging technologies that will transform
the human landscape. This includes what Shattuck describes as Forbidden
Knowledge, that is knowledge that scholars, philosophers, novelists, and most
particularly religious thinkers have cautioned against – attempts to create a perfect
human being, or weapons of mass destruction, or to cheat death. The concerns
expressed by science journalist, Tom Wilkie, about the ‘Human Genome Project
and its implications’ in Perilous Knowledge are on the verge of being realised. [60]
Advances in genetic engineering, synthetic biology, neurobiology/technology,
even 3-D body printing will transform our notion of what it means to be human.
A display in the Barbican’s exhibition, ‘AI: More Than Human’, announces: ‘The
US, China, Israel, South Korea, Russia, and the UK are developing increasingly
autonomous weapons’. Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS) or Killer
Robots, over which humans could have no meaningful control, which can cause
mass destruction or target people on the basis of their race, ethnicity, or culture,
are a product of toxic knowledge. But toxic knowledge also include technologies
that undermine statecraft, democracy, and accountability: algorithms, data
targeting, techno monopolies, and the types of technologies used by Cambridge
 233 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

Analytica; [61] and the use of opaque and uncontested mathematical models
to produce absurd products (for example, subprime mortgages) and reinforce
discrimination and cultural, ideological, and political bias, weaponised disciplines
(such as anthropology), [62] and deliberate creation of chaos to disturb an existing
system in order to gain financial or political advantage. [63] Toxic knowledge is
based on the ‘confidence of the cognitive powers’ of ‘the automation of calculative
reason’; on the fantasy that machines can imagine a better future; it is the
psychopathology of The Madness of Knowledge. [64]
Third: emergent knowledge adds yet another layer of ignorance, invincible
ignorance – ignorance that is the outcome of our Unthought – things we have
never thought simply because they are out of the framework of the dominant
paradigms, disciplinary ignorance due to myopic boundaries, theories, principles,
assumptions, and axioms that are the basis of both: true knowledge and toxic
knowledge. As such, all emergent knowledge contains ignorance – including
the ignorance of our ignorance – as its integral component. This ignorance is
invincible because it cannot be overcome within the existing dominant paradigms
that shape all varieties of knowledge. Alternatives, and sane futures, are located
far, far beyond the predominant paradigms that shape our thought and actions in
postnormal times.

THUS, EMERGENT KNOWLEDGE IS TRIGOXIC: A COMPLEX, EVOLVING

ENTITY THAT COMBINES TRUE AND TOXIC KNOWLEDGE THAT IS
SHROUDED BY THE SMOG OF IGNORANCE.

It will be shaped less and less by humans and more and more by AI, a form of
intelligence we have never encountered before. We do not know how AI systems
actually make decisions; indeed, we may never know. They have a huge data
point and carry out massively complex statistical analysis. What we do know
is that AI is ‘everywhere and nowhere. Often hard to see, AI has the potential to
finds its way into every aspect of our lives. It can be defined in different ways, but
fundamentally, AI is the endeavour to understand and recreate human intelligence
using machines’. [65] It is changing how we live, how we relate to each other, how
we perceive ourselves and others. It is amplifying our biases and prejudices. It is
affecting our privacy, freedom, and truth. It can predict our behaviour before we
know it; and it has knowledge of what we will do before we will do it. It is both
shaping and defining our future.
Thus, AI will determine not just how we know but what we know. The very
fabric of what we regard as knowledge will be transformed profoundly. TRIGOXIC
knowledge is the logical culmination of historical and continuous merger of
knowledge with power. [66] It is the apotheosis of the postmodern experience
of the last few decades, a direct product of the total relativisation of truth and
234 THE SMOG OF IGNORANCE

morality. Whereas postmodernism was ‘the new imperialism of Western culture’

that aimed to consume and regurgitate non-Western culture, the postnormal
embodiment of knowledge aims to commodify the very essence and being of all
on the planet. [67]

Wisdom
So, how do we, ‘talk (more wisely) about wisdom’ in the face of such gigantic
changes and challenges? ‘If our world is too complex, our knowledge too broad, our
information too great for one person to fully understand, what is another option for
wisdom?’ [68] If we accept the conventional definition of wisdom, dating back to
antiquity, as the quality and exercise of good judgement and sound decision making,
and the ability to think and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, and
insight, what exactly is required of a wise person? I would argue it requires an
appreciation of uncertainty and some capability to navigate the 3Cs’s of postnormal
times: complexity, contradictions and chaos. It also entails an awareness of
various varieties of ignorances and ability to negotiate the smog of ignorance. It
necessitates using what we do know to engage with what we do not know. And,
as British Futurist Laila Varley suggests, ‘wisdom necessary for a wise future
does not lie in knowing’ but ‘in the ability to take disparate pieces of knowledge,
sometimes incomplete, and see a bigger picture’. The ‘big picture’ involves seeing
the whole elephant. Valey recalls Rumi’s story, told in the Masnavi, in which blind
men touch and feel an elephant in the dark. Depending on where they touch and
what they feel, they believe the elephant is like a pillar (leg), a waterspout (trunk),
a fan (ear). ‘Unlike the blind men, wisdom would have been to recognise that each
perspective could be partially correct and find a way to perceive the elephant: taking
into account the collective information’. [69] Finally, it involves stepping out of the
dominant ways of knowing, being, and doing into the Unthought, to anticipate the
unknown, and imagine and create more desirable futures.
All this is perhaps too much to place on the shoulders of individuals. The
capabilities and competences required are truly monumental; and it cannot
essentially be the characteristic and prerogative of ‘knowledgeable’ and experienced
individual minds. Ramirez rightly asks: even if an individual could be wise at one
level, could he also be wise at other, lower, or higher levels? [70] The postnormal
condition suggests not.
Perhaps AI could come to our rescue. If wisdom, as Swartwood suggests, is ‘the
same kind of epistemic achievement as expert decision-making skill in areas such
as firefighting, and military tactics’, then AI would be perfectly suitable for the task.
Indeed, there is emerging literature that argues that AI can, and should, be the
repository of all wisdom. [71] As the American philosopher Shannon Vallor points
out, ‘the current trajectory of computerised automation, driven by advances in new
algorithmic techniques for machine learning and mobile robotics, risks gradually
displacing human wisdom from many of the roles it has historically occupied in
the moral and intellectual order of society’. [72] Thus, in postnormal times, the
235 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

DIKW pyramid ceases to be a pyramid. The hierarchy evaporates as AI gathers

data, processes information, synthesises knowledge, and dispenses wisdom. The
postnormal shifts now become clear. We move from:

FROM TO

DATA BIG DATA

STATIC, ACCUMULATIVE, DYNAMIC, INSTANTANEOUS,

LOCALISED INFORMATION SIMULTANEOUSLY GLOBALISED AND
LOCALISED GARGANTUAN INFORMATION

KNOWLEDGE EMERGENT TRIGOXIC KNOWLEDGE

WISDOM AI

But there are a couple of nefarious ghosts in the machine.

First: AI operates under the smog of ignorance. AI contains all the biases,
prejudices, and ethnocentric judgements of those who produce them in the first
place; and it utilises plain, vincible, and invincible ignorances – the toxic component
of emergent knowledge – in its judgments and decision-making processes. We saw
that when Microsoft chat bot, tay.ai, released on 23 March 2016, acquired racist and
misogynistic overtones a few hours after its release; it had to be shut down within
sixteen hours of its launch. A year earlier, Google’s photo app happily labelled
African-Americans as ‘gorillas’. Google’s BERT, launched in 2018, demonstrated
similar gender and racial bias. Indeed, almost all AI’s such as ELMO, ERNIE and
GPT-2 have faced similar issues. The very fact that these AI’s are named after the
characters in American children’s show, Sesame Street, indicate the problem here:
AI’s pick up prejudices and biases ‘in the way a child mimics the bad behaviour of
his parents’. [73]
This paternalism is the very foundation of Eurocentric hegemonic
epistemological and ontological orthodoxy. The West has conventionally seen
the non-West as a child to be disciplined, taught and told how to behave and
think. So, AI not only retains all the dominant and totalising discourses but also
enhances and makes them prevalent. Ultimately, AI would have the power to define
everything, every idea, every concept, in the image of its creators. Not only will AI
engendered knowledge and wisdom enhance the conventional dichotomy of us
and them, West and East, rich and poor, but it will also outlaw – and define out of
existence – pluralistic perspectives, tacit knowledge, situated experience, mystical
understanding and other ways of seeing, being, doing, and knowing.
Second: if wisdom is simply a mechanical endeavour, based on knowledge
and a certain set of rules, how then can we actually measure AI wisdom? How
 236 THE SMOG OF IGNORANCE

would we judge that AI has actually made a wise decision? There are, as human
intelligence researchers Nic M Weststrate, Michael Ferrari, and Monika Ardelt tell
us, three scientific methods of examining and measuring implicit claims to wisdom:
‘descriptor-rating, person based, and experimental methods’. [74] The first simply
‘asks individuals to rate, rank, or sort adjectives or short statements potentially
indicative of wisdom’. The second, person-based approach, asks a selected group
to nominate wise individuals and provide an example of their wisdom in action
from their biography. The third, so-called ‘experimental approach’ asks ‘individuals
to judge the wisdom of fictional characters who differ in age, gender, or other
characteristics’.

IN OTHER WORDS, IT IS HUMAN BEINGS, EVEN IN SCIENTIFIC

EXPERIMENTS, WHO ARE THE ULTIMATE ARBITRATORS OF WHAT
CONSTITUTES WISDOM AND WHO ACTUALLY POSSESSES IT. SO, WE
MAY SAFELY CONCLUDE THAT, IN THE FINAL ANALYSIS, WISDOM IS
ESSENTIALLY A HUMAN ATTRIBUTE; ONLY HUMANS HAVE THE ABILITY
TO JUDGE WHAT IS AND WHAT IS NOT TO BE WISE!

This point was made amply clear in a 2018 workshop at NordiCHI, a biennial
conference that functions as the main Nordic forum for human-computer
interaction research. A multidisciplinary group of researchers, academics,
philosophers, and ethicists explored the role of AI and Human Computer Interaction
(HCI) in the future of wisdom during the coming decades. ‘What will be the long-
term consequences of HCI, AI, IoT, Big Data and Smart Technologies 50 years from
now – in 2068?’ [75] Wisdom, the concept paper for the workshop stated, ‘relates to
the ways in which we make decisions and act, based on our experiences, knowledge
and reasoning. As a critical lens on computing, it includes both questions on our
epistemologies (i.e. ways of knowing) and our ontologies (i.e. what is and can be). For
instance, Augmented Reality proposes new forms of “hybrid” objects that are both
“real” (i.e. we can interact with them), and ‘imagined’ (i.e. they are not physical),
that interact with our environments and change our perceptions and sense-making
in those environments’. As a Design Fiction workshop, the participants had to
utilise fictional abstracts ‘from research papers that have yet to be written’ so they
could ‘explore possible consequences of the technologies they themselves are
developing by conducting critical thought experiments’. [76] The fictional abstracts
describe futures where AI replaces human decision-making, encourages humans
to make wiser decisions, and uncovers the impact of wiser decision-making on the
environment and resources. However, the participants found that the technologies
they described ‘may not have been that wise’, ‘there is no abstract where wisdom
lies in the technology in itself’, and ‘we didn’t find any of the technologies that our
237 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

abstracts were talking about to be wise. The closest was the one that depicted [AI]
trying to get people back involved with science’. The conclusion: ‘the gut feeling
from the workshop was that wisdom is primarily found in humans’. [77]
So, wisdom may not be an attribute that could be transferred to a machine –
however ‘intelligent’ it may be. It is one thing to provide selected traits of wisdom to
AI and quite another for AI to actually act wisely. And if we are teaching wisdom to
AI, exactly what kind of wisdom is being imparted? Is it the philosophical wisdom
of Socrates? Or the practical wisdom of Aristotle? Or the compassionate wisdom of
Jesus and Mohammad? Or the paradoxical wisdom of Buddha, who never made a
judgment in his life, but dispensed wisdom through enigmas and maxims. Or the
wisdom of Rumi who taught with parables and moral stories. Or should we emulate
the metaphysical wisdom of ibn Arabi?
Wisdom cannot be simply reduced to a set of rules. There are certain key aspects
of wisdom – often absent from the discourse that focuses solely on rules and logical
components – that are specifically human: empathy, compassion, love, forgiveness,
sincerity, humility, patience, gratitude, courage, modesty, introspection,
contemplation – the old fashioned, time honoured, virtues so essential for acting
wisely but so demanding to teach a machine. The very virtues we need to navigate
postnormal times. [78] Moreover, human wisdom also incorporates the rather
essential notion of responsibility. As Vallor notes, AI cannot take responsibility for
its decisions and judgments; only humans can take responsibility, and can be held
accountable, for the decisions and judgments made by AI. [79] Responsibility and
accountability are essential moral components of the virtuous state that is wisdom.
So, the wisdom of AI is as artificial as its intelligence. AI may help us tackle so many
intricate, interconnected, contradictory, and rapidly changing ‘wicked’ problems
we face in these postnormal times. It would help us discover new treatments for
dreaded diseases and dangerous cancers. It may even augment and encourage
humans to make better decisions. But for real and authentic wisdom we will have
to look elsewhere.

Postnormal Wisdom
Navigating postnormal times requires a new order of wisdom. It is quite clear that
the depth of knowledge, and insight to circumnavigate the smog of ignorance,
required at any one level is far too much for an ordinary human being. We thus
have to rethink wisdom not so much as an individual but as a communal virtue. We
need to move from the conventional notion of wisdom as a repository of individual
quality, the prerogative of sagely individuals to a more profound understanding:
wisdom as a collective, communal, enterprise. In postnormal times, wisdom has
to be seen as a collective moral acumen; a rational cooperative learning how to live
sustainably; a communal effort to create what is truly of significance; what enhances
quality of life, human well-being, and augments the health of the planet; and what
plants the seeds for a genuine future of justice and equality. Maxell provides a wide-
ranging definition of wisdom more suitable for our age:
 238 THE SMOG OF IGNORANCE

Wisdom includes knowledge and understanding but goes beyond them in

also including: the desire and active striving for what is of value, the ability to see
what is of value, actually and potentially, in the circumstances of life, the ability
to experience value, the capacity to realise what is of value for oneself and others,
the capacity to help solve those problems of living that arise in connection with
attempts to realise what is of value, the capacity to use and develop knowledge,
technology and understanding needed for the realisation of what is of value. [80]
Maxwell suggests that such wisdom can be institutional and social; but I would
argue it has to also be communal and networked. Just as knowledge is nowadays
acquired in communities of researchers and scholars, wisdom too must be spawned
by communities that share common norms, values, and goals.

SUCH COMMUNAL WISDOM WILL HAVE A COUPLE OF EXTRA LAYERS

OF GENUINE KNOWLEDGE THAT AI COULD NEVER REQUIRE: TACIT
KNOWLEDGE AND WHAT WE MAY CALL HANDHELD KNOWLEDGE.

Tacit knowledge is culturally embedded, it makes sense, and provides a sense of

direction, within a particular cultural milieu. It is the knowledge of indigenous
cultures, traditional societies, and scholarly communities, where it is passed
from generation to generation. It is possessed by individuals, who may not even
be conscious that they hold it, and shared in communities. Like the ability to
speak Urdu, play the sitar, or design buildings and cities, it is complex, abstract,
embedded, deeply causal, difficult to articulate, and as such cannot be transferred
to other people. The only way to acquire it is to join the community. Handheld
knowledge is knowledge of a more intimate nature: knowledge we acquire through
deep listening, inner reflection, or metaphysical speculation, or numinous elation,
or communion with nature – ethereal insight and understanding we can all possess
in the palms of our hands. It is the kind of knowledge that brings people together
for mutual erudition, caring, healing, and for growth. ‘And it is just this gathering,
which enables spaces to open up between people, for people to learn from one
another. Through the hands, sharing a wisdom so old yet so contemporary –
a wisdom capable of creating networks between people and land, and between
cultures. Handheld knowledge unpacks what it means to deeply listen, growing
a “slow-time-space” that is more in alignment with our inner thoughts. [81]
Besides well-established old virtues, wisdom communities will also have
a complex, holistic virtue essential for postnormal times: what Vallor calls
‘technomoral virtue’ – the ability to see the moral dimension of accelerating
technological change. Technomoral virtue is somewhat different from established
virtues such as honesty, flexibility, humility, and self-control in that it is not a precise
temperament but ‘a general condition of well cultivated and integrated moral
expertise’. [82] It functions as a lens through which we contextualise and cultivate
 239 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

old virtues ‘with a new and explicit adaptation to our emerging global technomoral
environment’. [83] Technomoral virtue then serves as a collective intellect that
enables us to see what is really good in a changing context and choose viable and
wholesome futures from a plethora of destructive and inhuman options.
We have to consciously create wisdom networks and communities where the
collective can provide a modicum of capabilities and competences to see through
the smog of ignorance and navigate postnormal times. That is, networks and
communities bound together with aspiration to transcend contradictions, with
intellectual acumen to raise ethical and moral concerns, to appreciate that complex
issues require complex approaches, and to act, when necessary, with, as the advocate
of Extinction Rebellion say, ‘love and rage’.
But communal wisdom is not just about when to act but also when to stay
still: questioning the perpetual quest of arrogant and toxic knowledge, of the lust,
fantasies, and dreams of intoxicating knowledge – ‘the madness of knowledge’ –
and gathering together the knowledge and capability of stillness. [84] Communal
wisdom is about how communities learn not just when to speak, but also when
to stay silent: for the more we express ourselves in postnormal times, the less
we say and the less power we have; the more information we generate the more
agency and independence we lose, the more dysfunctional our communities and
societies become.
History, said ibn Khaldun, moves in cycles. So, we return to Eliot’s lament,
written over eighty years ago, and the opening verses of ‘Choruses from The Rock’:

The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,

The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.

Wisdom is the quest for the life we are losing in postnormal times. It is discovering
ways of transcending such modes of life and living, of seeing through the smog of
ignorance, learning to navigate postnormal times towards safer, more desirable
futures for all our diverse communities as well as the Earth, the very abode of our
terrestrial journey.
240 THE SMOG OF IGNORANCE

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 245 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

REIMAGINING EXPERTISE
FOR POSTNORMAL TIMES
Maru Mormina, Julia Schönebergand, and Lata Narayanaswamy

In December 2020, news has just been broken that Covid-19 vaccines have been
approved and mass rollout will begin shortly. Hailed as a miracle of science, this
undoubtedly ground-breaking medical achievement confirms once again the
epistemic authority of science and its power to return our lives to normal. Yet, as
Arundhati Roy concisely pinpoints, it is exactly this ‘normality’ that lies at the core
of current entangled problems:

‘our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to
“normality”, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to
acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of
this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday
machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than
a return to normality.’ [1]

While Covid-19 is the greatest global crisis the world has faced since World War
II, this pandemic is merely the most recent manifestation of historic, continuous,
and contiguous crises that have been subtly unfolding but are now clearly
manifesting in all their extreme severity. This view departs from the triumphalism
of commentators and medical experts waving ‘vials of liquid hope’ to signal the
end in sight, and instead focusses on the complexity of a syndemic constituted
of interlocking and mutually reinforcing socioeconomic and environmental
variables, addressing which requires more than ‘medical miracles’. [2] This raises
the inevitable question of what and whose knowledge is or should be providing
answers, which is being side-lined through the choice of particular framings and
discourses, and with what consequences for the creation and implementation of
expert-driven ‘evidence-based policy’.
The question of scientific expertise is central to the Covid-19 pandemic. It also
propelled the systems, institutions, and processes of science advice to unusual public
prominence and scrutiny. Press conferences led in regular intervals by political
actors have ensured that the visual ‘parade’ of leaders’ daily briefings also included
physicians, public health officials, epidemic modellers, and other perceptibly
 246 REIMAGINING EXPERTISE FOR POSTNORMAL TIMES

neutral ‘experts’. The language of science has permeated political discourse and is
being used to build trust, reassure the public, and justify government policy.
It is evident from the unfolding of policy turns and u-turns since the beginning
of the pandemic that ‘following the science’ is a less than straightforward and
deeply politicised slogan. It implies that there is ‘one’ science to follow that is almost
always transmitted in a very specific and acknowledged form of assumedly neutral
and objective expertise. Yet, as we see from the different science-based strategies
that countries have adopted (consider for example Sweden and New Zealand), there
is not just one science and ‘evidence’ is always open to interpretation. During this
process, objective, neutral, but also uncertain, data become inevitably intertwined
with political worldviews, values, and interests. If political action is always values-
driven, so is the science that advises it.
For the Australian philosopher, Heather Douglas, acknowledging the importance
and role of values in science brings front and centre the moral responsibility
of scientists and science advisors to communicate scientific uncertainty and
its societal consequences – undoubtedly the defining feature of crises such as
Covid-19. [3] But, it also brings to the fore the inescapable reality that science
advisors and other experts cannot (and, according to Douglas, should not) divorce
their understanding of reality from their experience of it. The latter underpins
the ideologies, assumptions, and values that inform the framing of problems and
possible solutions experts offer, directly or indirectly, to policymakers, ultimately
making them accountable to society. Much of the public scrutiny directed at
science advice focuses on the ‘credibility of the data’, but there is little debate on the
worldviews informing the interpretation of the data and models that have fed so
heavily into the critical policy decisions made at this time.

IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO ONLY CRITIQUE THE ASSUMED NEUTRALITY OF

‘SCIENCE’ AS SUCH, BUT WE NEED TO MORE CLOSELY LOOK AT WHERE
‘SCIENCE’ COMES FROM.

To do so, we must consider the current structures of local and global expertise and ask
to what extent they reproduce particular ideological and epistemic commitments
that narrow the policy horizon for postpandemic/crisis reconstruction.
Governments around the world have had to walk the very tight rope of saving lives
and livelihoods, repeatedly framed as a trade-off. Efforts to restart the economy
through stimulus packages to restore pre-pandemic patterns of consumption have
resulted in second and third waves throughout much of Europe, demonstrating
the incompatibility of protecting health and protecting the economy (or at least
the current economic model). This highlights that political imagination is very
much tied to a normative ideal of modernity and a commitment to individualism,
capitalism, urbanisation, technological progress, and growth.
247 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

We will critically approach the question of what and whose knowledge dominates
public discourse and influences decision-making, particularly in the context of
Covid-19. In order to re-imagine notions of ‘expertise’ our point of departure is an
understanding of Covid-19 as the latest manifestation of a slow burning ‘crisis of
modernity’. Policy advice and political action are grounded on particular epistemic
and value commitments that risk narrowing the range of possible solutions to
address the root causes of this pandemic and the other multiple crises connected
with it. Covid-19 has placed humanity on the edge of an epochal shift that offers
an opportunity for long-term changes so that we can truly build back better. This
demands new understandings and framings, possible only if expertise in general,
and science advice in particular, are reasserted and transformed through a new
commitment to epistemic pluralism.
The analytical framework of wicked problems will reveal the problems arising
from a monopolisation of expertise, namely the exclusive possession and/or
control of cultural capital – recognized as legitimate competence and authority – by
a small number of elite players. [4] Drawing from postcolonial theory, we interpret
the monopoly of expertise as both a function and product of historic processes of
epistemic narrowing resulting in the dominance of certain voices and institutional
structures that have come to symbolise ‘trust’, rigour, and knowledge. We argue
the monopoly of expertise along three lines of epistemic narrowness: disciplinary,
geographical, and ideological. These different forms of narrowness in ‘expertise’
and values concur to (re)produce the premises of modernity towards which
resources are disproportionately directed: individualism, capitalism, urbanisation,
and belief in the possibilities of technological and political progress. In the context
of the current pandemic, this is seen in the strong emphasis that countries across
the so-called industrialised world have placed on technoscientific solutions (e.g.
tracking apps), even in the face of proven low-tech community-level strategies
successfully deployed across Africa during Ebola and now throughout the present
pandemic. [5] This technology-focused approach is not value free; it responds to a
historic narrative of progress as inextricably linked to science that devalues other
(nonmainstream, peripheral) forms of knowledge and expertise. It may also explain
the ascendance of a particular cadre of scientific experts to the unprecedented levels
of recognition and authority seen during this pandemic.
Covid-19 has been construed as a unique and genuine ‘global health’ crisis, with
science at its centre. Throughout this pandemic, leaders have relied predominantly
on biomedical expertise. Yet, if we accept that this is only one among multiple
ongoing crises – social, environmental, intergenerational, political and economic
– addressing Covid-19 will require not just medical solutions, but, above all,
addressing the interrelated inequalities exposed by the pandemic. [6] For this, we
cannot simply reproduce the same old paradigms of unsustainable consumption
and unequal growth that have opened societal chasms almost everywhere but must
create spaces for new frameworks to emerge.
248 REIMAGINING EXPERTISE FOR POSTNORMAL TIMES

Policymaking in the post-Covid era will need to be creative and unconstrained

by old models and rigid path dependencies. Scientific advice can support this
process only by overcoming its historical epistemic narrowing and embracing
greater pluralism: disciplinary, geographical, ideological. Grounding our argument
in post-normal science (PNS), we suggest that in order to reimagine policymaking
in the post-Covid era, scientific advice, though one among the multiple perspectives
needed, must harness a diversity of experiences and knowledge, avoiding narrowly
defined conceptions of expertise. [7] Science advice in times of crises, but more so
in post-crises times, must encompass a plurality of voices beyond those already
amplified by power and privilege. This is essential to identify and frame alternative
solutions that lie outside individuals’ field of vision, due to the blind spots created
by the moral values, worldviews, or interests that become inevitably entangled with
myriad scientific processes.
Narrow expertise has profound implications for public policy and therefore our
argument is fundamentally normative. Following the British philosopher Miranda
Fricker, we frame the monopoly of expertise as an epistemic injustice. [8] It consists
in the persistent side-lining of relevant forms of knowledge and experiences that
results, through their exclusion from public discourse and policy debates, in a
dismissal of needs. Understanding and challenging epistemic injustices, especially
where ideas come from, who embodies them, how expertise is framed, interpreted
and ultimately acted upon has never been more pressing than in the age of Covid-19
the world over, when life and death decisions are being made in the name of science.
Challenging the accepted imaginaries of knowledge and expertise means also, and
perhaps more fundamentally, challenging the premises and values that determine
what knowledge and which experts are relevant to society and its problems. Drawing
from PNS, we conclude that in these unique times the co-creation of knowledge
needs plural, diverse and inclusive epistemic global communities, operating with
openness and transparency.

Epistemic Narrowing and the Monopoly of Expertise

One of the most salient features of the current pandemic in countries around the
world has been the increased reliance on experts to guide decision-making, a
paradoxical reversal of the post-truth, postmodern contestation of expertise. This
‘return of the expert’ brings into focus the entangling of knowledge with authority,
legitimacy, and power in the struggle to re-imagine and define contemporary
societies. The reaffirmation of the pre-eminence of scientific expertise at play
in this pandemic suggests that, notwithstanding the postmodern contestation,
science still holds sway as the exclusive and exclusionary voice of progress.
The linking of some forms of knowledge with progress, science, and the future
that, at least superficially, underpins the idealised pursuit of ‘evidence-based policy’
has its roots in nineteenth century Western knowledge narratives. [9] Progress
was envisioned in deterministic, crudely imagined linear journeys from a state of
backward, under-developed rural subsistence to diversified and self-regulating
 249 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

market-based knowledge economies. [10] Technological advances contributed to

the self-portrayal of Europe as ‘developed’ against the ‘under-developed’ rest of the
world – a narrative used to justify the colonial enterprise. [11] Science also became
culturally biased, for the questions that came to count as “scientific” were those
that contributed to increasing Europe’s expansionist powers, whilst other aspects
of reality remained unchartered. [12]
This ‘imaginary’ is itself perpetuated by the codification, validation, and
dissemination of disciplinary silos of narrowly defined techno-scientific ‘expertise’.
The professionalisation of both what and how we ‘know’ has contributed to
the hegemony of certain ideas and has delimited both who is an expert and also
how that expertise is both sought and expressed. [13] In other words, ‘progress’
entails considerable homogenisation of what is considered ‘knowledge’, often
defined through techno-scientific paradigms, but also through who is considered
a knowledge expert. Knowledge is communicated through common languages,
maps, or ‘grammars’ which have both intrinsically gendered and racialised
dimensions. [14]

AS AMERICAN SCHOLAR DONNA HARAWAY ARGUES, THERE IS AN

OBJECTIVELY KNOWABLE ‘TRUTH’ THAT IS UPHELD BY ‘MASCULINIST
SCIENTISTS’. OBJECTIVE, RATIONAL SCIENCE IS, IN SHORT, THE PROVINCE
OF MEN.

A similar discursive exclusion occurs in how knowledge becomes ‘raced’. [15] The
particular world view that led to the primacy of white Europeans as ‘civilised’ or
‘advanced’ against the ‘backward’ or ‘poor’ ‘negroes’, [16] which persists in the racial
tensions that still pervade our modern societies, may be the philosophical and
political antecedents to the current gendered, racialised, and exclusive system of
expertise that has the ‘male white expert’ as its key referent. [17]
We suggest that the ‘science’ guiding the political response to Covid-19 is to a
great extent the product of these historic processes of epistemic narrowing of how
we make sense of the world and whose consequence has been the development of a
monopoly of expertise. This is manifest in the predominance of certain disciplinary
framings and interpretations of reality over others and in the gendered and racialised
expertise that continues to influence leaders around the world (Figure 1). Lack of
diversity, both disciplinary and experiential, matters epistemologically. Besides the
obvious exclusion of talent, an exclusionary, elitist, and homogenous monopoly
of expertise makes it more difficult to escape scientific bias. For disciplinary
perspectives, values, life experiences, and interests all condition the hypotheses,
background assumptions, models, and explanations offered, as well as the choice
and framing of questions that are studied – and ignored. [18] But lack of diversity
and the epistemic narrowness it brings, also matters morally. For it ‘create(s)
250 REIMAGINING EXPERTISE FOR POSTNORMAL TIMES

spaces in which those who already manipulate the world can further strengthen
their power position, and then impose (or reaffirm) a pattern which allows them
to continue manipulating the world’. [19] Lack of diversity in science in general,
and scientific advice in particular, produces blind spots to the needs and realities of
those sectors of society most underrepresented, as well as the impact of policies on
these groups, further disempowering them. In the context of the current pandemic,
it is then pertinent to ask: through whose lenses are our decisionmakers making
sense of reality? Whose worldview is producing and interpreting the evidence
that influences the decisions upon which our lives and livelihoods depend? What
knowledge is being considered and what knowledge is being excluded from the
decision-making process?

A Wicked Problem
There is no doubt that Covid-19 is a complex crisis or, to borrow from Rittel and
Webber, a wicked problem. [20] Wicked problems arise in situations of uncertainty and
cannot be easily defined because multiple and often incompatible characterisations
are possible depending on the agents’ perspectives and underlying values. Since
there is no single definition of the problem there can be no single answer but a
variety of multiple and often contradictory solutions. We saw this at play during
the early phases of the pandemic, for example, when disagreements regarding
asymptomatic transmission translated into confusing public health responses, [21]
including the controversial pursuit of herd immunity. [22] It is in this context of
uncertainty caused by an information deficit typical of wicked problems that
scientific expertise and politics intersect.
Despite their fuzzy edges, wicked problems demand action. Decision-making
requires introducing some sort of logical structure that allows the problem to be
defined, making it manageable, so that solutions can be identified. This entails
simplifying the problem by reframing it as a bounded problem and not as one
that exists within, and interacts with, a broader ecosystem. In Rittel and Webber’s
terminology, this means turning a ‘wicked’ problem into a ‘tame’ one. [23]
Simplification and reframing – taming – facilitate the transfer of powers to a few
actors or decisionmakers. In the case of Covid-19, defining it as a health crisis has
meant that overall responsibility for the pandemic response has sat predominantly
with health ministries. [24]
Establishing problem boundaries also allows realignment of the problem
along the lines of the available forms of expertise – matching the problem to the
tool rather than the other way round. [25] Particularly when dealing with highly
technical or novel issues, this may involve the creation of a technical independent
agency or epistemic community (in the context of the current pandemic, a prime
example of such epistemic community is the UK Scientific Advisory Group for
Emergencies, or SAGE and its various technical subcommittees). The question is
not so much what expertise or knowledge is necessary to address the problem but
who has the most relevant expertise that can be readily deployed. However, while
251 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

this may be necessary to effect action, this results in a disciplinary narrowness

that limits participation to those perceived to have knowledge relevant within
those boundaries. It also constrains debate and risks setting aside competing
perspectives. Narrow expertise can produce tunnel vision neglecting the complex
problem interdependencies and favouring quick shallow fixes. Crucially, it entails
an epistemic commitment to the particular framings (and solutions) favoured by the
small monopoly of experts. Because any given problem definition implicitly binds
us to a specific set of solutions, who influences how problems are framed matters.
For those who see this pandemic primarily through a public health lens, reducing
the rate of infection is above all other priorities, in contrast to those who perceive
the problem to be mostly about food and job security and for whom economic
resilience is paramount. Framings are a powerful tool to shift our perspective, but
they are not morally neutral.
The global management of the current pandemic conforms to the characterisation
of ‘tamed’ wicked problems. Rather than addressing it as a complex problem with
multiple characterisations and requiring multiple perspectives, the political response
has been consistently narrow and lacks a ‘whole-of-government approach’. This was
identified in Iran as one of the causes of the country’s inadequate response to the
pandemic. [26] Lack of cross-government coordination can be also seen in countries
characterised by siloed, fragmented systems such as the US where the primary
responsibility for managing the outbreak was placed with local health agencies. [27]
In the UK, cross-government organisations such as the National Security Council
(NSC), whose role is to coordinate the different parts of government on issues of
national security, have had a limited role during the pandemic. [28] Instead, key
decisions were made by a tight decision-making group involving a few senior
ministers. Reduced cross-government coordination and siloing also means reliance
on a narrow body of expertise, that which is seen as most relevant to the agency/
group with overall responsibility. By ‘taming’ Covid-19 as a health crisis, governments
have overwhelmingly drawn scientific advice from the biomedical community, with
an overrepresentation of modellers, epidemiologists, and virologists. Epistemic
narrowing and lack of disciplinary diversity resulting from the strong biomedical
framing of the pandemic may be responsible for the scientific biases that in the
early phases underestimated the difference between Covid-19 and flu and led to a
pandemic response based on influenza modelling. The same disciplinary narrowing
of (biomedical) expertise may explain the conspicuous lack of understanding of
the economic cost of the policies advocated, as the UK Chief Scientific Officer (who
chairs SAGE) admitted in front of a parliamentary committee. [29]
Our concern here is not to belittle the incredible contribution of science to the
current situation, nor to question the right focus on the immediate public health
response. Our aim is to highlight how taming Covid-19 has been both a political
choice and a function of the epistemic narrowing of expertise, and this may affect
the policy direction as societies emerge from the pandemic. Governments (perhaps
influenced by their scientific advisors) continue to construe Covid-19 as a unique,
 252 REIMAGINING EXPERTISE FOR POSTNORMAL TIMES

unprecedented, and exceptional ‘health’ situation and not, as we argue, the latest
of the many complex, interconnected, and interdependent ‘crises of modernity’.
In the UK, this exceptionalism is reflected in the setup of bespoke management
arrangements (for example, for test and trace) outside the usual government
structures (such as the National Health Service), which can be rolled back once the
threat is removed and ‘business as usual’ resumed, suggesting that the government
views Covid-19 as a transient, unique event. The narrow health focus is also seen
in the penetration of epidemiological terms (peak of infection, fatality ratio, R0-
number, etc.) in political discourse and everyday language, and contributes to the
portrayal of Covid-19 as an acute problem of rapid and unexpected onset while
distracting attention from its long-term drivers: this has long been a crisis in the
making. [30] Mathematical models and narrow technoscientific expertise may
provide powerful number-answers for policymaking during crises, but they entail
simplification, and value-laden framings.

TAMING A WICKED PROBLEM MAY BE HELPFUL IN THE SHORT TERM

WHEN THE PRIORITY IS CLEARLY TO SAVE LIVES, BUT IT LEAVES
UNRESOLVED THE QUESTION OF HOW TO TACKLE THE BIO-SOCIAL,
POLITICAL, AND ECONOMIC DETERMINANTS OF PANDEMICS: POVERTY,
CLIMATE CHANGE, FOOD SECURITY, UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE,
URBANISATION, ETC.

The question of what post-Covid era we should strive for requires other types of
normative approaches and expertise.
How problems are framed constrains the possible range of solutions identified.
If we perceive Covid-19 as a unique and transient episode in history that demands a
time-limited set of responses, then once decisionmakers decide the goal has been
achieved the response can be rolled back, allowing a return to ‘business as usual’. If,
on the other hand, we look at the interconnectedness of this pandemic with other
crises of, for instance, climate change, populism, racism, or intersectional inequality,
then it becomes apparent that this moment in history might offer a turning point for
recalibrating our values and rethinking the domestic and global structures that lie at
the root of our current predicament. Which of these two visions ultimately prevails
might depend, albeit only in part, on the expertise available to decisionmakers.

Privilege and Prejudice

It would be mistaken to think of science advice as disembodied expertise. We
think it is important to consider not only what expertise informs the decision-
making process but also who embodies such expertise, who is recognised and who
is excluded. For besides the disciplinary dimension, there is also an ideological
253 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

dimension that becomes manifest in the political tactics of selective use and
commissioning of expert advice to support particular agendas. [31] Epistemic
narrowing occurs through the exclusion of qualified advisors whose views do not
fit, or the appointment of experts ‘on the right side’, with the greatest social capital,
or of trustworthy background (be it educational, social, or political). [32] The
‘expertise´ that governments seek when appointing advisors may be therefore less
meritocratic and more ideological.
Understanding ideological narrowing necessitates more detailed insights into
how expertise is constituted, legitimised, and how it relates to power by becoming
the product and preserve of certain social groups. Expertise is a relational concept
constituted both through exclusion and recognition. I can only be an expert if
others are non-experts, and my standing depends on the demands that others place
upon my knowledge. As a relationship of exclusion, expertise implies a dichotomy
between experts and non-experts and a knowledge differential that often runs
alongside other social differentials: of power, privilege, and prestige. [33] These
experts (individuals and groups) become invested with an authority bestowed by a
self-regulating community of peers with its self-determined standards of excellence,
norms, and structures of inclusion and exclusion, exempt from public accountability.
In the case of academic experts (one among different forms of expertise available to
governments), peer-review, citations indexes, and availability of resources (in the
form of grants, access to networks, etc) are some of the indicators that measure an
individual’s esteem by the community of peers and, therefore, their standing as an
expert. These indicators may look like a particular set of value-neutral judgements,
but they are in fact a kind of credentialism that serves to perpetuate the entrenched
inequalities that help preserve both the expert’s recognition and their exclusionary
status quo.
The technocratic approach to Covid-19 uniquely reveals this exclusionary status
of scientific experts which has left critical questions of public health outside the
scope of democratic deliberation. Governments ‘following the science’ have sought
to ensure a rational approach to decision-making and ensured the flow of scientific
information to ordinary citizens to increase compliance. However, this has hollowed
out public discourse, perhaps contributing to a growing sense of disempowerment
and disaffection, as seen in the decreased compliance to government advice during
the second wave of infection. Talk of R-numbers, virus transmissibility, or infections
curves glosses over the difficult moral and political questions that are at the heart
of the Covid-19 crisis and which remain away from the headlines: the social and
economic determinants of disease vulnerability directly linked to a capitalist model
of economic growth and neoliberal health policies of recent decades, the pervasive
individualism and diminished sense of the connectedness that characterise
modern societies, and which more than misinformation undermines the solidarity
that underpins public health measures. These are not technical questions to be
answered by experts but questions about justice and morality, which is to say they
are questions for democratic deliberation.
254 REIMAGINING EXPERTISE FOR POSTNORMAL TIMES

As a relationship of recognition, expertise only exists in a demand-supply

relationship. While the drive to create/acquire knowledge may be driven by a
range of ‘push’ factors (funding, opportunity, urgency), the ascendance to expert
only becomes manifest at the request of someone (an individual, an organisation,
a government). [34] Expertise is, to a great extent, in the eyes of the beholder.
Personal recommendation via established networks (peer recognition) or media
presence (public recognition) are among the primary mechanisms by which
policymakers identify experts. [35] Those who accrue the greater social capital in
the form of ‘more or less institutionalised relationships of mutual acquaintance
and recognition’ are often those who have a seat at the inner circle of policy advisors
at the exclusion of others. [36] However, social capital, which is often internalised
by policymakers as a proxy for expertise in their selection of advisors is, according
to Bourdieu, irreducibly linked to class and other forms of social stratification. The
consequence is that instead of a spectrum of views and diversity of experience, a
virtuous circle of influence is established consisting of a monopoly of experts,
a continuation of the epistemic narrowing of colonial knowledge systems. And
because it is usually easier to recognise and trust those with views and other
characteristics similar to one’s own, experts tend to be sought among those ‘on the
right side’ [37] or those whose expertise may be perceived to lend credibility to a
pre-conceived policy agenda. [38] To illustrate this, consider a recent journalistic
investigation that revealed how tensions within the UK government in the face
of a second wave of Covid-19 infections were resolved by the Prime Minister
following a secret meeting with health experts. Faced with competing demands
from ministers in favour of tougher public health measures and those in favour
of protecting the economy, the Prime Minister is said to have sided with scientists
advocating the controversial ‘heard immunity’ approach, side lining the official
scientific advice. [39] Heard immunity is a fringe view that promotes a laissez-
faire management of the pandemic which allows people greater freedom to pursue
social and economic activity, a view more consistent with ministers concerns over
the economic downturn caused by the pandemic as well as the alleged libertarian
instincts attributed to the Prime Minister. [40] Not just privilege is perpetuated (in
the exclusionary selection of experts) but ideological narrowness is magnified by
the creation of scientific echo chambers (policy-based evidence) and the inequitable
exclusion of relevant knowledge and constructive criticism.
Alongside the ideological narrowing and related to it, sits a geographical
narrowing that manifests itself in the apparent unwillingness of the so-called
Global North, or those countries considered ‘rich’ and/or ‘developed’, to avail
themselves of the experiences and knowledge preserved in the collective memory
of countries already tested by deadly infectious outbreaks. [41] The geographic
narrowness of knowledge and expertise are a symptom of a pervasive narrative – or
rather, a prejudice – that continues to portray the so-called Global South, ‘poor’ and/
or ‘developing’ world mostly as the location of problems, the source of infections,
rather than the possible source of knowledge or solutions. This is not a failure to
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recognise that knowledge and expertise exist outside the Europe-North America
axis; rather, it is a failure to see the relevance of these diverse sources of knowledge
and expertise to the problems of the North. Western exceptionalism underpins
the historical credibility excess of ‘international expertise’ and the concomitant
credibility deficit of local, situated, expertise which, despite the rhetoric of
partnership and equality, still characterise international cooperation. [42] In the
context of the current pandemic, ideological and geographical narrowness may well
be one of the root causes of the millions of individual stories of loss and suffering
behind the Covid-19 statistics and the persisting inequalities within and among
societies globally, a theme to which we will return shortly.

Epistemic Injustice and the Dismissal of Needs

The epistemic narrowing caused by a monopoly of expertise that is constituted
through selective exclusions and inclusions of knowledges both at the local
and global levels is not morally neutral: it amplifies deep-seated ‘epistemic
injustices’, that is, the enduring side-lining of relevant forms of knowledge and
experience. [43] Epistemic injustices occur when ‘someone is wronged specifically
in her capacity as a knower’ [44] or when ‘socioepistemic structures’ [45] converge
to marginalise certain groups and exclude them from the process of knowledge
production. In Fricker’s account, the former is described as ‘testimonial injustice’
(someone’s account of reality lacks credibility) and the latter as ‘hermeneutical
injustice’ (some people’s experiences are not understood or rationalised due to
their historic exclusion from the structures and activities that shape knowledge
creation). [46]

BOTH FORMS OF EPISTEMIC INJUSTICE ARE TIED TO IDENTITY-BASED

PREJUDICE THAT RESULT IN CREDIBILITY DEFICITS OF CERTAIN
INDIVIDUALS/GROUPS AND THE CONCOMITANT CREDIBILITY EXCESS
OF OTHERS.
They harm most directly those whose interests and voices are the least powerful.
When seen through the lens of epistemic justice theory, the narrowing of knowledge,
through exclusionary forms of expertise, intersects with broader discourses of race,
power, and discrimination within and among societies. The narrow way in which
we have become accustomed to ‘know’ the world creates barriers for systems-level
learning and change in the face of systemic crisis.
Fricker’s account of epistemic injustice provides us with a lens to interpret
some of the ethical consequences of the monopolisation of expertise by local elites
associated with discipline-bound forms of knowledge in the context of Covid-19. For
example, the behavioural assumptions made by the UK government’s Behavioural
Insight Team, which applies nudge theory to public policy, wrongly predicted
256 REIMAGINING EXPERTISE FOR POSTNORMAL TIMES

poor population compliance with strict and protracted quarantine measures and
led to the delayed government response during the critical early phases of the
pandemic. [47] This was not just a question of narrow use of expertise, side-lining
decades of public health knowledge in favour of behavioural models and theories,
it was an epistemic injustice involving a credibility deficit of public health experts
costing thousands of avoidable deaths. The male dominance in Covid-19 advisory
and decision-making boards around the world and the exclusion of women from
the collective sense-making process is a form of hermeneutical injustice, which has
resulted in the overlooking of the gender-based inequities that have been amplified
by Covid-19. [48] Acting upon the advice of these non-inclusive, non-diverse bodies,
governments have adopted response measures such as lockdowns and work from
home policies that did not consider women’s higher levels of income loss and
increased caring responsibilities. The inability to understand and articulate the
lived realities of particular groups can exacerbate pre-existing injustices affecting
those groups. The experience of Ebola and Zika epidemics shows that affected
countries experienced higher levels of maternal mortality, gender violence,
unwanted pregnancies, and unsafe abortions because policies failed to account
for intersectional needs and implications of measures. Achieving inclusion and
representation in advisory boards is essential to provide decisionmakers with a
diversity of knowledges, views and perspectives that ensures no-one is left behind.
Epistemic justice is a pre-requisite for social justice.

Post-Normal science
Our analysis positions the current system of homogenous expert elites within
historic processes of epistemic narrowing, wherein a universalising cosmovision
grounded on an epistemic commitment to the normative ideals of modernity
becomes associated with particular monocultures of disciplinary expertise, and
where the ‘othering’ of people outside white Europeans continues in the present-
day exclusion of knowledges (and needs) from the decision-making process. [49]
We frame this monoculture of expertise as a form of epistemic injustice, by which
the dominance of particular individuals, groups, and/or forms of knowledge
results in the hegemony of certain framings of reality that, when translated into
policy, disproportionately affect the most disadvantaged groups in society. The
over-representation of biomedical experts (mostly white, mostly male, and mostly
from elite institutions) and notable lack of representation of social sciences, female,
BAME or other traditionally overlooked perspectives in science advisory groups may
have well contributed to the dominant narrative of the pandemic as a ‘health crisis’
and the failure to recognise its socioeconomic determinants. The ‘medical gaze’
that sanitises pandemics through epidemiological models supporting quarantine
measures, school and business closures, or travel bans without attending to their
long-term, social and economic costs renders invisible once more the structural
injustices that underlie the disproportionate burden this pandemic specifically,
and capitalist accumulation generally, has placed and continues to do so on groups
 257 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

marginalised or neglected. [50] It is the same gaze that in the UK helped legitimise
eyewatering investments in underutilised hospital infrastructure, undelivered
ventilators and other underwhelming ‘moonshot technologies’, while low-income
families were left struggling to feed their children [51] – an issue taken up not by
experts but by soccer stars [52]. Where expert knowledge was silent, another type
of knowledge grounded on experience provided answers.
Counteracting a monolithic culture of science advice requires diversifying
expertise to foster the pluralism that is inherent to the pursuit of knowledge. This
is nowhere more important than in the context of wicked problems, where ‘facts
are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high, and decisions are urgent’. [53] In this
context of informational uncertainty and system complexity that the philosophers
of science, Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome Ravetz, call ‘post-normal science’ (PNS),
trust in a unified science as the universalising voice of reason and progress is
delusional. [54] Rather, PNS demands an extended epistemic community, one
that reaches beyond disciplinary boundaries and limited sets of technocratic and
institutionally-privileged forms of expertise to encompass all those who have a
stake in the problem – a socially distributed knowledge system.

BECAUSE IN PANDEMICS THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM IS NOT ONLY

SCIENTIFIC IN NATURE BUT IS ALSO ABOUT THE VALUES, PARADIGMS,
AND POLITICAL AND CULTURAL FRAMEWORKS THAT CO-EXIST IN
PLURALISTIC SOCIETIES AND WHICH MUST COME TO TERMS WITH EACH
OTHER DURING THE CRISIS AND BEYOND.

If pandemics conform to the characterisation of wicked problems inhabiting

a PNS space, a deliberative, inclusive, and consensus building approach is
needed. [55] For this we must seek epistemic justice recognising not just science’s
plurality but also seeing scientific expertise as only one among the various types of
relevant knowledge. This, in turn, entails refashioning the structures and systems
of scientific advice built on institutionalised practices of knowledge production by
expert elites. But more fundamentally, it involves interrogating our understanding
of the very notion of expertise and questioning the accepted norms by which
those claiming to own it are judged. For an extended epistemic community is,
by definition, a snapshot of the diversity of experiences, values, and knowledge
characteristic of pluralistic democracies.
The inclusion of diverse disciplinary and social perspectives ensures that the
consequences of policies on different groups is understood. Diversity of expertise
sharpens our understanding of the stakes, which in turn informs political
decisions. [56] Pluralism also makes visible the complex interplay between different
groups in their struggle to influence the narrative, counteracts the concentration of
 258 REIMAGINING EXPERTISE FOR POSTNORMAL TIMES

power (and the knowledge enabling it) and, in the context of postcrises recovery,
allows alternative frameworks to emerge.
Yet, pluralism on its own is not sufficient, it must go hand in hand with openness.
Expertise (whether disciplinary or experiential) needs to be actively challenged.
For science is never uniform but always contested, never more so than during this
pandemic where premature conclusions (on quarantine, masks, contact tracing,
schools, ventilation) were reached often on the basis of data not yet peer-reviewed,
and where facts were interpreted (and counter-interpreted) time and again through
the lens of ideology. Debate, therefore, helps scrutinise the implicit disciplinary
assumptions, blind spots, and value commitments that filter into policy advice. [55]
The polarisation unleashed by competing declarations by world-leading scientists
advancing diametrically opposing pathways to manage the pandemic could be seen
as a healthy exercise of open debate exposing the entanglement of science, politics,
and ideology. The Great Barrington Declaration, sponsored by a libertarian think
tank with links to the oil industry and the anti-climate change movement, advocated
a ‘focused protection’ approach that was soon co-opted by the far-right. [57] The John
Snow memorandum, published by The Lancet under the title ‘Leading consensus
on the Covid-19 pandemic’ [58] and endorsed by over twenty mainstream public
health organisations, was accused as pro lockdown. [59] Meanwhile, the official
expert bodies with real power to influence policy remained shrouded in secrecy for
months, not just about their operations but also their membership. [60]
For those who see this pandemic primarily through a public health lens,
supressing transmission is above all other priorities, whereas those who perceive
the problem to be mostly about economic resilience favour management strategies.

POLARISATION MAY BE INEVITABLE WHEN THE STAKES ARE HIGH,

BUT IS A PRIZE WORTH PAYING FOR AN INCLUSIVE, PLURALISTIC, AND
TRANSPARENT PROCESS OF DELIBERATION AND DECISION-MAKING.

Returning to Funtowicz and Ravetz’s PNS scenario, the normative prescription for
wicked problems is an ‘all hands on deck’ approach that prioritises open, inclusive,
and distributed expertise. And when we do this, we might see this exceptionally
unique Covid-19 pandemic in a completely different light.

Expertise for Global Wicked Problems.

The question of what expertise (and experts) governments and society at large
need in postnormal times is interrelated with the question of whether we continue
to frame the Covid-19 pandemic as the crisis which can be overcome as a singular
event, or whether we recognise it as one of multiple, interrelated crises that bring
to the fore the injustices, inequalities, and racisms that are not new, but continue
to persist. Global wicked problems range widely, encompassing ‘the crisis in
259 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

global leadership; the global capitalist economic crisis; ecology, the environment,
and climate change; the ongoing scramble for African natural resources; and
epistemological and cognitive justice issues’. [61] That the current Covid-19 crisis
might instead be a manifestation of a broader crisis of ‘modernity’ implies a need
to move beyond the binaries of the current knowledge order. This requires us to
challenge two premises: universalism and normality.
Firstly, ‘modernity’ has exacerbated inequalities within and between countries
by requiring adherence to a capitalist, and largely Eurocentric, model of ‘progress’
everywhere. The expertise sought by policymakers around the world is one that
helps achieve and conform with this orthodoxy. This expertise is located almost
exclusively in the homogenous and exclusive institutions and systems of expertise.
The assumption prevails that there is a universalizable solution applicable to
all. To understand the implications of such universalism we do not have to
look far. The disproportionate rate of deaths of BAME people in the UK, and the
underrepresentation of these groups in the circles of experts that, at least in our
respective countries, are predominantly white and male is not incidental. It is a
function of historic epistemic narrowing and epistemic injustices resulting in the
systematic exclusion of needs. The avoidable health and socioeconomic inequalities
exacerbated by this pandemic are a direct consequence of the application of a
universalising orthodoxy legitimised by a system of expertise lacking the epistemic
and social diversity necessary to form a lived understanding of the realities of poor
and marginalised people. [62] The same exclusion holds true for not able-bodied,
LGBTIQ and other minorities.
Covid-19 may be a universal problem at this moment, but its impact and
implications are not the same everywhere. Likewise, the assumption that the
solution is also universal is as equally flawed as thinking the pandemic is a singular
event. It is, in fact, quite the contrary; we are predicted to experience more and
more devastating epidemics and pandemics, an evolution directly interlinked
with an exploitative and extractive way of life. [63] In fact, the extreme increase
in Covid-19 infections among precarious immigrant labourers in meat mass
producing slaughterhouses in Germany showcases interrelations and impacts of
exploitation and extraction, of labour and resources, and the global divisions of
work and production. [64]
Secondly, as the impending promise of a Covid-19 vaccine intensifies hopes
for a ‘return to normal’ [65] that unleashed euphoria in stock markets around the
world, [66] we are reminded of a tweet by a Chilean activist that made its rounds
in social media in March 2021: ‘we can’t go back to normal, because normal was
the problem’. While the slogan referred to earlier domestic protests in Chile, it
perfectly grasps the current predicament. Who is defining what normality is?
Normality for whom? Here it becomes even more obvious the implications of a
monoculture of knowledge. The ‘normal’ in this new discourse mainly refers to
‘restarting the economy’ on the previous terms. Governments around Europe are
kick-starting economic stimulus packages and the climate crisis, whose urgency
260 REIMAGINING EXPERTISE FOR POSTNORMAL TIMES

seemed to have gained some traction in 2019, is side-lined in favour of the same
economic growth narratives that brought us here in the first place. This underlines
ideological narrowness.
The expertise needed to ‘build back better’ in the post-Covid age is one that
critically questions the yardstick we have been regarding as ‘normal’: excessive
consumerism, exploitation of resources and labour across space and time, deepened
inequalities, racism, misogynism, and discrimination of minority groups. The fact
that now especially Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPoC) migrants and
working classes are suffering exponentially from the impacts of the crisis is not a
surprise, but a result of policies of recent years: the impact austerity politics have
had on health systems, the privatization of social welfare and social protection,
working conditions for immigrant labourers, and the list goes on.
Politicians claim they are ‘following the science’. ‘The science’ in that sense
refers to a particular type of knowledge. A kind of knowledge that is firmly rooted
in a Cartesian reductionism blind to the holistic and organic interconnectedness
of life, having disengaged mind from matter and whose ultimate expression is the
false dichotomy of nature and culture. [67] This is the particular way of viewing
the world, rooted in historic processes of epistemic narrowing, that has become
recognized as expert knowledge, simultaneously resulting in reification of an
individualised extractive (neo-)liberalism and the delegitimization of knowledges
that place emphasis on life in harmony and community with human and non-
human beings. ‘The science’ is never neutral and never objective, but firmly rooted
in a very particular worldview, that, despite claiming universal applicability, is far
from being the only way.
Given the unfortunate frequency of large-scale disease outbreaks in many
parts of the world, more than ever international cooperation is needed to step
up global preparedness. Global action is only possible if countries move beyond
national interests and towards global solidarity. Solidarity does not mean
merely international assistance (necessary as it may be) but, fundamentally, the
recognition of the equality (including epistemic equality) and interdependence of
all global actors which creates shared responsibilities. Global preparedness must
overcome epistemic narrowing and find new respect for the diversity of knowledge
and expertise of individuals and groups, especially in the Global South, which have
been serially overlooked at the global level. Some of this accumulated expertise is
attributable to the efforts of scientists and physicians whose contributions have
been largely written out of history but continue to be active at local/regional level.
Take the case of Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum, the Congolese physician who
was the first to collect a sample of the Ebola virus in 1976. [68] In a recent feature
for the public service broadcaster in the US, National Public Radio (NPR), NPR East
Africa correspondent Eyder Peralta tells Dr. Muyembe’s story, which includes the
revelation that if you ‘Google “Who discovered Ebola?” you get a bunch of names –
all of them white Western males’. Peralta interviewed Peter Piot, the young Belgian
doctor who received Muyembe’s samples and is now Professor of Global Health and
 261 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

Director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). [69]
When asked if he feels ‘responsible for writing Muyembe out of history?’ he
responds by saying ‘that’s a fair comment’.

Imagining Alternative Futures

Covid-19 has placed us in a PNS space that calls for intersectional and epistemically
diverse knowledge. This is necessary not only at the height of the infection threat
when immediate decisions of life and death must be made, but equally important
(and our focus here) in the aftermath, when societies must grapple with the
question of what the post-Covid world might or should look like and who has a say
in shaping it.
We wanted to highlight why questions of knowledge, expertise, and the way we
individually and collectively imagine futures, especially in countering immediate
crises, are interlinked. We have shown the expertise at play in the face of Covid-19
has been narrow and not inclusive of diverse worldviews, experiences, and
perspectives. [70] This applies at the local level, where science advisory boards are a
reflection of non-inclusive and non-diverse monocultures of knowledge, as well as
the global level. After all, to our knowledge no European government has accepted
advice from Global South epidemiologists or learnt lessons from Global South
leaders. [71] Inevitably wicked problems are often conceptualised, framed, and
simplified in biased ways, and Covid-19 is no exception. But if we accept it as one
of many interrelated crises, it becomes an imperative to be open to truly inclusive
and deliberative processes of knowledge production and modes of living, being,
and relating.

HISTORY WILL TELL US TO WHAT EXTENT COVID-19 REPRESENTS A

WATERSHED MOMENT AND AN OPPORTUNITY FOR NEW PARADIGMS
TO EMERGE. WE ARGUE THAT THIS SHOULD BE A TIME OF RECKONING,
REQUIRING PUBLIC DELIBERATION ON THE UNDERLYING MORAL VALUES
THAT GUIDE NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL POLICY.

We need a long-term, 360-degree vision underpinned by global solidarity that

‘understands and addresses the interrelated inequalities that have been laid bare by
this outbreak’. [72] As its two predecessors, the SARS-CoV-1 outbreak in China from
2002 and the MERS-CoV outbreak in Saudi Arabia from 2012, Covid-19 is the direct
consequence of modern capitalism. Epidemics and pandemics are not ‘natural
phenomena’ but a biological process interweaved with a social, political and
economic context. Aggressive agricultural practices, excessive and messy processes
of urbanisation, habitat disruption, and unsustainable resource extraction, all
taking place within hyperconnected communities, are all well documented causes
262 REIMAGINING EXPERTISE FOR POSTNORMAL TIMES

of zoonosis and outbreaks. Covid-19 exposes the fault lines of modern capitalism
and presents us with a stark choice between continuing to trust the ‘invisible
hand of the market’ to trickle down solutions to societal problems or a new social
contract that reaffirms human dignity and, on that basis, builds the alternative
social structures we need. [73]
We do not wish to overstate the role of science advisors and other experts in
this process. After all, what model of society should prevail is a matter of public
deliberation in which we are all implicated. However, echoing the words of
European scholars Corinna Burkhart, Nina Treu, and Mattias Schmelzer, we need
to envision alternatives to capitalism, growth, and environmental degradation. [74]
This vision cannot emerge from the epistemically narrow forms of expertise which
still shape how we and our leaders see and know the world. The tragic consequence
of ‘epistemic narrowing’ is groupthink and the ‘policy narrowing’ that often
culminates in the embodied exclusion of needs. [75] The neglect and even dismissal
of localised, diverse, and intersectional knowledge creates blind spots to the lived
realities and demands of those left behind. Worse still, it precludes the possibility
to imagine alternative futures to the detriment of all. We are experiencing crisis at
the moment, but more specifically, it is a crisis of a very particular mode of being in
the world. [76]
We are not advocating for a rejection of all that is usually associated with the
Western ideal of modernity, including the techno-scientific paradigms that have
much improved the lives of millions worldwide and now ground our hopes for a
vaccine to relieve us from the coronavirus. This would be to replace one exclusion
with another. Rather, we are arguing for epistemic justice, which, at a local level,
calls for diverse epistemic communities of science advisors, and at a global level
entails the provincialisation of the West and its belief in the universality of its mode
of being.
It would be mistaken to rely only on technoscientific expertise to relieve us from
our current predicament. A vaccine may well end Covid-19 but will not prevent
future zoonosis developing into global pandemics unless alternatives to its root
causes, such as extractivism – destruction of habitats and growth at all costs – are
found. The solution to Covid-19 is not technological but a ‘new normal’ that can
only be imagined by opening up to pluralistic visions of the good life and can only
be realised by overcoming the monopoly of expertise that limits political action far
more than it legitimises it. In the words of Pope Francis I, ‘anyone who thinks that
the only lesson to be learned was the need to improve what we were already doing,
or to refine existing systems and regulations, is denying reality.’ [77] The worldview
that brought us today’s crisis is hegemonic and homogenising, the solution must be
the opposite.
263 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

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SCIENCE AND
MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
IN UNCERTAIN TIMES
Kjellrun Hiis Hauge and Richard Barwell

Contemporary society faces a range of complex and urgent challenges characterised

by a high degree of uncertainty. Examples include climate change, global pandemics,
and new technologies like genetically modified organisms. The renouned duo
philosophers of science, Silvio Funtowicz of Argentina and Jerome Ravetz of the
UK, argue that such challenges require post-normal science. Post-normal science
is distinguished from ‘normal’ science, characterised as a kind of puzzle solving
activity where scientists choose solvable problems and produce knowledge
associated with a high level of certainty. The quality of this work is assured through
a peer community that usually consists of other scientists. [1] On issues where
uncertainty and stakes are low, in terms of costs, impacts, or risks, experts can feed
decision makers with solutions based on a relatively value-free idea of science.
Although there is an increased awareness of the limitations of science on complex
issues, research suggests that the idea that policy should be informed by objective
science is still strong. [2]
Problems like climate change, global epidemics, and new technologies require a
different approach, for which Funtowicz and Ravetz proposed the term post-normal
science. [3] These kinds of problems have several features, including high degrees
of complexity, uncertainty, and risk. These factors arise in the context of non-linear
dynamics, multiple actors, and contested values. For example, while the creation of
a GMO crop strain in the laboratory may be considered normal science, the question
of how to deploy GMO crops in commercial agriculture is much more complex. The
release of GMOs into an ecosystem is difficult to model and may have unforeseeable
outcomes. The use of GMOs may implicate farmers, agroindustrial companies,
governments, aid agencies, local communities, protest movements, and various
other groups. Each set of actors brings different values to the problem, leading to
different ideas about what information is significant, what forms of data should be
collected, and what impacts should be considered serious, to get things started. In
this sense, quality in knowledge production for policy has a strong connection to
 272 SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS EDUCATION IN UNCERTAIN TIMES

relevance; it must consider pluralities of knowledge perspectives and values as well

as uncertainty, and its characteristics must be placed at the centre of debate. In the
culture of normal science, by contrast, only expert voices count. A key feature of
post-normal science, therefore, is the idea of extended peer communities:

the evaluation of scientific inputs to decision making requires an

‘extended peer community’. This extension of legitimacy to new
participants in policy dialogues has important implications both
for society and for science. With mutual respect among various
perspectives and forms of knowing, there is a possibility for the
development of a genuine and effective democratic element in the life
of science. [4]

In effect, Funtowicz and Ravetz are calling for the involvement of a wide range of
stakeholders, not only in discussing the results of research, but ultimately in the
conduct of science itself:

The relevant peer community is thus extended beyond the direct

producers, sponsors and users of the research, to include all with
a stake in the product, the process, and its implications both
local and global. This extension of the peer community may include
investigative journalists, lawyers and pressure groups. [5]

By extending the peer community to include a much wider range of stakeholders,

including those directly affected by the situation in question, both science and
solutions are likely to be enhanced through, by way of an example, an extended
sense of what information should be taken into account (‘extended facts’) as well as
a more broadly-based treatment of risk and uncertainty.
The extended peer community is a persuasive idea, but it also raises questions.
As researchers in the field of mathematics education, we are aware that any
understanding and interpretation of complex scientific problems requires some
degree of mathematical literacy. [6] Participation in an extended peer community
clearly demands an ability to interpret texts relating to advanced mathematical
ideas (think, for example, of public discussion about climate change, or about
restarting nuclear power production in Japan). These texts, even if simplified for a
‘non-scientific’ reader, may include or refer to data, graphs, and charts, statistical
analysis, probability and risk, use of mathematical models, and the list goes on.
Moreover, the presentation of these ideas is never neutral; it represents particular
positions and interests, and uncertain risks may impact stakeholders differently. Yet
to participate in extended peer communities, citizens need to be able to engage with
these mathematical texts and to some extent the ideas and techniques to which they
refer. The question we explore here is: how can citizens be mathematically educated
so that they can participate in extended peer communities?. In order to keep our
 273 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

discussion focused, we specifically examine the place of uncertainty in post-normal

science. Uncertainty is a key feature of postnormal situations. Participation in
extended peer communities (and in democratic debates more generally) therefore
requires a critical understanding of uncertainty. To theoretically advance the
previous work on post-normal science and mathematics, we draw experiences from
this limited previous work, going more into depth on how uncertainty, as a central
feature of post-normal science, can be addressed within mathematics education so
that the development of critical citizens can be better supported.
Our approach to mathematics education is based on the Danish mathematics
educator Ole Skovsmose’s critical mathematics education, which we discuss later
in further detail. We will show how post-normal science and critical mathematics
education are partly complementary perspectives, before going into more depth on
the topic of uncertainty. [7]

WE FOCUS ON UNCERTAINTY SINCE IT IS A CHALLENGING TOPIC, PLAYS

A CENTRAL ROLE IN UNDERSTANDING POST-NORMAL SITUATIONS, AND
IS ONE OF THE PRIMARY REASONS THAT EXTENDED PEER COMMUNITIES
ARE NECESSARY IN SUCH SITUATIONS. WE INCLUDE EXCERPTS FROM
CLASSROOM DISCUSSIONS CONDUCTED IN NORWAY TO ILLUSTRATE
OUR IDEAS.

Critical Mathematics Education

Both the UN and the OECD suggest that mathematics and, in particular, mathematical
literacy are important for critical reflection and democratic participation in
society. [8] The OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)
defines mathematical literacy as: ‘[ . . . ] an individual’s capacity to identify and
understand the role that mathematics plays in the world, to make well-founded
judgments and to use and engage with mathematics in ways that meet the needs
of that individual’s life as a constructive, concerned and reflective citizen’. [9] PISA
has been criticized, however, for emphasising the individual in its definition of
mathematical literacy, while paying less attention to democratic values. National
curricula are in some instances more specific about the democratic value of critical
citizenship. For example, the Norwegian National Curriculum states a need for
citizens’ competence to ‘understand and critically evaluate information, statistical
analyses [ . . . ] to understand and impact processes in society’. [10]
The appearance of references in curriculum and education policy texts to
mathematical literacy linked to critical thinking and society may seem promising
for post-normal science and the participation of future citizens in extended
peer communities. Mathematics curricula, however, have largely failed to
 274 SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS EDUCATION IN UNCERTAIN TIMES

embrace these ideals. Mathematics teaching often appears to foster a view of

mathematics as an activity that produces either a correct or an incorrect answer.
This ‘traditional’, procedurally oriented view is challenged by many mathematics
education researchers, professional associations, and curricula who often
advocate an alternative approach broadly focused on problem-solving. While this
‘reform’ approach may encourage students to develop more productive forms
of mathematical thinking, it is not necessarily any better at promoting the kind
of critical thinking that we suggest is necessary for participation in extended
peer communities, or, indeed, in the broader political debates surrounding
postnormal situations.

WITHIN THE ACADEMIC FIELD OF MATHEMATICS EDUCATION,

HOWEVER, THERE ARE MORE CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE ROLE
OF MATHEMATICS IN EDUCATION IN WIDER SOCIETY.

Some question the role of abstract mathematics in education and promote

ethnomathematics for a discussion; [11]) some promote mathematics as a tool for
students to achieve insights into (their own) problems of social justice; [12] and
others promote mathematics education where students reflect on how mathematics
shapes their lives, as well as society, in often invisible ways. [13] These areas have
come to be known as critical mathematics education. Skovsmose’s work and the
theoretical program it originated have established some key ideas about the role
of mathematics and mathematics education in society, as well as useful concepts
for tackling these ideas in mathematics classrooms. [14] Here, we show how these
ideas complement post-normal science. We argue, in fact, that ideas from critical
mathematics education can form the basis for preparing students to participate in
extended peer communities. Indeed, Ubiratan d’Ambrosio, a Brazilian mathematics
educator, has argued that the field has a ‘responsibility for the future’; that is, he
argues, faced with the enormous challenges and threats to environmental, social,
international, and individual peace, mathematics educators must act. [15] Preparing
students to participate in extended peer communities can be part of a program for
mathematics education for the future.
Critical approaches to mathematics education are concerned with how students
can learn to participate in a democratic society, through an emphasis on critique. A
critical approach to mathematics education includes students learning and using
mathematical methods to examine social, environmental, or economic problems
as well as students learning about the nature and role of mathematics in modern
society. Mathematics is seen as political, both in the sense that mathematics is an
essential part of political debate, and in the sense that mathematics is one of the
key tools in the construction of a technological-industrial society and is implicated
in every kind of problem, from warfare to computer viruses to environmental
 275 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

crises. [16] A link with post-normal science is already apparent. Mathematics is

necessary to understand and debate many aspects of postnormal situations; but
mathematics is also implicated in the existence of these situations, through its
central role in the design and use of modern technology.
While a number of authors have contributed to the development of critical
mathematics education, the most elaborated approach comes from the work of
Skovsmose. [17] Here, we summarise some key ideas derived from Skovsmose’s
work, highlighting their particular relevance for the task of preparing students
to participate in extended peer communities. It is important to understand that
critical mathematics education is neither a method for teaching mathematics, nor
a curriculum of what to teach. Rather, it is a philosophy of mathematics education,
offering concepts and ideas with which to think or rethink the more pragmatic
concerns of mathematics teaching.
The role of mathematics in shaping society is strongly mediated by technology.
Skovsmose discussed different perspectives on the nature of technology. [18] One
view is that technology consists of tools, through which humans can act on nature.
This view of technology is based on a separation of humans from nature, indeed, on
the idea that humans can ‘overcome’ the limitations of nature. This separation is
arguably implicated in the many environmental problems with which we are faced.
A second, more critical view, however, is that technology is a social force.

Technology concerns all aspects of social life, it becomes an

absolute for social organisation. Not only the form of production but
the whole ‘civilisation’ undergoes a technological reconstruction.
Nature in its original sense disappears, and we become inhabitants in
a technological reconstruction of our social reality. [19]

This view of technology describes how technology is used to organise labour,

production, and human behaviour and changes the way in which these things are
understood. From government surveillance to Facebook, our lives are structured
by different forms of technology. In fact, the clearest examples are all forms of
information technology.
Information technology is driven by mathematics; more specifically, it
depends on mathematical models. Internet search engines, to give one example,
work through the use of sophisticated algorithms, which encode a mathematical
model of some aspects of the internet. There are two important points about this
marriage of mathematics and information technology. First, mathematical models
are designed by human beings. Mathematical models are not simply neutral
representations of the world; they encode choices, values, interests, etc., reflecting
the interests and preferences of the human designer, as well as the limitations
of mathematical methods. Search engine algorithms may reflect commercial
or political interests, highlighting some sources rather than others. Moreover,
technology renders this human dimension invisible. We tend more easily to see
 276 SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS EDUCATION IN UNCERTAIN TIMES

search engines as sophisticated tools (which they are), rather than human choices,
values, and interests. Second, through technology in particular, mathematical
models undergo an important shift. Mathematical models are designed to describe
or model aspects of the world. As such, they are powerful and useful. Models of
weather systems allow us to make reasonable forecasts of weather in the short
term. When information technology is built into the fabric of society, however, the
mathematical models that drive them no longer describe reality, they become part
of reality – they become prescriptive. [20] Search engines do not simply describe
what is available online, they influence what we look at (and what we buy). There
is, therefore, a significant, but largely invisible role for mathematics in structuring
society and influencing human behaviour. Skovsmose calls this role the ‘formatting
power of mathematics’. [21]
The idea that mathematics formats our society is in line with the philosophy of
post-normal science, where emphasis is put on what is often denoted as uncertainty
in the problem framing. [22]

THE FORMATTING POWER OF MATHEMATICS IMPLIES THE SIGNIFICANCE

OF MATHEMATICS IN BOTH THE EMERGENCE AND THE RESPONSE TO
POST-NORMAL SITUATIONS. OUR UNDERSTANDING OF CLIMATE CHANGE,
FOR EXAMPLE, IS ALMOST ENTIRELY DERIVED FROM MATHEMATICAL
ANALYSES AND MATHEMATICAL MODELS, WHICH ARE ASSOCIATED WITH
UNCERTAINTY.

There are clearly real social effects of how climate change is modelled and
understood, and the question of how mathematics-based analyses of climate
change should be transformed from descriptive to prescriptive is an important
one. The need to pay attention to such things is part of the Funtowicz & Ravetz’s
argument for extended peer communities. [23]
So far, we have summarised the idea that mathematics plays a significant role
in shaping social reality. The next step is to consider what students need to know
about mathematics from the point of view of critical mathematics education.
In this regard, Skovsmose proposes three kinds of knowing in mathematics. [24]
Mathematical knowing refers to the ability to use various mathematical skills, such
as producing mathematical expressions, developing mathematical justifications or
proofs, and performing calculations and procedures. Technological knowing refers
to the ability to apply mathematics and mathematical methods in the context of
technology. Technological knowing includes the construction and application of
the models and algorithms that drive technology. Finally, reflective knowing refers
to the ability to consider the impact of mathematical and technological knowing,
including consideration of the aims of technology, as well as associated social and
 277 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

ethical issues. Although all three forms of knowing are inter-related, attention
to reflective knowing is a distinctive aspect of critical mathematics education.
Skovsmose gives a more extended definition for reflective knowing as:

the competence needed to be able to take a justified stand in a

discussion of technological questions. In this sense we may relate
reflective knowledge to the general competence needed to be able to
react as a critical citizen in today’s societies. The possibility
for the public to be not only subjects, i.e. geared only to receive
outputs from the ‘system’, but also to provide inputs to the ‘system’,
presupposes reflective understanding. [25]

Thus, a critical mathematics education includes reflective knowing as an important

dimension. Learners should not only learn the methods and applications of
mathematics; they must learn about its consequences. They must learn about the
formatting role of mathematics in society.
This position has important implications for how the mathematics of
postnormal situations might be addressed in educational contexts. It is not
sufficient to teach the statistical techniques used to, for example, calculate global
temperature increases. Nor is it sufficient to teach how to apply these techniques,
using computers, to run analyses of temperature data. Such tasks do not require
students to engage with the broader issues or to participate in the related political
processes. To teach for reflective knowing would involve discussion of the meaning
and consequences of calculations of global temperature changes, discussion of
possible actions, and discussion of the role of mathematics, such as the limitations
of the statistical methods. Such discussions might lead to political action, whether
at a local informal level, or through participation in formal political processes.
Fostering reflective knowing, then, is an important aspect of critical mathematics
education of direct relevance to education in the context of post-normal science.
In particular, for citizens to participate in extended peer communities, they need
some degree of mathematical and technological understanding but, we argue, most
crucially, they need reflective knowing, in order to be able to critically engage with
the information they receive or generate for themselves.
Finally, we need to consider the nature of students’ participation in critical
mathematics education, since this will also have implications for their potential
participation in extended peer communities. The question of participation,
however, turns out to be related to epistemology. In essence, Skovsmose argues
against a monologic perspective on mathematical knowing. Transmission models
of teaching and learning are clearly monologic, in the sense that they assume a fixed
body of knowledge that is simply transmitted to learners ‘as is’. There is little room
for reflective knowing in such a perspective. There are, however, few mathematics
educators who explicitly subscribe to a transmission model. A more common
approach is the constructivism derived from Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget’s genetic
 278 SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS EDUCATION IN UNCERTAIN TIMES

epistemology. Skovsmose argues that this approach is also monologic, though in a

more subtle way. In Piagetian-inspired teaching, students are assumed to construct
mathematical knowledge and thus the teacher’s role is to provide appropriate
experiences in order that they may do so. [26] The nature of the mathematics to be
constructed is not really open to challenge, however. It is in this sense that Skovmose
characterises teaching inspired by constructivism as monologic.
Skovmose argues instead for a dialogic approach, by which he means something
more than simply allowing students to engage in discussion during mathematics
class. Skovsmose’s explanation of a dialogic epistemology in mathematics education
is, in fact, an important basis for our proposed link between critical mathematics
education and post-normal science. This link highlights the treatment of competing
knowledge claims, which Skovsmose refers to as ‘knowledge conflict’:

my use of the word ‘dialogue’ has much in common with the term
‘negotiation’. The establishing of ‘dialogue’ as an epistemic concept
is implied by giving up the thesis of the homogeneity of knowledge,
and accepting that contradictory knowledge claims can rightly be made
with the consequence that knowledge conflict becomes a reality. [ . . . ]

Knowledge conflict is a sensitive epistemic phenomenon, and cannot be

solved by adding new information, collecting more observations or by
performing more careful calculations. Knowledge conflict has to be
handled in a different way. Critique and reflection are needed. From
knowledge conflict, we may hope to develop new concepts and to be
able to reflect upon knowledge already held. If knowledge conflict is
to enter into a dynamic process, its critical and dialogical nature
has to be emphasised [ . . . ] The upheaval of a knowledge conflict
cannot be the result of pure reasoning or of some carefully carried
out experiment. The only way forward is negotiation. [27]

The notion of dialogue as a feature of critical mathematics education means

that teaching mathematical facts and procedures is insufficient. Mathematical
knowledge itself must be open to challenge. In the case of climate change, for
example, there is no absolute method with which to measure the temperature of the
planet. Temperature measurements are made in different places and at different
times and then combined using statistical methods. The choice of locations,
of statistical methods, of corrections and so on have become popular in public
debates about climate change, illustrating how knowledge conflict can arise and
have important consequences for public understanding and policy. Mathematical
knowledge, then, is in relation to human activity and, as such, open to uncertainty,
values, and power. [28]
There is a clear link between the notion of dialogue in critical mathematics
education, post-normal science, and the idea of extended peer communities.
279 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

Post-normal science emphasises precisely issues of uncertainty and the need

for negotiation through extended peer communities. Postnormal situations are
precisely those in which more information, observations, or calculations will not
in themselves lead directly to solutions. Rather, postnormal situations require
dialogue, and with it, the creation of new concepts and ideas.

Uncertainty
Post-normal science includes a particular attention to uncertainty and its role in
knowledge production and in policy making. The theory of post-normal science
includes distinctions between different sorts of uncertainty:

• Technical uncertainty: inexactness arising in particular methods and techniques,

which can be dealt with through standard methods, such as statistical measures
of error or the use of probability.
• Methodological uncertainty: unreliability arising from the choice of methods,
data, where, for example, judgment and academic traditions play a role. For
instance, connections between system components are basically known, but
cannot be accurately quantified.
• Epistemic uncertainty: the ‘border with ignorance’, arising from lack of knowledge,
information or suitable methods, or the lack of awareness of some features of
the situation. This sort of uncertainty is in particular related to complex issues
with conflicting stakes. [29]

These categories are conceptual, rather than material, and in many situations are
likely to co-occur. A central idea here is that postnormal situations are characterised
by epistemic uncertainty and should be dealt with by post-normal science, where
an extended peer community contributes to the knowledge base, to values
perspectives and to evaluate the quality of expert knowledge. A specific uncertainty
can be characterised as a mix between the three sorts. While the size of a technical
uncertainty can be assessed, it is not possible to know whether an uncertainty
of the other sorts is large or small. The dimension of the sort of uncertainty is
rather characterised by the level of control through quantification. An epistemic
uncertainty may be small, but there is not sufficient knowledge to determine that
this is the case. An essential feature with these sorts of uncertainty is that there
is no objective way of deciding which sort is dominant. On the contrary, the sort
of uncertainty and the level of conflict and stakes are interdependent. Uncertainty
does not matter much if it does not have implications for values and interests.
Funtowicz and Ravetz divide science based problem-solving strategies
into three ideal zones: applied science (technical uncertainty and low conflict
level), professional consultancy (methodological uncertainty and medium
conflict level) and post-normal science (epistemic uncertainty and high conflict
level). [30] It is noticeable that these zones can be linked to Skovsmose’s types of
knowing in mathematics. Both theories make distinctions between a basic level,
 280 SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS EDUCATION IN UNCERTAIN TIMES

or zone, involving fairly routine methods, tools, and techniques; a second level
involving decision-making within the mathematical and/or scientific process;
and a meta-level, requiring critical consideration of the choices and effects of
these processes. [31] Technical uncertainty can be handled sufficiently through
mathematical knowing, as quantifications of the uncertainty is an appropriate
approach. Methodological uncertainty requires an evaluation of the methodology
and how the knowledge is applied, which resembles technological knowing.
Epistemic uncertainty in postnormal situations calls for critical citizenship and
reflective knowing as the framing for societal problems.

THE UNDERLYING TRIPARTITE DISTINCTION IMPLIES, THEREFORE, THAT

WITHIN MATHEMATICS EDUCATION, THE THREE SORTS OF UNCERTAINTY
CAN BE CONSIDERED THROUGH ATTENTION TO MATHEMATICAL,
TECHNOLOGICAL, AND REFLECTIVE KNOWING.

Mathematical knowing can include learning about sources of inexactness in

mathematics, as well as the mathematical methods used to deal with such
inexactness. Technological knowing can include learning about how such methods
are selected and deployed and how uncertainty is embedded in various kinds of
mathematical application. Finally reflective knowing can involve learning about
how uncertainty arises in postnormal situations, as well as the social and societal
effects of different possible ways of handling uncertainty.
The issue of climate change provides a good example of how mathematics
education can address and distinguish between the different sorts of uncertainty.
To learn about inexactness and mathematical knowing, students may apply
statistical concepts on empirical time series. This is the case for emission levels or
temperatures measured at a specific place. The mathematical content knowledge
can be basic, as is seen in the presentation through graphs or calculation of
averages, or more advanced. Methodological uncertainty can be addressed through
problem solving or discussions where students engage in methodological aspects.
An example of this arises in discussing assumptions of linearity or choosing how
to mathematically represent an area’s annual temperature. The public debate on
climate change, with its conflicting views and disagreements on facts illustrate
epistemic uncertainty and the formatting power of mathematics. These discussions
could include insights into why experts disagree on temperature changes, what
stakes are at risk in climate change, the political consequences of temperature
predictions, and the implications of public and political demand for more
precise predictions. Mathematics education can thereby contribute to tackling
mathematically expressed information, not with the purpose of requiring students
to believe any particular idea, but through giving them the opportunity to learn
about the inherent sorts of uncertainties in the issue of climate change.
 281 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

Uncertainty in Mathematics Classrooms

The following are excerpts from three mathematics classroom activities to illustrate
the preceding theory and to highlight several characteristics that need to be present
in mathematics education to help prepare students for critical citizenship. We
will not address mathematical content knowledge, but rather discuss the role and
application of mathematics. The characteristics we discuss are conflicts of interest,
values, complexity, and uncertainty.

Students discussing traffic safety

A mathematics teacher at a school in a rural area in Norway developed a student
project on traffic safety for her twelve–thirteen years old students. [32] The local
community had experienced several incidents where cars had driven off the road
and into the sea, and the school bus passed this stretch of road every day. In the
project, the students carried out a traffic survey and measured the heights of the
barriers in five exposed bends in the road. The students participated in deciding
how many measurements they should take in order to evaluate the height of the
barriers and whether they were safe. Spreadsheets were used to process and present
the data.
The teacher had decided the vehicle categories for the traffic count sheet, but
the students came up with two suggestions for changes. One was in class when they
presented their charts on the traffic counts:

Per: When I now look at what we have counted, I think we should have
had a separate column for buses.

Teacher: Yeah, OK? Why would you do that?

Per: Because there are so many people in buses. There are more than
for example in a private car.

When Per argues there are more people in buses than in cars, he is considering the
much greater impact of a bus running into the sea than a car running into the sea.
Regarding the chart as a way to communicate risk, a change in vehicle categories
to include the buses as a separate category could make the risk look more severe.
The second suggestion the students made concerned sheep. Some sheep had
been in the road during the traffic count, and these had been counted and placed
under the ‘other’ category on their sheet. A student had argued that it was relevant to
show explicitly that there had been sheep there, however, because they constituted
a risk factor on the road. [33]
Within the constraints of a fairly conventional educational setting, the project
gave the students some opportunity to experience the formatting power of
mathematics in that they could see that choices on how to approach the problem
of traffic safety through mathematics influence the perception of risk and hence,
282 SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS EDUCATION IN UNCERTAIN TIMES

potentially, the resulting decisions. The teacher allowed for a dialogic approach to
learning, as the categories for the traffic count were negotiated between the students
and the teacher. [34] The project was on a topic that mattered to the students and
the teacher let the students have a say in developing the project. Projects like this
can be useful preparation for critical citizenship, or for participation in extended
peer communities, because the students were actual stakeholders, and the project
was participatory.
Norwegian educationalists Kjellrun Hiis Hauge and Rune Herheim studied how
the three sorts of uncertainty from post-normal science were present in the traffic
project. [35] The uncertainty related to the students’ charts on the traffic count
was labelled as unreliability, possibly overlapping with ignorance, because the
students indicated that the communicated risk level would change with different
choices of categories. Students were therefore engaging with both methodological
and epistemic uncertainty. The excerpt illustrates a similar overlap between
technological and reflective knowing. Questioning the vehicle categories can
be characterised as a reflection on the application of mathematics to increase its
relevance, but the reasoning behind such choices, associated with the number of
people in buses, is associated with reflective knowing and the formatting power
of mathematics.
Although the school project was considered a success, there was still potential for
further learning. The students could, for example, have been challenged to express
more explicitly how the choices of categories make a difference. The excerpt above
illustrates how the importance of choice was only implicit in the dialogue between
Per and the Teacher; explicit argumentation might have facilitated further learning
for critical citizenship. The students could also have discussed the issue of choices
in more general terms: how do experts make such choices? What implications do
the students see for their reflections? The students and the teacher might also have
benefitted from being offered vocabulary on uncertainty to make their discussion
more explicit.

Students discussing climate change

During a master’s course on mathematics education, the students and the lecturer
(Hauge) discussed a graph produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change to represent projections of global temperature change. [36] The lecture
was an introduction to critical mathematics education, and the aim was to link key
concepts to the discussion about the graph and about climate change more generally.
These concepts included the notions of formatting and reflective knowing.
The IPCC graph starts at the year 1850 and shows the estimated and predicted
change in global temperature until 2300 with estimated 95% confidence intervals.
The estimates and predictions are based on averages of results produced by a
number of different computer-based climate models. The graph presents five
predicted courses for average global temperature change, given different future
scenarios of global greenhouse emission levels. The trajectories from each of the
 283 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

emission scenarios are accompanied by a number that indicates how many models
have contributed. There is a break in the trajectories in year 2100, since fewer
models have contributed to the continuation beyond that point. [38]
In the following excerpt, Kjellrun draws the students’ attention to this feature:

Kjellrun: But if we look at year 2100, what is happening there?

[pause sixteen seconds.]

Elisabeth: [inaudible] is a break?

Kjellrun: Yes, why is that?

Elisabeth: At least the red one.

Kjellrun: Yes, at least the red one, that’s very distinct.

Elisabeth: There are fewer models, you know.

[ . . . ]

Tor Inge: I’m thinking that the most critical until 2100 do not
continue further in the models.

Kjellrun: Yeah, well that’s true.

Tor Inge: So that the curve isn’t as steep when it continues.

The red trajectory to which Elisabeth refers represents the status quo: emissions
continue at more or less the same rate as today. Elisabeth recognises that the
break is caused by the use of fewer models. Tor Inge’s utterances indicate that he
imagines a more critical future prediction if all the models had contributed after
2100. Unlike the examples from the traffic safety project, there is no apparent
negotiation between the students and the teacher in the above excerpt. Yet, because
of Kjellrun’s semi-open questions, the excerpt can be argued to show a dialogic
element when she invites the students to reflect on its mathematical properties.
Skovsmose’s understanding of negotiation may rather be linked to the different
ways of understanding the knowledge claims represented by the graph. The
students’ reflections can thus be characterised as reflective knowing. [39]
The students were not introduced to uncertainty concepts from post-normal
science, but they seemed to recognise that the predictions are associated with
uncertainty beyond what can be characterised as technical uncertainty. [40] Their
reflections are dealing with an understanding that the involved models do not
 284 SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS EDUCATION IN UNCERTAIN TIMES

necessarily provide the same predictions or the same uncertainty measurements.

This implies that the associated uncertainty is more in line with methodological or
epistemic uncertainty.
Again, a clear line cannot be drawn between the two because the students do
not comment further on implications of the differences in model output. There are
several ways of perceiving the uncertainty relating to the break in the graph. One
might picture that the uncertainty is of a methodological sort; that the models are
more or less reliable but that there is uncertainty related to connecting components
in the climate system. The break can also be perceived as a consequence of ignorance;
a lack of knowledge about what affects the climate and how this uncertainty
contributes in shaping how the problem of climate change is understood. Similarly,
whether the excerpt illustrates technological or reflective knowing is not clear since
the students do not reflect further on the significance of the break.
This small classroom study suggests that discussing graphs, has potential for
developing critical mathematics education for post-normal science, even though
the underlying mathematics and science is to some extent incomprehensible to the
participant. [41] The context of the graph is of course essential for understanding
the significance of the associated uncertainties and the reasons for disagreements
about climate change. During the classroom discussion, the students offered a range
of critical reflections besides those shown above, while still expressing their trust in
the IPCC and climate scientists. In fact, they expressed unease about pointing to
limitations in the knowledge base of the graph. [42]
Nevertheless, the students reflected on a range of aspects of uncertainty,
including natural variation, uncertainty in models, irreducible uncertainty,
epistemic uncertainty and how to cope with uncertainty.

THE CLASSROOM DISCUSSION AND THE LECTURE ON CRITICAL

MATHEMATICS TOGETHER OFFERED THEM IDEAS AND CONCEPTS WHICH
COULD HELP THEM ARTICULATE ASPECTS OF MATHEMATICS IN SOCIETY
THAT ARE CRUCIAL FOR CRITICAL CITIZENSHIP.

Students discussing oil exploitation

The last example is taken from a plenary discussion among fifty thirteen–fourteen
year olds in their classroom. In Norway, there is an ongoing debate on whether the
offshore area close to these students’ hometown in Lofoten, a rural area, should be
opened for petroleum exploitation. The area is considered promising for oil and
gas production, but is also a significant area for tourism and a range of fisheries. A
research team from Bergen University College prepared the student discussion and
visited the school. The students were asked to consider futures with or without oil
exploitation and provide arguments for and against. The activity was not overtly
 285 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

mathematical, but the classroom activity illustrates some qualities relevant for
critical mathematics education and post-normal science.
Hauge et al. described how the classroom discussion exposed the students
to uncertainties and the complexity of the issue through their disagreeing
opinions. [43] The students introduced a range of topics during a two-hour plenary
discussion: fish, scenery, mountains, tourists, oil prize, shopping malls, oil spills,
and job opportunities. Through arguments and statements, the students made links
between these elements, and through doubts and through counter arguments they
introduced uncertainties about these links. In this way, the discussion provided
an arena where the students together constructed an image of uncertainty and
complexity.
The students also disagreed on values and what was at stake. To illustrate this,
we present two excerpts from the plenary discussion. Melissa is a student and the
first speaker when they return after a break:

Melissa: We came up with a point. You talked about getting a shopping

mall here. It’s the same thing as if you should remove the Eiffel
Tower in Paris and rather build a shopping mall. Then tourism there
would drop at once, and the same can happen here. That if we get
big oil installations and a shopping mall, and we only have industry
here, then it will drop here, too.

[several minutes with students discussing]

Roy: I think personally, that change is the best for [their hometown]
right now. We need to take a few chances, because now we have lived
on fish and dried fish, and tourists, for many, many years – and we are
committed to try, at least – to try to become a city – it is a good
thing. Maybe people think it’s cool. We can- There will be a shopping
mall. And then when you want to go out for a walk, there are still
mountains, and everything else you can go to. It’s not like we’re
going to remove mountains. We’re not going to blast them to create a
shopping mall.

Melissa and Roy clearly disagree about preferred futures. The power expressed in
Melissa’s statement, conveying Lofoten’s iconic value, suggests she might not be
willing to take any risk of affecting Lofoten’s culture and identity. Roy, on the other
hand, announces that he wants a different life than Lofoten can offer and calls for a
new identity for his hometown. He seems willing to accept associated risks. Conflict
of interests and diverging opinions on acceptable risks are common in societal
risk debates. The classroom discussion thus allowed the students to experience
key elements of public debate: They exposed conflicts of interests, defended their
opinions and values and experienced that values and opinions remain conflicting.
286 SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS EDUCATION IN UNCERTAIN TIMES

The conflicting opinions of Melissa and Roy illustrate a knowledge conflict regarding
whether a risk is acceptable or not. The classroom discussion thus allowed for a
dialogical epistemology in education. [44]
Hauge et al. has exemplified how the students developed arguments, which
they refined and further developed because their classmates provided counter
arguments. [45] Classroom discussions are recognized as a learning arena for critical
citizenship, as students need to practice developing arguments by responding to
others, and they learn mutual respect, in spite of conflicting view. [45]
The activity cannot be labelled ‘mathematics education’ although the students
did use concepts like probability and risk in their argumentation. Still, the students
experienced being exposed to key characteristics of postnormal situations
conflicting values, urgency, uncertainty, and complexity while also having to
respond to them during the discussion. To learn more about risk, the students
could have been made aware of these typical characteristics of confrontational risk
issues and with reference to their own discussion. They could also have explored
information on the internet, discussed premises and assumptions of presented
information and statements, and, more specifically, addressed the question of why
experts disagree.

Discussion
Uncertainty is multi-dimensional and can be studied through a critical mathematics
education approach. By summarising the main points from the three classroom
situations, we can begin to shed light on what a mathematics classroom activity
might look like that prepares students for critical citizenship, inspired by ideas
from critical mathematics education and post-normal science. Relevant aspects
for mathematics educators to consider include forms of critique, the role of
mathematics, and the potential for conflicting values, uncertainty, and complexity
related to the societal issues that stand as the basis for classroom activities. In
summarising the classroom activity, we begin to see how post-normal science can
enrich critical mathematics education and vice versa. Finally, we can then look
at what implications this investigation might have for the future development of
mathematics education and its connections to post-normal science.
In all three projects, the students were given opportunities for critique. In the oil
discussion, the students turned critique towards each other through responding to
other student’s arguments and developing and reconsidering their own reasoning.
In the traffic safety project, the students were critical of the teacher’s decision on the
categories on the count sheet as they worked on quantifying and communicating
risks related to the low road barriers. In the second example, the students’
discussion of projected temperature change provided an arena for critiquing
qualities of assessments and predictions produced by experts as well as how the
public and decisionmakers respond to expert knowledge. All three student projects
were about choices concerning the future, they were exploratory in their approach,
and all three project topics were relevant for the groups of students.
 287 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

The role of mathematics varies across the three projects. While the students in
the traffic project had to complete mathematics tasks in order to develop arguments
highlighting the risk of accidents, the students discussing temperature change
examined mathematical information and results. The students who discussed oil
exploitation did not work with mathematics explicitly, but achieved insight into
a real-world context where there is plenty of expert information in mathematical
form. Indeed, this last example could be considered to be a simulation of how an
extended peer community might work. In different ways, the classroom activities
highlighted the importance of values and uncertainty.
Excerpts from the three classroom situations illustrate how uncertainty
concepts from post-normal science can be understood and applied in mathematics
education. In the students’ discussion on oil exploitation, it was essential in
both a critical mathematics perspective and a post-normal science perspective to
recognise how conflicting stakes, complexity, decisions, and uncertainty were
present in their argumentation and how these characteristics were intertwined.
The traffic safety project and the temperature change discussion demonstrated
students’ capabilities to reflect on the impact of uncertainty in mathematical
information on risk-related problems. Uncertainty and values were linked by the
students in all classroom studies. The students’ choices in how to present traffic
statistics could influence value perspectives of risks present. Students reflected on
their attitude to risk together with value statements on the future of Lofoten. In the
final discussion, differences in model predictions were linked to critical futures in
terms of global warming.

CONCEPTS AND IDEAS FROM POST-NORMAL SCIENCE CAN BE USEFUL

FOR CRITICAL MATHEMATICS EDUCATION, INCLUDING STUDENTS,
TEACHERS, AND RESEARCHERS AS THEY CAN BRING ATTENTION TO,
AND AWARENESS OF, KEY CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ROLE OF
QUANTIFICATION IN SOCIETY.

They can also serve as a guide for what mathematics education should include in
preparing students for critical citizenship and, potentially, participation in extended
peer communities: handling conflicting views, dealing with complexity and
recognising and coping with uncertainty. Together, the classroom activities described
in this paper involve some of these elements, but deliberate choices based on post-
normal science might have further developed the activities in terms of preparing for
critical citizenship. Students could, for instance, be made aware of different sorts
of uncertainty that can and cannot be controlled through statistical measures, and
postnormal characteristics could be articulated in relation to the topic, such as
conflicting values and stakes, risk, uncertainty, urgency, and complexity.
288 SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS EDUCATION IN UNCERTAIN TIMES

Mathematics education can make an important contribution to post-normal

science, particularly in relation to preparing students for critical citizenship and
participation in extended peer communities. We have argued that classroom
activities based on dialogues in the form of negotiation on uncertainty aspects
is central for this purpose. Society will benefit from an educational system that
emphasises critical perspectives, although such an approach is far from being
realised. As shown earlier in this paper, there are voices from critical mathematics
education who emphasise the necessity of education for critical citizenship
and lived democracy. There are clear benefits from cooperation between critical
mathematics education and post-normal science, yet challenges need to be
overcome. Some are related to further exploration of how to apply ideas from post-
normal science in critical mathematics education. In post-normal science, the
types of uncertainty can be regarded as qualities in expert knowledge. Pointing out
the quality of uncertainty serves several purposes. One is to encourage experts to
both take the types of uncertainty into account when developing knowledge and to
communicate types of uncertainty in advice. Another purpose is to rationalise that
postnormal situations call for extended peer communities. Both purposes reflect
a theoretical and philosophical stance and imply changes in how science and the
role of science in society is understood. However, once the types of uncertainty are
used to label knowledge, utterances, or student activities, the researcher takes the
role of an uncertainty expert. Defining uncertainty may easily become positivistic
which, in itself, contradicts the philosophy of post-normal science. Yet, concepts
and ideas from post-normal science, can serve to increase educators’ and students’
awareness of uncertainty and its possible roles in societal issues. This complements
ideas from critical mathematical education related to critical citizenship and has
additional valuable perspectives to offer.
Research on mathematics education in a post-normal science perspective,
and vice versa, is in its initial stages. More studies need to be conducted on how
to empower students and to develop critical citizenship and to also see how this
benefits research on post-normal science.
289 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

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Lofoten Area. Marine Policy, 44, 82–89
SCIENCE EDUCATION
FOR THE ANTHROPOCENE
Jane Gilbert

The challenge is not that we must find ways to ‘know’ the future; rather, we need to
find ways to live and act with not knowing the future. [1]
The point of education is never that children or students learn, but that they
learn something, that they learn this for particular purposes, and that they learn
this from someone. The problem with the language of learning and with the wider
‘learnification’ of educational discourse is that it makes it far more difficult, if not
impossible, to ask the crucial questions about content, purpose, and relationships. [2]
This joins the already large body of work that argues for change in science
education. It is intended to contribute to the debate on why change in science
education is so difficult by raising the possibility that there are significant ‘blind
spots’ in our vision of science education. While being ‘in crisis’ seems to have
been a feature of science education since its inception, we must consider that the
transition into the Anthropocene could be the ‘crisis to end all crises’, the catalyst
needed to provoke real change. [3]
If we accept that carbonised modernity is coming to an end, then we have to accept
that science education as we have known it must be reconceptualised. Substantial
rethinking – of its content, its purposes, and its relationships – is required. This
kind of thinking is incredibly challenging because the conceptual categories that
structure our thinking are themselves part of the problem. We cannot think outside
these categories: we can only, to use a term from the Algerian French philosopher
Jacques Derrida, put them ‘under erasure’, signal that they are problematic and may
eventually need to be ‘erased’, while also continuing to work with them. However,
despite the difficulties, I think it is essential that we begin this work.
To understand this imminent change in how we teach science, we must begin
with an overview of various change initiatives in science education. This overview
will also outline recent work calling for schools to be ‘revolutionised’ for the ‘new
times’ of the twenty-first century. We must then consider the implications of this
call, for education in general, and then for science education. Following this, I will
set out three possible scenarios for science education’s future and propose some
strategies that could allow us to see the ‘blind spots’ that seem to make science
education immune to change.
 294 SCIENCE EDUCATION FOR THE ANTHROPOCENE

The American philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn’s much-cited work of

nearly half a century ago describes scientific progress as occurring, not via the
gradual accumulation of knowledge, but as a series of revolutions – or ‘paradigm
shifts’ – in thought. [4] There are long periods of what he calls ‘normal science’,
‘puzzle-solving’ activity structured by the current way of conceptualising the field
and its problems. Anomalies emerge, but the puzzle-solvers work to explain these
from within the current paradigm. Eventually, however, these anomalies build up to
a crisis point. There are disputes, which can be bitter, and calls for change. If these
are not resolved, the field undergoes a ‘paradigm shift’, a radical departure from the
old way of seeing things, which is replaced by an incommensurable new view. The
field moves off with new energy, in a new direction and/or with new conceptual
tools, but it eventually settles down into a new period of ‘normal science’, within
the new paradigm.

THE DEFINING FEATURE OF SCIENCE EDUCATION, AS IT HAS DEVELOPED

OVER THE LAST CENTURY OR SO, HAS BEEN ‘PUZZLE-SOLVING’ ACTIVITY
AROUND TWO BASIC QUESTIONS: HOW TO GET STUDENTS TO LEARN
SCIENCE MORE EFFECTIVELY AND/OR HOW TO ENGAGE GREATER
NUMBERS OF STUDENTS IN STUDYING SCIENCE.

Anomalies have arisen, and there have been many calls for change, over several
decades. A major theme has been the disparity between what school science
education programmes offer and the needs and interests of young people. In
research project after research project, this disparity has been explored, and a great
many solutions have been proposed. Despite all this, participation rates in science
study (once it is no longer compulsory) continue to decline, as do levels of interest
and engagement in science. Overall, student’s understanding of science does not
seem to have improved. [5]
Partly, but not entirely, because capability in science (and a science-supportive
public) is thought to be key to economic progress, every few years, a ‘crisis’ in
science education is identified. [6] Reports and new research are commissioned,
new teaching approaches are recommended and new curricula come into effect. [7]
Some (usually small fragments) of this thinking finds its way into policy rhetoric
and classrooms, but, inevitably, there is no paradigm shift in thinking or practice,
and things continue much as they always have.
As science educator George DeBoer has shown, this is a well-established
pattern. [8] Over the century or so of its existence, science education debate has
alternated, with a periodicity of about twenty years, between two competing
ontological positions. In one position, the disciplinary requirements of science are
emphasised. Education here is a technical matter – how best to instruct or initiate
295 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

students into the discipline. The second of the two positions emphasise educational
considerations. The focus is on learners and how best to foster their intellectual and
socio-cultural development. Science is seen as one context (of many) within which
this can take place.
In the last couple of decades, this pattern has continued. Research in science
education has had a strong focus on developing and evaluating initiatives designed
to make science more relevant and interesting for learners. One approach has been
to advocate changes to the curriculum content. Science educators have proposed
a broadening of the traditional knowledge base of school science to include, for
example, science, technology, and society (STS) studies, the history and philosophy
of science (HPS), environmental science, ‘issues-based’ science, the study of
socio-scientific issues (SSIs), ethics, ‘nature of science’ studies (NoS) and science
capabilities, and, more recently, making future studies part of science education.
Science ‘literacy’ and/or ‘citizenship science’ as key purposes of science education
have been discussed at great length. Another approach has been to advocate for the
development of better teaching and learning methods. Constructivist pedagogies,
and a focus on social, cultural, and/or affective dimensions of an individual’s
learning have become, at least in theory, the ‘new orthodoxy’. Alongside this, the
‘science for all’ movement has argued for changes to science education’s content
and teaching methods to make it more attractive to individuals from under-
represented groups, in particular, students from indigenous and/or lower socio-
economic backgrounds and girls.
While there have been dissenters and there are signs that the science side of
DeBoer’s pendulum might be in the ascendancy again, it seems fair to say that
the education focus has, in theory, predominated for a generation or so. However,
below the surface rhetoric, we find a different story. A clue to this is science
education’s tendency towards what American educationalist David Perkins calls
‘aboutism’: that is, the predilection to re-orient all new initiatives, whatever
their putative intent, as new knowledge to be learned, usually in addition to the
previously accepted knowledge base. [10] For example, the ‘nature of science’ (NoS)
initiative: this was originally intended as a way of moving science education away
from its traditional focus on the facts of science to approaches that were supposed
to facilitate critical thinking about science and the epistemological frameworks on
which it rests. However, in practice, NoS has become just another set of concepts
students must learn about. In some jurisdictions, these are even expressed as
sets of propositions that need to be understood by students and by teachers. [11]
Similarly, the introduction of “socio-scientific issues” was supposed to be a way of
helping students critically engage in debates about science’s relationship with its
socio-cultural context. [12] However, possibly through a commitment to the idea of
objectivity, many teachers aim to treat SSIs in a balanced way, avoiding discussions
of economic or political interests and/or socio-cultural values. The result of this
is a tendency to teach about the social, cultural, or ethical issues associated with
various scientific or technological practices: that is, giving students more “stuff
296 SCIENCE EDUCATION FOR THE ANTHROPOCENE

to know”, not providing them with appropriate contexts to develop the critical
thinking skills they need to participate productively in debates about these issues.
Another example is recent work advocating adding ideas from futures studies into
science education programmes. This work sets out approaches to science education
which involve students learning about the discipline of futures studies, ostensibly
as a way of preparing them for the future. [13] While apparently contributing to the
education side of DeBoer’s pendulum, these approaches are also likely to produce yet
more ‘aboutism’, the collecting of new concepts, as opposed to fostering students’
capacity to think critically, to think for themselves, in increasingly complex ways,
about the future.
My point, in drawing attention to these trends, is to find a way in to the
deconstructive process that I think will be necessary to move science education out
of the impasse DeBoer identifies, into new spaces that can release us from the past
and allow us to try to address the challenges posed by the Anthropocene.
Why is it that, while science educators say they are committed to meeting the
needs of learners in their socio-cultural context(s), they default to ‘aboutism’?
Is there something in the way science educators are socialised that predisposes
them to think like this? Or does science education attract people who already
think like this? Or does this have something to do with how science education is
structured, with how it has developed as a discrete field of enquiry? I don’t think
we know the answers to these questions, and I think this is part of the problem.
In this paper, I want to argue that we need to look closely at ourselves, to dig up
some of our assumptions about science education – what it is and what it is for
– as well as our assumptions about science, education, society, and the future.
I think we are likely to find ‘blind spots’ that are getting in the way of the many
changes that, in the past, we have advocated but never really actioned. Looking to
the future, if these blind spots are not addressed, science education will maintain
its current immunity to change and become increasingly anachronous. I return to
the discussion of blind spots later, but now it is necessary to review some recent
arguments for major change in education and look at the implications of this work
for science education.
The last two decades have seen a tsunami of commentary on education’s future.
References to ‘future-focused’ education, ‘twenty-first century learners’, ‘digital
natives’, and so on are now routine, particularly in policy contexts. According to
this literature, today’s schools are not adequately preparing young people for the
increasingly complex, uncertain, and fast-changing world of the future and the
need for significant change is now urgent.
A two-part story underpins this literature. The first part lists some of the “mega-
trends” driving the ‘paradigm shift’ taking place in the world beyond education.
This list usually includes the following: First is the digital revolution – the
exponential growth in computing power and digital networks, and the implications
of this for society, the economy, and the nature and distribution of employment
opportunities. [14] Second is globalisation – the dissolving of boundaries between
 297 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

nation-states and their economies. Third is the development of new, networked

forms of knowledge that are now ‘too big to know’. [15] Fourth is the projected
shift in world order that is likely to result from the demographic and economic
changes now well under way in, for example, the BRICS (Brazil, Russian, India,
China, and South Africa) group of countries. [16] The fifth mega-trend encompasses
developments linked to the Anthropocene – climate change and the many other
wicked problems we face in the twenty-first century. These trends, it is argued, are
likely to produce the end of work as we currently know it. Most manufacturing
work, as well as whole classes of professional work, will be replaced by intelligent
technologies (this will affect large sections of the current scientific workforce).

THE BREAKDOWN OF NATION-STATE BOUNDARIES WILL LIMIT THE

ABILITY TO LEVY TAXES, WHICH WILL IN TURN LIMIT THE CAPACITY
TO PROVIDE PUBLIC SERVICES, INVEST IN INFRASTRUCTURE AND SO
ON. SOCIAL INEQUALITIES WILL INCREASE. AND THEN THERE ARE THE
PHYSICAL EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE.

Taken together, these trends represent a strong challenge to the current order
and to known ways of doing things. However, the response, in most ‘first world’
countries, thus far, has been to strive to maintain their competitive advantage, to
mitigate the risk of economic and/or political oblivion. This is where education
comes into the picture.
In the second part of the prevailing story, schools are portrayed as having failed
to respond to these trends, as being inert, outdated, obsolete, and no longer ‘fit
for purpose’. Part of another, bygone age, they rely on, and are embedded in, ‘old
knowledge’, ‘old systems’, and ‘old technologies’. We need, the argument goes, to
revolutionise education, to rebuild it from the ground up so that it can better meet
the needs of these ‘new times’.
This story is pervasive and well-known in education contexts: however, it
has not produced a revolution in educational thinking. Schools continue to be
organised by the same knowledge, the same systems, and, to a large extent, the
same technologies (in the widest sense of this term).
In the policy rhetoric on education’s future, two big ideas predominate. The
first is better system performance – a future-focused system is one that produces
higher rates of student achievement and more students with tertiary qualifications.
The second is digitisation – e-learning and better data management. However,
these ideas are just a finessing of old understandings of education: they are not a
framework for preparing young people to live, think, and act in tomorrow’s world.
Education’s apparent inability to engage with futures thinking, like science
education’s inability to find its way out of the impasse it is in, has to do with its
 298 SCIENCE EDUCATION FOR THE ANTHROPOCENE

genealogy, its connection to some big ideas that, in the postmodern Anthropocene
age, may no longer apply.
Modern education was forged in the transition from agriculture-based
economies and societies to predominantly urbanised, industrially oriented ways of
life. The development of mass schooling was important for its role in producing the
human resources – and consumers – needed in modern economies. The subjects of
the modern school curriculum, including science, were developed to support the
growth of modern economies and societies. However, modernity was based on (and
made possible by) the burning of fossil fuels, and this period in history, characterised
by some authors as ‘carboniferous capitalism’ is coming to an end. [17] This has
implications well beyond the economic context.
Sociological and philosophical analyses of the Anthropocene’s implications
for modernity’s key assumptions are well under way. A case is being made by some
scholars for a new paradigm of post-carbon social theory, for a reworking of the
modern conceptions of society, politics, and the economy. [18] In other disciplines,
there is talk of the shift to postnormal times. [19] As readers of this volume will be
aware, this term was first used in the 1990s to describe changes in science: however,
it is now widely applied across a range of other, very different disciplines. Key to its
meaning is the recognition that things are no longer certain, simple, or stable (if
they ever were). Uncertainty, complexity, chaos, and contradictions are the ‘new’
normal. As Ziauddin Sardar puts it:

We live in an in-between period where old orthodoxies are dying, new

ones have yet to be born, and very few things seem to make sense.
Ours is a transitional age, a time without the confidence that we can
return to any past we have known and with no confidence in any path to
a desirable attainable sustainable future. [20]

Everything is now complex – that is, deeply entangled, inter-connected,

unpredictable, and open. Any given problem has multiple dimensions: there can
be no right or wrong answers, just different ways to understand the problem.
Reality is incomprehensible via the traditional disciplines, which rely on reducing
the system to a selection of discrete units, inevitably leaving out key aspects. As
Sardar puts it, in postnormal times, business-as-usual modes of thinking and
behaving are ‘now dangerously obsolete’: they are ‘an invitation to impending
catastrophe’. [21]
If, as these scholars argue, we have moved into the postnormal, postcarbon,
Anthropocene era and modernity’s key concepts no longer apply, then it seems we
need to think again about the meaning of education and society, and, following from
this, the meaning (and purpose) of traditional school subjects, including science.
Schools, if we continue to have them, will need to prepare young people for a range
of different possible futures, including possibilities other than the continued
growth model assumed by modern education.
 299 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

Some educational theorists are increasingly beginning to work with these

ideas. [22] A few, most notably Richard Slaughter in the UK, Noel Gough in Australia,
and William Doll in the US have been working in this area for twenty years or more.
However, apart from their work, I think it is fair to say that science education has
lagged behind the other curriculum areas in debating these questions.
There are important reasons for this. One is science’s deep connection to
carboniferous capitalism. Another is that science and technology are routinely
depicted as the future: that is, the idea that the future will be built via advances
in nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology (IT), and so on and
that science will ‘save’ us from the problems we face. But, as Richard Slaughter has
pointed out, science takes place in social contexts.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY DO NOT, BY THEMSELVES, SHAPE THE

FUTURE: IT IS SHAPED BY CHOICES HUMANS MAKE ABOUT THE
VALUES USED TO CREATE AND GUIDE DEVELOPMENTS IN SCIENCE
AND TECHNOLOGY. [23]

The future of science education will similarly be shaped by human choices and
values. The point of this paper is to argue that we are now at an important turning
point. There are choices available to us now, important choices that will shape the
future of science education and, if education really can have a role in this, the future
of the planet.
As a way of trying to see outside the current paradigm, to imagine the kinds of
spaces we need to make choices now, I sketched out three broad scenarios for the
future of science education, written as if we are looking backwards from a point in
time a decade or so in the future. These scenarios or, more properly, ‘orientations to
the future’ are of course simplifications. They are not predictions: their purpose is
to serve as a starting point for the discussions we need to have about the range of
values and assumptions that could – and hopefully will – shape science education’s
future development.

Orientation 1: “Business as Usual”

Science education has continued to see itself as having two main purposes: providing
preprofessional training for the scientists of the future, working in ways that
would be familiar to twentieth century scientists, and producing citizens who are
‘literate’ in science and disposed to support its endeavours. The goal of continuous
improvement, seeking ever more efficient ways of achieving these purposes, has
been maintained. School science has kept its traditionally strong disciplinary
boundaries and continued its search for ways to make its abstract, disembodied
knowledge more relevant and/or engaging to students. New content (like the STS
and/or NoS studies referred to earlier) has been added, and new pedagogies have
 300 SCIENCE EDUCATION FOR THE ANTHROPOCENE

been developed. Discussion of the importance of scientific skills, capabilities or

competencies continued, largely apart from the content debates and the pedagogical
connections between the knowing, doing, and thinking aspects of science remain
under-theorised. Debate about why so many students are not particularly positive
about school science and/ or a career in science has continued, and research has
increasingly focused on ‘teacher effects’ – improving teachers’ content knowledge,
their pedagogical knowledge, and their pedagogical content knowledge, via new
and improved pre-service teacher education and in-service professional learning
programmes. School-scientist collaborations have been a focus: these were
designed to bridge gaps in teachers’ science knowledge, to provide access to up-
to-date technologies and ‘authentic’ science experiences for students. Investment
in e-learning, both as a tool for communication and collaboration, and as a way of
providing simulated and/or authentic science experiences, has increased hugely.
Because science has continued to be seen as central to future economic prosperity,
there has been significant investment in science education; however, it remains in
a ‘puzzle-solving’ mode.

Orientation 2: “Science as Innovation”

The early twenty-first century saw an explosion of interest in the concept of
innovation. Science and innovation (which were traditionally distinguished) came
to be seen as strongly linked, and science/innovation came to be seen as the basis
of virtually all new economic growth.

SCIENCE WAS VALUED, NOT AS AN END IN ITSELF, BUT FOR ITS

‘PERFORMATIVITY’, WHAT CAN BE DONE WITH IT. WHILE THIS SHIFT
REFLECTED PERCEIVED ECONOMIC IMPERATIVES, IT WAS ALSO BASED
ON AN ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF CHANGES IN SCIENCE IN THE LATER
TWENTIETH CENTURY.

First was the shift to what the British Kiwi psychist John Ziman calls ‘post-academic’
science: large teams of scientists, working in complex networks, on large-scale,
multi-disciplinary projects, which often have complex ethical and/or stakeholder
issues. [24] Second was the development, in the early twenty-first century, of new,
more open forms of science: that is, increased use of non-expert data collection,
crowdsourcing, open sharing, discussion, and publishing of early results, and
highly networked, ‘just-in-time’ collaborations. [25] This Science 2.0 is highly
productive: it is, according to the commentators, the source of innovation in
today’s world. [26] Alongside this were massive changes to traditional conceptions
of knowledge and expertise. In the age of Big Data, knowledge became ‘too big to
know’. No longer a thing in itself, it became seen as existing in, and a property of,
301 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

networks not individual minds or even disciplines. [27] These changes, combined
with the policy emphasis on innovation, produced calls for change in school
science. Initially, these involved greater emphasis on collaborative work, e-learning,
and students participating in authentic science (such as bird counts or collecting
weather or water quality data). However, these were soon recognised as ‘business
as usual’ science education (albeit more authentic and with better technology), as
opposed to teaching for innovation, and the focus shifted. Picking up on research
on the conditions needed for innovation, science educators began to advocate
approaches designed to develop the ‘diversive’ forms of curiosity found in very
young children into the deeper, more disciplined, epistemic forms of curiosity that
underpin mature intellectual development. [28] These new strategies also aimed to
build students’ capacity to collaborate with people very different from themselves,
to build deep knowledge in specific areas and to use this knowledge in a range of
creative endeavours. While there was an apparent shift away from the traditional
emphasis on the concepts and processes of science as ends in themselves, the aim
was for students to develop deep knowledge in a few areas of science, to allow them
to engage in “knowledge-building” in areas of personal interest. However, because
most people’s ideas about science education’s purpose did not change very much,
implementation of these strategies was patchy. While there was plenty of talk
about collaboration, curiosity, communication, and design thinking, these terms,
like enquiry, capabilities, NoS, SSIs, and the like, did not revolutionise science
education: they simply became more stuff to know for students.

Orientation 3: Post-Normal Science Education

In the first quarter of the twentieth century, the increasing likelihood of abrupt
climate change came to be widely accepted. The continued growth scenario became
untenable and the possibility of other images of the future had to be considered.
This was deeply disruptive to educational thinking. Environmental considerations
were nothing new in education: the last half century or so had seen the development
of many environmental and/or sustainability education programmes. But because
these initiatives rested on many of the same assumptions as mainstream education,
they were not especially helpful for supporting the kinds of change needed to
transition beyond the Anthropocene. Fortunately, in the early twenty-first century,
a few theorists had started to think about the demands of the Anthropocene
shift. Some emphasised the qualities people need to cope with postnormal times:
for example, Sardar and the South African philosopher Paul Cilliers argued that
imagination, creativity, and ethical thinking are critical. [29] The creativity theorists,
on the other hand, emphasised resilience, persistence, and the capacity to ‘manage
polarities’ – the ability to hold multiple perspectives simultaneously and the ability to
shift between openness and discipline. [30] Other theorists focused on new thinking
tools. For systems/complexity theorists, while complex systems are fundamentally
unmasterable, it is possible to investigate elements of their behaviour via what the
Welsh futurist David Snowden calls ‘safe-to-fail probes’. [31] Educationists began to
 302 SCIENCE EDUCATION FOR THE ANTHROPOCENE

use systems thinking – to see learning systems where before they had seen individual
students and subjects. [32] However, science educators struggled to adapt to this
new thinking. A few began to advocate teaching about science as a complex system
and/or teaching for complexity. Others made the case for seeing science education
as a complex system. [33] However, this work was a radical departure from science
education’s traditional vision of itself. At this point in time, it is not yet clear whether
complexity thinking’s influence will provoke a paradigm shift or whether the field
will continue to move slowly towards entropy and eventual death.

EACH OF THE THREE SCENARIOS ABOVE HAS A DIFFERENT ORIENTATION

TO THE FUTURE. MY PURPOSE IN CONSTRUCTING THEM WAS TO MAKE
THE POINT THAT WE NEED TO ACKNOWLEDGE A RANGE OF DIFFERENT
POSSIBILITIES FOR THE FUTURE, AND TO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THERE
ARE CHOICES TO BE MADE.

However, I noticed my own default position as I was writing these scenarios: each
sets out a different context for meeting students’ needs, suggesting different
knowledge and/or capacities accordingly. This focus on the needs of students does
not address the blind spots in the discipline of science education that I argued are
obstructing its development. To bring this all together, I want to look at science
education’s future through a completely different lens, one that I think is a potential
catalyst for change.
The French philosopher Bruno Latour, in his 2013 Gifford Lectures, sees
the Anthropocene as heralding a major intellectual shift. Building on his long-
term investigation of modernity, Latour argues that we need to see nature, not
as something to be tamed, as something to be deified, or something we are apart
from, but something we are deeply engaged with. [34] This focus on nature, not as
an “object of enquiry”, but as part of us, something we are inextricably entangled
with, needs new ways of thinking, new tools that are capable of exploring what he
refers to as the ‘crossings’, ‘borders’, or ‘conversations’ between science and nature.
For Latour, the Anthropocene challenges scientists to think very differently about
science – what it is, what it is for, and what and who it should engage with. [35]
The Anthropocene’s advent challenges science education in a similar way. It
challenges science educators to think very differently about what science education
is, about what it is for, who it is for, and what and who it should be engaging with.
Following Latour, it suggests that instead of framing science, education, and society
as discrete entities, we need to foreground the ‘crossings’ or spaces between science,
education, and society.
Latour’s emphasis on interconnectedness, entanglements and complexity is part
of the wider intellectual turn I’ve outlined. How then can this challenge be taken
 303 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

up in science education, a field dominated by its predilection for entities? In what

follows, I offer the beginnings of a framework for tackling this very considerable
challenge. Getting underneath this predilection requires new thinking tools,
approaches that allow us to see the system differently.
Some recent work on the concept of futures literacy has been helpful to me in
beginning this process. According to Riel Miller, the purpose of futures studies
is not mechanistic prediction of the future, extrapolating from current trends, or
managing risk. Nor is it utopian thinking, steering us towards certain desirable
futures. These, he says, are the opposite of what futures studies is about. Instead,

[w]hat distinguishes futures studies from other disciplines is their

preoccupation with how we create the future every day and on this basis
to analyse the prospects for change – be it one day or a century from
now… Most of futures studies focuses on exposing how the future cannot
be predicted because it is contingent on choices we make starting
now. The aim is to evoke a much wider and deeper sense of possible
futures, in this sense entirely unlike the predictive traditions that
depend very heavily on either continuity or on exogenous events like
an apocalypse. [36]

Miller advocates what he calls futures literacies, strategies that scaffold the
anticipation of a range of possible futures, in ways that are not constrained by our
past, usually unnoticed, assumptions. [37] As the Australian futurist Keri Facer
puts it,

[t]his perspective changes the dominant metaphor for our orientation

toward the future. Rather than envisaging ourselves walking forwards
into a future in which choices are laid out before us and from
which we must choose, carefully selecting paths to avoid risks and
fears. Instead we might imagine ourselves walking backwards into an
unknowable future, in which possibilities flow out behind us from our
actions. [38]

But to think about and make choices for the future, we first must be aware of the
basis for our past choices. This, in the case of science education, seems to be a
series of unconscious assumptions. We need strategies for helping us release these
assumptions, strategies that will allow us to see the system in new ways and in all
its complexity.
System change involves addressing the mind-set out of which the system
arises. [39] This of course is no easy task. As the American leadership experts
Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linksy put it, ‘enough important
people like the situation exactly as it is, whatever they may say about it, or it would
not be the way it is’. [40]
 304 SCIENCE EDUCATION FOR THE ANTHROPOCENE

While it is common for individuals and organisations in a system to rhetorically

promote new approaches and paradigm shifts, the capacity to fully embrace and enact
new ideas is often limited by existing but unnoticed or unexamined assumptions
and beliefs. These hidden assumptions obstruct, or, as Kegan and Lahey put it, make
individuals and organisations ‘immune to change’. [41] Overcoming this immunity
requires us to bring these assumptions to consciousness, or, as the American adult
development theorist Robert Kegan puts it, ‘make them object’. Kegan writes:

differentiation always precedes integration. … Before we can reconnect

to, internalise, or integrate something with which we were formerly
fused [or ‘subject to’], we must first distinguish ourselves from
it [‘make it object’]. [42]

So, what are the unnoticed assumptions in science education that we need to ‘make
object’ so that they can be put up for discussion, and engaged with in new ways for
the ‘new times’? Here is my attempt to notice some of the more obvious ones.
First, science. We treat science as an entity, something that, while it evolves,
already exists as a thing in itself, outside human thought (and values), and,
therefore, coming before education (and society). While there is now a large body
of work in the philosophy and sociology of science showing that science, like all
the other disciplines, is a social construction and therefore evolves alongside, and
embedded in, our social systems, there is another, different point to be made here.
The debate over which – science, society, or education – comes first (and therefore
structures whatever comes after it) just reinforces our predilection for entities.

SEEING OUR WAY OUT OF THIS RUT REQUIRES US TO ASK DIFFERENT

QUESTIONS: HOW ARE SCIENCE, SOCIETY, AND EDUCATION INTER-
CONNECTED? HOW DO THEY DEPEND ON EACH OTHER? HOW DO THEY
INFLUENCE EACH OTHER? HOW DO THEY CONSTRUCT EACH OTHER?
HOW DO THEY TALK TO EACH OTHER?

What does asking these kinds of questions tell us about the system they are part of?
What new ways of looking at it are opened up? What new “images of the future”
become possible?
Second, Education. We treat education as the process of accumulating
conceptual and practical knowledge, which develops the mind and prepares people
for the world of work and for citizenship. It takes place in specialised institutions
and involves following a pre-set curriculum, assisted by teachers. But is this
kind of education, already being called into question, likely to continue? Other
learning opportunities are already available – via the new knowledge networks,
305 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

invisible colleges, not-school and so on, and preparation for the world of work
is unlikely to remain a key function. Electronic devices will render traditional
practices redundant – teaching will have to become something other than the mass
instruction of students, through pre-determined steps, to mastery of topics that
are of little interest to them. What should education’s goals be as we transition to
the Anthropocene? How, if at all, could education support people to work well with
complexity, uncertainty, and contradiction? How, if at all, could it support people to
work well with each other?
Third, society is also treated as an entity, as something that has always existed.
Yet it too is a construct of modernity. Modern mass education was supposed to
produce the kind of society we want, to create the ‘glue’ that makes it possible and
holds it together. A great deal of what is taught and how it is taught has this purpose.
But maybe society will be held together differently in the future. Or maybe holding
it together will not be possible in an age of ‘filter bubbles’ and steadily increasing
inequalities. [43]
Fourth, we treat ‘the future’ as if it were a single something, and we treat it
as if it already exists. As Miller, Facer, and others point out, this closes down the
possibilities for thinking and acting to create it. This is obviously just a beginning:
my point here is that noticing these assumptions, bringing them to consciousness,
is a necessary precursor to change, to seeing science education differently for the
future. If we want there to be a future for science education, I think we need to
start seeing its purpose as being to support different ways of defining, envisaging,
constructing, and creating the future – in students, but, before this, in ourselves.
Even considering this has profound implications for what we can see and what we
can do – now, in the present. [44]
306 SCIENCE EDUCATION FOR THE ANTHROPOCENE

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future. Ethos 10 October 2010.
DRAMA EDUCATION AND
APPLIED THEATRE IN
POSTNORMAL TIMES
Michael Anderson

The Western world is moving uneasily from one uncertainty to the next. In our
nations, the ravages of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) have brought into sharp
focus the disparities between the rich and the poor. The overwhelming greed
of bankers and corporations has led to ‘austerity’ which means, for citizens of
Greece, Ireland, Spain, and many other countries, poverty. At the same time
those responsible for these corporate crimes have remained largely untouched,
untarnished, and in many cases rewarded. While there is nothing novel about
corporate greed, contemporary capitalism and hyperactive market economies
have created globalised and networked economic misery. This crisis of confidence,
a crisis of trust, has developed in the midst of other crises. The crisis of climate
change, the crisis of food security and the crisis of mass refugee movements are
a result of wars. The rapid exchange of information that technology now allows
has created a maelstrom of crises that are complex, contradictory, and confusing.
As the American sociologists Brent K. Marshall and J. Steven Picou suggest, ‘(t)he
critical question is not how do we reduce uncertainty, but rather how do we make
better decisions in a world of irreducible uncertainties?’ [1] Obama said in 2009 on
his inauguration:

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our

nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and
hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and
irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure
to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes
have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our healthcare is
too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further
evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and
threaten our planet. [2]
 312 Drama Education and Applied Theatre in Postnormal Times

These coinciding conditions have moved international relationships to a situation

that Ziauddin Sardar calls postnormality. [3] The term first emerged when
philosophers of science, Silvio Funcowitz and Jerome Ravetz, sought to understand
‘unpredictability, incomplete control and a plurality of legitimate perspectives’. [4]
They argued that beyond the certainties of scientific method a new understanding
was required that facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high, and decisions
urgent. Beyond the normality paradigm, espoused by the American philosopher
of science Thomas Kuhn, Funcowitz and Ravetz developed a way of thinking about
science and more recently the humanities that pushed the bounds of certainty and
engage with the ambiguity of the modern condition. While Funcowitz and Ravetz
do not argue the postnormal paradigm completely replaces the scientific method
they do argue that ‘we would be misled if we retained the image of a process where
true scientific facts simply determine the correct policy conclusions’. [5] Policy
in science and other spheres is still somewhat driven by the ‘normality principle’
driven by ‘facts’.
The normality paradigm is, however, an inadequate and, to a large extent,
discredited starting point for education and schools and yet schools are almost
universally predicated on assumptions that arise from normality: cause and effect,
economic growth, and industrial prosperity. [6] The testing and reporting regimes
imposed on schools by Governments in Western economies, such as Australia and
the United Kingdom, have created a market-driven schooling system that is much
more about training than it is about imagined futures. As educationalists Pat
Thomson, Bob Lingard, and Terry Wrigley suggest:

Governments around the world are committed to changing education.

These changes are framed by national economic imperatives and driven
by the need to be globally competitive in today’s globalised economy.
This is not change driven by an imaginary of a better and more
socially just future for all, but of a more competitive economy,
powered by improved human capital and better skills. [7]

In the face of evidence that the old models of schooling are at best inadequate
and at worst failing the large shifts demanded by the conditions of postnormality.
Postnormality presents challenges to participants in education to reconsider the old
‘normalities’ and re-imagine what schooling could be in a ‘post-fact’ world, where
students require the skills and understandings to confront the contradictions,
chaos, and complexities of the future. [8]

A Postnormal Tomorrow?
If the realities of postnormality begin to overtake our schooling and our society,
what might that mean and what we might do, as drama educators and applied
theatre workers, in response. According to Ziauddin Sardar the postnormal age is:
 313 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

… characterised by uncertainty, rapid change, realignment of power,

upheaval, and chaotic behaviour. We live in an in-between period
where old orthodoxies are dying, new ones have yet to be born, and
very few things seem to make sense. Ours is a transitional age, a
time without the confidence that we can return to any past we have
known and with no confidence in any path to a desirable, attainable,
or sustainable future. [9]

Sardar argues that the combination of complexity, chaos, and contradiction has
fuelled a shift from normalcy to postnormality, sweeping away the institutions
and understandings society has clung to for thousands of years and replacing
them with uncertainty. Sardar argues that this condition is different to other
shifts in history as the combination of rapid networked systems facilitates rapid
and chaotic shifts. This is demonstrable in two distinct and interacting ways in
science and global conflict. In economic terms, the pressures bearing down on the
global economy, from networked greed and environmental pressure, created new
and unprecedented conditions beyond the ‘normalcy’ of market economics. As
British Futurist Gill Ringland argues, economic models have been in decline long
before the GFC struck: ‘concerns about energy, environmental and security issues,
food price increases, growing economic and financial imbalances and asset price
inflation should have suggested that all was not well with this model’. [10]
While financial crises are not new, the rebalancing of labour and resource
economics from the West to the East means that the ‘debt and deficit’ business as
usual model has become vulnerable. Ringland continues:

recovery from the crisis is likely to be slower than that of the

new competitor nations. Competition will be intense, and on new
terms. Global systems issues – such as environmental change, but
also international law and finance, access to raw materials and the
management of intellectual property – all require the rich nations to
sacrifice some of their power. This combination of power rebalancing
and an institutional vacuum implies that the next decade will be a
turbulent one. [11]

While science and technology has driven economic growth in many economies,
there has been a less welcome rise in the side effects of these technologies.
As Marshall and Picou argue:

these same advances tend to manufacture environmental problems that are

increasingly complex, large-scale, and destructive. This is the paradox
of the twenty-first century. We are increasingly reliant on science and
technology to solve ‘normal’ environmental problems, but some of these
solutions in turn create ‘post-normal’ environmental problems. [12]
 314 Drama Education and Applied Theatre in Postnormal Times

There is a paradoxical bind here. Society has become reliant on the network and
market economies but the combined fruits of both of these are often poisonous. The
certainties of ‘facts’ and ‘normality’ have been supplanted by societal conditions
that Sardar nominates in a postnormal world; complexity, contradiction, and chaos.
The first condition of postnormality, and that Sardar nominates, is complexity.

Complexity
One of the most compelling demonstrations of postnormal complexity is the
ongoing ‘wars’ on terrorism whether they are state sanctioned or initiated by
organisations such as Hamas or the Taliban or state sponsored. These conflicts are
often in response to an abhorrent act such as a terror attack or a chemical weapons
attack on civilian populations. There are, however, complex forces at work as the
networked global community assesses the cost of action and/or non-action on the
global community. Morality in these cases is shaped and driven at least in part by
energy security and the economic pressures higher oil prices could bring to bear on
local economies. The networking and linking of these geopolitical and economic
factors integrated with the rapid delivery of live or almost live coverage brings
new complexities to bear on decisionmakers and creates complicated tensions for
political leaders. In one of the main theatres of the war on terror, Afghanistan, the
United Nations Mission to Afghanistan records the death toll as 14,728 in addition
to the 2996 who were killed in the 9/11 attacks. These wars on terror with their
theatres in New York, London, Bali, Afghanistan, and Iraq have taken an enormous
toll in human life and human hope.

THESE ARE COMPLEX CONFLICTS, THAT ARE TO A CERTAIN EXTENT,

ABOUT BIG ISSUES, SUCH AS INTERNATIONAL ESTEEM, WESTERN
CONFIDENCE, OIL, AND THE PLACE OF THE US IN INTERNATIONAL
POWER PLAYS.
The problem with coming up with a coherent response to the ‘war on terror’ is the
complexity this global war produces. The attacks of 9/11 remain abhorrent, but do
they justify the torture and civilian deaths that have been the legacy of the West’s
war on terror? This ‘war’ seems in some ways more complex than many others
from our past, as former US Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice said: ‘we’re in a
new world. We’re in a world in which the possibility of terrorism, married up with
technology, could make us very, very sorry that we didn’t act’. [13]
And perhaps this complexity is a contributing factor to Sardar’s next C, Chaos.

Chaos
The global warming phenomenon that will see chaotic changes in weather patterns,
a rise in food and water conflict and widespread famine, is now upon us. [14] We see
 315 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

the portents of this effect in the long droughts and the savage weather that seem
to prophecy the chaos to come as politicians disengage with the issue. Chaos has
also become more prevalent in our once civil societies. In 2005, in Australia we saw
the largest ever race riot being coordinated on mobile phones. [15] Racist anarchy
reigned, the sleepy seaside Sydney suburb of Cronulla exploded in the most violent
and chaotic racist violence seen in years. Likwise in the UK, in 2011, in Hackney,
Brixton, Chingford, Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham, and Liverpool chaotic
riots also stained the landscape. [16] These riots had the added feature of social
media that propelled the suddenness and the ferocity of the chaos. As the British
journalist Stephanie Baker points out riots in the UK are not novel but ‘new social
media played a key role in organising the recent riots with smart phones giving
those with access to these technologies the power to network socially and to incite
collective disorder’. [17] Protest in the postnormal world is organised, coordinated,
and delivered through mediated crowds for the voracious and instant twenty-four-
hour news cycle.

Contradictions
Sardar’s third C is contradictions. As he says, we now live in:

A complex, networked world, with countless competing interests and

ideologies, designs, and desires, behaving chaotically, can do little
more than throw up contradictions … It is the natural product of
numerous antagonistic social and cultural networks jostling for
dominance. [18]

Teacher education, internationally, is one such site of this contradiction.

We know of the importance of sustained supported teacher preparation that
attends to theory and practice [19]. Yet we see governments in the UK, Australia,
and the US delivering programmes where six-week training makes you ‘ready
to teach’ and school ready. Even though the weight of evidence indicates these
alternative pathways provide a better model, governments continue to roll these
schemes out. [20]
Another example of the contradiction of our times, is in education. We know
from the overwhelming weight of research that large and frequent testing does not
enhance, let alone sustainably enhance, students’ learning. Yet, testing regimes
persist in schools, that effectively make the goal of learning, testing. As Thomson,
Lingard, and Wrigley argue:

In stark contrast to this imaginary of a socially just world, and often

driven by PISA envy, educational policymakers mobilise various forms
of audit and intervention designed to produce measurable increases in
‘performance’ at system, school and student levels. [21]
 316 Drama Education and Applied Theatre in Postnormal Times

Fundamentally contradictory pieces of evidence become policy and practice. These

contradictions have become so entrenched that often the practices go on largely
unchallenged. Contradictory policy is allowed to stand because in postnormal times
society seems to have lost its ability to discern or trust ‘normal’ sources of evidence.

Drama Education and Applied Theatre in a Postnormal World

The wonder of our field is that we have the shape-shifting power of our art form to
answer these ambiguous, complicated realities found in postnormality. We have an
aesthetic, a pedagogy, a process that, through its features, ingests, processes, and
produces meaning from chaos, complexity, and contradiction. Drama and theatre
allow participants to respond to ambiguity, conflict, indifference, and complexity.
Critically this art form allows us to make meaning through structure, form,
and imagination, through devising, through enactment, through embodiment,
through creation.
Sardar argues in the closing of his article that the only way to transition from
postnormality to new normality is through imagination and creativity. He says:

Imagination is the main tool, indeed I would suggest the only tool,
which takes us from simple reasoned analysis to higher synthesis.
While imagination is intangible, it creates and shapes our reality;
while a mental tool, it affects our behaviour and expectations. [22]

Sardar’s identification of imagination as a way of delivering more informed analysis

and ‘higher synthesis’ positions drama education and applied theatre as potent
responses to postnormality. Drama’s potential as a tool for social imagination and as
a tool for ‘analysis and higher synthesis’ to imagine the shape of what might emerge
in a postnormal space, is potent but there are significant blockages to that potential.
The strongest lies in the persistence of curriculum hierarchies that push drama to
the peripheries of schooling.
We have said and heard so many times before the claim that drama education
and applied theatre should be at the centre of schooling and the centre of community
understanding. [23] Drama education and applied theatre now have a body of large,
diverse international research extending from ‘Champions of Change’ to ‘Drama
Improves Lisbon Key Competences in Education’ and more recently the role of ‘Arts
in Motivation, Engagement and Achievement’ study that provide an expansive and
substantial evidence base for drama and the arts as influential factors in student
learning, within and outside the arts. [24] This body of research evidence provides a
strong case for why the arts in general and drama specifically should hold a strong
position in the curriculum and schooling. Yet the curriculum hierarchy persists,
and in some places that have traditionally been strongholds for drama curricula like
the UK, the subject has been systematically removed from the curriculum. [25] This
contradiction suggests that even though the evidence is now in that change even in
a postnormal world is slow.
 317 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

In a world that has gone postnormal, what space can a pedagogy that is low
down on the curriculum hierarchy contribute to the massively complex postnormal
landscape? Perhaps rather than being a threat to drama education and applied
theatre, postnormality presents several opportunities that normal times do not
for the revitalisation through some inherent qualities of drama and theatre that
assist in the navigation through a postnormal world. [26] Perhaps drama and
applied theatre could make a contribution to the rebuilding of hope and the social
imagination in these confused, contradictory, and chaotic times. There is, however,
a caveat on this potential that needs to be signalled before a discussion about the
potential power of drama for transformation – the tendency for some in the field to
over-reach in their advocacy for the ‘transformational power’ of drama education
and applied theatre. In his recent writing about the politics of transformation
in applied theatre discourses, the Professor of Theatre and Performance at the
University of New South Wales, Michael Balfour highlighted some of the tensions
that surround the advocacy and funding relationships in applied theatre arguing
for a different kind of connection between advocacy, research, and practice in the
field suggesting a recalibration of our claims for change:

a theatre of ‘little changes’ provides a way to re-orientate what

is possible about the work. It moves away from the need for change
rhetoric, impact assessments and the strain for verifiable measurements
in defining applied theatre, and places an emphasis on the need for
‘theory generating’ research, and propositions about how theatre
actually works. [27]

The advocacy driven rhetoric of change that funders, bureaucrats, and politicians
have come to expect is rarely realistic. As the English educationalist Jonothan
Neelands and Balfour argue, change does occur but the expectations created for the
gatekeepers should be kept in check with what the evidence suggests or as Balfour
argues, ‘(c)hange rarely occurs in the way any social architect plans for … maybe it
is a matter of simply reconsidering the scale of the claims for change that are made
about the practice’. [28]

Positioning Drama Education for Postnormal Times

In the face of complexity, chaos, and contradiction, what might drama education
and applied theatre have to contribute to imagining ourselves into a new post-
postnormal future? If we can imagine that drama education and applied theatre does
have a contribution to make in a postnormal world, how might the field reposition
and reimagine itself to make a difference? Rather than laying out blueprints or
plans I have nominated several qualities of drama education and applied theatre
that I believe provide a potent answer to the postnormal condition. I believe that
they must be developed and foregrounded in our research to help us and our field
make a contribution to understanding postnormality.
 318 Drama Education and Applied Theatre in Postnormal Times

Democratic Creativity
The rise of what the American urban studies theorist Richard Florida calls the
‘creative class’ has provided a further segregation of the elite ‘creative’ and the
‘rest’. [29] Even though this new demographic is being touted as beneficial, it does
have the (perhaps) unintended consequence of separating the ‘creative classes’
from whatever constitutes the other classes. The persistence of amateur drama at
and arts of all kinds reminds us that participation and ability in the arts are classless
and a democratic right of citizens in the community. As Michael Balfour points out
applied art can be found in diverse contexts including far away from the supposed
high incomes and middle-class predilections of the creative classes. [30]
Our responsibility as researchers in this field is to provide an understanding of
the tools of creation, the ways of knowing that our field has to offer and find new
ways to take them to places and people that currently feel excluded from the arts. [31]
Applied theatre has found new ways to take participatory drama and theatre into
‘refugee camps, schools, hospitals, homes for the elderly, remote villages, prisons,
indigenous communities and care homes for children’. This kind of approach has
taken drama and theatre into the communities that are often victims of postnormal
conditions. Applied theatre has a track record in democratising access to drama
and theatre by providing access to the tools of creation and performance. As we
consider how we might regenerate our field in a postnormal future, redoubling our
efforts to democratise creativity, taking it to all classes, not just the creative classes,
must surely be a priority.
In a postnormal world the challenge is to consider how we might make
creativity a right for all, rather than an option for the creative classes. We need to
continue dispelling the myth that creativity is some individual, divinely inspired,
and mediated gift. It is the right of our children, our adults, our elders, and our
communities in the same way that language and communication are rights. In fact,
it may be one of the most important rights to ensure that we can imagine and enact
our futures in postnormal times. We must redouble our research efforts to make
creativity infiltrate new spaces and places. As British theatre and performance
scholar Helen Nicholson suggests:

In a modest way, the theatre can help imagine what the shape
of [the future] might look like. If theatre is an interweaving of
memory and liveness and learning is constructed in negotiation and
dialogue, theatre education offers a powerful place to encounter the
unexpected, to extend horizons of expectations and consider where
we are positioned in the world. It is material and ephemeral, and
recognizes that meaning is made not only in the symbols, metaphors,
and narratives of drama, but between spaces and places, in the gaps
and the silences of reflection as well as in the movement of and
activity of practice. [32]
 319 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

The power to know and understand our world through theatre that Nicholson
identifies here is not the privilege of a few; it is the right of all communities and
we, through our research and practice, should redouble our efforts to make
the creativity that we know and cherish a right for all our communities with
methodologies that suit the needs of our community, not just the needs of the
academies most of us work for. Which is the second quality I would like to nominate:
methodological innovation.

Methodological Innovation
The originators of postnormal science Silvio Funcowitz and Jerome Ravetz argue
that they introduced the term not to supplant scientific method but rather to make
a place for inquiry that dealt with research questions that did not fit the strictures
of positivism. [33] Perhaps because of the interdisciplinarity of our field, we have
a rich and vibrant cross-fertilisation of methodological traditions. I think because
we are researching drama education and applied theatre, that are by its very nature
human, ephemeral, political, emotional, and physical, our research is always
seeking innovative methods to record and represent our data. Drama education
and applied theatre have not been colonised by ‘approved’ methods of researching,
rather we have amongst us methodological innovators from education, psychology,
theatre, and philosophy. [34]

OUR HERITAGE IS RICH IN FLEXIBLE METHODOLOGIES THAT MOVE WITH

THEIR COMMUNITIES AND YET REMAIN DEVOTED TO RIGOUR AND THE
CREATION OF MEANING. THIS STANDS IN STARK CONTRAST TO OTHER
FIELDS THAT HAVE ALLOWED HOMOGENOUS RESEARCH METHODS THAT
ARE OFTEN OUTMODED AND IRRELEVANT TO BECOME THE NORM.

There are, however, rich possibilities in creating research collaborations in

a postnormal world. New research alliances with our colleagues in fields such as
computer simulations, criminology, psychology, sociology, cultural studies, and
the like will force us to reshape and refine our methodological traditions for the
changes we see in our communities. As we create these collaborations, we become
open to new methodological traditions that can infuse and ignite our own practice.
I think this innovation and experimentation that has often looked ‘too risky’ and
‘unfundable’ to the research gatekeepers could in fact be a major advantage in
postnormal times. It may be that our field’s search to capture what we do will be a
potent force in a world that relies on solving problems that demand creativity and
imagination and the third quality of the field that marks it out as different from
others, the social imagination.
 320 Drama Education and Applied Theatre in Postnormal Times

The Social Imagination

As our societies enter the next phase of postnormality, there is probably no more
pressing need than the need to understand each other, to empathise, and to imagine
what our future together could be. As Jonothan Neelands said:

The social experience of acting as an ensemble, making theatre that

reflects and suggests how the world might become in the hope that it
is not finished is of course of paramount importance to our young. We
pass them the burden of the world that we have made in the hope that
they will in turn have a world to pass on to their children. In this
task socially made theatre will be their mirror, dynamo and lens –
their tool for change. [35]

Neelands is defining the social imagination here. He is defining the ways we can
through the mirror, the dynamo, and the lens make sense of postnormality and
with a democratic creativity ask what-if questions about our community. The social
imagination allows us to enact and rehearse better futures for our children, for our
adults and for our prisoners and it gives them in the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire’s
terms a sense of critical hope that could provide the glue to cohere our communities
through postnormality. It provides a way to understand what we could be and not
just what we have been. It allows us to imagine a better community.

THE FUTURE OF OUR FIELD MATTERS BECAUSE RESEARCHERS WHO CAN

UNDERSTAND AND ENLIGHTEN OTHERS ABOUT SOCIAL IMAGINATION
WILL PROVIDE OUR COMMUNITY WITH A PRECIOUS GIFT, A GIFT OF
TOLERANCE, A GIFT OF PEACE, A GIFT OF HOPE.
Postnormal times call for radically different approaches. Postnormal times
call for researchers who understand ambiguity, who value imagination and
who champion creativity. Postnormality could be the golden years of our field,
a time where social imagination, methodological innovation, and democratic
creativity can meet the needs of a confused and uncertain world. Our legacy will
be judged on whether we have made a clear and rigorous argument about putting
methodological innovation, democratic creativity, and the social imagination at the
centre of the debates not for the ‘good’ of our field or own careers, but for those
who are a collateral damage in a postnormal world. Change for those set adrift in
a post-normal world even ‘little’ change could be real change. We must chart our
course for the postnormal times ahead because as Brutus reflects following the
assassination of the titular character in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar:
 321 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyages of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries:
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
322 Drama Education and Applied Theatre in Postnormal Times

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ZOMBIE DISCIPLINES
Liam Mayo and Shamim Miah

Ours is an age defined by significant change. In these postnormal times we are

suspended between the no-longer and the not-quite-yet. [1] Those things we have
held to be true are increasingly irrelevant, ways of knowing and being in the world
are rapidly transforming, and the tools that we once used to navigate change have
become all but obsolete. [2] With the loss of faith in science, technology, and politics
to lead the West into the future, with the traditional touchstones questioned, it
seems there is uncertainty not just about the future, but about how to even begin
thinking about the future. [3] In these postnormal times, humans de-emphasise
change and cling to traditional notions of stability and certainty: a product of our
perception of what is and what is not normal. As a consequence, our postnormal
condition nurtures ignorance and fosters uncertainty, characteristics which, we
argue here, are systemically promoted through zombie disciplines. [4]
In an interview with the Journal of Consumer Culture, the noted German sociologist
Ulrich Beck reflected on the challenge of theorising about a society whose system
of coordinates is changing significantly. [5] Throughout his career, Beck had
repeatedly rejected ‘zombie categories’ which he attributed to the sociological
classics and claimed embodied aspects of experience that were no longer relevant
in the twenty first century. Zombie categories, such as ‘social class’ or the ‘nation-
state’, Beck contended, are merely kept alive today artificially by scholars. [6] Going
further, in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Beck argued that state-based
concepts of war, peace, friend, foe, enemy, crime, and peace should also be rendered
obsolete. With these concepts, he built the general foundations for the assertion
that sociology, as a discipline, should liberate itself from the intellectual blockages
that it had inherited from the classical tradition. ‘How can one,’ Beck queries, ‘make
reasonable decisions about the future under such conditions of uncertainty?’ [7]
Indeed, these sentiments mirror those of futurist Ziauddin Sardar, who
argued that postnormal times provides a lens through which futures studies may
interpret and understand the present period and develop a language to describe
the ruptures that are occurring across disciplines and canons. Traditional futures
approaches deal with the plurality of alternative futures by distinguishing
between plausible, probable, possible, and preferable. Now, Sardar contends that
a postnormal landscape challenges empiricist futures and makes conventional
strategic planning and foresight work problematic. [8] This is not the death nail
for futures studies; rather, it is a redoubling of importance of futures approaches
 328 ZOMBIE DISCIPLINES

and a signal toward the importance of the imagination in navigating the change
of our age and indeed, the importance of imagination in dealing with zombie
disciplines. [9]
Confronted with zombie disciplines we propose to do three things. First, explore
the erosion in traditional forms of knowledge and how this is impacting the way
change is approached and understood. Expanding on Beck’s notion of ‘zombie
categories’, we argue that it is indeed ‘zombie disciplines’, concomitant with the
erosion of knowledge, that leave us ill-equipped to effectively navigate current
epochal changes. To demonstrate this, we use the example of sociology, unpacking
the characteristics that render it as a zombie discipline. Second, we take Sardar’s
contention and expand further on the notion of imagination as a means ‘to produce
new definitions of everything from art to architecture, politics to policy, science to
spirituality and what it means to be human in postnormal times’. [10]

ANTICIPATORY IMAGINATION IS OFFERED HERE AS A USEFUL PROCESS

FOR QUESTIONING AND FORMULATING THAT IS LINKED TO ‘PEDAGOGIES
OF POSSIBILITY’ AND FOR OPENING SPACES FOR ALTERNATE FORMS OF
KNOWLEDGE CREATION. [11]

We make the case that, in light of zombie disciplines, fostering anticipatory

imagination within curriculums and institutions invites change and transformation
at the personal and cognitive levels while fostering new values and new strategies
that can creatively manage uncertainty and complexity. [12] Third, we address
notions of agency and suggest how, through a reimagining, an ontological shift
from Enlightenment notions of Being to new notion of Becoming is available to us,
which is worth considering given our postnormal context.

Zombies and the Living Dead

The zombie, as a metaphor, provides a deeper critique of knowledge in postnormal
times: occupying the space of both the living and the dead. They embody the paradox
of our transitional age. By nature, the zombie is ‘human and non-human, living and
not living, cultural and non-cultural, natural and supernatural, suspended between
fundamental binaries that most definitions presuppose’. [13] The zombie has its
origins in Haitian Vodou via African spirituality; it represents the embodiment of
the fear associated with the woes of slavery, economics, politics, or spirituality. [14]
Appropriated by modernity, the outbreak of zombieism is a twentieth century
phenomenon rooted in the Western imagination, that has exploded and become
part of the cultural zeitgeist, and transformed into the flesh-eating ghoul of
modern cinema. To date, over one thousand zombie movies have been made since
1920 and over half of them produced in the last ten years. The zombie phenomena
commercialized in 1968 by Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, considered to be the
 329 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

movie to popularise the zombie genre and to establish it as a cultural phenomenon,

replaced the earlier alien villain introduced by H. G. Wells in his 1898 classical novel
War of the Worlds, which was a source of inspiration for many film directors. Now
the threat to Western humanity was not the fear of the alien, the Other, rather, the
threat existed within us, amongst us, an imminent viral threat.
While there has been much academic discussion of the zombie of the cinema,
there has been little examination of the zombie itself, prompting several scholars to
‘analyze the zombie as a symbol in itself’, representative of the ‘anxieties growing
from the anomie resulting from a monolithic authority structure weakened by
secularism, pluralism, and cultural relativity’, quintessentially the slave without
master, subject to their vilest desires, and without hope of divine salvation. [15]
The primary feature of the zombie is that they inhabit a diseased world: by
embodying a diseased body, they exist without cure. In this sense, the zombie lacks
the essential feature of any living organism; rather, they straddle the divide between
the living and dead. Unintelligibly, they are communal in that they vaguely share
proximity despite the absence of any accord between them. [16] They shuffle from
place to place, seemingly unattached; they do not talk, rather communicate their
incommunicability; they are heedless, fierce, and threatening but give no thought
to defending themselves against harm; and are not evil, rather merely scrabbling to
satisfy a base instinct of their own craving. [17] Indeed, zombies are us. Their premise
is based on their self-reflected image of humanity. But zombies are an ugly us. They
lack dignity, and in pursuit of their consumption, they will destroy themselves. [18]
Thus, more than a symbolic representation, the zombie is an abstraction by which
we may explore the erosion of knowledge in postnormal times.
The zombie metaphor has indeed provided utility for the topic of critical
assessment within sociology and, in particular, cultural studies. The zombie as a
metaphor has been used to describe how disciplines, such as sociology, anthropology,
and economics, are based upon ideas which are dead, but paradoxically continue to
walk amongst us. As Quiggin noted:

Some ideas live on because they are useful. Others die and are
forgotten. But even when they have proved themselves wrong and
dangerous, ideas are very hard to kill. Even after the evidence seems
to have killed them, they keep coming back. These ideas are neither
alive nor dead… they are undead, or zombie ideas. [19]

An examination of zombie disciplines is crucial in postnormal times, especially given

that the entire raison d’etre of higher education based upon critique, contestation,
and developing new knowledge has given rise to ‘post-truth’ (postmodernism),
‘deep-fake’ (not possible without computer algorithms), and ‘fake-news’ (made
popular largely due to uncritical masses). Universities, together with some of the
disciplines that are taught, are like the living dead: an uncritical movement of
scholarship, bounded and restricted by its methodological constraints, which
 330 ZOMBIE DISCIPLINES

continues to exist and to teach the next generation of students, thus allowing the
system to self-perpetuate. [20]
A discipline, rooted in traditional forms of knowledge production and
dissemination, in these postnormal times, characterised by chaos, complexity, and
contradiction, rather than leading to wisdom, instead produces an epistemological
veil, a ‘smog of ignorance’: [21] an obnoxious projection of the existence of
knowledge that masks a lack of knowledge within the neoliberal educational system
which benefits only those within the power structure rather than the students. [22]
This diseased reasoning is a helpful way of describing people’s inability to provide
authentic explanations to complex issues because the capacity of organizations to
make judgments has become infected with zombie ideas. [23]

Disciplines and Knowledge

The current disciplinary ordering and structuring of knowledge is largely a
product of the Enlightenment, in general, and modernity, in particular. During
the premodern period, most Western higher education institutions of learning
included four distinct faculties of study: theology, canon law, medicine, and the arts
otherwise known as the liberal arts (which mainly taught the trivium: grammar,
rhetoric, and logic).

THE RISE OF MODERNITY WITNESSED THE EVOLUTION AND EXPANSION

OF A RANGE OF KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS BY NEW AND EMERGING
SCHOLARLY COMMUNITIES. DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY,
DISCIPLINES BECAME A HELPFUL MEDIUM THROUGH WHICH MOST
UNIVERSITIES IN THE WEST WERE ABLE TO CATALOGUE AND ARCHIVE
NEW EMERGING FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE, RANGING FROM THE NATURAL
SCIENCES, TO SOCIAL SCIENCES, AND TO HUMANITIES.

Throughout the early twentieth century, new disciplines were added to the growing
list; with psychology, the late twentieth century witnessed the growth of media
studies, gender studies, and queer studies.
It is clear that the rise of disciplines was closely associated with knowledge
production and dissemination, but as the Icelandic philosopher Páll Skúlason,
in A Critique of Universities, has pointed out, the purpose, function, and objective
of higher education establishments and their relationship with discipline and
knowledge served different purposes. [24] The French tradition, as seen with the
I’Universite de France, which was founded by Napoleon in 1806, viewed discipline
and knowledge as serving the interest of the state. Similarly, the British tradition
considered the function of universities to train the administrators, soldiers, and
331 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

leaders to run the empire. Conversely, the German tradition as developed by the
Prussian philosopher and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt via the Humboldt
University of Berlin considered the importance of advancing science, scholarship,
and research as the purpose of higher education.
A number of critiques of academic disciplines have demonstrated how disciplines
have strong connections with knowledge and not with ethics or wisdom. In an
early critique of discipline, Foucault, in Archaeology of Knowledge, argued how
academic disciplines are simply a set of ‘ideas’ that have been historically grounded
in power structures and have actively re-produced existing power politics. [25]
Furthermore, modern knowledge production translates to power, control, and
exploitation. According to American sociologists Jeffery Guhin and Jonathan
Wyrtzen, knowledge production is a political act, which they term as ‘violence
of knowledge’. [26] They question the liberal assertion that ‘true’ knowledge is
apolitical by locating the deeply political circumstances through which knowledge
is produced. They go on to elucidate the point, drawing upon postcolonial theorists
to describe how the Other, subjected to ‘violence of essentialization’, based upon
the principles of Orientalism, is largely an academic pursuit for dominating,
restructuring, having the authority over the Orient, [27] and epistemic violence’,
which according to the Indian literary critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak refers to
the process by which Western forms of epistemology preclude or destroy local
forms of knowledge. [28] For Sardar, ‘wisdom integrates and unifies the knowledge
and values of a person, it cannot be abused, and a wise person cannot be immoral’.
For the subaltern, knowledge, when linked to disciplines, is not the pursuit of the
greater good, neither is it linked with wisdom – knowledge is the obliteration of the
cultural codings that enable agency. [29]
It has now been established that contemporary knowledge production is linked
to neoliberalism. The cultural theorist Samir Amin illustrates how paradigms
within the social and economic sciences tend to shift with times and schools of
thoughts, often in opposition to one another. This critical analysis reveals that the
dominant paradigm becomes the ‘single thought’ of the moment when it ‘responds
best to the demands posed by the particular phase of capitalist development’
– what best suits those with power and influence in society. [30] Similarly, the
social philosopher Karl Polanyi argued that instead of historically normal patterns
of subordinating the economy to society, the system of self-regulating markets
required subordinating society to the logic of the market. [31] As a result, the
‘developed world’ runs society ‘as an adjunct (accessory) to the market; instead of
the economy being embedded in social relations, social relations are embedded
in the economic system’. [32] More recently, most universities have developed a
tradition which embodies the market and the business model of neo-liberalism; as
Sardar noted, ‘the underlying argument of most of the early literature on the crisis
of education is that thanks to confluence of the rise of neoliberalism, increasing
globalization and advancing communication technology, universities have become
big businesses’. [33] These arguments, centred on discourses of productivity
332 ZOMBIE DISCIPLINES

and activity, paradoxically create feelings of compliance and passivity, including

inability to think, loss of individual control, and contagion. [34] Additionally, the
emphasis on creating a labour force results in the student as the consumer rather
than the learner. These consumers become what Matt M. Husain calls “zombie
graduates,” who are entitled to be happy yet lack critical understanding and suffer
acute philosophical poverty. [35]

Sociology as a Zombie Discipline

Disciplines disseminate ideas and concepts that are no longer representative
of reality but continue to shape minds and outlooks, education and policies,
and outlooks and futures. [36] Zombie disciplines range from anthropology to
economics, political science to development studies, cultural studies to media
studies, all varieties of ‘area studies’, certain types of history and philosophy,
particular perspectives on biology, and many other ‘subjects’ in between. For
illustrative purposes, we will focus on sociology.
Sociology is a product of modernity while concurrently maintaining the objective
to make sense of modernity. Modernity had fundamentally transformed Western
societies through industrialisation, urbanisation, and the decline of religion. The
introduction of sociology made it possible to reflect upon the nature of these socio-
cultural transformations. In short, ‘sociological conceptualizations of capitalism,
modernity, and economic development as western European phenomena emerged
due only to factors endogenous to the region, such as the French Revolution, the
Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution’. [37] However, it is important to
challenge some of the many claims underpinned by the literature related to ideas
of modernity and liberalism, especially related to the socio-political transformation
of France and advances of liberty, equality, and fraternity. In fact, as the Trinidadian
historian Cyril Lionel Robert James has pointed out, it was the slave resistance in
Haiti that was instrumental in shaping these ideas of universal rights in the minds
of French thinkers. [38] Thus, sociology is an outcome of socio-historical factors
of European modernity. Its rise coincided with positivist epistemology, which
developed from the decaying roots of Western religious certainty. Auguste Comte,
the author of Plan of the Scientific Works Necessary for the Re-Organisation of Society,
proposed sociological positivism as a way of solving social problems through rational
planning. Comte maintained that positivist or scientific methods of approaching
society would lead to a linear, orderly, and progressive view of history, starting with
theological stage, through a metaphysical phase, and gradually leading to a positive
or scientific stage.
While the origins of sociology can be traced back to Plato’s Republic (375 BC),
Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah (1377), or even Baron Montesquieu’s work The Spirit
of the Law (1748), it was in the fourth volume of Comte’s 1838 work, Cours de
Philosophie Positive, that the actual term sociology was first used. As a result, he
is the father of modern sociology, and his ideas enjoy the same legitimacy as the
natural sciences. The second key figure within sociology was Herbert Spenser who
 333 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

combined scientific metaphors with sociological theories. Spencer’s The Study of

Sociobiology advocated evolutionary theory of Social Darwinism to ‘explain’ the
intellectual superiority of Europeans over non-Europeans. His idea was used
to justify Western superiority via anthropology and colonialism abroad while
justifying the status quo of the ruling classes in England by resisting social reforms
made by the oppressed working classes. While sociobiology has had a complex and
controversial history, some of the ideas of race science continue to shape popular
and scientific debates.
Given its historical context, it is important to note that the rise of sociology
was materially connected with its Eurocentric formations. As Alatas has noted, the
‘vigorous outburst of colonialism in the nineteenth century was accompanied by
intellectual trends which sought to justify the phenomenon [of colonialism].’ [39]
In light of the current questioning of sociology’s heteronormative standpoint by
feminism, critical race theory, and others, Julian Go has pointed out that sociology,
and by extension any discipline, needs to take stock of issues related to knowledge,
power, and standpoint. So, while the discipline is the product of history, it is the
product of only one history of the victor. [40]

ZOMBIE DISCIPLINES DO NOT ONLY HAVE THEIR FOUNDATIONS FIRMLY

ANCHORED IN IMPERIALIST AND RACIST HISTORIES, BUT ALSO HAVE
‘GREAT MEN’ ASSOCIATED WITH THEM WHO ARE REQUIRED TO BE CITED
WITHIN THE LITERATURE.

Sociology revolves around three thinkers: Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, and Max
Weber. Karl Marx’s ideas have been well documented especially those related to
capitalism, economy, class struggle, and ideology. Perhaps what is less frequently
debated is his idea related to non-European societies. In his analysis of the empires
that existed before industrialisation, Marx viewed pre-capitalist ‘Asiatic Empires,’
such as the Ottoman, Chinese, Indian, and Persian empires, as going through
political change without any social transformation. In his analysis of India, he
argued how despite centuries of political change, the village-centred social order was
unaltered. The British Empire destroyed India’s village-centred order by connecting
India’s local economy with the global economy. For Marx, colonialism was crucial
to create the conditions of a world capitalist order. [41] Max Weber’s writings and
interests were diverse and covered a range of topics, ideas, and concerns. His key
writings on modernity were to establish the claim that while scientific knowledge
existed, especially throughout worlds, such as China, India, and the Islamic world,
systematic rational science was unique to the West and could be traced back to the
Hellenic mind, that is, Ancient Greece. [42] Émile Durkheim’s views on imperialism
were slightly different from those of Marx and Weber, especially given that he
did not publicly advocate nor hold a critical position on French Imperialism. [43]
334 ZOMBIE DISCIPLINES

Nevertheless, these three classical sociologists failed to ‘incorporate the dynamics

of Empire into their historical sociology of contemporary society’. [44]
To spread ideas and concepts, zombie disciplines use canonical texts and, in
the case of sociology, canonical sociological classics. As British sociologist Gregor
McLennan pointed out, these texts ‘were largely couched as grand ethnographies
of social progress, however complicated, featuring a common scenario in which
nonWestern societies are positioned as backward and modern capitalist ones as
advanced’. [45] There are many epistemic shortcomings that gave rise to sociology
as a zombie discipline, perhaps one of the most important of these is based upon the
claims of metrocentrism; that is to say, epistemological ideas underpinned within
sociology, rooted within a specific understanding of Europe and the rest of the
world, are made universal through the writings of Weber, Marx, and Durkheim. [46]
It is important to note that the key to understanding any zombie discipline lies
neither in the uncritical acceptance, nor its rejection, but rather in acknowledging
its ontological standpoint, its limitations, and its ability (or more pointedly,
inability) to navigate postnormal times. In postnormal times, the mask slips from
sociology and its related disciples to expose its zombie nature, and in doing so, it
demonstrates how it leads to the logical conclusion of postmodernism, the death of
knowledge, and the triumph of interpretation.
Is sociology dead? It can be argued that as a discipline, it is indeed dead, but
it continues to give the illusion that it exists. Sociology is dead, especially given
the rejection of any grand theory or set of theories to explain the nature of society.
This raises several broad ontological questions, most pertinently stated by cultural
theorist and philosopher Jean Baudrillard. In a number of transformative articles,
especially Simulcra and Simulation [47] and The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, [48]
he argued that society did not exist; if it does, it is entirely composed of signs. His
argument is based upon the notion that televisual communication and by extension
social media and its signs are so ubiquitous in its ‘realty’ that people struggle in
deciding what is real. By the same logical conclusion, if the boundary between
real and the hyper-real is blurred, then how can sociologists develop a theory
explaining the nature of society? Indeed, this speaks to the quandary posed by Beck
as he reflected on the challenge of theorizing significant societal change: ‘if the
fundamental distinction and criteria that we have always identified with modern
society no longer apply, where can one begin?’ [49]
Perhaps what is most striking is that contemporary society – given its complexity,
chaos, and contradiction together with its speed and spontaneity – is moving faster
than sociology, so it is difficult for it, or indeed any discipline, to keep up with.
The desire to play down change in spite of change is symptomatic of a humanity
attempting to navigate postnormal times without the adequate know how to do
so. [50] Zombie disciplines create zombie people, who continue to make decisions
that are informed by toxic knowledge, [51] and these further exacerbate the impacts
of postnormal change. [52]
 335 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

Culture and Imagination

The root of this predicament is human culture. The psychologists John Vervaeke,
Christopher Mastropietro, and Filip Miscevic locate the epistemological crisis in
Western culture, a result of the collapse in the worldviews of modernity; and as a
result, we are now bereft of the wherewithal to respond to emergent challenges. [53]
He takes an aesthetic reading of Western culture, reflecting on the collective sense
of alienation, disconnection, and disenchantment that appears apparent in a society
devoid of a spiritual mythology to compel action. As Vervaeke, Mastropietro, and
Miscevic put it, ‘it is one thing for a culture to run its course, and give rise to the next
stage in its development, or even to be conquered by another culture – a death and
rebirth, if you will. It is another for it to trip over itself and expedite its own demise
– a waking death the walking dead epitomize’. [54]
Indeed, ours is a cultural crisis owed to humanity’s inability to move beyond a
manufactured normalcy that perpetuates a familiar sense of the present. [55] The
sociologist John Robert Clammer asserts, ‘if Bauman is correct in his argument
that the outcome of modernity was the Holocaust [56] then it is indeed our very
civilization that has brought us to the brink of catastrophe, but perhaps this time
to an ecological Holocaust. If this is the case then ... it is our very culture and the
values that constitute it that is the root of our problems’. [57]

CULTURE, AS CLAMMER REMINDS US, IS PREMISED ON CONSTELLATIONS

OF VALUES, ASSUMPTIONS, AND DRIVERS THAT ARE CONSTANTLY
IN FLUX.

Within culture lies imagination, which, according to Sardar, is a key ingredient

for coping with postnormal times: ‘while imagination is intangible, it creates and
shapes our reality; while a mental tool, it affects our behaviour and expectations’. [58]
With imagination, the construction of myths and stories becomes the vehicle for
communicating and negotiating meaning about our world. [59] As such, ‘given that
our imagination is embedded and limited to our culture, we will have to unleash
a broad spectrum of imaginations from the rich diversity of human cultures and
multiple ways of imagining alternatives to conventional, orthodox ways of being
and doing’. [60]
Futurists have a role to play here. Futures thinking, as an approach to problem
solving, understands the world as a complex system, and draws on a wide range
of tools to access understanding, capacity building, and strategic potential it has
concerning possible, plausible, and preferred futures. [61] The primary focus
of futurists is images of the future and as it is culture that provides us with such
images, imagination is the domain of the futurist. [62]
However, the imagination is contextual; we cannot imagine beyond our
experiential, spatial, or temporal contexts. Indeed, contexts often seem hegemonic
 336 ZOMBIE DISCIPLINES

and diminish agency, [63] and our futures are colonized. [64] Responding to this,
futures work locates agency within the past–present–future nexus of culture. In
this way, the role of the futurist is to break free from dominant (extended) present-
centred imagery of the future and facilitate creation of and/or the presentation of
alternative images of the future. This requires us to, as Bussey suggested, ‘claim
– or reclaim – our right to cultural agency… to offer alternative narratives, images
and visions ... to hack into the cultural coding that determines how we think,
relate, remember, act, love, fear and hope’. [65] Here, the futurist is responsible for
generating new possibilities within the cultural genome, exploring new pathways
by reconfiguring old elements, inserting new code, and bringing out creative
work generating alternative futures. [66] To achieve this, what is required is an
appreciation of anticipation as a human faculty and anticipatory imagination, the
pedagogical device, as tools for thinking beyond current utilitarian approaches
to the future, emancipating those invested in – even complicit in – a dominant
reading of the present. [67] Thus, the role of the futurist is to unlock anticipatory
imagination. This requires a framework for praxis.

Anticipatory Learning, Imagination, and Agency

As a pedagogical device, anticipatory action learning is a well-established
framework in the futures research tool bag. Effective anticipatory action learning
processes link individuals to social transformation, integrate different kinds and
levels of appreciation of futures, create open-ended and continually evolving
conditions, and contribute to intelligent action rather than formal knowledge. [68]

EDUCATIONALISTS RICHARD M. FELDER AND REBECCA BRENT SUGGEST

THAT WORKING IN THE SPACE BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE AND PROBLEM IS
WHERE LEARNING IS TRULY FOSTERED. [69] WITHIN THIS FRAMEWORK,
‘SOCIALLY ROBUST KNOWLEDGE ... CAPABLE OF DEALING WITH
UNKNOWN AND UNFORESEEABLE CONTEXTS’ IS FOSTERED AND TESTED. [70]

This points toward the request of postnormal sciences to engage extended peer
communities in the work of science; however, we argue, anticipatory action
learning goes much further.
Postnormal science, where postnormal times finds its foundations, was
conceived as a means to question values and make them explicit in scientific
research. [71] Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome Ravetz were advocating for the inclusion
of non-expert audiences and stakeholders, those groups whose concerns and values
are usually considered external to the scientific process, as a means to democratise
research inputs and outputs. [72] Known as extended peer communities, these
groups can and might lead toward the integration and absorption of localised
337 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

knowledge, which can shape areas of study and bring about more collaborative and
responsive modes of research.
Anticipatory action learning is different and more relevant in postnormal
times, in that it incites active participation, is future focused in its application of
anticipatory decision making, and embeds a reflective practice – or double loop
learning – in which participants identify a problem, posit a solution, apply this
solution, assess the outcome, and reflect on the questions: what happened, did it
work, and where next. [73] In this way, teacher and student, researcher and subject,
all become creators and purveyors of new, practical knowledge and are involved in
positive action toward the future. Indeed, the anticipatory action learning model
has successfully been integrated into curriculums for the development of students’
anticipatory reasoning and questioning as well as into community engagement
projects deployed by city planners to bolster participatory decision-making
processes. [74] Conceptually, this future-orientated attention essentially draws
an awareness of and yearning for alternatives already embedded in the present
database of images and practices.
However, positive action, nested in constructive optimism, [75] requires a
healthy imagination that is ‘critically aware of the diminished futures that appear
hegemonic in the dominant culture’. [76] Futurists Marcus Bussey, Mei Mei Song,
and Hsieh Shang-Hsien have offered a model for anticipatory imagination that
brings in the personal and transformational as domains that point to the capacity
to lead from conditioned reality to a point beyond it – something new, perhaps
even surprising. Indeed, the inclusion of the personal and transformational
domains acknowledges that there is a connection between our sense of identity
and our relationship with the future, and the process of transformation can
have personal, social, and cultural outcomes. [77] Thus, personal imagination is
dependent on an individual’s social and cultural capital and makes sense of deep
existential questions of identity, potentially, and taboos. Social imagination speaks
to the assumptions, values, rationalities, and institutional conditions that set
contexts. Cultural imagination exposes the historical and epistemological roots
of context. Anticipatory imagination traverses all three plains of imagination
to, in the case of Bussey, Song, and Hsieh, empower engineering students to
regard the interdependence of systems, embrace risk taking and open-ended
questioning, and adopt a proactive stance toward their future in reconstructive
and creative ways.
We propose that this pedagogical model for building anticipatory imagination
should be deployed and embraced across disciplines. Unlocking anticipatory
imagination, it is suggested, builds confidence around one’s capacity to actively
reframe contexts, deploy skills and materials in the quest to solve problems.
That is to say, that the futurist becomes the hacker, who exercises individual and
collective agency within the cultural domain, to put one’s creative energy in the
service of social, cultural, and ecological processes that keep gridlocking, in a state
of postnormal paralysis. [78]
338 ZOMBIE DISCIPLINES

Fundamentally, this is all about agency: the capacity of individuals and

communities to make decisions concerning all main aspects of their lives in ways
that are neither completely constrained nor completely without reference to
social, economic, and family circumstances. [79] In particular, agency refers to the
agentive dimension of human subjectivity, the human-specific capacity to actively
influence and change their living conditions. [80] This capacity for action, the
American writer Kevin Brockmeier tells us, is mediated through the particular social
character of human life. [81] In Brockmeier’s view, this implies that the conduct of
action is under the sway of intentional states, such as beliefs, desires, emotions,
and moral commitments, states which in turn are interwoven with culture, society,
and history. [82] Indeed, we are reminded of Karl Marx who reflected, in his Theses
on Feuerbach, that the ‘human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single
individual ... but the ensemble of the social relations’. [83]
A particular futures method provides the opportunity to unpack and analyse
the particular contextualities that are seen to govern and/or affect images of the
future: causal layered analysis (CLA). [84] This poststructuralist method opens up
a greater understanding of one’s complicity in any context and how, through the
logic of causality, through either active or passive behaviour, one can rework the
world around them. Causal layered analysis encompasses four vertical layers within
which horizontal discourses may be entered:

Layer Agency

Litany I have the ability to influence the direction of my life

Systems Set and rigid; institutional and paternalistic

Worldviews Grand narratives

Myth/metaphor If you imagine it, you can make it so

The basic insight here is that agency, however constrained by force of circumstance,
always lies where the stakeholder stands and, in the context, what they determine.
Postnormal times is a transitionary period. What comes after postnormal
times, Sardar tells us, ‘can be consciously shaped to be better, saner, more globally
and ecologically relevant, more pluralistic, more humane and more peaceful
alternative’. [85] While the emphasis here is on agency, Sardar is implicit in his
invitation for a diversity of voices in shaping what comes next. Indeed, Sardar’s
project has long been to simultaneously resist and disengage from the defining
power of the West and create an intellectual and cultural space for the non-West by
encouraging nonWestern cultures and societies to describe themselves with their
own categories and concepts and anticipate their own futures. [86] Further, agency
is not an exclusive property of humans or even the biosphere. [87] Surely in our
 339 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

postnormal times, as autonomous machines become smarter and more ubiquitous,

bound to make life-or-death decisions, their agency ought to be addressed too. [88]
The European philosopher Rosi Braidotti advocates for a postanthropocentric
configuration for knowledge that grants the earth the same agency as the human
subjects that inhabit it. This will require a reimagining of what is meant by
agency. [89] For Braidotti, this reimagining cannot be drawn from the immediate
context or the current state of terrain, rather:

they have to be generated affirmatively and creatively by efforts geared

to creating possible futures, by mobilizing resources and visions that
have been left untapped and by actualizing them in daily practices
of interconnection with others. This project requires more visionary
power or prophetic energy, qualities which are neither especially in
fashion in academic circles, nor highly valued scientifically in these
times of coercive pursuit of globalized ‘excellence’. [90]

Untapped visions may be explored through anticipatory imagination. What

makes narrative such a flexible vehicle of imagination is its capacity to tap into
multiple frameworks of meaning that draw on both real and fictive scenarios
of agency. As Brockmeier points out, the imagination and its use of narrative
seamlessly mingles the factual with the fictitious, the real with the possible; ‘in fact,
it fuses the real and possible with the impossible’. [91] Agency, then, in postnormal
times exists everywhere, is open and fluid, is not linked to a dominant world view,
but rather invites us to reimagine everything we thought we already knew.

Layer Agency in normal times Agency in postnormal times

Litany I have the ability to influence Everything has agency

the direction of my life

Systems Set and rigid; institutional Open, fluid, and dynamic

and paternalistic

Worldviews Grand narratives Eroding, new, yet to emerge

Myth/metaphor If you imagine it, you can Reimagine everything that

make it so you thought you knew

Futurist Sohail Inayatullah proposes that while all four layers of CLA are important
in the process of unpacking the contextualities, a higher order is placed on the value
of the mythic/metaphoric layer as it is the layer that informs all other layers. [92]
Indeed, mythology has the ability to transcend paradigms. [93] Thus, a change in the
mythology that drives us, a reimagining of how we are in the world, whilst enabled
340 ZOMBIE DISCIPLINES

by the imagination and facilitated through the epistemological realm, has implicated
effects on the ontological realm. Let us address this in a return to our zombie metaphor.

Anticipation and Becoming

Our relationship to the zombie has been one based on fear: fear of the Other, fear of
the imminent existential threat, and fear of that which exists amongst us waiting to
ravish us and strip us of our very souls. It is no mistake that the West has appropriated
the zombie into the zeitgeist from the Haitian Vodou tradition; Said’s Orientalism
remains entrenched in the cultural artifacts of today. Others, like the French duo
of Gilles Deleuze, a philosopher, and Félix Guattari, a psychoanalyst, viewed the
zombie from a Freudian-Marxist view, [94] in which capitalism is the root of the so-
called death drive; as people become dehumanized by commodification, they can
increasingly look forward only to death. [95] It is a relationship rooted in fear. This
fear, it is argued, stems from the fact that zombies, at first glance, look like us; they
are our undead doppelgangers, familiar yet unfamiliar, intimate, and strange, all at
the same time. Here, we enter the realm of the uncanny.
Freud’s conceptualization of the uncanny indicates the divergence of the realm
of the real and the realm of the fantastic. [96] Freud’s project, whilst denoting
the very real emotion – the uncanny experience – is nevertheless a response to
the objective world, a response that remained ungraspable for Freud by anything
available to him in the clinical terms. Freud’s acknowledgment of other forms of
knowing and being outside empirical constructs hints at a disownment of the
Enlightenment constructs of reason, rationalism, and secularism that otherwise
framed the clinical case studies of Freud’s work. [97]
Freud’s notion of the uncanny has become a point of reflection for many thinkers
investigating our relationship with the world. The object-oriented philosopher
Timothy Morton argued strongly for the importance of uncanniness and for allowing
space for strangeness in intimacy, in which other beings can be their strange selves,
‘strange strangers’. [98] For Morton, these beings are everywhere and everything:
people, animals, trees, chairs, desks, sports cars, skyscrapers, microbes, and laptops.
His goal is to, philosophically, make the inanimate, animate. This is an open and
co-evolving space, where objects share relationships with one another in a manner
that is reciprocal. [99] This approach moves beyond Enlightenment, subject–object
relations, instead seeking to conceptualise an ecology of objects, flattened and
without hierarchy. Ontologically, this is a proposition toward Becoming, rather
than Being. This process of Becoming is more closely aligned to what the political
and social philosopher Diana Coole calls new materialist ontology ‘a process of
materialisation in which matter literally matters itself … this is not, then, the dead,
inert, passive matter of the mechanist, which relied on an external agent, human
or divine, to set it in motion. Rather, it is a materialisation that contains its own
energies and forces of transformation. It is self-organising, sui generis’. [100] This
approach seeks to expand our sense of agency so as to involve the interplay of
human–non-human in co-creative works of materialisation. If new materialism
341 KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION

is moving to a process of Becoming, then our notion of subjectivity too becomes a

process; fluid, porous, open, and coexistent. [101]
Indian economist Arun Kumar Giri calls this weak ontology ‘which urges us to
realise that ontological cultivation is not only a cultivation of mastery of the self, but
also cultivation of its humility, fragilities, weakness, and servanthood facilitating
blossoming of non-sovereignty and shared sovereignties… Weak ontology helps us
realise that both identities and differences have inbuilt limitations and they ought
to realise their own weakness as a starting point for communication and sharing
through cultivation of weak identities and weak differences’. [102] This is resonant
with object-orientated ontology, an anti-anthropocentric philosophy that removes
humans from the centre of the cosmos and asserts the agency of non-living forms.
With object-orientated ontology, Morton offered the notion of the ‘mesh’ – the
interdependence and interconnectedness of all living and non-living things in a
way which gives equal value to the holes in the network and the threading between
actors within that network. [103] In doing so, Morton keeps open a space for the
uncanniness of our intimacy with the world and with other beings. [104] Thus,
according to Morton, through the embrace of object-orientated ontology, we open
ways of being together in the world – subject and object – that go beyond Modernist
constructs of the self and self-interest. [105]

Wither Zombies?
Should we reimagine our relationship with the zombie? The zombie as a symbol, as
an abstracted concept, fills us with fear as it reminds us of our fundamental deficits
as a human. The zombie disciplines as the force that perpetuates these deficits are
proving obsolete to meet the emergent challenges presented in these postnormal
times. Our proposition has been that, rather than ward off the zombie apocalypse as
we are taught to do in Hollywood movies and popular culture, we should embrace
the Otherness of the zombie – uncover and embrace the intimacy that underlies our
uncanny relationship with the flesh-eating undead and seek to navigate the future
together. By examining images of the future and uncovering cultural assumptions,
with a view toward transformation, futures approaches provide the tool kit we need
to shape a ‘better, saner, more globally and ecologically relevant, more pluralistic,
more humane and more peaceful alternative’. [106] In particular, anticipatory
imagination, nested within the anticipatory action learning framework, provides a
process that brings in the personal and transformational as domains of knowledge
creation. As we have postured here, anticipatory imagination, when injected into
the curricular that buoys zombie disciplines, unlocks agency, fosters confidence
around one’s capacity to actively reframe contexts, and deploys skills and materials
in the quest to solve problems. We aspire to create transformation from the inside
out. Zombie disciplines, like the zombie itself, are not the enemy, but rather are
relics from modernity that require excavation, revamping, and reframing to help us
transition toward that which is to come after postnormal times. [107] After all, the
zombie is fundamentally and metaphorically transformational.
342 ZOMBIE DISCIPLINES

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POSTNORMAL TIMES
& MINCED WORDS
C Scott Jordan

It was a swastika.
It is such a strange word. Even by English standards. Swastika. This odd
combination of consonants and vowels makes for something almost as startling
as the symbol itself. The symbol which lies burnt into the lawn before me on a
particularly steamy summer morning. It is a peculiarly cruel form of cultural
genocide to so bastardise a religious peace symbol. Peculiar still that I find this
pyrotechnic graffiti in Omaha, Nebraska: a micro example of the city’s famous
tradition. That being, the destruction of tradition. Out with the old, in with the new.
Gentrification in Omaha takes on a meaning no other city could fathom. Excise the
historical and lay out a new rug to forget. No memory to romanticise, no past to
draw fear from. Only the newer and the better. A noncanonical interpretation of the
American Dream.
If Omaha didn’t invent gentrification it has, at least, perfected the model, making
it widely available and applicable. Packaged for home use, cultural genocide has
been neutralised to the point of it almost being a fun and recommended family
outing for the weekend. My roommate and I laugh with a nervous accent as we
drive by the numerous gentrification projects at work all throughout the streets
of Omaha.
This nature dates back to the first staking out of the Nebraska territory during the
United States’ western expansion of the nineteenth century. Nebraska comes from
the native Oto tribe’s word for ‘flat water’ referring to the Platte River which bisects
the state’s contemporary territorial borders. Omaha itself was one of the tribes
that roamed the great plains. The first white people to call Nebraska home were
nicknamed ‘tree planters’. This unusual moniker comes from the annual tradition
turned state holiday known as Arbor Day. Arbor Day traces its origin back to the
sojourn of one of the original American mythological figures, Johnny Appleseed.
Bare footed with a tin pot upon his head, Johnny marched across the American
frontier with his bag of apple seeds in a nigh biblical, yet suspiciously homoerotic,
fashion ridding the new world of useless grassland to lay the groundwork for the
industrialised, production-ready landscape that Manifest Destiny called for. Indeed,
the American Spirit! The first inhabitants of contemporary America rolled with the
 354 POSTNORMAL TIMES & MINCED WORDS

punches. Whatever nature gave, the early tribes made it work and in such a way
that did not destroy the hand that fed them. They would attempt to teach the first
Europeans how to farm so that they may survive those first treacherous winters.
Leave it to the Western tradition to take a model and find a way to exploit it and bleed
it for all it has to offer. The gift of the first thanksgiving would, unbeknownst to
the givers – the first American tribes – be the instrument of their undoing. Military
campaign, mass over-farming, and slaughter of the Buffalo would provide the first
wave of genocide and gentrification against the native peoples. The second wave
would not only strike against the way of life for Native Americans but be a slap in
the face of mother nature. A mass terraforming event that would set the ball rolling
on the demonic mind of early developers of the largest Midwestern American cities.
Year after year, more and more trees turned the endless sea of prairie grass
into odd forest as the nineteenth century waxed and waned. The tradition of
gentrification would not stop there. The twentieth century brought cars and
industry, turning Omaha from a pit stop on the Oregon Trail, to a metropolis, a true
American city. The fathers of contemporary Omaha had the Pacific Ocean in their
sights but found that fortune and glory would be found easier in the journey than
the destination. They settled in Omaha to finance those set on California’s promise
of gold and most importantly in transporting it back east. Bankers and businessmen
sought to make Omaha the ultimate capital of a pan continental empire of business,
managing trainlines, telegram (and eventually telephone) lines, and safe transport
of mail and money, to and fro. To the northern part of the town, the first kings and
queens of Omaha (to this day they actually hold a ball every year where the city elites
elect a King and Queen of Aksarben, which is just Nebraska spelled backwards).

A NEW WAY OF LIFE HAD TAKEN ROOT IN THE LOOSE SOIL OF THE
FORMER PLAINS. SYMBOLS OF THE OLD NATIVE AMERICAN WAY WERE
TRANSFORMED AND ‘MADE BETTER’ WITH THE HEAVY USE OF ART DECO
– YET ANOTHER APPROPRIATION OF SORTS.
The mass immigration from Europe at the turn of the century created a refugee
crisis for the eastern United States. Just as the founders of the East Coast fled the
persecution of the Old World, the new immigrants moved west to flee the new
persecutors (a weird cyclical trend seen all around this great big planet of ours).
Tribes of Bohemians, Italians, and Slovaks built ghettos within the modern-day city
limits of Omaha. Like any true American city ought to, the city developed along a
classic grid system. North to South. East to West. Block by block. The streets became
as good walls as modes of transport, making sure every different group stayed in
their own place. Eventually the rich elites of the North set their eyes for the west
to recreate a Stepfordian paradise in the yet untouched land Johnny Appleseed
left them. The South, the landing point for newcomers (due to the railroad’s
355 CULTURE & CREATIVITY

placement) became the labour capital and home to the working minorities. First
Europeans, more recently the Latin Americans. The abandoned castles of the North
would become as good a place as any for the recently freed slaves to settle upon
the conclusion of the American Civil War. Malcolm X was born in the leftovers
of Omaha’s most royal families. The construction of major interstates would help
solidify the artificial borders of segregation that keep all the different citizens of
Omaha away from each other.
Omaha today is a microbrewery for racial and class tensions. Numerous
structures in society seek to maintain the physical borders that the architects of
Omaha put up to frame Omaha from the Missouri River westwards. Fairy tales
told to scare children are reinforced by the five o’clock news. The South is for the
lazy foreigners and is ruled by gangs imported from Latin America, mostly Mexico
(statistically true, yet nevertheless grotesquely over generalised by the netizens of
Omaha). The North is the capital of crime and hate, also noted as the most likely
place in all of the United States for a black male to be murdered. Downtown (the
East) is just where you go to work, but try to avoid the homeless and their plight.
Even the mighty police force has trouble properly herding them away from the
general public. They inspire an instant of empathy, but in truth, the average
American hopes they would carry on with decreasing the surplus population.
West Omaha is safe. That is where home is, reeking of cleanliness and success. The
American Dream imagined. No crime happens here (except of course for the crime
which happens within the family unit, or within the closed boardroom, or any of
that sexual misconduct occurring in front of the blind eyes of university campus
leaders or church officials).
Omaha is America. That wonderful melting pot of culture, where only the filmy
crud rises to the top and temperatures and tensions remain constantly extreme,
regardless the season. Come visit our world-famous Henry Doorly Zoo. It houses a
wide variety of species taken from the wilds all around the world! Like this world-
renowned zoo, Omaha itself is always tearing down old builds to build new and
better, yet keeping little bits of romanticised memories in the façade. Shuffling
new groups of immigrants around being careful not to let them mix too much. The
immigrants of Yugoslavia and Africa from the nineties and the noughties are just
beginning to carve their little bits of the city out, just in time as the latest influx of
global refugees is beginning to develop bringing in new groups from the Middle
East. Everyday more and more projects gentrify the old and decrepit. Upon the ashes
of the old, Omaha builds up and outward, prices soar, and the class gap is kept well
fed. Yet each group is kept sectioned off from each other, each in their own cage.
A proud zoo of humanity. Something truly postnormal comes in Omaha’s pride
over its heritage, steeped in multiculturalism, yet emphasised with segregation
and division.
What keeps it all together? Well, that would be the lie upon which the plot of the
American narrative is carefully constructed. The lie is that America defeated racism,
or at least that we have managed racism so effectively that to even count it as still
356 POSTNORMAL TIMES & MINCED WORDS

existing is statistically superfluous. The Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, Black
History Month, Juneteenth, the multitude of pancultural holidays and school lesson
plans. They all succeeded. Congratulations America, we did it. Blacks and Whites,
Asians, Mexicans, Middle Easterners, even the Russians and the Ukrainians. We
can all live in tolerant harmony. Even religious, gender, and sexual identity come
together to sing Kumbaya or enjoy a cup of Joe, consuming and gentrifying ad
infinitum. Score one for humanity!
This was the education I was served growing up an American millennial. It was
the 1990s and we were at peacetime, things, by American standards, were quite
weird. We were told to look around, there was no forced segregation, and to look
at all the minorities that we share this wonderful country with. Measures had even
been taken to pay for the sins of the father such as Affirmative Action and issued
public apologies. It was the highest crime for our generation to make fun of anyone
for being different, to refer to disliked things as being ‘gay’ was outlawed, ditto plus
one for the infamous ‘r’ word (which even in its ‘acceptable’ scientific contexts is
something to be avoided). A sort of Ludovico sickness would develop in our stomach
just for thinking of certain racial slurs. Change had finally come.
And then there was 9/11. No, that must have been a fluke. Americans are past
hate. We love our differences. That which makes us unique. We stand together
in our differences as one nation. We would rally behind the stars and stripes. The
struggle occurred, and we progressed to the mountaintop. Hadn’t we? Why did the
older generations use certain words or avoid certain places or banish certain types
of music and film. Was this story more complicated? Did we miss a part? Had I slept
through some sliver of exposition? What if we had been lied to? It is a hard and
nauseating thought, to realise that you might have been indoctrinated.
And then there was the election of 2008. Barack Obama. And just like that, the
hate returned. Racism resurfaced, alive and flourishing. Those differences shifted
into focus. To be American meant something different overnight. While we didn’t
fully understand it, it was something that none of us really liked. And then there
was the election of Donald Trump. The seemingly impossible, now an in-your-
face reality.
And then I found myself in Omaha’s Memorial Park on a phenomenally humid
day. Sweat dripping and my morning jog reduced to a dumbfounded loiter with
an exhaustion-induced contrapposto stance. My lungs rapidly disrupting the air
pressure around me. The salinity of my sweat burning my eyes. And a swastika
lay burnt into the hallowed ground of Omaha’s highest war memorial. Aside from
housing the granddaddy of all high hills, famed for snow day sledding, Memorial
Park is the sight of memorials honouring those who died from Douglas County in
America’s various foreign conflicts. World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam,
all meshed together. Memorial Park is a collage of patriotism, organic as with the
tallying of each new death toll for each new American military operation, one could
bet that another statue or plaque will be added to the grounds. Among the names
of the fallen Nebraskans is an exorbitant number of American flags and the fast
 357 CULTURE & CREATIVITY

and loose use of classic patriot phrases. Each one more mind numbing than the
last, derived from sound bites delivered to force homogeneity amongst a people
ready to tear each other apart in accordance with English philosopher Thomas
Hobbes’s nightmare.

GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH. UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE

FALL. LIVE FREE OR DIE. YOU’RE EITHER WITH US OR YOU’RE AGAINST
US. FORGIVE BUT NEVER FORGET. FREEDOM ISN’T FREE. ALL OF THEM
DATED. ALL OF THEM RIDICULOUS. PATHETIC ATTEMPTS TO UNITE A
PEOPLE SIMPLY TO BE AGAINST THE OTHER.

Simple platitudes and threatening contradictory mind traps. If Freedom is not free,
then perhaps what it is that we are talking about is anything but. We utter these
words without thought or reflection just as we recite the anthems and light the
fireworks and gather around the heart-warming glow of patriotic nationalism.
And then, as I wipe the sweat from my forehead, I realise I have discovered what
it is that Omaha is missing in all its infinite diversity. Nazis.
Just as it takes the latest fashion trends to travel from the Coasts to Middle
America, perhaps Postnormal Times has also lagged in reaching the Heartland. But
it is unmistakably here. This swastika was no random event. This is not something
that can be passed off as a childish prank or the ravings of an isolated lunatic. A ripple
of thunder is rocketing across America as Nazis are returning, if it is the case that
they actually went away. Even in Omaha, reports spoke of Nazi propaganda leaflets
appearing in various neighbourhood Little Free Library boxes. While defamation of
property is a bold statement, do we know what is actually being talked about?
Language is a strange thing and postnormal times has made it even stranger.
What I propose here is not some duel of wits and semantics. Instead, I wish to
point out the fragility of the very semantics by which we structure our logic and
the fundamental fallibility of our wits. The damage already done leaves us with
words, starved of definition, which we take for granted. Wilfully sipping this
nectar of ignorance, we pass through time and space with reckless regard speaking
to such phenomenon as unpatriotic nationalism, contingent independence,
and subjugating freedom. A blissful ignorance side kicked to an unrelenting
uncertainty self-perpetuates the postnormal state. Those in the know, or, perhaps
at best, aware of their own unknowing, are perplexed to a crippling degree. The
problem is an issue of not having the correct tools. The physicists find their theories
reaching beyond their experimental range. Thus, their practice is more philosophy
than fact challenging science. The postmodernist attempts to eradicate grand
narratives, creating a grand narrative against grand narratives. The posthumanist
dives headfirst into the robot revolution untroubled by the multiverse of potential
 358 POSTNORMAL TIMES & MINCED WORDS

ironic consequences that can and are resulting in such neglectful investigation.
Each master tries to capture the future in their own image and direct it towards their
own utopic ideal.
At this point we are faced with two problems. First the future is not singular,
it is a plurality of futures. Second the future cannot be controlled, managed, or
placed upon a shelf. The complexity and contradictions, uncertainty and chaos
of our times, coupled with breathless accelerating change, does not allow for the
old-fashioned luxuries of control, efficiency, and management. The present is not
just weird; it is constantly getting weirder. Our systems and routines are becoming
obsolete. The jogging paths we’ve come to know by muscle memory are not taking
us to the destinations we desire. So, is this where the road ends?
Where to go next? This is an interesting dilemma. The approach favoured by
the most academically minded is to grapple this problem, wrestle the angel, dissect,
experiment, and look for the definite solution. But the beasts of uncertainty and
ignorance cannot be defeated. We need to learn to navigate our way through
postnormal times. Beyond this point, we require tremendous creativity, distillation
of foundational value, acceptance of rapid change, living with uncertainty,
awareness of our ignorance, and thinking the unthought. Even mastery of those
tools does not guarantee smooth seas for navigation. There is no assurance of safety,
sanity, or indeed survival in postnormal times.

POSTNORMAL TIMES DOES NOT COME WITHOUT SIGNS. INDEED,

THOSE OF US WRESTLING WITH POSTNORMAL TIMES ARE CONSTANTLY
REFINING AND BUILDING UP OUR AWARENESS OF THESE SIGNS.

The menagerie of postnormal times serves our purpose best here. Black elephants
are the first member of the menagerie. Black elephants are those events which are
otherwise easily identifiable possibilities that had been ruled out due to confirmation
bias or simple ignorance. The second member of the menagerie are black swans.
Black swans are the inconceivable, at least within given worldviews and systems,
the seemingly impossible. These game changers alter our imagination’s ability to
perceive what is possible, they trigger a flurry of positive and negative potentialities.
The third member of the menagerie are black jellyfish. These creatures are the
true bulls in the china shop of postnormal times. Rapidly becoming the symbol
of these climatically challenging times, black jellyfishes are those events that,
though often starting as small, ‘normal’ occurrences, are driven, through positive
feedback, to grow in geometric proportions challenging the structural integrity of
global systems. They are ‘high impact’ and have a great potential to make things
postnormal – rapidly. [1]
It is important to note here that the menagerie is largely dependent on
perspective. One individual’s black swan could easily be a black elephant to an
359 CULTURE & CREATIVITY

individual halfway around the world in a different socio-political context. But the
purpose of the menagerie is to highlight uncertainties, our ignorance, and the
limitations of our own worldview and situation. It is a much better way of navigating
futures beyond the end of the road.
Jogging on the road, the body is in a super-heightened state. Smells, sights,
sounds, feelings are all on their highest alert as the body struggles to maintain
homeostatic control of itself. During a proper run, things out of place can startle,
sending the body into a state of shock. On the numerous jogs I have taken in my
life I have been startled by the happening upon of roadkill, animal scat, and even
unnoticed fellow joggers. This was the first time I had been startled by the discovery
of a symbol. I snap out of it, moving away from the swastika, reigniting my run for
home, still a few miles down the road. My mind is racked by various words. Words
we overuse and others we don’t use enough. And then there are the words we use
and don’t actually know the definition of what we are talking about.

Freedom
Freedom. It is a most curious contradiction. Worse yet, it is a seductive contradiction.
Like capital, it is never just satisfied with a unit or two of itself, it must always be
more. Insatiable, freedom fights for itself even at the consumption of the freedom
of others. Just as Adam Smith convinced the Western world that acting in one’s
self-interest magically worked in the interest of the common, my freedom is your
freedom and we must be willing to die for it, at any given moment!
This could not be illustrated more perfectly than through the Constitution of the
United States of America. While I could write volumes on the contradictions this
particular document alludes to, I will try to remain focused on this one. Naturally,
the first two amendments are the only ones the common American will remember
by heart without having to consult Google. While the second amendment gets more
airtime on the news (for the unfamiliar, that’s the gun one) the first amendment is
the one which tends to be invoked on a more regular basis. Within that one run-on
sentence, which comprises the amendment, lies over two hundred years of legal
philosophy, fundamental building blocks responsible for American angst and
arrogance. And it is a dangerous contradiction. It speaks to freedom of expression,
speech, and assembly. It promises that if this great experiment fails, we have the
right to tear it all down and build something better in its place. It allows one the
freedom to be. But, it also allows one the freedom to take others freedom. Common
sense and jurisprudence have done a little good in history. For instance, it is illegal
to yell ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theatre, as this would invoke mass hysteria. Though it
gives both the oppressed and the oppressors the right to march in the streets with
police protection. This freedom gives you the freedom to bind your fellow humans
in bigotry, racism, and xenophobia, of course with the adage that you ought to be
able to consume what you dish out. The first amendment of the US Constitution
gives one the right to hate. It also turns freedom into a commodity. Our commodity
and one which can be stripped from the other if they don’t play by our rules. A day
360 POSTNORMAL TIMES & MINCED WORDS

doesn’t go by in the United States without us proclaiming the sacred word freedom,
with each use, we further bastardise its meaning deepening the contradiction. This
black elephant is ripening towards postnormal fruition and soon those cries for
freedom will find themselves being answered by something very different.

Fascism
As the Americans have overused the word freedom into its own undoing, both
Europe and the United States have underused another word allowing for a faded
memory to return proudly and display its ugly face unabashedly. Fascism. Even to
see the word written, carries with it an entire context. Yet, today we are told not to
use this word. Not for fear of offending others or because it has become outdated.
We have become so afraid of Fascism’s return to global dominance, that we shun the
slightest use of it beyond historical context. In fact, a black swan is identifiable in the
concept of fascism ever rising to power again in Europe, or anywhere in the world
for that matter. Those of us who find some or all of our life having been uploaded
to the internet may be familiar with Godwin’s Law. This is the law which states that
eventually all online arguments devolve into comparing one’s competitor to Hitler
or the Nazis. The use of this comparison had become a cop out for finding the most
insulting thing to say to one’s opponent. Understandably, for the preservation of
professionalism and dignity, many have refrained from making such comparisons
entirely. But what for the events in the contemporary era that actually are fascist
and look a lot like or even one-up the deeds of the Nazis?
Former US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright throws the word at us in
giant red letters on a black background in her 2018 book. In Fascism: A Warning,
Albright seeks to re-inoculate public discourse with the word. [2] She rightly points
out that fascism has often been chalked up to meaning ‘What Hitler or Mussolini
did’. Distilling it from historical conceptions, Albright defines fascism as the belief
in one opinion standing for the whole of a nation or state and the defence of that
opinion being the justification of violence. She lays out a historical primer in
fascism’s approach to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and highlights the
creep of fascism back into global politics. Most importantly she pushes for further
study of the phenomenon so that it can be curbed and prevented from being the
decay of the contemporary political order.
Freedom and fascism have taken an interesting path into contemporary
political rhetoric. Trump, Brexit, Fake News, Social Media, Big Data. Little of it
has retained any intellectual value. As in Albright’s work, there has been a small
revival in reflecting on fascism and freedom. Thinkers like Timothy Snyder are not
afraid of pointing towards a soft hijacking of contemporary democratic processes
by tyrants and fascists. Like a good Aristotelian should, in his latest book, The
Road to Unfreedom, he pits extreme political views of the now against each other
so as to find a mean, the principle itself. [3] Ultimately, this exercise proves futile
in postnormal times. The extremes of the now are contradictions that fracture our
opinions. There is a value to Snyder’s discussion though. The struggle between
 361 CULTURE & CREATIVITY

extremes is important for beginning to comprehend the contemporary world. He

also points out important historical trends we must remain cognisant of. He asks
the reader to take control of the past so as to build a more preferred future. In terms
of postnormal times, the past he speaks of is more properly stated as the Extended
Present. This is the future before us if the status quo is maintained. Trends continue
uninterrupted and all is business as usual. [4] As things become more and more
postnormal, the probability of this future coming to be is less likely. Understanding
this limitation is key to fulfilling the request to the reader that Snyder states. Power
is never given. No one is just offered the keys to history.

POSTNORMAL TIMES IS NOT A SPECTATOR’S SPORT. IT REQUIRES

PARTICIPATION. THIS CONVERSATION MUST BE KEPT ALIVE. REFLECTION
AND CONSTANT CORRECTION CONTROL IS NEEDED TO REFINE THE
LANGUAGE WE USE.

Fear, irrational assumption, and hate have been allowed to control discourse at
an unprecedented rate. Words need to be constantly on trial. What do we mean
when we cry freedom? What are we doing when we mindlessly spout off patriotic
diatribes or nationalist oaths and songs? What is truly being risked when we turn
freedom, in its myriad of forms, into a motivation for action? Fascism is scary. But
will we ignore it as it quietly grows in the dark? The confounding nature of the
potential danger laced within language can quickly be manipulated into convincing
people of their own opinions. This is populism at is most malicious. The calls for a
return to the ‘good ole days’ or to make (insert your nationality/state identity here)
great again are the smooth romanticising of the familiar and ultimately destructive.
And we have already seen how seamlessly this carries on along with each of our
technological leaps. Now social media and our online lives segregate and silo us off
instead of bringing the world together as techno-utopians once dreamed – but now
desperately pray for.
Language has a unique power. It can time travel. At this particular point in time,
we humans cannot. Because of this fact, we must rely on memory. Language travels
through time and space, often unscathed by the journey. Memory is constantly
recast and edited before the might of perspective, cleaver storytelling (often by the
winner of a particular historical moment) and the ever-flexible impact of emotion.
The more eloquent of society can attempt to use words as they please and, if they
sing a pretty enough song, can weave lies and fractured reality into language. We
can be convinced to disregard history and let the sins of the father be just that.
But remember, history matters. Futures matter and are always there before us. We
cannot allow our words to be misused and morphed. Slowly they become the black
elephants and swans that haunt our reality and historical trajectory. Heaven, forbid
they become the black jellyfish that can disrupt all, positive and negative, for better
362 POSTNORMAL TIMES & MINCED WORDS

and for worse. Yet, words are words. Just as we can lose our own identity in the wake
of populism, it can be recovered. Definitions must be held accountable. This is the
first step towards owning the future, that together can begin the construction of a
trajectory towards our preferred futures. Sticks and stones be damned; words can
indeed hurt – and maybe they ought to.
I am not sure if a dictionary can be made in postnormal times. Perhaps the
philosopher in me needs that stability, and perhaps that stability may come in a
form unthought to our present selves. What is important is a self-awareness check
on the language we use and the complexity, contradictions, and chaos that takes it
to radically new trajectories. The confinement brought on by structures in language
and society can equally be an opportunity and impediment. If a dictionary is to be
attempted, it mustn’t be a dead, hardened, set-in-stone law text; it has to remain
flexible and a living dictionary subject to change, and changing times. It will be
uncomfortable as we must breathe life into the reference materials that once
grounded us. But postnormal times is an ‘in-between period’ and for the time being,
until the new paradigms are born, we must challenge those that are problematic
and dying and get creative and imaginative in how we do it if it’s to have an effect. [5]
I adore running in the rain. There is a comfort in the hazard. The combination
of a thinned-out atmosphere and a slight temperature drop makes for an all-too-
familiar world being made anew. You notice things you have once taken for granted.
Postnormal times is like running in the rain, but that only means our bodies must
be all the more alert for the dangers that accompany roads and rain. Be aware that
the path you once knew so well might take you to an entirely different destination.
We are blinded by the rain drops of our own uncertainties and ignorance, but we can
take comfort in identifying the elements of the menagerie, judging the awareness
of our limited perspectives, and begin to take the first steps that become the full-on
sprint. We stand to be startled out of our run by things far stranger and more fear
invoking than swastikas burnt into a public green space.
363 CULTURE & CREATIVITY

References

1. Ziauddin Sardar and John A. Sweeney’s ‘Three Tomorrows of Postnormal

Times,’ Futures 75, 2016, p. 1–13. Also seen in The Postnormal Times Reader,
Edited by Ziauddin Sardar (CPPFS: London, 2017) p.109–136.

2. Madeline Abright’s Fascism: A Warning (Harper Collins: New York, 2018)

3. Timothy Snyder’s The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America (Tim Duggan
Books: New York, 2018).

4. Ziauddin Sardar and John A. Sweeney’s ‘Three Tomorrows of Postnormal

Times,’ Futures 75, 2016, p. 1–13. Also seen in The Postnormal Times Reader,
Edited by Ziauddin Sardar (CPPFS: London, 2017) p.109–136.

5. Ziauddin Sardar’s ‘Welcome to Postnormal Times’ Futures 42(5), 2010, p.

435–444. Also seen in The Postnormal Times Reader, Edited by Ziauddin Sardar
(CPPFS: London, 2017) p. 47–70.
MUSEUMS IN
POSTNORMAL TIMES
Olga Van Oost

Reports of conflict and revolt in the European Union dominate the news and journals
with a seemingly endless diversity of subjects. In pre Covid-19 times, we saw the ‘yellow
jacket’ movement demonstrating in France and Belgium against high petrol prices
and social inequality; the increasing public anger of #YouthForClimate at politicians
for their global failure to tackle the problems of climate change and international
migration; the growing terror threat; the crippling poverty that still exists in many
parts of the world; the Brexit; and last, but certainly not least, the #MeToo actions that
frequently made the headlines in 2018. During the pandemic, existing inequalities
sharpened even more than before, with the murder of Afro-American George Floyd on
25 May 2020 by a policeman as a most cynical and painful point of culmination. In our
ultra-connected societies this boosted the Black Lives Matter movement on a global
scale. Currently, the pandemic seems to be ‘under control’ in many parts of the world
but to state that ‘normal life’ has returned would be an overstatement. In Western
Europe, we notice that a lot of people are experiencing a tremendous setback in this
(almost) post-Covid-19 era: burn-outs, depression, and other mental issues are rampant.
Shocking and disruptive are the numbers of news items on youngster’s mental and
physical problems (loneliness, eating disorders to name a couple examples). It goes
without saying that the impact of the war in Ukraine is huge and one of the major
problems on European soil. Not to mention the energy and economic crisis we are all
facing. And this is only the tip of the iceberg of world and local problems.
In short, the number of problems on a global scale is superfluous and cannot
be overseen. Our era is characterised by an unseen complexity, chaos, and hyper-
connectivity. According to Ziauddin Sardar, we find ourselves in a transitional era:
postnormal times.
When looking back to the past few years and trying to make it balance out, it is
hard to keep up an optimistic spirit. Global problems have only grown, especially
against the backdrop of the pandemic and the increasing explicit and ubiquitous
violence. The work of Sardar has not lost any of its credibility, on the contrary. It is
frightening in its actuality.
For a person working in the field of museums and cultural heritage who strongly
believes the Zeitgeist determines the meaning and position of museums in society,
 366 MUSEUMS IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

this is challenging. I came across this work a few years ago and I was intrigued
instantly. In particular, I wondered whether this framework could be useful when
analysing ‘the museum’ as an institution and concept. [1] What might a museum
mean in postnormal times? Is it possible to ‘make a difference’ or ‘make a change’ as
so many of these and other heritage organisations aspire? Or is this a sheer illusion?
I will reflect upon these questions and try to analyse them. The new museum
definition that the international museum community of the International Council
of Museums (ICOM) voted for on 24 August 2022 is an interesting starting point.
Will it prove to be ‘futureproof’ in postnormal times? Will it help to give answers to
the major challenges in society or will it confirm the status quo?

A New Museum Definition

In museum circles, 24 August 2022 will be remembered as the day members of
the global community of the International Council of Museums voted for a new
museum definition, during the Twenty-Sixth General Conference of ICOM, which
was held in Prague. The new definition for museum they defined was:

a museum is a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of

society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits
tangible and intangible heritage. Open to the public, accessible and
inclusive, museums foster diversity and sustainability. They operate
and communicate ethically, professionally and with the participation
of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment,
reflection and knowledge sharing. [2]

This museum definition is the result of a participatory process that took several
years and that involved the international museum community. A (temporary) so-
called ‘Standing Committee’ was assigned to lead the process. Initially, the Museum
Definition Prospects and Potential Committee (MDPP) was the Standing Committee
in charge, led by Danish museologist Jette Sandahl. The MDPP presented a
proposal in September 2019, at the General Conference that was hosted in Kyoto.
Unfortunately, the committee encountered major protests from the international
community. The community stated there was no democratic basis to vote for the
proposal that was put forward because the process prior to the proposal was not
transparent enough. Besides, the text that was proposed was very long, and looked
more like a vision text than a definition.
In short, during the Kyoto-conference, we voted not to vote for the proposal.
This was quite a turbulent situation that shook the confidence in ICOM and had an
impact on its legitimacy.
Subsequently and in the middle of the Covid-19 crisis, a new standing
committee was appointed, ‘Museum Define’. The committee embraced the lessons
learnt from the previous trajectory and quickly set up and communicated a very
transparent process, including multiple moments of asking feedback from the
 367 CULTURE & CREATIVITY

ICOM-committees. Eventually, this resulted in the proposal that was voted for in
Prague, and that was accepted by more than 90 percent of the votes cast.

The Importance of an International Museum Definition

The importance of an international museum definition may not be underestimated.
It is one of the foundations for many national museum and heritage policies.
Against the backdrop of the museum definition, policymakers can decide whether
to subsidise an organization or project. The International Council of Museums
(ICOM) is a powerful and authoritative umbrella organisation on which museum
and heritage professionals rely. ICOM offers opportunities to collaborate on a global
scale and it is the musicological reference. Not seldom (political) authorities need
to be convinced of the relevance and uniqueness of museums they are responsible
for. The global, musicological, and legislative framework of ICOM is an important
support, even if it is often just symbolic.

Museums Opening to Society?

Obviously, this definition is a compromise. The core ideas of the ‘old’ museum
definition recalled the ‘traditional’ museum’s function as a site for collecting,
researching, preserving, and educating. This traditional view is still prominently
present as well as the focus for both tangible and intangible heritage.
To better illustrate this, it is necessary to review the former museum definition,
that was decided in 2007 in Vienna:

a museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of

society and its development, open to the public, which acquires,
conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and
intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes
of education, study and enjoyment. [3]

However, it was expanded considerably with such critical phrases as ‘open to

the public’, ‘accessible and inclusive’, ‘diversity and sustainability’, ‘operate and
communicate ethically’, ‘participation of communities’, ‘education’, ‘reflection’, and
‘knowledge sharing’. These new characteristics are notable and acknowledge the
role museums (aim to) play in society. For years now, museums all over the world are
going through processes of transformation from inward-looking, closed institutions
to more outward-looking and open organisations. Museums tap into a broader trend
where citizens are being encouraged (and are encouraging each other) to display
social engagement through direct action in response to key societal problems.
Museums are also being challenged to take a stance. Throughout the world, they
are displaying an increasing willingness to take their social responsibility seriously
by contributing as an independent voice to the most important contemporary
debates. This goes hand in hand with a growing sensitiveness towards ethics and
principles of ‘good conduct’.
 368 MUSEUMS IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

We notice this paradigm shift happening in museology as well. Archaeologist

and museum management and curation expert Robert Janes and professor of
museum studies Richard Sandell have been working on such themes as activism,
mindfulness, sustainability, and ethics for a long time and the recently published
book Museum Activism gives an overview of these ongoing debates. [3] Museums
and their associations increasingly discuss these topics on public fora. It is
exemplary that the London based Museums Association’s annual conference in
2019 focussed on ‘Sustainability and Ethical Museums’ and ‘dealing with conflict’
was of paramount importance. But these debates not only exist locally, but have
received more international attention as well.
At the level of ICOM, The International Committee of Ethical Dilemmas (IC
ETHICS) is a very young committee, only taking its first steps in 2017. [4] However,
its importance is growing fast. The committee has been addressing thematic issues
on the handling of ethical dilemmas while also striving for equality, diversity,
and inclusion. Illicit trafficking of cultural property, decolonising collections, the
ways of dealing with human remains, and general good governance only top a
growing list of concerns whose attention and navigation is required to create more
ethical museums fit for our postnormal times. INTERCOM, ICOM’s international
committee working on museum management also recently published a study
on the lack of ‘good governance’ in many museums in East and Central Europe.
Above, at the 2022 ICOM General Conference in Prague, ‘ethics’ was a major issue as
well. [5] The ICOM Code of Ethics which is, next to the new definition of a museum,
another cornerstone of ICOM’s achievements, is currently being revised with the
aim of making the necessary adjustments to equip museums for the contemporary
challenges they will face.

TO SUMMARISE, IT ACTUALLY IS AN ACCOMPLISHMENT THAT A MAJOR

SHIFT TOWARDS MORE OPENNESS, PARTICIPATION, INCLUSION, AND
ETHICS HAS FOUND SOIL IN THE NEW MUSEUM DEFINITION. HOWEVER,
THE QUESTION IS WHETHER THESE CHANGES ARE SUFFICIENT,
ESPECIALLY IN THE CONTEXT OF A POSTNORMAL ERA?

From Classic, Modern, Postmodern to Postnormal?

In order to answer this question, we first need to pinpoint a bit more of what Sardar
actually means by ‘postnormal’. According to Ziauddin Sardar, we live:

in a transitional age, a time without the confidence that we can

return to any past we have known and with no confidence in any path
to a desirable, attainable or sustainable future. It is a time when
 369 CULTURE & CREATIVITY

all choices seem perilous, likely to lead to ruin, if not entirely

over the edge of the abyss. In our time it is possible to dream all
dreams of visionary futures but almost impossible to believe we
have the capability or commitment to make any of them a reality. We
live in a state of flux beset by indecision: what is for the best,
which is for the worst? We are disempowered by the risks, cowed into
timidity by fear of the choices we might be inclined or persuaded to
contemplate. [6]

While in the ‘normal’ past, we could rely on our foundations, from economics and
political sciences to natural and biological sciences to deal with the major global
problems, this no longer holds true. Sardar states that:

things are going wrong; they are going spectacularly wrong, on a

global scale, and in multiple and concurrent ways. We thus find
ourselves in a situation that is far from normal; we have entered the
domain of the postnormal. [7]

Sardar draws on the work of Jerry Ravetz, the British philosopher of science, and
the Argentinean mathematician Silvio Funtowicz, who first introduced the concept
of ‘postnormal’ in the nineties, when they came to the conclusion, they could no
longer rely merely on empirical data to develop scientific reasoning and policies
because of the uncertainty in scientific work. [8] Science had become postnormal.
Three decades later, Sardar concludes that society has become postnormal. Its
main features are complexity, chaos, and contradictions against the backdrop of
globalisation and ubiquitous connectivity and communication. The confidence in
institutions – nation states, public institutions as museums, politics – established
in the heyday of Modernity, is collapsing. Says Sardar, ‘in postnormal times it is the
institutions, the system itself which constitutes the problem’. [9]
In order to determine the ‘postnormal era’, Sardar made an interesting overview
of subsequent time frames: classic (1920–1950), modern (1950–1975), postmodern
(1975–2005), and postnormal (2005–). He acknowledges that this division is
arbitrary, but it is an exciting exercise in which he argues these eras convincingly.
It is beyond my intended scope here to elaborate on the different characteristics of
the eras; however, it is useful to sum up a few characteristics. In particular, I wish
to focus on the difference between the postmodern or late modern era and the
postnormal era. [10]
In the analysis of our present juncture the focus in social sciences seldom
goes beyond the ‘postmodern’ – or variations as late modern, reflexive, liquid. It
is a merit of Sardar to actually do this and to develop a real alternative, and move
beyond the postmodern.
370 MUSEUMS IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

Meaning
Classic: ‘I think, therefore I am’
Modern: ‘I progress, therefore I am’
Postmodern: ‘I shop, therefore I am’
Postnormal: ‘I share, therefore I am’

Truth
Classic: Monolithic
Modern: Monolithic
Postmodern: Relative and pluralistic
Postnormal: Contradictory

Key Concepts
Classic: Conquest, Supremacy, Progress
Modern: Progress, Efficiency, Modernisation
Postmodern: Dissolution of Grand Narratives (meaning), Multiple Truths, Plural
Voices
Postnormal: Complexity, Chaos, Contradictions, Uncertainty, Ignorance

Science
Classic: Pursuit of Truth, funded largely by the State
Modern: Scientific Method as Neutral, Objective Truth; funded by the State and
Corporations (Military-Industrial Complex); Peer Reviewed Publication
Postmodern: Socially Constructed; funded largely by Military-Industrial-
Corporations Complex; Peer Reviewed Publications
Postnormal: ‘Facts are Uncertain, Values in Dispute, Stakes High and Decisions
Urgent’; Driven by Mega Corporations (Google, Microsoft) and Billionaire
Philanthropists; ‘Extended Peer Communities’ but still largely funded by Military-
Industrial-Corporations Complex

Communication
Classic: Telephone, Telegraph, Morse Code, Radio
Modern: Microwave Ovens, Television
Postmodern: Mobiles, e-mail, Internet, World Wide Web
Postnormal: Instant, Perpetually Connected, 24-hour Global News Channels,
Facebook, Twitter, ‘Internet of Things’

Political Organization
Classic: Empires
Modern: Nation Sates
Postmodern: Regional Groupings and Alliances
Postnormal: Power shift to Non-State Actors
371 CULTURE & CREATIVITY

Governance
Classic: Representative Democracy
Modern: Interest-Based Democracy (neo-liberal, hyper Modern)
Postmodern: Deliberative Democracy (diversity, plurality, ‘politics of difference’)
Postnormal: Complex, Chaotic, Unmanageable

Equality
Classic: Legislate discrimination, Poor Law
Modern: Welfare State, Equality before the Law (assumed), Trickle Down Effect will
improve the lot of the poor
Postmodern: Multiculturalism, Integration, Assimilation
Postnormal: Acceleration of Inequality, Rich Grow Richer at Lightning Speed

Environment
Classic: Relatively Healthy
Modern: Polluting
Postmodern: Toxic
Postnormal: Catastrophic, Climate Change

Museums and Societies

The future will tell whether all our times will become postnormal. Meanwhile, it
is definitively an inspiration. Furthermore, the model seems viable, and it is an
exciting reflection to ask ourselves whether museums would fit in this postnormal
era and if they will be able to adapt.
In order to understand museums, we should also try to understand dynamics
and reforms in societies over the past centuries, especially during the period
known as Western Modernity. Museums and their societies are communicating
vessels. However difficult and in fact unattainable this may be, many philosophers,
sociologists, and historians have dedicated their work to it. Regarding museum
histories, scholars generally share the framework of eighteenth century Western
European Modernity to coin the notion of the ‘public museum’. [11] Museum
histories are intrinsically ‘classic’, as Sardar notes, and ‘modern’ because they were
invented in an era that was dominated by a paramount belief in Western European
civilisation and establishment, self-presumed supremacy of Western colonial
culture and values. [12] Public museums were created by a ruling class and served
to give expression and confirmation to the form of society championed by that
class. Museums also acquired a position of authority as scientific and ‘neutral’
institutions, embedded in a narrative of ‘progress’ and ‘truth-finding’. Sardar’s
model, mentioned previously, exposits on these aspects nicely.
It is important to note, that since this time, many have made valiant adjustments
to this modern narrative and distanced themselves from these modern ideas. Notably,
in the nineties of the twentieth century, scholars such as the German sociologist
Ulrich Beck, the English sociologist Anthony Giddens, and the English sociologist
 372 MUSEUMS IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

Scott Lash left their marks on this academic debate when they defined the ‘reflexive
modernity’ as a next phase in modernity. The Polish British Zygmunt Bauman used
‘liquid modernity’ as a leading principle in this though. [13] Lash and Bauman
amongst others share the idea that ‘modernity’ has not come to an end as postmodern
thinkers suggest but has entered another phase as the ‘certainties’ of early modern
Enlightenment have crumbled at the precipice of the twenty-first century. [14]
Museologists were influenced by the work of these sociologists when they coined ‘the
liquid museum’ or ‘the reflexive museum’ – museum models that reflect the urge for
museums to reinvent themselves in line with the dynamics of present-day societies.

The Imaginary Postnormal Museum

Following up on Sardar’s theory, it is time to go past the notions of postmodern/late
modern/reflexive/liquid modernity and to enter the postnormal. What could this
imaginary postnormal museum look like?

A POSTNORMAL MUSEUM WOULD STILL CONCERN ‘HERITAGE’ BUT IT

IS NO LONGER CLEAR WHETHER THE FOCUS WOULD BE AS STRONGLY
AND EXCLUSIVELY ON ‘ARTEFACTS’. INTANGIBLE ASPECTS OF HERITAGE
SUCH AS MEMORIES, RITUALS, PRACTICES THAT ARE BEING PASSED ON
BETWEEN MEMBERS OF COMMUNITIES BECOME MORE IMPORTANT.

A major issue for this matter is the basic question whose heritage will be selected
by whom, to be kept in a museum? Selection processes are hard in a postnormal
era that is characterised by complexity, chaos, controversies, and contradictions.
Besides, this era is defined by decolonisation and a radical questioning of Western
Enlightenment all together.
Subsequently, the institution ‘museum’ and the way it works, is being questioned
as well. It can no longer be the ‘national’, ‘regional’, or ‘local’ pride of an elite. After
all, in this new system political power has shifted from national states and regional
groupings to non-state actors. Furthermore, governance has become really complex,
chaotic and even unmanageable. While in a postmodern era we could still fall
back on key concepts of a deliberative democracy, built around diversity, plurality,
‘politics of difference’, this is no longer the case. The postnormal museum will have
to rethink its governance structure completely, with special attention to human
relations and ethical responsibility. We notice in museology that practitioners
as well as academics have already been saying for years that organisations need
to change their power structures. [15] Janes criticizes the way most museums are
organized and run. [16] He confirms that the structures are still frequently based
on the old museum model that is top-down, bureaucratic, hierarchical, and even
(slightly) otherworldly.
 373 CULTURE & CREATIVITY

If museums do not want to become irrelevant, they urgently need to reflect

on these issues and their internal organisation. With this in mind, Janes has
introduced the concept of the ‘mindful museum’. Drawing on the Buddhist
tradition, this is an interesting model to review both the wider tasks of the museum
and its interpersonal relations with people both inside and outside the museum
walls. [17] To Janet Marstine, an expert in the field of museum ethics, the key to
the survival of museums as meaningful institutions lies in a rethinking of their
organisational structures, that should take ‘people and the world’ as its starting
point. She argues for a new form of museum ethics, based on the idea of an ethical,
socially responsible museum:

the ethical, socially responsible museum of the twenty-first century

recognizes the identities of its staff and its publics as hybrid and
fluid, rather than simply boxes to be ticked. [18]

In the past, ethics have all too often been reduced to the drawing up of ethical
codes and regulations, which serve no other purpose than the so-called
‘professionalisation’ of museum work. These codes are still valuable and should be
maintained but in an ethical, socially responsible museum ‘democratic pluralism,
shared authority and social justice’ are equally important. [19]
Sardar also stresses the importance of ‘ethics’ in the postnormal era. This
attitude is key when trying to deal with the acceleration of inequality and the major
environmental issues we are facing. It is the only way to stay tuned with younger
generations for who it is ‘normal’ to be perpetually connected, have access to 24-
hour global news channels, and be continuously present on social media platforms.
Younger generations to whom it is also quite ‘normal’ to share views, knowledge,
and ideas.

Is the ICOM Museum Definition Postnormal (Enough)?

Honestly, it is not easy to reflect on the idea of a ‘postnormal museum’. Especially
since the above-mentioned scholars and many among ‘us’ museologists, including
myself, are the embodiment of a Western Modern framework. Although we self-
assume to be very open-minded, reflexive, and flexible thinkers, the fact remains
that we are part of the Modern-Postmodern system. Certain prejudices are deeply
ingrained in our societies, thoughts, and feelings. There are many challenges. One
of the major ones resides at the level of the institution itself. We need to rethink
the institution itself, the (political) governance and the ‘powers that be’. Museums
are actually having debates on their questionable governance, their debatable
‘ethics’, the way they are funded and by whom, and the (lack of) ‘autonomy’ and
‘sovereignty’ all over the world. They also share difficulties in finding new ways
to share collections and knowledge. Historical burdens remain concerning the
‘ethics’ (and especially the lack thereof) by which many museums acquired their
present collections and an unwillingness to make up for or even begin the process
374 MUSEUMS IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

of addressing historical wrongs holds the contemporary museum in a lag state.

Although debates are going on, the outcomes are generally rather affirming for the
status quo. Unfortunately, there seems to be an inability to embrace change and to
actually change.
In this sense, the postnormal museum is still largely imaginary. The same goes
for the postnormal character of the new ICOM Museum Definition. As I explained,
the museum definition is innovative because it embraces very important societal
values. However, it can hardly be called a harbinger of a new age. Museums
probably have to change first, bit by bit, in order to influence the definition to its
fullest extent.
We should stay hopeful, and my reflection undoubtedly lacks depth and
examples. When working in the museum field, I do see many heritage organisations
striving for change. We actually see museums are tapping into themes like climate
change, the importance of ethics and of decolonising the collection, or generally
decolonising deeply rooted ways of colonial thinking, fighting inequality, and so
on. Museums do acknowledge they have a role to play. The International Council of
Museums could also play a forerunner’s role and actually use its non-governmental
power to enable change through empowerment and provocation.
The postnormal paradigm offers us a viable framework to work with. It would
be really interesting and worthwhile to set up a research project and to look
for examples of museums or heritage organisations that might be going in the
postnormal direction. This would not only be a valuable thinking exercise; it might
even contribute to a next generation of museums and museum people that are
badly needed in a postnormal society.
375 CULTURE & CREATIVITY

References

1. Van Oost, O. (2019). More than Words. Museology in Postnormal Times.

In Smeds, K. (Ed.), The Future of Tradition in Museology. Materials for a
discussion (pp. 174–178). Paris: ICOFOM.

2. Prior, N. (2002). Museums & Modernity. Art Galleries and the Making of Modern
Culture. Oxford/New York: Berg.

3. Janes, R.R. & Sandell, R. (eds) (2019). Museum Activism. London/New

York: Routledge; Janes, R.R. (2009). Museums in a Troubled World: Renewal,
Irrelevance or Collapse? London/New York: Routledge; Sandell, R. (ed.) (2002).
Museums, Society, Inequality. London/New York: Routledge.

4. IC ETHICS – ICOM International Committee on Ethical Dilemmas

(ic-ethics.museum)

5. INTERCOM (2022). Museum Watch Governance Management Project.

Paris: ICOM.

6. Sardar, Z. (ed.) (2017). The Postnormal Times Reader. Center for Postnormal
Policy & Futures Studies, p. 47–48.

7. Sardar, Z. (ed.) (2017). The Postnormal Times Reader. Center for Postnormal
Policy & Futures Studies, p.49.

8. Ravetz, J. & Funtowicz, S. (1999), ‘Postnormal science: an insight now

maturing’, Futures 31 (7) 641–646.

9. Sardar, Z. (ed.) (2017). The Postnormal Times Reader. Center for Postnormal
Policy & Futures Studies, p.216.

10. Sardar, Z. (ed.) (2017). The Postnormal Times Reader. Center for Postnormal
Policy & Futures Studies, p.193.

11. Bennett, T. (1995). The Birth of the Museum. London/New York: Routledge.

12. Vázquez, R. (2021). Vistas of Modernity. Decolonial aesthesis and the end of the
contemporary. Amsterdam: Mondriaan Fund.

13. Beck, U., Giddens, A. & Lash, S. (1994). Reflexive Modernization. Politics,
Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Stanford University
Press; Bauman, Z. (2007). Liquid Times. Living in an Age of Uncertainty.
Cambridge: Polity.

14. Berman, M. (2010). All That is Solid Melts Into Air. The Experience of Modernity.
London/New York: Verso.

15. Simon, N. (2010). The Participatory Museum. Santa Cruz: Museum 2.0.
376 MUSEUMS IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

16. Janes, R.R. (2009). Museums in a Troubled World: Renewal, Irrelevance

or Collapse? London/New York: Routledge.

17. Janes, R.R. (2009). Museums in a Troubled World: Renewal, Irrelevance

or Collapse? London/New York: Routledge.

18. Marstine, J., Bauer A. A. & Haines, C. (eds) (2011). New Directions in Museum
Ethics. London/New York: Routledge, p.11.
CONFRONTING
POSTNORMAL TIMES
Yelena Muzykina

For the last few decades, contemporary scholars have tried to conceptualise the
changes taking place around the globe. Through this process new perceptions of
the world have emerged pointing out the variety of modifications we are currently
going through. Most of the transformations – to name a few: extreme weather
events, a global recession, or privacy evaporation with the arrival of big data –
send us specific signals that we ought to be receiving as wake up calls. Greenpeace
activists steadily holler, slightly louder than the wide host of doom-forecasting
soothsayers, that the overuse of resources leads to environmental catastrophes
(warming up of the world’s oceans, droughts in California, erosion of the sea coast
in Florida, floods in Britain, and the list goes on) and the spoiling of the planet’s
ecosystem. Every year think tanks agonise over all sorts of pending crises from
economic to political to energy supply or refugees settling, thus making society slip
deeper into them. As Andy Hines put it, ‘we’re fouling our nest, and not aware of
how serious the issue is.’ [1]
The proportions of the tragedies we face day by day lead some to call attention
to the ‘ills’ of modern-day times, defining them as ‘The End of Normal’, thus
proclaiming the ‘normal’ as somewhat passé. [2] Assumptions such as progress,
modernisation, (economic) growth, and development have become confusingly
obsolete. We see that the ‘old’ world is falling apart. A new reality, or ‘real virtuality’,
that substitutes our customary existence comes into being. [3] Yet there is no one to
be blamed beyond ourselves, collectively, as we humans continue, unincumbered,
to alter life on the planet, so much so that American biologist Michael Soule had to
coin a new term – the ‘Catastrophozoic Era’ – to describe our times. [4]
On the one hand, scholars and experts on complexity Peter Allan and Liz
Varga distinguish specific negative characteristics of our present epoch, talking
of ‘instability, breakdown, and collapse of old structures’ giving some hope that
they may serve as a springboard to ‘new features, technologies, variables and
characteristics’ on the horizon that might ‘lead to a new period of qualitative
stability’. [5] On the other, futurist John A. Sweeny is less enthusiastic and describes
our era as one of extreme ‘global weirding’. [6] All in all, we see that things are not
just going wrong, but they are going astray on a global level. What is even more
 378 CONFRONTING POSTNORMAL TIMES

shocking is that this chaos is taking different directions, occupying various fields at
the same time. Nothing around us functions ‘normally’ any longer.
To tackle this complex situation Ziauddin Sardar, a British Muslim intellectual
and polymath, proposes the concept of Postnormal Times (PNT), which suggests
a fresh view articulating a theoretical framework that could explain our epoch.
Beyond this, the framework also envisages the emergence of ‘postnormal’
phenomenon and hints at a way to activate further practical changes. [6] The key
components that Sardar identifies as the drivers and shakers of PNT are the ‘3C’s’:
complexity, chaos, and contradiction. Their understanding could help to find a new
way forward. Let us give a brief outline for each ‘c’.

Defining Postnormal Times through 3C’s

The first distinctive characteristic of PNT is complexity. There is nothing simple
about things that require fixing, whether it is food supply chains, frequent floods, or
a given state’s foreign policy. Sardar points out that complexity should be perceived
as ‘a natural by-product of the fact that most of our problems have a global scale’. [7]
Moreover, the critical lesson of complexity could be put like this: the notion of
control and certainty are becoming obsolete.

IF, IN ‘NORMAL’ TIMES, WE USED TO BUILD MODELS, COME UP WITH

MODES, AND FORMULATE METHODS THAT HELPED US TO FIND ANSWERS
TO INTERCONNECTED ISSUES, NOW WE MUST DISCARD THEM AND LOOK
FOR SOMETHING ELSE.

The second characteristic of PNT, according to Sardar, is chaos. When

acceleration is the norm, predictability is rare, and small changes can lead to
significant consequences. The philosopher discerns that the reason for this inherent
unpredictability resides in the behaviour of the complex systems of human beings,
particularly in the changing nature, scope, and function of true networks. Due to the
rise of technology, we have never been as connected as we are now. That connection
keeps us in close contact not only with each other but with the world around us,
causing interdependence. ‘Indeed, it seems that nowadays we do not communicate
to live; but live to communicate’, says Sardar. [8] Such close linkages, however,
work like a Trojan horse. A small, seemingly insignificant, occurrence can trigger a
collapse of enormous impact. When everything is linked up, the potential for both
positive and negative effect multiplies in geometrical progression. The latter option
presents us with greater bother because, for instance, one computer virus can, in
principle, bring the whole world to a grinding halt.
For the human and cultural spheres, Sardar identifies individualism as a reason
for the chaotic behaviour that is causing networks to fail. Our irresponsible, selfish
actions are essential ingredients of a recipe for catastrophe, amplified by the fact
 379 CULTURE & CREATIVITY

that we are always in the know, a condition that prompts us towards self-organised
panics, thanks to mobile phones, e-mails, tweets, messaging apps, and the 24-hour
news channels. It sounds horrifying, but looking back at 9/11, which gave rise to the
global War on Terror, or the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunis in 2010,
which gave rise to the Arab Spring – the actions of a few individuals could indeed
lead the world to waste.
Last but not least, Sardar identifies contradictions as the third characteristic
of PNT. He cites Jerome Ravetz, a British philosopher of science, who together
with Silvio Funtovicz, an Argentinian mathematician, introduced the concept of
‘postnormal’. Ravetz and Funtovicz point out that:

contradictions also point to the fact that everything, every policy,

has a cost. No matter how we may perceive progress, how beneficial we
may think it is, it always has detrimental side effects. There is no
achievement of good without some production of evil. [9]

From all possible contradictions, Ziauddin Sardar sets his eyes on two. The first
one is about the pace of changes that have always existed. ‘It is not just that change
is rapid but the actual rate of change is itself changing – exponential acceleration
has now become the norm.’ The examples are easily spotted in the economy, for
example. According to the latest research results of Oxfam International, 1% of the
world population owned 82% of all wealth created in 2017. ‘The billionaire boom
is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a failing economic system,’
said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International. [11] The second
contradiction grabs knowledge as its prey. Sardar concludes that in the process of
our knowledge expansion, we realize more keenly than ever that our generation is
more ignorant than any other in the history of humanity. In addition, our current
ignorance takes a new turn: whatever solution we produce to a problem using our
contemporary knowledge, there are always bits that are not solved and cannot be
solved because of our unconscious ignorance of them. Sardar and many others
writing on postnormal times exposit extensively on the various layers of ignorance
in postnormal times and their epistemological consequences, both conscious and
unconscious. [12]
What do all these scaring characteristics mean for the existential perspective?
First of all, in such a situation the highest merit goes to the required quality of
intellectual humility. We are presently unable to define things or process them with
any precision; no new models are yet available; no new classification schemes have
been suggested. In conditions of complexity, chaos, and contradiction, any attempt
at simplifying the structuring of new knowledge, using any of the present models or
classification systems, is futile. The very notion of a model implies simplification,
reduction of some components, a linear way of interaction – all of which go directly
in the face of the reality of PNT. They are out of the question in this environment and
new ways of thinking that imbody the 3C’s are desperately needed.
 380 CONFRONTING POSTNORMAL TIMES

Secondly, the PNT situation deprives us of what Sardar calls the ‘luxury of time’.
When things change rapidly, how could the process of observation, reflection, and
response adjust to the necessity of responding promptly? The human mind is not
able to carry out complex mental calculations at the speed of light, as it is often
required nowadays. That is the prerogative of artificial intelligence that get more
and more attention, funds, and powerful support in contrast to philosophy and the
humanities in general. An artificial ‘brain’ can perform, simultaneously, hundreds
of thousands of operations and provide results in nanoseconds. So, the question
arises: ‘what is intellect nowadays and what are its functions?’ Even though the
quest to answer such questions requires direct participation of human beings – as
a machine can only mimic ‘cognitive’ functions that are associated with human
learning and problem-solving – a new definition for what exactly is human, is
required. [12]
What exactly makes us human? What activities would classify us as a species
different from machines? How can we define the purpose of life and what sense
will it carry in a chaotic environment? What relationship to time, space, and matter
should humans have in PNT? Should we keep talking about those three at all
when now they look more ephemeral than ever? And what are we to make of such
notions as ‘order’, that has always been helpful to promote a certainly structured
and organised world? Order doesn’t seem to work anymore. Even the simple idea of
order seems unfeasible or at least in need of updating in PNT.

HOW ARE WE TO GO DEEPER? WHERE IS THE PLACE FOR DETERMINING

GOOD AND EVIL WHEN THINGS ARE CHOSEN BY HOW FAST THEY
WORK? WHAT VALUES SHOULD HUMANS HOLD ON TO IN AN INSTANTLY
CHANGING WORLD?
Even though we produce more questions than answers at the moment, this is
a sign of our awareness of the problem.

Coping With Postnormality: Variety, Creativity, and Dialogue

Let us try to think about some ingredients that could help us deal with postnormal
times: the world that falls apart, loses its solidness, struggles with ambiguities,
and menaces to shatter because of the most trivial thing. If we cannot manage and
control this new reality, why not instead try to navigate through it?
For such an undertaking, a few suggested milestones could assist in balancing
those characteristics that Sardar lists in his description of PNT and might stand to
make our existence more plausible. They can also be considered landmarks of our
ontology, indications of who we are as human beings.
First, how about counterpoising awareness of variety to sheer complexity? Would
you agree that chaos longs for creativity and contradiction requires promoting a
 381 CULTURE & CREATIVITY

dialogue as a means of a solution in time of turbulence? All three ingredients are

indispensable for our survival in postnormal times.
Variety is not something new, but an old characteristic of our society. As a state
of diversification, it is profoundly neglected and almost forbidden, though it might
be pretended to be acknowledged and even praised. Take the well-known but failed
concept of multiculturalism, specially developed by politicians of Western Europe
to manage the complexity of the situation that arose from the flow of Muslim
immigrants into the countries of the European Union. On the surface, it seemed
that the conventions were preserved, and variety was celebrated. But a closer look
reveals that the new culture that has emerged on the expanses of Western Europe
was initially doomed to terminate.
Multiculturalism holds a national and Western identity as a, supposed, a priori
foundational concept that assumes that Western culture can coexist freely with
others. It is the West that defines what is required for full citizenship, pressing the
‘Others’ to comply with the rules of the game. Of course, it is done not as bluntly
as in the case of the French assimilation model, which places a straightforward
demand to newcomers to ‘become like us without any excuse’. But the ultimate
result is the same for multiculturalism as was the case with assimilation – abject
failure. According to Olivier Roy, the problem here is not with ‘multi’, but with
‘culturalism’. [13] The prefix denotes the complexity of the problem, not a possible
solution. The latter happens with a culture that, by definition, is a lifestyle of
people in its fullness, the social heritage that an individual gets within his or her
group. [14] It is a very complex system that includes economy, religion, society,
and varies by time and geography. As a result, they are quite tangible and get their
embodiment in objects. Those objects help us to identify ourselves as individuals
and human beings with our unique environment that often differs dramatically
from the images of Western civilisation. Such existential variety could be vital
and productive, proving that the world is of different sizes, shapes, colours, forms,
contents, meanings, and cannot be ruled by a single notion of truth. The world, then,
is much more complicated and demands recognition of what Ziauddin Sardar calls
‘genuine multiculturalism.’ [15] By this, he means that our world ultimately needs
to turn into a world of various civilisations – Western, Islamic, Indian, Chinese, and
the world of others out there:

each civilization will rediscover and renovate itself according to

its own criteria and concepts and have its own dynamic, thriving
way of knowledge, governance, democratic autonomy and civilizational
identity. And all will enrich each other with mutual respect,
cooperation and synthesis. [16]

Some sparkles of that enriched future could be caught in the contemporary

philosophical concepts developed by Costica Bradatan, a Romanian American
philosopher. Who could imagine a couple of decades ago that American culture
382 CONFRONTING POSTNORMAL TIMES

obsessed with success, self-made and self-built people would respond so willingly
to the idea of preserving the human capacity to fail as an essential to what humans
inherently are? It could happen only now, in postnormal times when our previously
dominant ways of being, doing, and knowing stop working. This model of success
does not function properly in our current circumstances. So what?
‘If there was ever a time to think seriously about failure, it is now.’ [17] Bradatan
suggests bringing some variety into the complexity of our existence and to look at
it from a different angle. That perspective enriches our understanding of ourselves.
Our capacity to fail is essential to what we are. Instead of trotting a familiar path, the
philosopher echoes Sardar and calls us to recognize that progress and improvement
are alluring. We need to form a new discourse about failure that helps us to get
rid of self-deceit and internal pride for being in this world. Bradatan points out
that failure has a distinct therapeutic function and mercilessly cures us from the
imaginable importance we put on thinking that the world exists only for our sake.
Instead of proclaiming that we are designed to be kings of nature and destined to
dominate, Bradatan declares that we humans are created to fail. Because of failure,
we recognise the gap left between what we are and what we can be, and we try to
fill that space with fantastic things. That real gap – not our understanding of our
talents as that which gives birth to technical innovations and genial inventions –
makes our historical accomplishments possible, makes us better.
This praise of failure sounds very fresh but very familiar at the same time. It
brings us back to the Biblical anthropology that recognizes the weakness and
fallibility of human nature. It describes the pervasive longing ‘to be like gods’ that
mystically immerged in the heads of the first people and the consequences that
desire brought into their daily life – failure, disasters, pain, non-existence. But the
collapse came with hope, hope that evil would be turned into good; the gap – the
existential abyss between what we are and what we could be – would be transcended
and even eliminated according to the higher will. Because of that promised hope,
we humans can really accept that our failures are not ultimately fatal. As Bradatan
puts it, ‘maybe it’s not a failure; maybe it can be a jumping off point for some kind of
success’. [18] A good point that proves that complexity of the world needs multiple
perspectives with different explanations that complement each other even in their
surface contradiction.
Indeed, the recognition of variety in the complex world helps to survive for it
brings unity avoiding uniformity that is usually imposed through violence and
annihilation. Variety constructs a mosaic canvas of reality from multiple pieces of
different shapes, colours, and materials that hold a marvellous organic cohesion.
Variety has a tight connection with its peer, creativity, which balances the
chaotic nature of postnormal times. In fact, we must stop perceiving chaos as
something destructive, something that leads to disorder. We must renew our
knowledge of it as a starting point of an immense creative project that is eventually
‘very good’! The creation of this world in the biblical account (Genesis 1) leads us
from chaotic, formless, and dark conditions of this earth to the proclamation of
 383 CULTURE & CREATIVITY

its perfection. Some portion of this creating-out-of-chaos power is assigned to us,

humans from the dawn of our existence. See how the Old Testament pictures Adam
naming animals according to their kind, thus bringing out of chaos an orderly
system of species (Genesis 2:19). Think about the command to take care of the new
environment, including plants, birds and animals that our ancestors received from
the first day of their existence (Genesis 1:28). [19] Creativity has been a tool useful in
combating chaos, amongst other tasks, since prehistory.
This Creator’s sparkle enlightened human history for centuries and was accessible
to every human being, without exaggeration. Pause for a moment and think who
the first listeners of the masterpieces of Johann Sebastian Bach were? Those were
ordinary German burgers which were coming to listen to their kapellmeister after
a hard-working week. That heavenly-inspired music was bringing peace and order
into the chaos of their daily thoughts; those were the moment of blessings that
creativity lavishly grants. Or think of St. Paul’s Cathedral and St. Peter’s Basilica?
Were they accessed only by some tourists who duly paid their entrance fees? The
architectural talent of Antonio da Sangallo, Giacomo Vignola, Giacomo Della Porta
and Sir Christopher Wren made exquisite creativity accessible to everyone on daily
bases. And what can you say about the harmony, order, and magic of such palaces as
the Alhambra or Topkapi created by the genius of Muslim architects? The creative
magic made them illuminate the landscape so exquisitely that you would never
think that the chaos of hills, woods, or bare slopes could bring to life that beauty.

FOR CENTURIES CREATIVITY WAS PUBLICLY AVAILABLE AND EXERCISED.

IT EXISTED (IN DIFFERENT FORMS AND DEGREES) IN ALL PUBLIC
SPHERES OF HUMAN LIFE AND WITH ALL PEOPLE, FROM A POTTER TO
A PEASANT, TO A TAILOR, TO A MERCHANT.
They contributed to the development of creativity because they worked it out
with their hands, minds, and hearts. The outstanding representatives of creativity,
the world-renowned artists, marked human history with the milestones of their
masterpieces. Facing the enormous progress in the development of science in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Modernity with its lawful, orderly, and objective
perception of the world brought a new perspective to creativity. It turned out to be
something incidental and subjective, a phenomenon associated with a breakdown
in Order and therefore with Disorder. [20] A popular perception put creative people
in the like of someone unhinged or even insane to some extent. [21] But it is a very
distorted picture.
The preoccupation of the Modern with the creativity that deals mainly with the
technical-scientific achievements that sprang up out of mere curiosity to find out
how the world operated gave rise to the emergence of this distorted image. The type
of creativity promoted builds a technological framework, based on the metaphor
 384 CONFRONTING POSTNORMAL TIMES

of the Universe as a machine. Such creativity was used mainly to satisfy only
one compartment of human existence, to provide a secure life for human beings
protecting them from diseases, natural disasters, or weather cataclysms might arise
to supplant them. The tragedy of chaos under PNT is caused by an entirely artificial
conflict between creativity and logic that became dominant in the previous epoch. A
society that wants to maintain a high level of creativity in its midst needs to nurture
it. This happens through a fortified system of humanitarian education that teaches
students music, philosophy, and the arts. Those courses have to be considered not
as supplementary or elective but compulsory for they breed the zeal and passion for
creative actions that leave visible impact all over our existence.
The Belarusian musician Mikhail Kazinik, in his book The Secrets of Geniuses,
gives a stunning example of the impact of creative power on ‘people of logic’, the
phrase he uses to refer to certain individuals, like businesspeople. [22] He, as a
lecturer, musician, and an educator is often invited to take part in training the staff
of renowned companies. For the first two days, those people listen to specialists who
tell them about current conditions of the economy, stock markets, political trends,
and the like. The information disperse here is highly logical and fact-based. On the
third day, when everyone is overwhelmed with figures and largely in a depressed
mood, Kazinik comes with his violin and starts talking about Mozart, recites poetry,
and plays music. This mighty throw-in of arts releases the enormous creative power
in the audience. The hard logic is washed down with the life water of creativity that
dispels the distorted imaginations of businesspeople, taking them to a new level,
helping them to find extraordinary solutions out of the chaos of facts. The world
becomes whole and restores its functional potential. That is why if we want to
overcome the chaos of postnormal times based on not-working-anymore logic, we
have to return to creativity that was implanted into human beings by the Creator.

IT IS OBLIGATORY TO STOP DIVIDING PEOPLE INTO THE INITIATE AND

THE COMMON AND BRING BACK INTO THE CURRICULUM OF OUR
EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS COMPULSORY COURSES IN PHILOSOPHY,
MUSIC, AND FINE ART. WITHOUT THAT, SOCIETY IS DOOMED TO SINK INTO
UNPRODUCTIVE, UNCREATIVE CHAOS.

At this point, perhaps the presence of religious ideas raises severe objections
from the more secular side of society. An often, but not necessarily problematic
occurrence. Indeed, I may not be correct and would not ask anyone to forcefully
accept the belief that what PNT is trying to do is ‘restore God’s creative image in
human beings’, or the like that may come from other religions, belief systems,
or conceptions of God or gods. This may appear to be a pitfall of unascendable
contradiction. The vast variety of opinions becomes the norm and somehow this is
385 CULTURE & CREATIVITY

incompatible with nature. Yet, actually, a constructive conversation could help us to

unleash the tension often found in PNT.
Here we come to the third milestone on our way out of postnormal times:
dialogue. first, we must consider a few things that could help us to have a genuine
dialogue and what might prevent it from taking place. First, some portion of amateur
zeal has to be revived in the process of views exchange. Dialogue has become such a
favourite tool that it is often turned into a business.
Let us take an interfaith dialogue as an example. The fear of Islam is reaching
its maximum in the West and some other parts of the world. One of the solutions
to combat Islamophobia is an open dialogue that brings together representatives of
different faith traditions to shed light on their beliefs and build bridges that would
help to overcome barriers to peaceful coexistence. Unfortunately, this method has
turned into a platform for performance of professional preachers, either of their
denomination or official state policy. For most participants, except a few fair-
minded scholars, such meetings are just formality, a part of the annual working
plan of their organizations for producing reports, not results. But taken seriously,
interfaith dialogue will become a productive instrument of battling complexity
only if it is followed up by actions that put people face to face with each other, make
them interact and learn from each other actively. The practical, active learning
should become a logical follow-up of any dialogue process.
The second characteristic of genuine dialogue in postnormal times is a strong
ethical dimension where accountability, an old-fashion virtue, plays a vital role. In
our debates we have to remember that ethics are neither remote nor impersonal;
they are equally applied to a single human being and the universe. Ethics provide
the guiding principle in our choices of direction to move, actions to take, goals
to fulfil, and solutions to search. If we acknowledge our imperfection, then we
will hold on to accountability as a saving anchor. Right now, giving an ethical
response to the dilemmas of PNT is not an easy task because by far we have made
ethics redundant in our existential realm. To revive them, it might sound for some
people as an attempt to go back to a religious beliefs system that was discarded by
secularism. The most profound maxim of accountability for our individual and
collective actions could be found in the New Testament. ‘In everything, do to others
what you would have them do to you’ (Matthew 7:12). We badly need to implant
this tenable command, this ethical foundation into our thoughts, words, actions,
motions, and being if we want to create a new normality.
The third thing informed and ethical dialogue assists us with is in allowing us
to transcend those limitations of tradition that often block productivity. We need
to accept a postmodern axiom in its postnormal rendition: there is no monopoly
on truth, no right or wrong, but there is a process of searching for it. Everyone is
able and welcome to contribute to that procedure and the objectives we set in our
pursuit. It is no more a search for the answer that ‘fits all sizes’ but a quest for
alternatives that might be born in a dialogue when sides take uncertainty, risk,
and ignorance thoughtfully and responsibly. In a nutshell, if we want to negotiate
386 CONFRONTING POSTNORMAL TIMES

our way out of the complexity in postnormal times, we need to relearn to dialogue
with each other, face to face, sincerely. Our primary objection should become
multiplying the common good through united actions. But we have to be careful
and not mix activity with activism; for there is no natural law that activism could or
ought to serve only the common good. It could be very destructive and dangerous
for creating new normality (take for example neo-Nazi or different forms of
xenophobic and/or fascist activism).
The world is longing for constructive, not destructive, actions. Variety, creativity,
and proper dialogue helps us to move forward through complexity and empowers
us to shape postnormal chaos into a new form of liveable reality for human beings.
Ultimately, positive futures lie ahead.

Who is Next?
All the ideas discussed thus far threaten to become void if there is nobody to see them
out. So, who will be the generation that should pave the way out of postnormal times?
The observations of the modern youth, frankly speaking, give little hope from
a traditional perspective. It looks like variety, creativity, and dialogue are not their
intrinsic characteristics. These are people for whom a dialogue mostly means
a symbiotic existence with their mobile phones that embody a whole world to
them. Their relations with time, space and even matter are entirely changed; and
that cannot but affect their human nature. The researchers say that those smart
technologies alter the brain, decreasing empathy and reducing the ability to keep up
the dialogue and any sort of conversation. [23] The younger generation is deprived
of real social interaction and the boundaries between the living and non-living are
blurring out for them.
The understanding of a variety by this generation is also strangely altered.
It mainly exists in technical terms within a framework of gadgets and software.
The diversity is determined in terms of options and apps things can use in their
performance. Sadly, but even the variety of feelings one can express is defined, in
a limited sense, by the number of emoji available on one’s phone. It means that
creativity is lived out within the borders of a virtual, not human, nature. These
young people grow up in the digital age obtaining entirely different communicative,
emotional, and practical habits than prior generations used to have at their age.
Privacy is almost gone: the lives of young people are completely lived online, every
face and every word can be instantly retrieved through Facebook, Twitter, or other
social networks. Like the economic crisis, the digital effects on this generation are
global, unparalleled, and complex. The moral categories of this generation are
often defined not in terms of good or bad, but quick or slow. That is the criterion of
choice nowadays.
The conclusion might sound quite pessimistic. These new people are brought up
in the language of emoticons and graphical representations, have their own desires,
expectations, and perspectives to envision and shape the world. It is a world of
instant and perpetual changes, where every aspect of life is broadcasted online, and
387 CULTURE & CREATIVITY

the environment is built of complexity, contradictions, and chaos. So, they might feel
quite comfortable in such reality. But there is still some portion of optimism we can
find for the future. Under the outer garments of complete strangers, the innermost
of this new generation is not that utterly unfamiliar. Those youth are still longing to
find answers to such questions as ‘who am I?’ or ‘what am I here for in this life?’ or
‘what is this life about and there is my place in it?’ The good news is that while flesh
and blood predominate in their physical bodies, the algorithm of their being would
replicate the centuries-old history of human existence, with its spiritual tosses. The
need for philosophical comprehension would stay acute drawing young people like
a magnet to the transcendent reality that is much more fascinating than a virtual
one. They would experience that unexplainable longing to make their way out of
chaos, complexity, and contradiction to a new normal reality.
Such a perspective places a massive task in front of those who could lead the
youth through the spiritual path full of allegorical thorns and thistles. This goes for
the thinkers and educators of today. Contemporary philosophers and intellectuals
should be as sensitive to all these immediate changes, more so than they ever have
before. The time of their ascetic existence is over; they need to get out of their ivory
towers. Their task is to see the reality from the ground, in order to lift it up, to think
about eternity in terms of nanoseconds, to learn the contemporary techno-language
to be able to explain the timeless truth. It is a challenging task but nobody promised
an easier one.
388 CONFRONTING POSTNORMAL TIMES

References

1. Hines, Andy. 2010. Hitting the Snooze Button on the future’s “Biggest Wake
Up Call.” URL: http://www.andyhinesight.com/forecasting/hitting-the-
snooze-button-on-the-futures-biggestwake-up-call/ (accessed 02.04.2018).

2. Galbraith, James K. 2015. The end of normal: the great crisis and the future of
growth. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks

3. Gehmann, Ulrich, Martin Reiche, and Gerd Stern. 2014. Real Virtuality: About
the Destruction and Multiplication of World. Bielefeld: Transcript.

4. Slaughter, Richard A. 2010. The biggest wake up call in history. Foresight

International: Indooroopilly, Qld.

5. Allen, P., & Varga, L. 2014. Modeling sustainable energy futures for the UK.
Futures 57 (March): 28–40.

6. Sweeny, John A. 2014. Command-and-Control: Alternative Futures of

Geoengineering in an Age of Global Weirding. Futures, vol. 57 (March): 1–13.

7. Sardar, Ziauddin. 2015. Postnormal Times Revisited. Futures, vol. 67

(February (28)): 26–39.

8. Sardar, Ziauddin. 2010. Welcome to Postnormal Times. Futures, vol. 42

(June (5)): 438

9. Ravetz, Jerome R., and Silvio O. Funtowizc. 1994. Emergent complex systems,
Futures, vol. 26 (June): 568–582.

10. Sardar, Ziauddin. 2010. Welcome to Postnormal Times. Futures 42

(June (5)): 438

11. Kottasová, Ivana. 2018. The 1% Grabbed 82% of All Wealth Created in 2017.
CNN Money (January 22). URL: http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/21/news/
economy/davos-oxfam-inequalitywealth/index.html (accessed 04.04.2018).

12. Sardar, Ziauddin. 2010. Welcome to Postnormal Times. Futures 42 (June (5)):
438; Sardar Z. & Sweeny, J.A. 2016. The Three Tomorrows of Postnormal
Times. Futures 75: 1–13; Sardar, Ziauddin. 2020. The Smog of Ignorance:
Knowledge and Wisdom in Postnormal Times. Futures 120: 102554; Mayo,
Liam. 2020. The Postnormal Condition. Journal of Futures Studies 24 (4): 61–72;
Sardar, Ziauddin. Emerging Epistemologies: The Changing Fabric of Knowledge in
Postnormal Times. London: IIIT & CPPFS, 2022; Jordan, C Scott. 2022. Right to
Ignorance? Critical Muslim 43: 127–144.

13. Russell, Stuart J. and Norvig, Peter. 2009. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern
Approach. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
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13. Roy, Olivier. Islam in the West or Western Islam? The Discconect of Religion
and Culture. Hedgehog Review. 8 (1/2), p. 128.

14. Kluckhohn, Clyde. Mirror for Man; A Survey of Human Behavior and Social
Attitudes. Greenwich, Conn: Fawcett, 1970, p. 17.

15. Sardar, Ziauddin. When the Pendulum Comes to Rest! in Inayatullah, Sohail,
and Gail Boxwell. 2003. Islam, Postmodernism and Other Futures: a Ziauddin
Sardar Reader. London: Pluto, p. 124.

16. Sardar, Ziauddin. When the Pendulum Comes to Rest! in Inayatullah, Sohail,
and Gail Boxwell. 2003. Islam, Postmodernism and Other Futures: A Ziauddin
Sardar Reader. London: Pluto, p. 124.

17. Bradatan, Costica. 2013. In Praise of Failure. The New York Times (December
15). URL: https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/in-praise-of-
failure/#more-151034 (accessed 05.04.2018). The book discussing the topic
in all its aspects is coming in 2019.

18. Success in Failure: Humanities Professor Shares Message With Wider

Audience. Texas Tech Today. URL: http://today.ttu.edu/posts/2017/03/costica-
bradatan (accessed 17.04.2018).

19. A Hebrew radah that is usually translated as ‘to rule’ or ‘to dominate’ and
a verb kadash translated as ‘to subdue’ do not assume authoritarian or even
despotic oppression of nature which we often witness today. They are about a
thoughtful, caring, and responsible stewardship with the recognition of God’s
supreme ownership. Later on, this idea re-appear in Islam in the form of the
qur’anic concept khalīfah.

20. Toulmin, Stephen Edelston. 2009. Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of

Modernity. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

21. Montuori, Alfonso. 2011. Beyond postnormal times: The future of creativity
and the creativity of the future.

22. Kazinik, Mikhail. 2011. Tayny Geniyev [The Secrets of Geniuses]. Moscow:
Novy’ Akropol’.

23. Chernigovskaya, Tatyana. Art is Our On! ly Hope. Future Urbanism

2014/2015. URL: http://futureurbanism.com/interview/art-is-our-only-hope/
(accessed 16.04.2018); Greenfield, Susan. 2015. Mind change: how digital
technologies are leaving their mark on our brains. London: Rider.
CAPTURING THE QUEEN AND
OTHER CREATIVE MOVES IN
POSTNORMAL TIMES
Liam Mayo

Chess has become very popular in my home recently. My five-year-old son Cassidy
has become fixated with the nuances of the game. I am not a particularly gifted
chess player myself, but one drizzly Sunday afternoon Cassidy and I found ourselves
stooped over an old wooden chessboard, he with wide-eyed curiosity and me
scratching my head, attempting to recall the rules of a game I had learned many
decades earlier. Nowadays, Cassidy pursues me relentlessly for a match. Any spare
moment and he is upon me with request, keeping his own tally of who leads who
in our never-ending tournament of chess. Patrick, my three-year-old, is equally as
engaged, although his interest peaks and wanes depending on who has captured
whose queen (capturing the queen – apparently – signals certain victory). Patrick
will hover around us, bouncing a rubber ball against the couch or the bookshelf,
chiming into the game when he notices something interesting happening, or
hurrying us along when he gets bored, or trying to coax his brother and I away from
the chessboard and into a game that he would prefer we all played – ‘I am so bored
of this! Hurry up!’
Given that the only real value I can offer Cassidy on his quest to master the game
of chess is the tireless commitment of a doting father, I went in search for different
ways I could inspire his learning journey. Online, I came across a quote from Thomas
Huxley, ‘the chessboard is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the Universe,
the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature and the player on the other
side is hidden from us’. [1] As someone interested in the ways in which reality is
perceived, and how our perceptions of reality are now changing, this quote gave me
pause for reflection. Pondering Huxley’s viewpoint – the world, the universe, the
laws of nature, and our agency to respond to the moves of our opponent – a salient
metaphor emerges for not only how we perceive reality, but how our perceptions
influence the way we think about the future.
 392 CAPTURING THE QUEEN AND OTHER CREATIVE MOVES IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

Modern Culture
Chess is a game of strategy after all, and whilst anyone can learn the rules of the game
with relative ease, developing deeper insight into the game requires a practised
commitment, emotional reflection as well as an ongoing intellectual inquiry. That
is to say that rather than simply recognising the characteristics of each element of
the game – the chessboard, the pieces, the rules of the game, and the opponent – but
by understanding the active interplay between these, one may be able to achieve
a strategic advantage. A strategic advantage – like capturing the queen – fosters a
sense of certainty; our knowledge and experience tells us that a particular set of
actions will elicit a desired outcome. The inference I take from Huxley’s metaphor,
is that we should not simply recognise the different attributes of our reality – world,
universe, nature, and agency – but seek to understand the relationship between
these as a means to nurture strategic foresight for how we approach the future, and
thus, gain certainty about where we are going, and the change that is to come.
This premise fundamentally characterizes the modern approach to
understanding the world around us: that certainty may be achieved through
critical, rational, reasoned, and scientific inquiry.

THE FOUNDATION OF MODERN SOCIETY, A MATURATION OF

ENLIGHTENMENT THINKING, IS THAT REALITY IS WHAT THE SUBJECT
(ESSENTIALLY, WE HUMANS) PERCEIVES OF OUR OBJECTIVE WORLD
(THE THINGS ALL AROUND US).

What we are left with is Western ontological constructs of subject/object as the

dominant form of reality making. This perception, according to modernity, can
be measured and rationalised through scientific inquiry. Huxley after all was a
staunch proponent of human reason and the notion that certainty may be gained
on scientific grounds. And while a diversity of thinking has infiltrated this space
(postmodernism, post-colonialism, post-structuralism, to name a few), one central
premise largely remains the same: through inquiry into the interplay between
subject and object, a sense of certainty about our reality (or realities as the case may
be) can be attained.
I use terms, ‘we’, ‘us’, and ‘our’, as a collective noun that captures, not only my
own species (humans), but all objects that share the world. My aim with this use
of language is to acknowledge multiplicity, but intentionally avoid relativism,
through an embrace of what the philosopher Rosi Braidotti calls the new collective
subject, ‘a “we-are-(all)-in-this together-but-we-are-not-one-and-the-same” kind of
subject’. [2] This is an important distinction to make in the embrace of postnormal
time theory; the effects of postnormal times impact all of us.
Yet, what is often taken for granted is that this premise is deeply cultural.
To acknowledge this is to understand the ways in which culture governs our
393 CULTURE & CREATIVITY

interpretations of the world around us. Culture, as the contemporary philosopher

Yuval Harari states, is imagined order. [3] Culture acts as a lens; it produces
meaning and it brings purpose into focus. In interpreting the relationship between
the different attributes of our reality, we must also acknowledge that all those
attributes, those things that we consider to be normal, are cultural constructs –
imagined order, but very much alive in the way that they influence all aspects of our
life. What this means is that the instruments by which modern society is governed
– the rejection of tradition in favour of progress, the prioritisation of the individual
over the communal, and marriage of the political, the vocational and the aesthetic –
are all constructs influenced by the monolithic culture of modernity.

Modern Creativity
To interpret and make problematic the assumptions and cultural constructs that we
use to make sense of our world has been a source of creative inspiration throughout
the modern epoch. Artists such as Edvard Munch, Georgia O’Keefe, Frida Kahlo,
Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Marcel Duchamp, Wassily Kandisky, Salvador Dali, and
Andy Warhol are characterised by the rejection of the traditional art concepts, forms,
and techniques and their absolute resolve toward innovation and progress in their
work, thought, and life. Their pursuit was to explore the juxtaposition between the
seemingly contingent nature of life and modern societies yearning for certainty, thus
challenging the audiences understanding of their relationship to the objective world.
Ernest Hemingway, the great novelist of modernity, experimented with an
understated and economical style of literature that not only drew stark contrast to
the more adorned writing styles that had come before, but draws the reader to use
their own imagination in their consumption of his works. Hemingway achieved this
by abandoning unnecessary adjectives, instead resting heavily on the use of nouns
to structure his narrative. In doing so, Hemingway literarily points to the objective
world and invites the reader to use their imagination to create a life around the
characters within his stories.
Nicholas Ray’s 1955 film Rebel Without a Cause is a cinematic representation of
this. The angst that the young protagonists direct toward their parents (tradition)
is palpable, although their reasoning is left somewhat opaque. In response to their
frustrations, they commit acts of rebellion, that although seemingly trivial, appear
to require a grave emotive response from the audience. And with the crescendo, the
tension between the young protagonists and their parents appears to be resolved
– the parents concede that the young people deserve to be treated with a greater
degree of acknowledgement and the young people demonstrated a maturity
beyond their frivolities (symbolised by the death of the character aptly named
Plato). Modern creativity is a commitment to progress, through ongoing inquiry in
our perceptions of reality. This inquiry is grounded in the individual, looking out at
the world, and interpreting it. In this way, the arts in modernity are both vocational
and political; they produce cultural artefacts to provoke critical inquiry and, as
such, further progress.
394 CAPTURING THE QUEEN AND OTHER CREATIVE MOVES IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

Modern Futures
This approach has bled into the way we think creatively about the future. It is a
sweet coincidence that Thomas Huxley was the grandfather of the future orientated
writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley. Like the objective world, the future is outside
us, beyond us, interpreted and understood through inquiry into our perceptions
of it. The seminal futurist Jim Dator takes a quintessentially modern view of the
future – seeing it as humankind’s ‘last frontier’, at risk of colonisation lest action is
taken. [4] In light of this, theories about researching the future have been proposed
and methods to achieve greater insight into the future have been developed, all of
which play within the creative confines of Huxley’s world, universe, nature, and
agency quadrilogy. Creativity, for the futurist, is to welcome a diversity of voices
and perspectives into this inquiry, to make problematic dominant assumptions,
while mapping and articulating trends, events, and emerging issues. [5] Through
this, images of the future are interrogated, and new images emerge. Science fiction
is of course one of the most poignant creative manifestations of modernity.
By this reckoning, the future – like our reality – is both malleable and multiple:
there are many futures, and as such we can shape them to be desired spaces. For
those aware of futures studies, there is familiarity here: by emphasising the plurality
of futures, and the diversity of voices, perceptions and contexts, potentialities of the
future are opened, and human agency provoked. But I would argue, there is risk too.
If the future is both the principle for action and the active space for the realisation
of potentialities, obligation is suspended. There is an unexplained cognitive
dissonance between changing reality as experienced and change as imagined; the
future always seems like something that is going to happen rather than something
that is emergent. In this context, the future, as it is conceptualised within modernity,
presents an epistemological obstacle to eliciting action in the present. It is a thing
that is rationalised into existence; the secular bastion of hope that remains afar; an
indictor by which we will progress, rather than the proverbial burning platform for
action in the present.
However, in an epoch characterised by significant change, this approach
is inessential. The phenomenon of the universe lays far further beyond our
understanding than, up until recently, we had thought. We may no longer fool
ourselves that we can control nature. Indeed, we are learning, the hard way, that
nature controls us. And the concept of agency has revealed itself to be the notorious
emperor without robes. The chessboard that is our world is shifting in ways that
means grave uncertainties are abound. While we have discharged our creativity
within the constructs of modernity, what are we to do when those constructs begin
to rupture? When our conditioned reality ruptures, where to from here?

Postnormal Times
Prolific futurist Ziauddin Sardar argues that postnormal times is a transitionary
period, where well established ways of knowing and being are rupturing, and
new ones are yet to emerge. [6] Ruptures are recurring points within the symbolic
 395 CULTURE & CREATIVITY

structure that testify to that structure’s fundamental incompleteness. [7] But

ruptures also provide opportunities to reimagine the nature and scope of how we
know the world around us. [8] When ruptures occur in culture, the way we perceive
reality is impacted. And, as our perception of reality are impacted, so too the way
we approach the future is impacted. Postnormal times theory conceptualises how
ruptures across the disciplines of modernity, particularly how our approaches to
the future, are becoming insufficient for understanding and interpreting today’s
increasingly complex and chaotic world. [9]

MODERNITY’S FALLACY, POSTNORMAL TIMES THEORY ARGUES, IS THAT

THE FUTURE IS SOMETHING THAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN, RATHER THAN
SOMETHING THAT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW.

That means that not only are we planning for the future in a way that we consider
normal, we are planning for a future that has already arrived. [10] Moreover, the
more we approach the future as though it is Dator’s last frontier (suspend obligation
for action), the more exacerbated our experience of postnormal conditioning (an
acute sense of ignorance and a greater proclivity toward nostalgia). [11] I have
proposed elsewhere that the contemporary perception of crisis (individually and
collectively) is the manifestation of a cultural crisis, owed – in part – to the inability
of the current dominant cultural frameworks to make sense of, and contextualize,
the transformation that is occurring. [12]
Fundamentality, modernity, with its desire for rationalism, reason, and certainty,
is ill-equipped to navigate our transformational epoch. Furthermore, because
of modernity’s propensity to downplay change in the face of change, a collective
sense of uncertainty governs decision making and suffocates our ability to leverage
the current transformation toward new cultural archetypes and norms. [13] With
this, our cultural processes gridlock, stifling creativity, in what the futurist and
historian Marcus Bussey calls postnormal paralysis. [14] Proponents of postnormal
times theory argue that a postnormal landscape challenges well established futures
approaches. Normal strategic planning and foresight work cannot succeed in
postnormal times as long as uncertainties continue to be ignored.
To be clear – our postnormal times cannot be controlled, mitigated, or curbed,
simply navigated. [15] Postnormal times theory focuses our attention on change in
the present and aims to understand and describe the changing nature of change,
to develop ways and means to navigate our contradictory, complex, and chaotic
landscape. Navigating the imbroglio of postnormal times requires imagination as
an intangible function that creates and shapes our reality. [16] As Sardar contends,
‘the kind of futures we imagine beyond postnormal times would depend on the
quality of our imagination’. [17] This is because imagination is culturally bound,
nested in time and space; we are unable to imagine that of which we have no
396 CAPTURING THE QUEEN AND OTHER CREATIVE MOVES IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

experience. [18] Imagination is the antecedent of creativity. Thus, postnormal

times theory is a reframing of the importance of futures approaches and a gesturing
toward the importance of the imagination in navigating the change of our age. [19]
My argument is that, considering our postnormal times, the way we have
manifested creativity within modernity requires reformulation. If navigation in
postnormal times ruminates on the way that thinking about the future may be used
as a tool that embraces ignorance and uncertainty. [20] I propose that the future
in postnormal times should be considered with the sophistication anticipated by
Bussey: an entity that is yet to happen, freed of the burden of content knowledge –
no facts to learn, no burden of evidence to weigh, and no information to manage,
accessed through our imagination, fuelled by our curiosity. [21] This approach
underscores the paradoxical characteristic of the future as an entity that ‘is ahead
but also behind us, it never arrives but is always with us, it is unknowable yet there
are things we do know’. [22] This is a de-coupling – a breaking free – from the
domination of present centred imaginary that shapes our understandings of the
future and an embrace of anticipation as a sensory device that moves us beyond
conditioned reality toward something new – perhaps even surprising. [23]
To achieve this is to unlock anticipation as part of the imagining process.
Anticipatory imagination extends across three domains of imaginations – personal,
social, and cultural – while foregrounding the interdependence between all three,
as a reorientation toward a future that offers an open set of possibilities and draws
attention and awareness toward a yearning for alternatives already embedded in the
present data base of imaginaries. [24] This yearning, Bussey argued, is the compass
that focuses energy and gives meaning to futures engagements, deepening the
utilitarian thirst for ever-expanding possibilities. [25]
Of course, this is all about agency: the capacity of individuals and communities
to make decisions concerning all main aspects of their lives in ways that are neither
completely constrained nor completely without reference to social, economic, and
family circumstances. [26] Agency refers to the agentive dimension of human
subjectivity; the human specific capacity to actively influence and change their
living conditions. [27] By unlocking anticipatory imagination, agency is ignited and
the uncertainty and ignorance that characterises the postnormal condition may be
embraced and overcome.
As such, postnormal times theory provides a framework that contextualises
contemporary change and opens space for anticipatory imagination to be unlocked.
To enact this requires a framework that is rooted in postnormal times theory while
also driving an imaging process that elicits creative approaches to thinking about
the future.

The Three Tomorrows

Working with my friends and colleagues, Jordi Serra del Pino and Christopher
Jones, I have attempted to achieve this by developing a praxis for postnormal times
theory. [28] Our praxis seeks to address the chaos, complexity, and contradictions
 397 CULTURE & CREATIVITY

prevalent in postnormal times, and the speed, scope, scale and simultaneity of
postnormal change, whilst simultaneously tackling the postnormal condition
that stifles agency. [29] To develop this, we turned our attention to the Three
Tomorrows as a framework that moves postnormal times theory beyond an analysis
of our epoch, toward a creative practise that unlocks anticipatory imagination and
ignites agency. [30] The thrust of our work has been to use the familiar (albeit
modern) setting of the futures workshop, as spaces for collective and anticipatory
learning. [31] For us, the futures workshop provides fertile ground for futurists to
facilitate polylogues. [32] Polylogues, in and of themselves, are a distinctly creative
process, providing conceptual spaces and opportunities for the diversity of agendas
to come together to negotiate outcomes toward unthought futures. [33]
The Three Tomorrows is deliberately juxtaposed against the Three Horizons,
the widely used normative and logical planning tool that presents alternatives
available in any situation. [34] As a framework, the Three Tomorrows articulates
three distinctly different futures, the ‘Extended Present’, ‘Familiar Futures’, and
‘Unthought Futures’, each with their own unique perspective on postnormal
phenomena, and together providing utility in understanding how these phenomena
unfold, interact, and impact one another.
The first tomorrow, the extended present, may be understood as our mental
projection of the present onto the future. It deals with the most widespread image
of the future in foresight analysis, famously coined by futurist and innovator Peter
Schwartz as the ‘official future’. [35] With postnormal praxis, we explore with our
participants the anticipations that are constructed on past and present experiences.
This tomorrow is explicitly linear in nature and foregrounds current global crises and
conjunctures. With workshop participants we ask the questions: ‘what do you know
about this issue/topic?’; ‘where is it going?’; ‘how much has it changes to date?’; ‘how
much of this understanding can we use to project change into the future?’ [36]

WE EMPHASISE THE CHARM OF THE EXTENDED PRESENT AND SPEAK TO

HOW REASSURING IT IS TO REST ON DOMINANT WAYS OF KNOWING THE
FUTURE; THAT THERE IS COMFORT IN THE NOTION THAT WE CAN LEARN
ABOUT THE FUTURE BY USING OUR PAST EXPERIENCES.

Through the process of exploring the Extended Present and developing scenarios,
participants are encouraged to list the indicators by which they measure their issue/
topic, the qualitative or quantitative measures by which they can demonstrate a
history of change and what they will be looking to measure as indicators of change
into the future. [37]
For Cassidy, in our never-ending tournament of chess, his mastery of the rules
of the game, how the pieces move, and an insight into my habits as his opponent,
his approach to the game may be considered through the lens of the extended
 398 CAPTURING THE QUEEN AND OTHER CREATIVE MOVES IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

present. His competence in these elements and his capacity to read and interpret
the interplay between these concurrently, determines how successful he will be in
his endeavours to out-strategise me and claim victory. There is comfort for Cassidy
in knowing that – for example – once he captures my queen, I am at a significant
disadvantage. He has played me enough times to know he can capitalise on my bad
habit of flooding one flank and neglecting to protect my key players on the other.
The extended present is the tomorrow participants cannot miss – the future that
everyone is expecting to happen, that is readily available, that can be formulated
through trends. [38] Participants are provoked to reflect, not only on what they
know about their issue/topic, but what they do not know about it.

THE OBJECTIVE HERE IS TO HIGHLIGHT THE VOIDS, THE GAPS IN

KNOWLEDGE, FOR PARTICIPANTS TO ARTICULATE FOR THEMSELVES
WHAT IT IS THAT THEY NEED TO LEARN ABOUT THEIR ISSUE/TOPIC.

The second tomorrow, the familiar futures, seeks to challenge and overcome
the appeal of the dominant view of the future that underpins the extended present.
The futurist Sohail Inayatullah’s ‘used future’ is relevant here, making explicit the
question: ‘is your image of the future, your desired future, or is it unconsciously
borrowed from someone else?’ The arts are a particularly rich and diverse data pool
from where our collective imagination draws alternative possibilities; painters,
poets, philosophers, writers, and artists have often been among the first to identify
the emerging issues of change precisely because of the ways they see reality in
variance with the ‘mainstream’. [39]
Recently, when I was playing Cassidy in a game of chess, I noticed that before
he made a move he would pause and take a deep breath. I asked him why he was
doing that, and he told me that at his school his teacher had explained to him the
importance of slowing down and taking time to reflect before he decided how to
move. He was now introducing this practice into his chess game. I also noticed he
had begun to use his pieces to draw mine out to mount an attack; he was no longer
simply anticipating my moves and responding, rather using his moves to tactically
incite particular moves from me.
Here, in the familiar futures, participants need to be open to new sources of
inspiration and to spot change or innovation in places that may seem unconventional
in traditional approaches to planning. We encourage participants not to dwell on
notions of likelihood or probability of transformation, rather to focus in on the
impact that change may cause the issue/topic. [40] Black swan events have shown
that small probability events may have a big impact and, therefore, it just does not
make any sense to analyse them according to their likelihood. Thus, more scenarios
may be developed, using different futures methods, or existing scenarios further
interrogated and developed.
399 CULTURE & CREATIVITY

The third tomorrow, the unthought futures, refers to what is outside the
assumptions and axioms of our worldview. This is difficult for us to grasp, not
because it is truly unthinkable, but precisely because it is beyond the scope of what
we consider imaginable. This is typically the most uncomfortable and challenging
part of the Three Tomorrow’s process. Here, the principal call to action is to embrace
anticipation, and use imagination, to focus our attention outside the framework
of conventional thought and dismantle dominant cultural agendas. By unlocking
anticipatory imagination, the Unthought Futures is a space that reinforces and
reframes agency. With reinforced agency unlocking anticipatory imagination, one
builds confidence and capacity to actively reframe contexts, and deploy skills and
materials in problem solving endeavours.
The unthought futures demands a different kind of exercise. Unlike the
previous tomorrows, the emphasis here is not so much on looking at the futures
in a particular way, but to examine the previous scenarios through a diversity of
perspectives. [41] Essentially, we need to understand why the preceding scenarios
have favoured some future options and ignored others. By fortune or design, Cassidy
often finds himself viewing our game through the lens of the unthought. Not only
because his age means his cultural footing remains embryonic, but because his
little brother Patrick forces his way into the game, insisting on being involved in
the decision-making process for which piece should be moved where. ‘Why did you
move your knight there?’ Patrick will ask with dogged earnest. ‘What are you going
to do now Dad has moved there?’ But Patrick won’t just stop there. He may switch
ends of the table, and come and sit on my lap: ‘why haven’t you moved your pawn
there, Dad?’, ‘why does your pawn only move in that direction?’, ‘why can’t all three
of us play at once?’
The realm of the unthought is not about visioning desired futures, it is about
interrogating the plethora of offerings at hand through a diversity of perspectives.
It is about laying out all the scenarios, visions, images of the futures that have been
produced before, and seeking and bringing forth everything from the synergies and
the overlaps, to the complementary and the contrary. Here, polylogues truly come
alive. Workshop participants, having worked together through the extended present
and the familiar future, now huddle in the unthought. This is not collaboration,
cooperation, or co-design, this is a negotiation, where agendas are named, and
outcomes fought for. Polylogues are the manifest and tacit uncomfortability of
working through the Unthought. As Sardar likes to point out – unthought futures
are the realm where human agency can be rescued and reinforced.
For Cassidy and me, Patrick cannot be ignored. No matter how hard we try, the
three-year-old that lingers by the chessboard will sooner or later make his presence
known, influencing and impacting our game. We may ask him to be quiet, but he
won’t be quiet for long. We may move our game to another room in the house, but
he will find us. We may give him another game to play, to keep him occupied. But he
will soon be done with that, realising our ploy to preoccupy him, and he will come
back bolder than ever! Thus, as Cassidy and I have learned, we cannot ignore Patrick.
 400 CAPTURING THE QUEEN AND OTHER CREATIVE MOVES IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

We must bring Patrick into our games of chess, hear his voice, and acknowledge
his agenda, embrace his perspectives and ideas, work with him to ensure he is
achieving the outcomes he desires just as we are achieving ours. Lingering in the
unthought, this is chess by negotiation!
Cassidy and I have found we have a great deal more fun playing this way.
Decisions are reached through careful and colourful conversations. We learn more
about each other, by hearing how each other view the game, their perspective on
where we are all up to and what should happen next. When we play like this, there
are never really any winners or losers, rather the game of chess becomes a process
of exploration and cocreation.

Postnormal Creativity
There is more to this story. A new chapter that introduces a radical way of
thinking; a way of thinking that deliberately seeks to disturb the human-obsessed
(anthropocentric) approach of modern society (see earlier remarks regarding
Enlightenment thinking dictates – reality equals human subject plus perception of
the objective world), toward an approach that promotes and embraces ecological
thought. This, somewhat jarring notion wants us to acknowledge that no being,
construct, or object can exist independently from the ecological entanglement of
our universe.

I AM ARGUING HERE THAT THROUGH POSTNORMAL CREATIVITY WE MAY

ACCESS AN UNDERSTANDING OF OUR ECOLOGICAL ENTANGLEMENT IN A
WAY THAT NOT ONLY ACKNOWLEDGES THE IMPLICATIONS THIS TYPE OF
THINKING HAS ON REALITY MAKING, BUT ON HOW WE CONCEIVE OF THE
FUTURE AS WELL.

Let’s explore this notion via three salient points. One, polylogues provide
conceptual spaces and opportunities for the diversity of agendas to come together
to negotiate outcomes toward desired futures. With polylogues, postnormal
creativity embraces tradition as part of progress (the voices and perspectives of
indigenous and first nations peoples as an example). Moreover, polylogues should
not only occur across the diversity of voices and perspective but across the diversity
of all entities that make up the material world (the environment, animals, matter,
for example). [42] Everything in the universe has a voice.
Two, through anticipatory imaginings, agency is unlocked, not to prioritise the
individual over the communal, but to ensure that the individual may make sense
of their place in our transformational epoch. This is to foster an understanding
of their nonlocality in a way that brings awareness that we are all enmeshed in
something that may not be reduced simply to the sum of our relations. Postnormal
401 CULTURE & CREATIVITY

creativity, by nurturing anticipatory imaginings, not only unlocks human agency,

but the agency of all things in the universe. It is through postnormal creativity
emergent realities may reveal themselves, and so too new approaches to the
future flourish.
Three, that through polylogues and anticipatory imagining, subjectivity may
be reimagined in a manner that signals an ontological shift, from Enlightenment
notions of ‘Being’ to new notions of ‘Becoming’. [43] This takes us toward a re-
grounding of the subject of modernity (we humans) in the material world in a way
that draws the future from a fixed point of the proverbial horizon, into the present
where change is actually happening and where issues need to be addressed. In
doing so, postnormal creativity reformulates the notion of the future entirely.
Remember Huxley’s world, universe, nature, and agency quadrilogy? The
modern approach to reality making is that the subject (humans) perceives of our
objective world (the things all around us); agency may only dwell within the human
subject. We humans are dislocated and held at odds from our reality in ways that
perpetuate our estrangement from the objects around us. [44] Thus, the future is
approached as an entity outside us, beyond us, interpreted and understood through
inquiry into our perceptions of it.
Postnormal creativity seeks to do away with the Western ontological constructs
of subject/object, in favour of a flat ontology; a universal ontology where all are
objects and are given equivalent credence. In this way, Munch, Picasso, Matisse,
Duchamp, Kandinsky, Dali, and Warhol, as the artists, have as much meaning and
agency as the pieces of art itself. Further, the paints, the canvas, the wood that
frames that canvas – all have the equal meaning and agency. Further, Hemingway
the writer, is an autonomous object, just as his stories are autonomous objects, and
are equally as real and relevant as any other object that exists. Similarly, words on a
page, and the manner in which they are articulated, shared, understood, digested,
and interpreted; the characters within stories; the places those characters live, visit,
and work in – are all objects, and should be treated as such. This is a rejection of the
anthropocentrism of traditional philosophy (that human access sits at the centre of
being, organising, and regulating) and asserting that all entities share the similar
characteristic of sublime unknowability. [45]
So rather than to interpret and make problematic the assumption and
cultural constructs that we use to make sense of our world, creative inspiration in
postnormal times is found in the complexity, chaos, and contradiction of a universe
where all things have a voice and agency, equally. As Bussey argues, ‘this offers new
ontological possibilities for individuals, communities, and more widely, for our
relational being with non-human fellow travellers’. [46] What this means for me
is, culture – and the cultural codings that influence and induce creativity – may be
hacked and reformulated toward a more ecological conception of our relationships
with the objective world.
 402 CAPTURING THE QUEEN AND OTHER CREATIVE MOVES IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

Postnormal Futures
There are spaciotemporal implications of this approach that define how the future
may be understood in postnormal times. Postnormal futures accept that we are part
of something far greater than us, that impacts us, but something we cannot tangibly
conceive of. As we seek out the future, to know the future, we find that there is no
future to know: well not when it comes to our future alone, anyway. Our nonlocality
in postnormal futures means that the effects of the future are experienced across
huge distance and time scales: you can experience the effects of global warming
– rain, temperature, and so on – but you can never experience global warming,
an entity unto itself, in its entirety. Just as every decision we make is about the
future, our decision-making is enmeshed in the vast ecology of our universe; we
are constantly functioning within the multi-faceted influence of unseen forces. We
are always inside the future; it is a haunting omnipresent force distributed across
continuums of experience. It haunts our very existence – no matter who we are,
or how we try to avoid it. Through the setting of the sun, the change of seasons,
the progressive warming of the globe, its effects are experienced, although we can
never comprehend it in its entirety.

IF YOU ARE STUDYING AN IMAGE OF THE FUTURE, YOU ARE NOT

STUDYING THE FUTURE, YOU ARE STUDYING A DROP OF RAIN THAT IS AN
IMAGE OF THE FUTURE AS CLIMATE.

Yet, while a postnormal future is felt as the haunting omnipresent, its causal
marks help us identify and understand it. This is an embrace of Rao’s notion that
the future is something that is actually happening – now – rather than something
that is going to happen. [47] Postnormal times inspires the futurist to approach the
future from the purview of the present moment as a shifting, ambiguous stage set,
rather than the dominant metaphysical notion of presence as time; as a succession
of now points.
Thus, postnormal futures are about an inherently ecological awareness that
liberates and consoles us, that shepherds us toward an understanding of our truly
intimate relationship with nonhuman parts of the biosphere. Postnormal futures
are epistemologically and ontologically non-hierarchical, a mesh of open and
complex systems that remind us that the future is an already existing totality for
which we are all directly responsible. In doing so, the postnormal futurist is able to
comprehend the truly futural nature of the future; postnormal times forces us to
consider the vastness of reality (the real), on time and space scales far beyond our
very being.
As an example of what I mean by this, consider for a moment my mobile
phone: designed in an office, crafted in a studio, and constructed in a factory, from
ancient minerals mined from the ground, will spend the best part of its working
403 CULTURE & CREATIVITY

life intimately pressed against my flesh, keeping all my secrets, and after my death,
the mercury from its battery will still exist beneath the earth’s crust in 250,000
years’ time. This is not really a mobile phone is it? I don’t really own it at all. And
we are not really able to address its existence on any preconceived past, present,
future continuum. Its matter, its energy, its essence shares our universe. It has its
own distinct subjectivity. As such, it has agency, voice, and an agenda, all of which
must be considered as part of our negotiation when it comes to polylogues. The
postnormal futurists know this, and this knowing becomes part of our navigation
through postnormal times.
Postnormal creativity turns these emergent ideas into reality. Thus, postnormal
culture is borne. What we have then is a shift from asking, ‘how do we plan for the
future?’ to the question, ‘what do we do now?’
Back at home with Cassidy, our never-ending tournament of chess continues.
His dogged enthusiasm to learn more about the game is infectious. ‘Do you have
a plan, Dad?’ he now asks me before each game. At five, he senses that his grasp of
the chessboard, the pieces, and the rules, is adequate – it is me, his opponent, that
he needs to master. ‘Dad always does that!’ he will tell his brother, Patrick, whenever
I make a move that he has anticipated. And when he beats me, which he is now
genuinely doing more and more these days, he will look me in the eye and say, ‘Your
plan didn’t work Dad. Checkmate!’
404 CAPTURING THE QUEEN AND OTHER CREATIVE MOVES IN POSTNORMAL TIMES

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24. Bussey, M., Song, M. M., & Hsieh, S.-H. (2017). Anticipatory imagination as
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the futures senses. World Future Review, 8(1), 39–45.

26. Evans, H., & Strauss, J. C. (2010). Introduction: Gender, agency and social
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32. Mayo, L. (2020). The postnormal condition. Journal of Futures Studies, 24(4),
61–72.
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33. Stevenson, T. (2002). Anticipatory action learning: Conversations about the

future. Futures, 34(5), 417–425.

34. Sardar, Z., & Sweeney, J. (2016). The Three Tomorrows of Postnormal Times.
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35. Sardar, Z., & Sweeney, J. (2016). The Three Tomorrows of Postnormal Times.
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36. Curry, A., & Hodgson, A. (2008). Seeing in multiple horizons: connecting
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Postnormal Concepts to Work. World Futures Review, 13(2), 86–100.

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Postnormal Concepts to Work. World Futures Review, 13(2), 86–100.

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Postnormal Concepts to Work. World Futures Review, 13(2), 86–100.

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ribbonfarm.com/2012/05/09/Welcome-To-The-Future-Nauseous/
AFROFUTURES FOR
POSTNORMAL TIMES
C Scott Jordan

Did you hear that?

Perhaps it was just the residual flutters of presbycusis.
First, we are shown a couple eerie production title cards reminding us, the
audience, that we have bought tickets for what is indeed a horror film. Raucous,
then silence. Then to blackness. A hard cut into a cold open. The suburbs. A man
wonders through the all-too-normal neighbourhood. He is lost. He is also black.
He shuffles in fright. This is a contrasted mirror of the innocent white person lost
in the rundown ‘hood,’ a jungle of low-income urban decay, haunted by the ever
suspicious Other. In place of the abandoned shell, green lawns, cookie-cutter family
homes, the inviting glow of illuminated streetlights.
Adding to our black hero’s terror, a car passes playing loudly from its radio a
nostalgic classic. The song is Flanagan and Allen’s Run Rabbit Run. The song is that
upbeat, barbershop quartet style, foot-tapping music that provided the soundtrack
to a simpler time, the good old times, of course before the troubles of desegregation,
homosexuality, and drugs. After a little game of stalker, the car stops, its door
opening as the music roars louder, run rabbit, run, run, run…
And then a masked man, our hero subdued, and the slamming of the trunk as
the cue to cut to:
Rapid fire fiddling, sharp cuts, a scratching, which returns, uncomfortably, too
soon. The screeching tunes and tempo solidifies any doubt you had that you are,
in fact, in a horror film. Suddenly, we are of the perspective of driving through a
wooded timber and credits flash upon the screen. The classic New England woods
of American horror. The fiddles cease as a more traditional tasting song crescendos.
The lyrics may at first sound like sung English, but quickly spoils the ear to it being
different. The song is Swahili. The song is also equal parts ritualistically dance-
like and prelude warning to a cautionary folktale. The lyrics roughly translate to
meaning ‘Listen to your ancestors, Run!’
Half a frame of pitch black accompanied by a breathless pause, cut to:
The everyday struggle of life in America. Except the subjects of this photographic
art collection are African Americans somewhere between living and surviving in the
contemporary world. The music drastically transforms from classic horror-shop to
 410 AFROFUTURES FOR POSTNORMAL TIMES

smooth and catchy. Childish Gambino’s Redbone, while also being a sort of anthem
of the times, is the contemporary hit that brings us from Suburban whitewash into
the real, normal world of our hero, Chris, who is packing to meet the parents of his
white girlfriend. Childish Gambino warns our hero to ‘Stay Woke,’ as ignorance and
uncertainty cloud his nerves like a realistic dream.
Through music Jordan Peele has thrust us forth into his first feature. Get Out. [1]
From its use of popular music to the blending of the Swahili song’s motif into the score,
even to the tapping of a spoon upon a teacup, Peele creates a beautiful work of art
through his use, and even absence, of sound. The power of filmmaking as art lies in its
not simply being a visual medium, but in that its use of sight and sound allow for us,
the audience, to see what cannot otherwise be seen. To hear what no one is listening
to. Peele’s talent with this craft and brilliant play on parody brings the uniquely black
viewpoint to the forefront of the minds of those with other worldviews.

THIS POWER, BUILDING OFF OF HUMANITY’S INHERENT SOCIALITY, IS

THE OBJECT OF THE SAME GAME PLAYED BY AFROFUTURISM. MORE
SPECIFICALLY PUT, AFROFUTURISM IS THE ATTEMPT TO PORTRAY THE
STRUGGLE OF BLACK AMERICANS, POTENTIALLY ALL MINORITY AND
DISPARAGED COMMUNITIES, SO THAT THE OTHER MAY SEE IT FOR
THEMSELVES.

The question we will later address is whether or not the harnessing of this ability
can translate into tangible change either through policy or social upheaval. In the
spirit of the colloquial conceptualisation of the future, it would only make sense
that this is most prominently seen in the genre of science fiction, but it should not
be so quickly pigeonholed into being only a tool of pulp sci fi. Even Peele’s Get Out
can be seen as a work of Afrofuturism and perhaps one of its greatest contributions
for the effect it triggered.
Like a film, Afrofuturism itself began in sound – music. To this day, it still
remains a staple of many black musicians, even if not as overt as in the case of Sun
Ra. Afrofuturism dates back as old as the issue of race itself amongst the African
diaspora, but was first coined and seriously discussed by the American cultural critic
and journalist Mark Dery in 1994. Music journalist Mark Sinker was also credited
with investigating the phenomenon in Britain through various articles written for
The Wire. In his article ‘Black to the Future,’ Dery wonders as to why more African
American writers have not chosen to embrace the science fiction genre especially
since it is the ideal medium for discussing slavery, alienation, and xenophobia.
Dery interviews one such writer, Samuel Delaney, a cultural critic, Greg Tate, and an
academic, Tricia Rose to begin this dialogue. Essentially, there simply is not a large
number of black writers, let alone those who look to the universe of science fiction
411 CULTURE & CREATIVITY

to create their art. [2] The article does not come to any ground-breaking conclusion,
but it does get the ball rolling and, whether intended or not, illuminates a potential
within popular culture.
The idea behind Afrofuturism is that it could provide the general public with
the epistemologically reflective exposé of the plight of contemporary African
Americans on the public opinion-altering level of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle or
Woodward and Bernstein’s Watergate reporting. Yet, Sun Ra and George Clinton
led the way for a blend of technology and African tradition in their music since
the 1950s. Sun Ra, taking his name from the Egyptian god, spoke of Saturn as his
mythical home world and how music was a mode of escape with the power to heal
the wrongs of this world. In his film, Space is the Place, music is used as a means
of time travel. He even applied through NASA, unsuccessfully, to be an artist in
residence with the organisation. The work Sun Ra did with his art and especially
with avant-garde jazz in Chicago carried on with George Clinton and Parliament-
Funkadelic into the stylings of Herbie Hancock and the more commercially known
Miles Davis and Jimmy Hendricks.
To this day the movement continues with the obvious influence of technology
within the music and, the new performative innovation of music videos, of Beyoncé,
Rihanna, and Missy Elliot. Samuel Delany and Octavia Butler have pioneered black
sci-fi writing for such contemporary writers as Nnedi Okorafar and N. K. Jemisin.
Kendrick Lamar tops billboard charts with his blending of the entire history of
African American music into his beats and Marvel’s Black Panther has broken
box office records. [3] The soundtrack of that film was largely developed by black
artists and headed up by Lamar himself. Yet racism in America is far from having
progressed. The daily news is tainted by police murdering minority citizens, horrific
displays of gentrification and institutional racism, and even America’s leaders are
not above blatantly racist remarks in public addresses.
So, what is happening?
Has Afrofuturism failed to wake the public? Is the dream of pop culture having
the power to provoke and inspire real change just that? Or has art simply become
the numbing white noise needed to get America’s opiate-addicted citizenry through
the day-to-day grind?
To begin the long overdue discussion of these questions requires an unravelling
and analysis of a multiplicity. Since it is often first nature to assign blame, I will
address that now, so as to kill any attempts at pinning fault. This particular blend of
problem is societal and, as such, the fault lies not only in all constituents of society,
but all such external factors that frustrate a system from randomness to ignorance,
uncertainty, and the unavoidable impression of chaos. All of this is exponentially
more threatening in postnormal times.
Perhaps the best place to begin in facing such a complex situation is with a
Marvel movie.
As a critic, a cinephile, and a comic book nerd I expected a lot, even too much, of
Black Panther. Donald Trump had been President of the United States for one year.
412 AFROFUTURES FOR POSTNORMAL TIMES

Ferguson, Flint, Detroit, and a host of other cities and communities throughout the
country remained starved of justice. No decisions had been made on the deaths of
minority victims of white cops in overly suspicious circumstances capsized within
evidence of discrimination and xenophobia. The Affordable Care Act, passed in
2009 by the US Congress by a vote of 220–215, was being drawn and quartered.
You might know this act by its colloquial name: Obamacare. But even this moniker
represents a deeper injustice as the bill actually passed was a widdled down version
of what was once a glorious piece of exemplary legislative craft in order to appease
the Republican Party, only one of whom who voted for it after all the butchery done
on their behalf. Talk of privatisation of prisons and increased election restrictions
whispered systemic racism. #BlackLivesMatter resurfaced upon Twitter followed by
all of its controversy. Nostalgia for the Obama years reached the point of provoking a
fiction mystery series where the former president and his vice president, Joe Biden,
adventured around solving crimes as pulpy, gritty detectives. The progressive hope
of 2008 was the shell of a corpse, devoid of all organic material.
In Hollywood, a much different tale was unfolding. Resistance found footing
in the alliance of #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter. Crimes of yesterday were being
exposed with the fall of Harvey Weinstein and the slurry of other allegations against
sexual discrimination and violence surfaced. White washing of foreign tales and
characters was being exposed and stood trial before the modern revolutionary
guillotine of public opinion and social media – Cancel Culture. Inclusion riders,
female directors, and gay heroes were all the rage. Patty Jenkins’s Wonder Woman
single handily revived the DC cinematic universe. Guillermo del Torro, an
immigrant, took home 2018 Oscars for both direction and best picture for The Shape
of Water. Oprah Winfrey gave the call to action at the ceremony, earning herself
the public’s official endorsement as the perfect foil to Donald Trump in the, then,
upcoming 2020 election (there were even campaign posters made following her
Oscar speech).
Black Panther wasn’t an origin story. Check. After all, if American audiences are
not completely showing superhero fatigue, they are at least burnt out on the same
old fallen man becomes a risen hero, chapter-one storyline. We met T’Challa in an
earlier Marvel film, 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, which was essentially a trial
run of the universe encompassing Avengers films to come. Black Panther was unique
in that we discover a whole new, hidden country, and we discover it at a time of flux,
a regime change. We are introduced to a whole new world of characters that, aside
from being well acted, are written to be original and the kind of persona that sticks
with the audience. The audience sees themselves within these characters with
realistic personalities and relatable flaws. The audience finds themselves saying
‘that is totally me’ or that one character or another is reminiscent of an old friend
recalled from the oblivion of time. The effects and cinematography are some of the
best that Marvel had dished up to that point. Overall, this film will be remembered
not simply for it being a delightful ensemble of African American art, but as a key
piece of cinema in general.
 413 CULTURE & CREATIVITY

It makes sense that Black Panther is seen as a revival of Afrofuturism. The film’s
imagery is richly engrained with classical elements of precolonial Africa and space-
age technology. Cloaking technology allows Wakanda to appear to the outside
observer as a grassy oasis in the heart of Africa’s jungle near a simple, yet impressive
waterfall overseen by farmers clad in multi-coloured robes wielding archaic spears.
Revealed, a bustling, densely populated metropolis with an impressive skyline
mixing pre-colonial huts with Western skyscrapers. Vehicles fly about this presently
grounded version of a Jetsons-like city that could be easily taken for any other major
urban centre in the East or West. In fact, I would not be surprised if a McDonalds or
Starbucks (or four of each, every few blocks) resided within this setting that could
easily be inspired from London, New York, or Dubai. One of the Wakandan king’s
councillors perfectly exemplifies the blend desired by Afrofuturism. He wears
a lime green lip plate that blends seamlessly with a vibrant lime-green Western
business attire suit. But wait, Wakanda is supposed to have been untouched by
colonialism or globalisation.
While Black Panther does a remarkable job of exemplifying and, to some,
reviving Afrofuturism, it also points out a key flaw in the genre through a logical
inconsistency. Afrofuturism is deeply rooted in a historical narrative. Usually, the
stories in this genre draw from a mythical ancient Nubian civilisation or a black
Egypt of the Pharaohs and anthropomorphised gods. This past is then projected
into a Western standard of cosmology. While the product is very groovy, it is
fundamentally limited. Afrofuturism, for instance, is dependent on racism, a
constructed social form devised by colonialists and perpetuated by the phenomenon
of globalisation.

THE ARTIFICIAL ENTITY OF RACISM ALLOWS FOR AN OPEN DISCUSSION

OF SLAVERY, ALIENATION, CONQUEST, SEGREGATION, JIM CROW,
GENTRIFICATION, AND THE MULTIVERSE THAT IS XENOPHOBIA.
THE COLOUR IS MOST CERTAINLY BLACK, BUT THE STRUCTURE IS
FUNDAMENTALLY WHITE.

Under a more critical eye, Black Panther is riddled with details that breakdown
the ideal of Wakanda and provide a clue to a more sophisticated Afrofuturism. The
reason for this is that Marvel created a film that fundamentally tells an African
American story in the context of Africa. Less scrutiny is spent on emphasizing the
language of Africa’s plight against conquest at the risk of costing the narratives
ability to speak to the contemporary struggle for racial equality in the States. While
white men in the film are referred to as colonisers, the intent is to emphasize the
Otherness and tyranny of the white majority experienced in the United States. To
Africa the threat of colonisers is the destruction and exploitation of black Africa
 414 AFROFUTURES FOR POSTNORMAL TIMES

in order to gain wealth for the colonists, be that the Europeans of the last century
or the contemporary threat of China, America, Russia, or generic multinational
corporations themselves. It is a subtle difference, but these small cracks chip
away at what Wakanda stands for. If Wakanda has managed to evade the threat of
globalisation since time in memorial, why do kids in the streets wear the slickest
Western styles, struggle with Western monarchical patriarchy, or Wakanda’s cities
reach to the stars with their phallic buildings, a typical Western urban architectural
design? Ryan Coogler may launch a thousand ships for the future of black science
fiction and film. But will they be able to overcome the limits of Afrofuturism?

HERE, IT IS IMPORTANT TO POSE THE QUESTION. IS IT ENOUGH FOR

AFROFUTURIST PIECES TO CONVEY, FROM ARTIST TO AUDIENCE, THE
HISTORICAL STRUGGLE OF AFRICAN AMERICANS? IF SO, THEN THE
PROJECT CAN TAKE A DIFFERENT PATH OF INFORMING. IS IT SIMPLY
MORE ESCAPISM?

But there is no escape. And what might be waiting out there beyond what is being
escaped? But perhaps that is not enough. In fact, perhaps Afrofuturism can take the
next step and inspire action. Maybe this is not simply a lofty dream of Afrofuturism,
but a need demanded by the rapidly burning out contemporary discussion of race
in the West.
Michael Eric Dyson’s 2018 book looks at a point in United States history when racial
tensions were overflowing and beginning to mix dangerously with other vocalised
instances of discord in the country. [4] Following the assassination of John F. Kennedy
in 1963, his brother Robert Kennedy, who had recently taken a change in priorities
towards the race question in America, called a meeting. Did this meeting include
Martin Luther King, Jr. or Malcolm X, the leaders of the movement at the time? No. He
turned to artists. James Baldwin, Henry Belafonte, Lena Horne, Lorraine Hansberry,
and Jerome Smith. As if dreamed up from the mind of philosopher Richard Rorty,
Kennedy, at the darkest hour of the 1960s, held this meeting of artists in search of a
resolution. Perhaps when all other action fails, we must turn to the artists to have the
creativity and openness to seek the unthought and plot a course for navigating hard,
and potentially postnormal, times. Dyson’s conclusion following the analysis of this
historic meeting and the contemporary discussion of race in America is for us to ‘be
Wakandan.’ Go out there and listen to as much rap and R&B music as you can, read
as many stories of Afrofuturism, and see as many Black Panther movies as possible.
Not only view, but participate. Create and through this maybe understanding and
progress can be distilled. Pop culture is powerful, as Anas Al-Shaikh-Ali beautifully
demonstrates in his Bias in Popular Culture. [5] Perhaps the work done by Donald
Glover aka Childish Gambino can give us some insight to this power.
415 CULTURE & CREATIVITY

The same day the multi-artistically talented Childish Gambino was to be the
musical guest of Saturday Night Live, he dropped an emotionally raw and visually
moving music video titled ‘This is America’. [6] The music video all takes place in
a massive empty warehouse. A man plays guitar upon a plastic chair as Gambino,
with dishevelled hair and the trousers of a Civil War-era confederate soldier,
begins dancing. The music is very uplifting sounding like an old tribal song of
celebration from the Africa of old, complete with a church’s chorus singing back up.
Gambino makes faces and body gestures that impersonate the old caricature of Jim
Crow period posters and blackface reproductions. Then seemingly out of thin air
Gambino draws a gun and shoots the guitarist in the head. The gun is taken away,
two-handed, in a fine cloth as the body is dragged away like rubbish. The music
rapidly changes tempo to something more synthetic. Gambino walks on as people
behind him run about and then the music again becomes more playful as younger
individuals join him in a dance fashioned after the dance performed by black
students in celebration of the end of Apartheid in South Africa. Then as everyone
is in celebration a church chorus is revealed as Gambino dances with them, then
is thrown an AK-47 which he uses to gun down the chorus. A familiar symbol of
church shootings in the United States. As the music again changes tempo, the scene
moves to chaos with cars on fire and people running and dancing about. Overhead,
children stare on but only through the lens of their smartphones. The music cuts
as Gambino pretends to shoot a gun and then proceeds to light a cigarette and
dance upon substandard cars in a mockery of rich rappers dancing on top of sharply
painted sports cars. Meanwhile the car factories in Michigan remain closed. We
close on Gambino being chased by faceless white men.
The video is jarring, and the lyrics mock a consumerist America intentionally
ignorant of the disaster in her communities, focused on making wealth and a social
media persona, in love with the second amendment of the constitution. Powerful is
one of the most under representative words you could use to describe this video and
the song attached to it. Both pull impressively from history and project themselves
into the future. Nonchalantly, Childish Gambino reminds us over and over again,
that this is America. Childish Gambino’s alternate persona, the actor Donald Glover
had just finished staring as the younger Lando Calrissian in Solo: A Star Wars Story.
What Glover did through his music video in all its poignancy, only begins to tap at
what has been made a career by the filmmaker Spike Lee.
Rolling Stone magazine recently did a cover story on Spike Lee where he talks
about his latest film BlacKkKlansman and life in Trump’s America. [7] Other
news outlets took on this story and asked, ‘where did Spike Lee go?’ Spike Lee’s
response is that he hadn’t gone anywhere. For thirty years he was breaking waves
in independent and black cinema. Each of his pieces provide another view on
racism and black America. Some widely received like Do the Right Thing, Chiraq,
and more recently BlacKkKlansman. Others have faded into obscurity. While he has
been outspoken about politics and current affairs, his films have never gotten mass
release, yet always hit, hard breaking standard and parlance. BlacKkKlansman is very
416 AFROFUTURES FOR POSTNORMAL TIMES

much a spiritual sequel to his debut Do the Right Thing, in their frank discussion of
racism in everyday America. BlacKkKlansman would be best viewed with Spike Lee
sitting across from you giving you the look that resembles the look on a mother’s
face when their child deliberately disrespects them. He intercuts his film with
celebration amongst members of the Ku Klux Klan and filmstock from the highly
racially charged films Gone with the Wind and Birth of a Nation, the first film made
in America that was even shown at the White House under the administration of
President Woodrow Wilson. He has some very hard-hitting scenes where the actors
themselves should have simply looked plain faced into the camera to recite. In
these scenes our hero, Ron Stallworth, the first black man hired onto this small-
town Colorado police force, is being comforted by his white fellow officers on the
reality and danger that still exists in racist America. This movie also takes place
in the 1970s/1980s. Ron utters such phrases as ‘we would never elect someone like
that as President of the United States and leader of the free world!’, referring to
attributes that are shared by the, then, current President Trump. There is something
striking in this image of a hopeful black man and the realist strike back of white
police officers. Lee speaks to something higher in this film. A general but genuine
comment on the racial debate in America.
The discussion of race in the West is, simply put, exhausting. Emotion has
over taken logic and stubborn refusal to question one’s educational or cultural up
bringing has brought the dialogue to a dead halt. Everyone has appeared to have
made up their mind on the issue. This frustration is expressed in Reni Eddo-Lodge’s
book summed up by its own title, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About
Race. [8] Since the discussion of race has continued to go on, seemingly regardless
of whether or not progress has been made, white people seem to want to forget
about that dark mark of history and move on. The problem lies in that if the
institutions that run our everyday are endemically racist, then we can’t move on.
When historians aren’t busy trying to figure out which historical figures were or
weren’t homosexual, there was a major push to say that the Civil War wasn’t about
slavery. This was a major shift in the discussion that drove Ta-Nehisi Coates into the
American dialogue.
Ta-Nehisi Coates entered the limelight when he began writing for The Atlantic
just before the election of Barack Obama as President. His main crux was to explain
how while the Civil War may have been driven by economic and political factors, at
the end of the day, the conflict came down to the issue of whether or not it should
be allowed for one person to own another. His career continued as he continued
writing as a sceptic of Barack Obama, fearing he was not ‘black’ enough to make
much of a difference as the country’s first black President. In his 2017 book We Were
Eight Years in Power, aptly subtitled ‘An American Tragedy’, Coates takes the pulse
of black in America and watches as the Obama presidency becomes, even for him,
the sceptic, a beacon of hope for the black future. [9] As the subtitle denotes, Coates
also traces back from the election of Donald Trump, how the well-intentioned rise
of black self-esteem also laid the groundwork for the rise of nationalistic and fear
 417 CULTURE & CREATIVITY

driven white supremacist attitudes in dangerously subtle shades. By the end of

the eight-year gig, Coates learned to love his black President, but could not help
but watch, in that slow-motion fashion we come upon disaster which we cannot
prevent, as Donald Trump became, in his words, our first white President.

ALL PROGRESS THAT WAS MADE DURING OUR FIRST BLACK PRESIDENCY
SO AWOKE A FEAR IN A FORGOTTEN AMERICA, THAT A PERCEIVED
IMBALANCE HAD TO BE CORRECTED AND AMERICA’S WHITENESS AGAIN
NEEDED TO BE DISPLAYED IN CASE ANYONE HAD FORGOTTEN.
Clad in Sperry’s, wielding tiki torches, the march on Charleston brought scary images
of memories past to the forefront of the 24-hour news’s view. As someone who
gained his formative education under the auspices of the Bill Clinton administration
and the intoxicating calm waters of the nineties, I’m not surprised. The theme was
fairness (ironically enough, one half of Fox News’s claimed tagline). Every day of
the week attempted to be a holiday in order to recognise another’s culture and the
struggle of the past. P.C. (political correctness) was law. No derogatory language,
no putting others down. It was the great equalisation. Racism had been defeated.
We can forget the past now, yet we had catch phrases like ‘forgive, but never forget.’
The impossibility of dissociating these emotions essentially sums up America’s
attitude up to 11 September 2001. Unfortunately, this equalisation meant that as
of whatever day we all agreed on this in 1996, we assumed everyone was on even
ground. We assumed our institutions were not racist. Yet housing and residential
zoning clearly shows racist origins that are perpetuated to this day. Prisons are
still holding unprecedented numbers of blacks, forced to work, for pathetic wages
to pay off unsurmountable debts birthed in ridiculous fines driven mad by the
passing of time. Vicious cycle does not even begin to give the description of the
situation justice. Yet, America felt it was unnecessary to even discuss reparations,
let alone consider them. America felt that maybe even affirmative action was a bit
unnecessary halfway through the second Bush administration. After all racism is
done and everyone is equal, right?
All of this nonsense is observed year by year through Coates’s writing during
the Obama years. And all of this occurs with the backdrop of Trayvon Martin’s
being gunned down for wearing a hoodie in front of the wrong cop. As hell breaks
loose in Ferguson and ripples rush out, throughout the historic southern United
States. Meanwhile, other forms of xenophobia from homophobia to Islamophobia
overtake the headlines. But this is not the end of the story.
Coates is not currently writing for The Atlantic. Coates has gone from fly-on-
the-wall to actor, but in the most peculiar way. Through Afrofuturism. Coates has
authored Marvel’s run of the comic Black Panther that ran from 2016–2018. Through
his pages assisted by the beautiful images of Brian Stelfreeze, Coates moves from
 418 AFROFUTURES FOR POSTNORMAL TIMES

observer of racism in the world, to offering ideas for change. Coates’ T’Challa offers
us a portrait of what the film Black Panther, and Afrofuturism in general can offer.
Through his run, T’Challa is challenged to both be a world superhero, with the
Avengers, and the ruler of his nation, Wakanda. He must compromise his people
for the greater good of humanity, likewise, to maintain order he must partner
with vicious and evil men, dictators of other African and even Western nations.
All along, terrorists and enemies attempt to dethrone him. At first glance, Coates’
Black Panther beckons to post 9/11 America under George W. Bush, fear, and the
Patriot Act (the one that allows the government to spy on its own citizens). Upon a
more sophisticated lens though, perhaps he is giving sight to the world of Trump’s
America and whatever might come beyond that.
In, We Were for Eight Years in Power, Coates uses his thought of each of the
four years of the Obama presidency to retroactively deconstruct the road to the
unthought election of Donald J. Trump. This partnered with his continued work on
Marvel’s Black Panther comic can provide a framing for how the Three Tomorrow’s
method of analysing and providing policy recommendations for postnormal times
can be put into action. What Afrofuturism tends to lack is the ability to move
from the familiar future of traditional sci-fi into the unthought third tomorrow of
postnormal times and the taking of power in one’s own future. As Coates continues
from Black Panther into the 2018–2021 run of Captain America, a character who was
just revealed to be a sleeper unit of the Hydra organisation, a team of racist and
white supremacist baddies in the Marvel comic universe, we will continue to see
what power lies awaiting an awakening within Afrofuturism.
Afrofuturism has a strong potential for being a navigational tool to action in
postnormal times. First, Afrofuturism, whether or not is it aware of it, is an ideal
incubator for ignorance and uncertainty. Both in visual and audio forms of art,
Afrofuturism’s grappling with the concept of the Other works to both expose
ignorances held by the audience and to analyse the ignorances held by the creator
or the perceived self.

IRONY AND NARRATIVE ARE MASTERFUL WAYS OF BRINGING

UNCERTAINTY UNDER SOME SHADE OF LIGHT. THUS FAR,
AFROFUTURISM’S HEROES, CAUGHT BETWEEN PAST TRADITION AND
FUTURISTIC TECHNOLOGY, CONFRONT UNCERTAINTY IN A WAY THAT IS
OFTEN LEFT OUT OF THE DAY-TO-DAY HUSTLE AND BUSTLE.

Science fiction is a genre built upon consequences and in those consequences,

uncertainty must be not only a constant struggle for the characters, but an internal
struggle within the thinkers and writers as much as it is for the sugar-coated minds
of the audience. Maybe as the old Sun Ra mantra goes ‘space is the place’ to deal
419 CULTURE & CREATIVITY

with the anxiety and nausea that cripples so many caught in postnormal times. Yet
the challenge for postnormal times, where Afrofuturism could gain some ground,
is in seeing through tomorrow.
In postnormal times, it is important look at the future as a multi-potentiated
concept. Commonly we break this up into three tomorrows. They are not strict,
rigid definitional entities, but rather descriptors that allow us to conceptualise and
move beyond the limitations of our own biases. Each tomorrow has within it, the
preconceived notion of the other tomorrows. Perspective is critical. Movement
from self-reflection to commiseration with other’s worldviews advances the
horizons attainable in unravelling the three tomorrows. Creativity and flexibility
are one’s precious commodities. First is the extended present. The not-so-distant-
future. The revelation of trends and the status quo. Beyond this first tomorrow lies
the second tomorrow of the familiar future. The flying car. It is futuristic for it is
a cool, space-aged way to get around, yet familiar in that we are still, supposedly,
using cars to get around. This is the pitfall of science fiction. The all-too-human
tendency to remain within the safety of sobering sanity. Robots, but humanoid,
and we fear their emotions and sentience, for then they’d be like us. Smart societies
driven by automation and social networking, cool, slick, yet beholden to our
contemporary structural flaws of being misogynist, racist, consumerist, and overall
standing on the classic foundational theme of unifying us by dividing us into
various classifications. Afrofuturism and the rest of science fiction do a brilliant
job of getting us to this point and even in explaining the postnormal creep that lies
within each step, but can it get us to the third tomorrow.
The truly unthought is a new frontier. As futurists Ziauddin Sardar and John
A. Sweeney tell us, ‘collaborative creativity and ‘ethical imagination[s]’ are not
simply the best tools for constructing scenarios in this tomorrow, ‘they are the
only tools’. [10] Furthermore, unthought futures are not simply something that
is not expected or anticipated; rather, they are something outside the framework
of conventional thought – something that does not allow us to focus on or think
about it.’ The unthought is not unthinkable, but might be useable from a certain
vantage point. It is the marriage of complexity, chaos, and contradiction. Distortion
of scope, scale, speed, and simultaneity are commonplace here. Blackness and
white supremacy can vanish in the unthought. Race can be uncreated. Slavery
and Jim Crow are ideals to be aspired to in this realm. Xenophobia is the tyranny
of the minority and historical narrative need not apply. Afrofuturism can unlock
its true power by tapping into the unthought. But, as has been explicitly stated in
postnormal times analysis: power is seldom given; it must be taken.
Now, caution should be advised here. A drastic jump from the ethereal fiction of
thought to the reality of the present is jarring and action without moral reflection
and continued futures thought can be dangerous. A fearful association can be drawn
between the creative and the destructive. This is the rationale used for the banning
of certain artistic expressions. It lies at the heart of John Lennon’s assassin, who
totted along his person a copy of J. D. Salinger’s A Catcher in the Rye. Also, in former
420 AFROFUTURES FOR POSTNORMAL TIMES

US President’s Ronald Reagan’s would-be assassin’s motivation to win over the

heart of Jodi Foster after seeing Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film Taxi Driver. The debate
will continue with each new example of youth and violence, from the pop cultural
influences on the young shooters at Columbine High School in 1999, to the 2012
shooter, dressed as Heath Ledger’s character The Joker, at an Aurora movie theatre
on the opening night of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises. Afrofuturism,
in being a truly futures study, must keep its potentialities open to all possible
outcomes. This means that it can be hijacked and used for the ulterior motives of
the militant and fascists. Yet in all the bad, an equal, if not greater, multiplicity of
good lies within the potentiality. A sound morality is as paramount as a respect for
mental illness and other social ailments that can bastardise a policy or a movement.
Afrofuturism provides for us a mode of reflexion as well as insight for navigation
of postnormal times that need not only be a way forward on the issue of race in
the United States or the West, but can be a cowl put on by other disadvantaged
communities or groups who find themselves in postnormal creep or looking to
prevent postnormal lag. As the film Black Panther speaks to and Dyson echoes in his
writing, we can all be Wakanda. In the comics of Coates, our hero T’Challa is caught
between being the King of Wakanda and a superhero for the world. There is a fine
balance to be maintained there. For even in the throes of PNT, there are constants
such as home and family that need tending to, yet the demands of good acts and the
pursuit of navigation are needed in these troubling times. In looking towards policy
in postnormal times, we can take a page from T’Challa’s book.
At the conclusion of the film Black Panther, T’Challa decides that it is time for
Wakanda to come out from hiding. That the risk of continued threats of attack can
be tackled by giving back to the world. He does what his cousin-turned-enemy
wanted; much as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X wanted similar outcomes,
but differed in method. T’Challa would not arm his disadvantaged African diasporic
brothers and sisters, at least with weapons, but share the benefits to humankind
that Wakandan thought, and innovation delivered through the use of its secret
element, vibranium. In the closing scene of the film, T’Challa and his sister Shuri
are undercover, visiting Compton where Killmonger, one of the films antagonists
for T’Challa, was born and raised. T’Challa reveals that he has bought a large block
of land there to build Wakanda’s first outreach centre. The first steps towards
walking through postnormal times should be small, short term, but with long term
ambitions, constantly monitored by specialists, and always open to revision.
A group of kids are playing basketball on the land T’Challa has bought. They
stop as T’Challa uncloaks their flying jet to the kids’ amazement. One of the young
boys walks up to T’Challa. Echoing the deeply needed self-reflection of politicians
and policymakers. The powerful. The boy asks, ‘who are you?’
Afrofuturism echoes out, from the funky grooves and electronic sounds
improvised by Sun Ra and George Clinton through to Beyonce and Missy Elliot
and even into the contemporary with Childish Gambino and Black Panther’s credit
song, Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s ‘All the Stars’, that follows the child’s posing of that
421 CULTURE & CREATIVITY

question. ‘This may be the night that my dreams might let me know that all the stars
are closer.’ The world is lived out between stanzas. Both the existence and absence
of sound weave together to create a soundtrack for our lives. It appears to be escape,
but in reality, it is the passage onto something higher, into something unthought.
Random combinations of notes can evoke emotion, retrieve a lost memory, and
even provoke a person to action. Such a mysterious force demands the austerity of
our intellectual rigor.
Can you hear that?
422 AFROFUTURES FOR POSTNORMAL TIMES

Reference

1. Get Out, directed by Jordan Peele, Blumhouse Productions, Monkeypaw

Productions, Los Angeles, February 2017.

2. Mark Dery, ‘Black to the Future: Interviews with Samuel R. Delany, Greg Tate,
and Tricia Rose,’ Flame Wars. 179–222. 1994; Mark Sinker, ‘Loving the alien
in advance of the landing’ The Wire.

3. Black Panther, directed by Ryan Coogler, Marvel Studios, Los Angeles,

February 2018.

4. Michael Eric Dyson, What Truth Sounds Like: RFK, James Baldwin, and
Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America. (St. Martin’s Press,
New York, 2018)

5. Anas Al-Shaikh-Ali, Bias in Popular Culture: The Power of Visual and Linguistic
Narratives. (Mahya Yayıncılık, Istanbul, 2023)

6. Childish Gambino, ‘This is America’ directed by Hiro Murai, May 6 2018,

Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYOjWnS4cMY

7. BlackKklansman, directed by Spike Lee, Universal Pictures, Los Angeles,

May 2018.

8. Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race.
(Bloomsbury, London, 2017).

9. Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy.

(One World, London, 2017).

10. Ziauddin Sardar and John A. Sweeney’s ‘Three Tomorrows of Postnormal

Times,’ Futures 75, 2016, p. 1–13. Also seen in The Postnormal Times Reader,
Edited by Ziauddin Sardar (CPPFS, London, 2017) p.109–136.
GOING BEYOND
POSTNORMALITY
Alfonso Montuori

Creativity and imagination are the most important ingredients for coping with
postnormal times, according to Ziauddin Sardar. This paper looks at the way
creativity itself is being transformed in the West, from the individualistic/atomistic
view of Modernity towards a more contextual, collaborative, complex approach. It
explores the potential and possibilities for this more participatory creativity to help
go beyond the ‘crisis of the future’, and argues that the centrality of creativity must
go beyond the mythology of genius and inspiration to inform philosophy, ethics,
and action. Philosophical reflection and the imagination of desirable futures can
emerge from a creative ethic that stresses the value of generative interactions and
contexts that support creativity.
In his provocative and important paper Sardar argues that chaos, complexity,
and contradictions are central to ‘postnormal times’. [1] He goes on to write that,

the most important ingredients for coping with postnormal times,

I would argue, are imagination and creativity. Why? Because we have
no other way of dealing with complexity, contradictions and chaos.
Imagination is the main tool, indeed I would suggest the only tool,
which takes us from simple reasoned analysis to higher synthesis.
While imagination is intangible, it creates and shapes our reality;
while a mental tool, it affects our behaviour and expectations. We
will have to imagine our way out of the postnormal times. The kind
of futures we imagine beyond postnormal times would depend on the
quality of our imagination. Given that our imagination is embedded
and limited to our own culture, we will have to unleash a broad
spectrum of imaginations from the rich diversity of human cultures
and multiple ways of imagining alternatives to conventional, orthodox
ways of being and doing. [2]

Sardar’s essay raises a host of interesting questions and possibilities, and in these
pages, I want to address several aspects of creativity that are particularly relevant to
the discussion of postnormal times, specifically by reflecting on the ways in which
428 GOING BEYOND POSTNORMALITY

the discourses and practices of creativity in the West are themselves changing. I
discuss the who, where, and how of creativity and how they are changing from an
atomistic/individualistic to a more collaborative, contextual, and indeed ecological
perspective that has considerable implications for the creativity of the future and
the future of creativity. I conclude by presenting one possible way in which a more
collaborative creativity can assist us in imagining different futures.

Creativity and Modernity

Creativity was not quite ‘normal’ in Modernity, if we are to believe the popular
Romantic mythology of tortured geniuses and lightning bolts of inspiration. [3]
We should therefore expect that in postnormal times creativity will have a few
surprises in store for us. In fact, creativity itself has changed, and in postnormal
times creativity may paradoxically become normal in the sense that it will not be
the province of lone tortured geniuses any longer (which it was not anyway), but an
everyone, every day, everywhere, process. [4] If, as Sardar suggests, creativity will be
essential for coping with postnormal times, then changes in the manifestation and
conceptualisation of creativity in the West deserve our attention.

History and Myths of Creativity

Let us step back and unpack some of the underlying ‘myths’ of Modern creativity,
as this view of creativity is quietly and rapidly changing. Traditionally, the research
on creativity focused on the three Ps: Person, Process, and Product. [5] In the
romantic mythology, from which this atomistic view originated, the person was
mostly a lone, eccentric genius. The ‘‘Who’’ of creativity could therefore only be an
individual person. Not a group, an organization, or a culture. If anything, groups,
organizations, and cultures were representatives of conformity and compliance,
and were viewed only as potential obstacles. The creative individual could always
‘transcend’ his environment. [6]
The ‘How’ of creativity consequently occurred exclusively ‘inside’ the
individual. [7] The classic image of the creative process involved a light bulb going
on over the creator’s head during the Eureka moment. The creative process was
viewed as a solitary process. In this atomistic, individualistic view, relationships and
interactions were not taken into consideration – unless it was to refer to interruption
by gentlemen from Porlock that made the pleasure domes of inspiration collapse,
or the masses mocking and misunderstanding the incomprehensible genius.
The ‘What’ or creative product was typically a major contribution to physics,
a symphony or transformative work of art. [8] Creativity was associated with ‘big
bang’, earth-shaking insights that were not the kind of thing the average person
could understand or be involved with. This takes us to the ‘Where’ of creativity,
which was almost exclusively the arts and sciences, and in the latter preferably
physics. If having the Creative Person as the unit of analysis, by definition ruled
out creativity as a possibility for groups and organizations, the Where of creativity
by definition made it virtually impossible for somebody not in the arts or sciences
 429 BEYOND POSTNORMAL TIMES

to consider herself creative or to be engaged in an enterprise that was considered

creative. This meant that creativity could only ‘exist’ in a limited number of human
activities. This characterisation of creativity made it a very unusual, subjective
phenomenon that was limited to very few individuals during rare moments of
inspiration in a closely circumscribed set of human endeavours.
Creativity was a puzzling phenomenon in Modernity. Because the Modern
scientific worldview was so Objective and Order-driven, [9] creativity was associated
with a breakdown in Order and therefore with Disorder, whether socially or
personally, and consequently with the popular belief that creative people are all to
some extent unhinged. [10] Creativity was also viewed as essentially contingent and
subjective, rather than lawful, orderly, and objective phenomenon. Science itself
could therefore not account for creativity. The creativity of scientists did not begin
to be systematically addressed until the 1950s. The Austrian British philosopher Karl
Popper stressed the context of justification, and by leaving the context of discovery
to psychologists he was essentially dismissing it as a worthy subject for science
and philosophy, and hence serious inquiry. [11] In the US, the Ph.D. dissertation is
supposed to be an original contribution to one’s field, but tellingly originality and
creativity are barely ever discussed during the educational process, unless it is in
the context of plagiarism. [12] Creativity was a subject addressed by the Romantics,
who emerged in reaction to the dark satanic mills of capitalist techno-science, but
worked in the arts rather than the sciences. Modernity was therefore split in two,
and creativity was firmly on the side of sturm und drang and subjectivity as opposed
to cool reason and objectivity.

BUT MANY OF THE UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS OF BOTH SCIENTIFIC

AND ROMANTIC CAMPS ABOUT THE WHO, HOW, WHAT, AND WHERE OF
CREATIVITY WERE SURPRISINGLY SIMILAR, AS WE HAVE SEEN.

Particularly in the US, the Person was the unit of analysis, and the social
and natural environment were essentially considered epiphenomenal. [13] The
environment of creativity, and creativity’s effects on its environment, were mostly
not taken into account. Social, political, and economic conditions were not a
consideration. The creative genius emerged no matter what the social conditions.
Hence also the dearth of research on creative groups, relationships, environments
that foster creativity, and generally on the social dimensions of creativity.
In Modernity, creativity was essentially decontextualised at the level of person,
process, and product. The creative person, viewed atomistically, did not need to
interact with, and was not influenced by the social world, a view still held by some
eminent creativity researchers today. [14] The creative process occurred inside the
person’s head and was not influenced by the environment. The creative product
was likewise not context-dependent, and the great work of art could be moved from
 430 GOING BEYOND POSTNORMALITY

museum to museum, inventions worked in any part of the world, and initially great
factories required no more than a handy river to dispose of pollution. [15]
The consequences of this decontextualisation can be seen at the individual and
the social level. In Modernity, the body was to the mind as nature was to society.
And creativity manifested in the myth of the self-destructive genius dying of
alcoholism or drug-abuse or mental illness is just as unsustainable as the techno-
capitalist myth of the ‘atomistic’ individual factory oblivious to its natural and
social environment. [16]
The creativity of Modernity did not consider Nature a partner, but rather
something to be dominated. Its purpose was to understand how nature operates,
and then use that information within an essentially technological framework,
based on the metaphor of the Universe as a machine. This creativity led to the
design of ways to protect human beings from nature – from disease, weather, or
famine, for example – and to extend human powers over nature. This took the form
of extensions of human capacities such as vision (microscope, telescope), and ways
to control nature to ensure more extensive food and energy production. But nature
seemed so inexhaustibly big and powerful, little if any thought was given to making
sure that nature’s capacities were not depleted, polluted, or even destroyed. As
English anthropologist Gregory Bateson summarized:

When you narrow down your epistemology and act on the premise ‘‘What
interests me is me, or my organization, or my species,’’ you chop off
consideration of other loops of the loop structure. You decide that
you want to get rid of the by-products of human life and that Lake
Erie will be a good place to put them. You forget that the eco-mental
system called Lake Erie is part of your wider eco-mental system – and
that if Lake Erie is driven insane, its insanity is incorporated in
the larger system of your thought and experience. [17]

The creativity of Modernity, in the manifestation of capitalist techno-science and

industry, essentially sought to dominate the natural environment for the benefit
of humans. The pollution of great factories and cities was conveniently disposed
of in rivers and oceans, with dire consequences. They were the equivalent of a
rubbish bin. Context was essentially an afterthought. For all intents and purposes,
Modernity operated with a closed system view of the world.
A more relational, open systems, complex view sees system and environment
in an interactive, mutually constitutive role. [18] In the twenty-first century,
contextual, relational, and processual creativity is manifesting in fascinating
ways. One example is Biomimicry, the development of sustainable human
technologies based on nature. Modern engineering was based on a machine (and
therefore artificial) model. Biomimicry is engineering inspired by nature. [19]
The relationship is based on partnership rather than domination. As an example,
ecological designers John and Nancy Jack Todd have created ‘living machines’. [20]
 431 BEYOND POSTNORMAL TIMES

A living machine can be created in a school for purposes of waste disposal. Instead
of using the traditional approaches, the Todds create an ecosystem using diverse
communities of bacteria and other microorganisms, including living creatures
such as algae, plants, trees, snails, and fish. A school’s sewage disposal therefore
takes the form of a small ecosystem with the appropriate living organisms that turn
sewage into clean water by consuming the various pollutants. [21] This approach
does not only take the environment into account in order to avoid pollution, but
actively works on developing a generative ecosystem that enriches the community
as well as the natural environment.
Underlying this approach is ecological design, which involves learning from,
and collaborating with, nature to deal with human challenges. [22] Ecological
design differs from the design and creativity of modernity because it approaches
the relationship between system and environment as one of partnership rather
than domination. [23] Creativity therefore in this new view is deeply relational and
contextual. The focus is not on the creation of an object that can be abstracted from
the environment, but rather on a relational, embedded, contextual creativity where
the environment itself is the creative process and product.

AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, ECOLOGICAL DESIGN IS A FORM OF CREATIVITY

THAT STARTS FROM THE POINT OF VIEW THAT THE ENVIRONMENT
ITSELF MUST REMAIN AND INDEED BE MADE MORE GENERATIVE. THE
UNDERLYING DESIGN PRINCIPLES SHOW MUCH PROMISE FOR THE
FUTURE OF CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION.

Transforming Creativity
Today dramatic changes are occurring in the way creativity is conceptualised
by scholars, and also in the way it is experienced by younger generations. [24]
Postmodernism in its various forms led to new ways of conceptualising self, society,
production, art, science, and creativity. [25] In art and entertainment we see this in
a shift to what has been called a participatory culture, which involves a blurring of
boundaries between ‘artist’ and audience. [26] The seemingly trivial example of
karaoke provides a glimmer of how entertainment now involves greater and active
audience participation, and where in fact the lead role in the performance is taken by
a participating ‘audience’ member. Wikipedia is another example of the, admittedly
controversial, ‘wisdom of crowds’. Video games like LittleBigPlanet have users
design their own series of levels. According to Jenkins, participatory culture involves
a quite dramatic shift from individual expression to community involvement.
Creativity research now includes a strong emerging focus on everyday creativity
rather than on ‘eminent creatives’ or major contributions and not limited to the
 432 GOING BEYOND POSTNORMALITY

arts and sciences. [27] The notion of everyday creativity suggests creativity can
occur in everyday life, and does not have to take the form of a major work of art or
scientific discovery. This opens up the possibility of the recognition of creativity as
a phenomenon that can permeate every dimension of life. The Where of creativity
is now potentially everywhere. There is also an increasing recognition of group and
collaborative creativity, which can be found in new research on innovation, group
creativity, jazz, and an increasing appreciation of ‘the wisdom of crowds’ as opposed
to an exclusive focus on the individual genius. [28]
Millennial college students associate creativity with everyday activities, and
with social interactions. [29] Whereas for Baby Boomers, creativity came from
‘eminent creatives’ in the form of the guitar of Jimi Hendrix or the pen of Ken Kesey
or Thomas Pynchon, in today’s ‘participatory’ culture the focus is not so much on
‘eminent creatives’, but on participatory processes in video games like Beaterator,
and the Garageband music application. [30] Individuals share their own music –
music they have created, not just that of established bands – over the web and jam
virtually. And while this is being viewed as the death-knell for traditional business
models of music production, new, mostly web-based models are emerging, and it
remains to be seen how the participatory culture will transform the arts.
The new participatory culture has been likened to a networked return to an earlier
form of creativity, when amateurs engaged in what we now call ‘creative’ activities
at home and quilted, told tales, played piano, and so on, because entertainment was
not directly available in their homes through the radio, television, internet, and
so on. [31] Twentieth century technology arguably created an essentially passive
culture of art and entertainment consumers. Trends suggest that now there may
be shift, a return to a cyber-amplified and networked everyday creativity, now with
technology that allows for active participation, and where file sharing can involve,
for instance, musical collaboration across vast distances. [32]

THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE SHIFT TO A NEW, IF NOT AS YET

WELL-ARTICULATED, COLLABORATIVE, CONTEXTUAL, ECOLOGICAL
CREATIVITY ARE ENORMOUS.

We have seen hints of the implications for the environment and the arts. In the
business world, as innovation becomes an increasingly central competency for
organisations, the importance of collaboration and creating work environments
that foster creativity has lead to more research on collaborative creativity and on
environments that foster rather than inhibit creativity and innovation. [33] The
Modern organisation, with its roots in the Americans Frederick Winslow Taylor,
a mechanical engineer and Henry Ford, the industrialist, was not designed for
creativity, innovation, or collaboration. [34] Taylor referred to what we now called
groups as ‘gangs’ and discouraged communication, essentially working on a divide
 433 BEYOND POSTNORMAL TIMES

and rule principle. Taylor’s guiding metaphor was the Machine, and machines do
not innovate or collaborate. The machine’s designers do, as the Deus ex machina.
In highly innovative organisations creativity is a distributed, participatory process,
and the organisations are designed so that ideally every member can innovate. [35]
The crucial question now is whether this ‘everyone, everyday, everywhere’
creativity will lead to a growing narcissism and consumerist self-absorption that
will make the ‘Me Generation’ seem positively altruistic, or whether it can be
channelled this creativity towards worthy human aspirations. At this point, the
jury is out, with wildly different prognostications, but there are signs of hope in the
emerging contextual and collaborative forms of creativity. [36]
The move towards collaborative, participatory, or grass-roots creativity has
implications for the future, and for how we envision the future. If the metanarratives
of Modernity are indeed gone and being replaced by Lyotard’s petits recits or
‘little narratives’, we could say this mirrors the shift from a ‘great man’ and ‘great
narrative’ creativity to a more every day, every(wo)man creativity, from a ‘universal’
to a local creativity. [37]

Participatory Visions of the Future

The Dutch futurist Fred Polak wrote that,

the rise and fall of images of the future precedes or accompanies the
rise and fall of cultures. As long as a society’s image is positive
and flourishing, the flower of culture is in full bloom. Once the image
begins to decay and lose its vitality, however, the culture does not
long survive. [38]

Whatever we may ultimately think of Polak’s controversial thesis, his statement is

provocative, and provides one very interesting entry point into postnormal times.
The US and much of Europe are facing what Morin calls a crisis of the future, and
there is much talk of ‘decline.’ [39] The anxiety many Europeans and Americans
are experiencing could be attributed, therefore, not only to the more obvious issues
such as the economy, terrorism, environmental degradation, immigration, and so
on, but also to a larger sense of vision and direction for the future. Today’s emerging
generations are experiencing lowered expectations: they fear – and expect – their
standard of living will be less than that of their parents, and that life will be far more
difficult and uncertain for them, not to mention, actually shorter. And yet at the
same time, they are more ambitious than their predecessors. [40]
Polak’s thesis about the image of the future raises a big question: what’s next?
What can we hope for? What lies beyond this crisis? Now that ‘progress’ has become
an unfashionable term, we are also left with a lack of a sense of direction, and no
sense of what constitutes something better. What has happened to the image of the
future? Drawing on popular culture, and particularly science fiction, we can see how
images of the future informed our vision of what lies ahead. [41] In the 1950s and
 434 GOING BEYOND POSTNORMALITY

1960s, a whole world of science fiction imagery promised a shining, silvery future.
Men and women in silver space suits were conquering the solar system, enjoying
space odysseys, getting lost in space, and occasionally having to address pesky
monsters from outer space or black lagoons. The ‘hard’ science fiction typified by
the American writer Robert Heinlein stressed the science and technology driven
nature of the future. Looking back on these images of the future one notes that
American science fiction in those days tellingly had no room for people of colour
or, for that matter, for nature, unless it was in the form of monsters.

IN THE 1970S, 1980S, AND 1990S THE UTOPIAN ASPIRATIONS OF THE

1950S AND 1960S TURNED DYSTOPIAN, AS THE SEX PISTOLS SANG
‘ANARCHY IN THE UK’ WITH, PERHAPS PROPHETICALLY, ‘NO FUTURE’.

Cinema brought us Soylent Green, Mad Max, Blade Runner, and Gattaca. The
appropriately named cyberpunk fiction of the American Canadian writer William
Gibson and others, presented bleak futures. Cyberpunk precursor, the American
writer Philip K. Dick’s, future worlds drifted uncomfortably between mysticism
and authoritarianism, metanoia and paranoia. As of 2010, the future seems to
have stalled at 2012, a year that in the Mayan calendar is said to coincide with a
cataclysmic transformation. From utopian technology to dystopian haves and have-
nots we have ended up on a mythological date. The 2012 phenomenon is perhaps
best captured in Pinchbeck’s 2012, a bizarre and fascinating tale that ranges from
psychotropic drugs to crop circles to Mayan prophecy. [42] Categorized in non-
fiction, it reads not unlike a Philip K. Dick novel.
The 2012 phenomenon suggests we are unable to envision a new world. In 2010,
2012 has become the mythical wall where the imagination of the West comes to an
abrupt end. From ‘hard’ science-fiction to ‘hard’ techno-psychedelic mysticism-fact,
extra-terrestrial visions interwoven with chaos theory and neurotheology. 2012 is
symbolically the point at which the imagination fails. Where do we go from here?
What can the West dream of ? And this is not strictly a Western issue. The economies
of China and India are moving at a great pace, but we have to ask, towards what?
From the Middle East to Africa to Latin America this has become a global issue, a
question for our planetary culture, and one that can emerge as we – meaning all
humans – become aware of our interconnectedness and our community of destiny,
in one of Morin’s typically complex formulations. [43]
When viewed from this perspective, the sustainability movement is working on
‘saving the environment’, but, perhaps because of the incredulity towards any global
normative scenarios, there is no larger vision of an alternative future in which there
is truly a different relationship between humans and the environment, and how
that plays out globally in terms of the economy, our cities, in our everyday lives. We
are left with the hope that we will not destroy the environment and ourselves, but it
 435 BEYOND POSTNORMAL TIMES

is not clear what we will be left with and whether it is worth striving for. In Polak’s
terms, the West’s image of the future has not just decayed, but vanished. And as we
have seen, today’s youth in the West has to look forward to a future that has been
painted as almost inevitably less healthy and less wealthy. Whether it will be wise or
not does not seem to enter the picture.
The problem is also that we are not clear how to think about the future, and how
to envision the radical nature of some of the changes that are required. Morin has
stated that,

we need a kind of thinking that relinks that which is disjointed and

compartmentalized, that respects diversity as it recognizes unity, and
that tries to discern interdependencies. We need a radical thinking
(which gets to the root of problems), a multidimensional thinking,
and an organizational or systemic thinking... [44]

In order to address the complexity and radical nature of our Postnormal Times, we
need to develop new forms of education and imagination. [45] A kind of thinking
that embraces complexity and contradictions, does not recoil from chaos, and
a willingness to envision alternative futures. Morin’s efforts towards ‘complex
thought’ – a kind of thinking that embraces paradox, complexity, and uncertainty
are invaluable here. [46] But along with the capacity to think about complexity
without simplistic reduction and polarisation that mutilates the very web of
interconnections that weaves complexity, what is also needed is the ability to engage
in complex dialogue. In other words, to address complex, chaotic, and contradictory
issues and be able to dialogue about them in a civil and generative manner with
others. This means ways addressing humanity’s most pressing issues in a context
of creative collaboration in which complexity does not become lost in the rhetoric
of argument and debate in favour of simplistic slogans and either/or logics. As
anxiety rises over the complexity, chaos, and contradictions of postnormal times, it
is increasingly apparent that there is also a rise in polarising, exclusive rhetoric, and
an unwillingness to listen or dialogue. There is, rather, an increasingly bellicose,
authoritarian response, which precludes any social creativity by imposing a simple
order, often through scapegoating and polarisation. [47]
The social creativity of complex dialogue can involve grass-roots efforts to
explore the future together, to envision alternatives, because this also means
learning to talk across differences in ways that see difference as the source of
creativity rather than mutual destruction. A complex world does not merely
require the ability to address complexity individually, to be able to think about it
and think it through, but it also requires the ability to engage in dialogue in a way
that reflects this complexity, and to envision complex and pluralistic futures. This in
turn requires what was lacking from the creativity of Modernity, namely generative
environments where creativity, exploration, hope, and dreams of a better future can
be nurtured and developed collaboratively. This is really a form of complex ethics,
436 GOING BEYOND POSTNORMALITY

which is inspired by the Austrian American scientist Heinz von Foerster’s Ethical
Imperative: ‘act always so as to increase the number of choices’. [48]
What would a ‘better future’ look like? Can we conceive of flourishing, positive
images of the future? We have been told about the postmodern incredulity towards
metanarratives, the rejection of the idea of progress. [49] Incredulity towards
metanarratives and disenchantment with progress do not mean that we should
reject more global assessments of what used to be called ‘the big picture’, or that
there can be no such thing as human betterment. No unquestioned faith in the
power of science, religion, revelation, or communism perhaps. An understanding
of the role of uncertainty, complexity, contingency, and human fallibility, and hence
an awareness that there is no predetermined path. [50] No security in the ‘ultimate,’
‘absolute’ statement. And no need to stop thinking and questioning, either. This
may be viewed as a catastrophe from the authoritarian perspective, but it can also
be viewed as a call for greater human creativity and responsibility. [51]
With the loss of faith in science and technology and politics to lead the West
into the future, with the traditional touchstones questioned, it seems there is
uncertainty not just about the future, but about how even to begin to think about
the future. There is also considerable anxiety about whether there will even be a
future, based on the interest in apocalyptic predictions. But surely, we should not
throw out the baby with the bathwater. For a tragically high percentage of the
world’s population, access to potable water is key to a better future. The economic
system, education, the environment, these are just some of the key problems facing
humanity. The problem is not that the West has it so good it cannot think beyond
its present blissful state. It is that the problems are so radical, they require stepping
beyond the present ways of thinking. They also require a deep reflection on the
nature of the Good, and the nature of human nature and human potential. [52]
The new collaborative creativity may be one way of beginning to stimulate the
collective imagination. As the changes in creativity in the twenty-first century
suggest, the generation of images of the future will not be confined to a priestly
class of artists and futurists. The new, participatory, grass-roots creativity can be
mobilized for the creation of better futures. Envisioning the future has historically
been a task left for artists or futurists. Asking the big questions has historically been
left to philosophers. The time has come for a process of grass-roots philosophical
futurism, drawing on some of the techniques of scenario planning to envision
alternative futures. [53] Very important in this process of envisioning petits recits is
ensuring the participation of groups that have been traditionally underrepresented
in the discourse of the future, including women, so-called ‘minorities’, and
young people, and the emphasis that this should be a creative process – not a
deterministic techno-forecast, but a creativity as ethical aspiration and ethics as
creative aspiration. [54]
One simple way to begin might simply be to stimulate the development of
petits recits, with community collaborative creativity sessions in which citizens are
invited to share their personal and/or collaborative vision of what a better world ten
 437 BEYOND POSTNORMAL TIMES

or fifteen years hence might be like, and then dialogue with others in small groups
to weave the visions together and look for common themes and patterns. [55] A
variety of methods can be drawn upon to structure the process of collaboratively
envisioning alternative futures, from Open Space Technology to Search Conferences
to Scenario Planning, with appropriate modifications to suit the context. [56]
The scenarios with visions of desirable futures can be articulated by a variety of
individuals and groups all over the world and presented through narratives, video
skits, illustrations, and other media, again ensuring the representation of the
traditionally underrepresented.

THESE MINI IMAGES OF THE FUTURE CAN BE SHARED ON THE WEB TO

PROMOTE DIALOGUES AND THE EXCHANGE OF IDEAS AND RESOURCES,
AND ABOVE ALL TO TRIGGER AND MOBILISE THE IMAGINATION OF
OTHERS TOWARDS DESIRABLE FUTURES.

This is merely one suggestion to address the vision gap. The larger point
is the emergence of a new, contextual, collaborative, emergent, networked,
participatory creativity, and the implications it can have for the future. There really
is an opportunity now for human beings to join together to envision new, desirable
futures together.
Creativity is a vital human capacity for postnormal times. In this reflection on
Sardar’s work, I have outlined some of the ways in which creativity itself appears
to be changing, and some of the implications of these changes. A collaborative,
contextual, complex creativity will be a vital ingredient in coping with the
present and creating the future. Creativity will cease to be a somewhat magical
phenomenon that stands outside the purview of ethics, or of philosophical
reflection (as Popper felt it should be). In fact, creativity should be informed by, and
in turn inform, philosophical reflection. Postnormal creativity will involve above
all the development of a new sense of responsibility for our creative actions, a
responsibility informed by both an awareness of the extent to which creativity is
already operative in our daily lives and choices, and the extent to which it assists us
in moving towards a vision of a more collaborative, ecological, diverse world. As we
become responsible for our creativity, we must also face our responsibilities with a
creative spirit.
438 GOING BEYOND POSTNORMALITY

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440 GOING BEYOND POSTNORMALITY

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AFTERTHOUGHTS
Ziauddin Sardar

‘The last normal photo.’

In May 2020, Robyn Vinter, a journalist based in Leeds for the Yorkshire Post,
started the hashtag #lastnormalphoto. [1] It went viral: she received thousands
of replies, with people across the world posting the last picture they took before
the Covid-19 global lockdown. Amongst the photos were music concerts, football
matches, shopping, restaurant dinners, plates piled up with food glorious
food, people meeting elderly relatives, revellers on the beach, fashion, and a
truckload of celebrity selfies. Other hashtags followed, including #happiertimes,
#beforesocialdistancing, and #misstheolddays, all confirming an instant nostalgia
for something called “the normal.”
But what is this ‘normal’ that is so desired by so many people? Conspicuously
missing from the last normal photos are pictures of people living from hand to
mouth, plates with little or no food, migrant and refugees living in squalor, and
the homeless living on the streets. We do not see this as ‘normal’. But as Pope
Francis I points out, this too is normal for a substantial segment of the global
population – a reality we cannot deny: ‘to discover such a large number of people
who are on the margins…and we don’t see them, because poverty is bashful… they
have become part of the landscape; they are things’. [2] There is a great deal more
that is ‘part of the landscape’ that we do not see as normal: devastation caused
by climate change; the megafires in Australia and the United States; cities, such
as Male and Jakarta, drowning underwater; the rising tide of far right in Europe,
the United States, India, and elsewhere; gross inequality within and between
nations; the incompetence of political and business elite; authoritarian regimes
arresting, beating, or torturing dissidents; and the hoarding of global wealth in
ever fewer hands. The nostalgic perception of pre-Covid-19 days is thus a rather
truncated, myopic normal. The normal, as Indian writer and activist, Arundhati
Roy, points out, ‘is the wreckage of a train that has been careening down the track
for years’. [3] Indeed, from the perspective of those who are suffering from the
direct impact of climate change, or migrants and refugees fleeing oppression, or
millions of those who lost their jobs due to automation and AI, or those millions
who are thrown in internment camps or declared non-citizens simply because of
their faith, the pre-Covid-19 world was rather abnormal: this is not how things
ought to be, you can hear them scream.
 444 AFTERTHOUGHTS

Return to Normal
The clamour for life to get ‘back to normal’, as evident on the front pages of
newspapers as on the news channels and social media, is a demand for return to the
status quo ante: the ‘normal’ state of affairs before Covid-19. But as graffiti in Hong
Kong, and elsewhere, declared: ‘there can be no return to normal because normal
was the problem in the first place’. Indeed, way back in 1983, singer Bruce Cockburn
told us that the normal gets worse and worse:

Strikes across the frontier and strikes for higher wage

Planet lurches to the right as ideologies engage
Suddenly it’s repression, moratorium on rights
What did they think the politics of panic would invite?
Person in the street shrugs ‘Security comes first’
But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse. [4]

For Christina Nichol, a California-based novelist, ‘normal life’ was certainly getting
crueller and crueller. [5] She had to live through ‘the last year’s fire, and the fires the
year before that, and the fires year before that’. During 2018, she informs us, ‘fires
burned nearly two million acres in California. And in 2017, fire ravaged a significant
portion of my hometown. When the university where I teach recently closed for
the semester because of shelter-at-home orders, it was the fourth closure in three
years.’ The Indian intellectual Pankaj Mishra suggested that even bigger ‘systematic
crisis’ lay ahead, and as such, return to imagined normal was not on the cards. [6]
American journalist Peter Baker concludes his ‘long read’ article in The Guardian,
‘we can’t go back to normal’, by suggesting ‘we are not watching a movie, we are
writing one, together, until the end’. [7]
What then lies at the end of the Covid-19 tunnel depends on your perception
and outlook – whether you are a pessimist or an optimist, politically on the left or
the right, realist or a dreamer, or looking at short-term or long-term futures. In the
short run, the ‘the new normal’, the health journalist Alice Park tells us in Time,
means ‘the death of the handshake’, ‘rethinking how self-isolation fits into broader
policy decisions’, and ‘microbial threats like coronaviruses will inevitably move
from the bottom to the top of public health priority lists, and the danger of infectious
diseases will loom large on our collective conscious’. [8] According to numerous
reports in The Guardian, the ‘new normal’ will include social distancing for years
to come, more people working from home, common use of face masks, swift
shutdowns, health checks when flying, and end of business travel – namely, the old
normal with a few restrictions. Beyond that, the optimistic view suggests that the
experience of Covid-19 could enhance our understanding of climate change, there
will be mass protests for change, and ‘moments of solidarity’ could be transformed
into ‘the broader political sphere’. The pessimists believe that surveillance will
intensify, authoritarian regimes will become even more draconian, distrust
between government and citizens will increase, neoliberal capitalism will run wild,
 445 BEYOND POSTNORMAL TIMES

and there will be more deaths and suffering worldwide. However, it could take some
time before we are out of the crisis. As British journalist Ed Young suggests in The
Atlantic, the ‘end game’ has three possible outcomes. First, there is an international
unity and collaboration to concurrently stamp out the virus, but this does not look
likely. Second, people develop ‘herd immunity’, but this will ‘come at a terrible cost’,
and ‘it would likely leave behind many millions of corpses and a trail of devastated
health systems’. The third potential outcome is that the virus is extinguished
here and there until a viable vaccine is developed; something that may take ‘very
long’. [9] We will have to learn to live with the virus until such time.

The Changing Normal

Whatever happens, Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari argued in a much-quoted
article in The Financial Times that we will never be the same again. Short ‘emergency
measures will become a fixture of life’, we could ‘give legitimacy to a terrifying
new surveillance system’, and, on the upside, we would probably trust science and
expert opinion much more. [10] British journalist Patrick Wintour reported that in
Europe, the United States, and Asia almost everything is up for debate: ‘the trade-
off between trashed economy and public health, the relative virtues of centralised
or regionalised health systems, the exposed fragility of globalisation, the future
of the EU, populism, the advantages of authoritarianism’. [11] He cites President
Emmanuel Macron of France who declared: ‘many certainties and convictions will
be swept away. Many things we thought were impossible are happening.’ The most
obvious ‘impossible’ thing that is all too evident is the return of the big state after a
thirty-year retreat. In many countries, states have provided support for its citizens,
forced by Covid-19 to isolate; in some countries, even small and big businesses have
been rescued and stopped from going bankrupt.

NATIONALISATION, ANOTHER RECENT ‘IMPOSSIBLE’, IS NOW ON THE

CARDS: SPAIN CONSIDERED AND THEN POSTPONED NATIONALISING
PRIVATE HOSPITALS, FRANCE IS KEEN TO NATIONALISE LARGE
BUSINESSES, AND IN BRITAIN, THERE IS A STRONG POSSIBILITY OF
NATIONALISING SOME PARTS OF PUBLIC TRANSPORT. HOWEVER, IT MAY
TAKE A FEW YEARS BEFORE WE CAN DECLARE THE END OF COVID-19 DAYS.
In a massive dossier, with contributions from a host of American and European
academics and writers, Politico magazine provides a long catalogue of how
‘Coronavirus will change the world permanently’. The suggestions from the good
and the great include the obvious – we will be more reluctant to touch people,
there will be less communal dining and more cooking, we will work more from
home, and virtual meetings will become common – to not-so-obvious positive
446 AFTERTHOUGHTS

and negative predictions. These include polarisation and individualism: ‘the

coronavirus pandemic marks the end of our romance with market society and
hyper-individualism’. Or, we could also go the other way: become less communal
and more authoritarian. ‘Regulatory barriers to online tools will fall’, and Big
Tech would become omnipotent. Governments could become Big Pharma and
themselves research and manufacture medicines and vaccines. Cultural critic
Virginia Heffernan suggests we will be released from ‘the tyranny of habit’: our
fantasy of ‘optimising’ life with emphasis on ‘peak performance, productivity,
efficiency’ could give way to ‘stop taking the streetcar, working for money,
bowling, and going to the movies’, and devote more time to ‘imaginative and
unconventional’ pursuits. Canadian American filmmaker Astra Taylor points out
that the rules that have shaped our lives are now mostly irrelevant. And, Matthew
Continetti, journalist and resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute,
predicts that we are heading for a ‘paradigm shift’ which will actually change our
understanding of change. [12]
The dominant perception of the normal is also challenged by a short
campaigning film by UNESCO. Shown on several networks (including NBC,
Euronews, Al Jazeera, France Televisions, Canal+, IPS, as well as on YouTube) across
the world, it juxtaposes certain facts we take for granted with other facts that we do
not regard as normal. For example:

1. Air pollution causes eight million early deaths a year – normal

2. During Covid-19, Himalayan peaks become visible for the first time in thirty
years – not normal
3. One child dies of pneumonia every twenty-nine seconds – normal
4. Coronavirus leads scientists and tech companies to open source their patents –
not normal [13]

The film concludes by declaring: ‘now is the time to build a better normal’ and
suggests: ‘it all starts with education, science, culture, information’. One can
logistically ask: are the existing values and structures of science and education, or
the dominant paradigms capable of producing a ‘better normal’? And is a ‘better
normal’ actually a, or indeed the, new normal?

The New Normal

While Covid-19 has made ‘the new normal’ ubiquitous, the term itself is not
particularly new. It has a long history in education going back to the late nineteenth
and early twentieth century when American textbooks were rewritten, undated,
and modernised. There we will find such titles as The New Normal History of the
United States, [14] The New Normal Music Course, [15] and The New Normal Mental
Athematic. [16] More recently, in a 2003 report, the US NGO Human Rights First
described the post-9/11 American landscape as ‘the new normal of US governance’,
which is defined by ‘the loss of particular freedoms for some, and worse, a
447 BEYOND POSTNORMAL TIMES

detachment for the rule of law as a whole’. [17] So, some forms of the new normal
have existed for some time!
However, what can we say about the post-Covid-19 new normal? There has been
a veritable avalanche of scenarios and prediction of potential futures from various
outlooks and perspectives. One can argue that the new normal is what you want it
to be, as can be seen in Aftershocks and Opportunities: Scenarios for a Post-Pandemic
Future where futurists provide a variety of predictions and forecasts on a range of
subjects, from an array of perspectives. But most of the scenarios in Aftershocks
and Opportunities and in other places are firmly focused on economic recovery. For
example, foresight experts Rohit Talwar, Steve Wells, and Alexandra Whittington,
the authors of Aftershocks and Opportunities, suggest that ‘the shape of economic
recovery’ gives us four scenarios:

1. The Long Goodbye (poorly contained pandemic, deep and prolonged downturn),
2. The VIP Economy (poorly contained pandemic, vibrant economic rebound),
3. Safe but Hungry (eradication of the pandemic, deep and prolonged downturn),
and
4. Inclusive Abundance (eradication of the pandemic, vibrant economic
rebound). [18]

McKinsey & Company, the global management company, offers a similar four-
stage analysis for emergence of the new normal. The first stage, resolve, will
require governments and businesses to assess the scope, scale, and depth of
action that is required. The second state, resilience, a period of financial stress,
requires businesses to develop plans to accommodate the shock. Stage three,
return, requires supply chains to be strengthened so the economy can return to
pre-Covid-19 levels of production and sales. And finally, stage four, re-imagination,
where shifts have to be made on the way we live, work, and how we use new and
emerging technologies. [19] In contrast, the ecological economist Simon Mair
paints a somewhat different picture of the new normal as four possible futures.
On the BBC Future website, Mair asserts that the dominant economic paradigm is
based on two interlinked beliefs: ‘the market is what delivers a good quality of life,
so it must be protected’ and ‘the market will always return to normal after short
periods of crisis’. Mair wants to emphasize value and centralisation in shaping his
post-Covid-19 four potential futures:

1. State capitalism: centralised response, prioritising exchange value

2. Barbarism: decentralised response, prioritising exchange value
3. State socialism: centralised response, prioritising the protection of life
4. Mutual aid: decentralised response, prioritising the protection of life.

Mair favours state socialism where ‘the state steps in to protect the parts of the
economy that are essential to life: the production of food, energy, and shelter for
 448 AFTERTHOUGHTS

instance, to ensure that the basic provisions of life are no longer subject to the
whims of the market’ and ‘mutual aid’ future where ‘we adopt the protection of life
as the guiding principle of our economy’ and ‘individuals and small groups begin to
organize support and care within their communities’. [20]
Whatever the new normal, what we can say about it with some confidence is
that it is a contested territory: a futures-oriented struggle over different visions
from different perspectives. The very concept of the new normal is a fantasy that
provides a false sense of certainty in a time of deep uncertainty, an intentional
move to remain at the level of surface uncertainty when postnormal times requires
delving into the depths. Or, as Canadian critical theorist Max Haiven puts it, the
post-Covid-19 future will be ‘defined by either the desperate drive to “return to
normal” or a great refusal of that normal’. [21] Indeed, if the new normal is simply
an extension of the neoliberal, free-market, technocratic worldview, then Haiven’s
warning is worth heeding. ‘In the wake of the pandemic,’ he writes,

there will almost certainly be efforts by those vastly enriched and

empowered in the last decades, notably in the intertwined technology
and financial sectors, to leverage their influence and resources, as
well as the weakness and disarray of traditional institutions, to
lead the reorganization of society along neo-technocratic lines.
They will continue to generously offer the services of their powerful
and integrated surveillance, logistics, financial and data empires to
“optimize” social and political life. This corporate dystopia can
wear a human face: basic income, hypervigilance for new epidemics,
personalized medicine. Already they arrive, bearing gifts to help us
in this emergency: tracking disease vectors, banning disinformation,
offering states help with data and population management. Underneath
the mask will be the reorganization of society to better conform
to the hyper-capitalist meta-algorithm which, though driven by
capitalist contradictions, will essentially be nonfeudal for most of
us: a world of data and risk management where only a small handful
enjoy the benefits. [22]

The new normal, then, is the same old way of colonising the future. It could result
in the tech giants – what American futurist Amy Webb describes as The Big Nine
(Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Technet, Baidu, and Alibaba)
– [23] becoming even more powerful and entrenched then before the crisis started.
Indeed, as Chris Meserole, of the Brookings Institution points out, ‘techlash’ could
evaporate into thin air: as we become more and more reliant on smartphone data
location, Zoom meetings, and shops online, anti-trust activity against the largest
technology companies will wane, and regulation of these giants will be eased or
may even disappear. [24] The new normal, then, could turn out to be, to use the
words of Haiven, a ‘vindictive normal’.
 449 BEYOND POSTNORMAL TIMES

Many of the optimistic scenarios and visions for a more just and equitable post-
Covid-19 world underestimate the resilience of neoliberal capitalism. It has deep
roots and can bounce back even after a deep recession; ‘the market will always
return to normal after short periods of crisis’ may be a belief, as Mair notes, but it
is a belief based on entrenched economic system with formidable momentum. In
general, systems – including global economic system – are structured to return to
established, entrenched norms.

THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC HAS LOOSENED OR DECOUPLED THE SYSTEM,

UNHINGED ASPECTS OF SYSTEMS’ INTERCONNECTIONS. IT MAY EVEN
HAVE FREED UP SPACE MOMENTARILY FOR ALTERNATIVE ACTIONS. BUT
THIS IS A TEMPORARY PHENOMENON; THE SYSTEM WILL READJUST
RAPIDLY TO RE-SOLIDIFY IN OLD PATTERNS.

Prodigious entrenched resources are focused on re-inscribing old systems. The

Covid-19 affair is an extreme event, defined as ‘a dynamic occurrence within a
limited timeframe that impedes the normal functioning of a system or systems’, [25]
which has to be seen in all its complexity, but it does not necessarily mean that it
will overturn the entire system.
There is, however, a probability that the new normal could turn out to be even
worse than the old normal!

The Complex Normal

There is, however, something special about the Covid-19 pandemic. We have never
experienced anything like it in living memory. It has brought the entire world
to a screeching halt. It has shown, as journalist James Meek suggests, that ‘the
boundary between the normal and abnormal, between the state of social security
and social breakdown, is elusive’. [26] It has displayed how science and ignorance
go hand-in-hand. It has demonstrated, to the extent that even the most myopic
can see, that the curtailment of human activities has a profound impact on the
environment. [27] It has exposed the belief that ‘we have achieved mastery over
nature’ and thus can ‘exercise control over events’ as a superannuated illusion. [28]
It has generated a host of ‘new moral questions’, ranging from the ethics of social
distancing; [29] to the interaction between climate chaos, ecosystem collapse,
and the pandemic; [30] to the importance of communitarian ethics. [31] And,
what is particularly special about the pandemic is that it is the first global, clearly
recognisable, postnormal event.
In her introduction to the special issue of Futures on Postnormal Times, the
late anthropologist Merryl Wyn Davies asked: ‘are we there yet?’ Davies argued
that evidence for postnormality was not particularly strong and that perhaps it
 450 AFTERTHOUGHTS

was too early to suggest that ‘the specific features of postnormal times (are) unlike
anything encountered in the past’? [32] This question has been answered by a
number of ‘extreme weirding’ events over the last decade. [33] Indeed, as The New
York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo has noted, ‘the world has become unmoored,
crazier, somehow messier. The black swans are circling; chaos monkeys have been
unleashed.” [34] But if there was still any doubt about the arrival of postnormal
times, Covid-19 has resolved them. [35]
Postnormal times is an in-between, transitory period but how long the
transition will last is anyone’s guess. The transition is from what we have thought
of, and may still think of, as normal, what we may contemplate as the new normal,
the multitudes of new normals that may emerge in the future, toward a radically
different world. As such, all the normals and new normals will be integral parts
of the extensive age of postnormal times. Covid-19 has clearly moved the planet
toward the edge of chaos, but it has not actually brought us to the tipping point.
There will be other postnormal events in the future, each nudging the globe closer
and closer to the edge of chaos. Right at the very edge of chaos, the tipping point
itself, there are only two options: collapse or a new order.

WHILE POSTNORMAL TIMES ARE A PRODUCT OF OUR COMPLEX,

INTERCONNECTED WORLD, WITH INSTANTLY AND CONSTANTLY
GENERATING FEEDBACK LOOPS, COMPLEX SOCIETIES THEMSELVES ARE
NOT PARTICULARLY UNUSUAL.

As anthropologist Stephen Lansing and geneticist Murray Cox show in Islands of

Order, emergent complexity is evident in even historic societies presumed to be
‘simple’. They look at the historic societies of the Malay archipelago and the wider
Pacific; examine language, kinship, large-scale population movement, genetic
makeup, cultural change, and racial topology; and the impact of colonialism and
show that the complex patterns of these societies are not random; rather, order and
chaos emerge out of non-linear dynamics or complexity. In a non-linear, complex
situation, states of stable equilibrium – such as persistent language communities –
‘appear as Islands of order in a sea of change’. [36] Out of equilibrium, social dynamics,
often produced by contradictions within societies, lead to chaos and collapse.
Collapse can occur for many reasons from resource depletion and environmental
change but, as the American anthropologist Joseph Tainter demonstrates in his
monumental study, The Collapse of Complex Societies, complexity is a ‘continuous
variable’. [37] Both a sharp increase as well as a sudden decline (as we witnessed
with the global Covid-19 lockdown) in complexity can lead to collapse. Complexity
makes it more and more difficult for organisations to function adequately.
Eventually, complex societies reach a point of ‘declining marginal returns’ when
things begin to fall apart, leading to collapse.
 451 BEYOND POSTNORMAL TIMES

To some extent, it does look like we are following the footsteps of the Mayans,
the Aztecs, the Chacoans, and the Roman Empire. As the American historian
Patrick Wyman suggests in an article in Mother Jones, we are witnessing the fall
of an empire: ‘the end of a polity, a socioeconomic order, a dominant culture, or
the intertwined whole’. [38] The ‘empire’ in question is Western civilisation,
which requires limitless resources in a finite earth to keep itself afloat. But in This
Civilization is Finished, philosopher Rupert Read and sustainability expert Samuel
Alexander argue the global capitalist system, the foundation of this civilisation, ‘will
come to an end, destroyed by its own ecological contradictions’. [39] In The Precipice,
moral philosopher Toby Ord marshals strong evidence in support of a string of
existential threats: climate change, environmental damage, nuclear weapons,
pandemics, ‘unaligned artificial intelligence’, nanotechnologies, and dystopian
scenarios which can have self-fulfilling affect or even be desired by certain groups of
people. [40] The “Declaration of Rebellion” by the global non-violent environment
movement, Extinction Rebellion, declares that humanity is facing ‘our darkest
hour’: ‘humanity finds itself embroiled in an event’ – sixth mass extinction, also
known as Holocene – ‘unprecedented in its history, one which, unless immediately
addressed, will catapult us further into the destruction of all we hold dear’. In the
Extinction Rebellion handbook, environmentalist Jem Bendell suggests:

we should be preparing for social collapse. By that I mean an uneven

ending of our normal modes of sustenance, security, pleasure, identity,
meaning and hope. It is very difficult to predict when a collapse
will occur, especially given the complexity of our agricultural and
economic systems. My guess is that, within ten years from now, a
social collapse of some form will have occurred in the majority of
countries around the world. [41]

However, as futurist Jim Dator has repeatedly pointed out, we should not see all
collapses as negative. Indeed, some types of collapses are essential for a major
transformation to occur: for example, the collapse of capitalism, which Dator
argues may be welcomed by those who desire an end to the ‘economic rat race’,
the laborers and wage earners who struggle daily to put food on the table. [42]
The collapse of destructive dominant paradigms may be necessary for new ones to
emerge. Moreover, the postnormal condition has also brought certain societies to
the threshold of collapse. The United States is unravelling fast, may descend into
civil war, [43] or move toward fascism, [44] and could collapse suddenly. [45] The
European Union too could be heading toward collapse. [46] We have witnessed
the collapse of Syria due to civil war, the economic collapse of Greece as a result
of the 2008 financial crisis, the collapse of the Rohingya through genocide, and
the Maldives due to sea level rises. Many indigenous cultures and non-Western
societies have experienced collapse during the last century. Digital media expert,
Abigail De Kosnik, points out:
 452 AFTERTHOUGHTS

I am from the Philippines, a twice colonised archipelago, and I grasp

very well that when a foreign people have arrived on your shores,
taken over your lands and waters, banned your language, changed your
names, killed and injured millions, forced you to convert to their
religion, seized control of your economic, political and cultural
systems, labelled you subhuman, and imposed colonialism and other
forms of racial/ ethnic and national hierarchies, your society has
known Collapse. [47]

It would thus be hardly surprising if most of the non-West felt a sense of relief with
the collapse of Western civilisation. Actually, that date may not be too far away, as
recent work at MIT, based on the World One computer model originally devised by
Jay Forrester for the 1972 Limits to Growth study, predicts the ‘end of civilization’
around 2040. [48]
There is, however, a key difference between collapse of historic empires and
civilisation and collapse that may greet us at the finale of postnormal times. Earlier
collapses were societal, local, regional, and civilisational in nature. There may be
similar collapses, in degrees or stages, in the future. Societies, economies, cultures,
paradigms, and worldviews may collapse. But a universal Collapse – as De Kosnik
points out, ‘will not be confined to either Global North or Global South; it would be
global Collapse.’ [49] It thus presents an existential threat to both – humanity and
the planet. When Western civilisation goes down, it will also take the rest of the
people and the planet with it!

Transnormal
The challenge of postnormal times is to navigate from our current unstable state
to another more structurally stable state without reaching the tipping point
where overall Collapse of apocalyptic proportion causing immense misery and
suffering becomes inevitable. This is a process of systematic movement leading
to transposition: acts of changing relationships, structures, and values that
interactively and collectively relocate humanity to a trans, or stable, state or realm
of existence. Trans confirms the meaning of ‘going beyond’ the current positions in
all fields of human behaviour, thought, and endeavours to reach a state of dynamic
equilibrium. To go beyond – rise above, cut across, leave behind, and surpass – is
also to prudently navigate our way to the other side of postnormal times. The world
beyond postnormal times will be a radically different world; not so much a world of
new normal, but a transnormal world. We do not know what it will look like, but we
do know what we need to transcend to get there!
The transnormal has two dimensions: the logical imperatives needed to avoid
the real possibility of collapse and the visionary element that involves the collective
and collaborative visions of most, if not all of us, of viable, thriving futures of
humanity on an ecologically healthy Earth. Here, I am concerned with the logical
imperatives to avoid collapse and lay the foundations for wholesome and inclusive
 453 BEYOND POSTNORMAL TIMES

social and cultural notions which could form the basis of futures’ visions.
What exactly do we need to transcend? There is no lack of candidates in
postnormal times. But let us begin with the black elephant that all, other than the
most myopic, can see: planetary boundaries, of which climate change is only one
limit. As the American author Jeff Goodell points out in Rolling Stone magazine,
‘climate change isn’t an “event” or an “issue”. It’s an era, and it is just beginning.’ [50]
The era began when we started to violate planetary boundaries. According to the
Stockholm Resilience Centre, there are nine planetary boundaries which regulate
the stability and resilience of the Earth system and bind us to a circumference
within which we can survive and thrive: climate change, change in biosphere
integrity (biodiversity loss and species extinction), stratospheric ozone depletion,
ocean acidification, biogeochemical flows (phosphorus and nitrogen cycles),
land-system change (such as deforestation), freshwater use, atmospheric aerosol
loading (microscopic particles in the atmosphere that affect climate and living
organisms), and the introduction of novel entities (such as organic pollutants,
radioactive materials, nanomaterials, and microplastics). Four of these boundaries
have already been crossed: climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land-system
change, and altered biogeochemical cycles, presenting a serious risk to the entire
Earth system and the survival of humanity. [51] To transcend climate change is to
return to the planetary boundaries – a journey that requires profound changes in
all spheres of life – a logical necessity to avoid further turmoil, even collapse, and
ensure sustainable survival of all life.

CLIMATE CHANGE, AND ASSOCIATED ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS, IS A

CONSEQUENCE OF HOW WE PERCEIVE AND TREAT NATURE. THE NOTION
THAT NATURE MUST BE DOMINATED, INDEED TORTURED TO YIELD ITS
SECRET, THAT EMERGED FROM WESTERN THOUGHT HAS NOW BECOME
A UNIVERSAL PHILOSOPHY.
The emergence of Covid-19 has been described as a ‘message from nature’ by
many environmentalists. However, the realisation that our attitudes to nature are
producing an unsustainable world is not new. In its modern form, it can be traced
back to the famous 1967 article, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis” by the
American historian Lynn White. ‘What we do about ecology depends on our ideas
of the man-nature relationship,’ wrote White. ‘More science and more technology
are not going to get us out of the present ecologic crisis.’ [52] White suggested a
return to the metaphysics of Saint Francis of Assisi. A year later, in his 1968 book,
The Encounter of Man and Nature, Iranian philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr argued
that ‘there is everywhere the desire to conquer nature, but in the process the
value of the conqueror himself, who is man, is destroyed and his very existence
 454 AFTERTHOUGHTS

threatened’. [53] Nasr suggested a return to non-Western metaphysics of Islamic,

Hindu, and Chinese traditions. Whether we opt for White’s recommendation, or the
Nasr option is beside the point; what is important is the realisation that metaphysics
is ‘the essential ingredient that’s gone missing’ from our attitude to nature. [54]
So, transnormal is also trans domination of nature and requires us to reintegrate
metaphysics into our approach to nature.
The unbridled exploitation of nature is a consequence of neoliberal capitalism,
a system based on cruelty, competition, and contradictions, promoting extreme
inequality. Capitalism monetises everything: human actions, desires, indeed
human beings themselves as well as flora and fauna, and the environment to extract
maximum value and profit. [54] It is a system based on the logic of perpetual growth
and continuous linear ‘progress’ leading to rampant deforestation, devastating
industrial agriculture, caustic intensive farming, and corrosive infrastructure
developments. As the American author Edward Abbey has said: ‘growth for the
sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell’. [55] But it is also not a question
of low growth or even zero growth; planetary boundaries now demand degrowth.
Progress based on everlasting growth, which has brought us to the precipice, has to
be abolished and replaced with homeostatic progress, a dynamic state of balance
between human activities and ecological imperatives. Transnormal then is also
trans capitalism, trans inequality, trans growth, and trans progress.

THE NOTIONS OF PROGRESS, GROWTH, EFFICIENCY AS WELL AS

OUR CONTEMPORARY ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND FRAMEWORKS ARE
PRODUCTS OF CURRENT MODES OF KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION.

Contemporary knowledge structures with their associated disciplines are embedded

in Western narratives and privilege and give unwarranted acclaim, dominance, and
extension to Western culture and its products, at the expense of knowledge systems,
ways of thinking, and cultural outputs of non-Western people. [56] However,
knowledge production is changing rapidly. Knowledge production has now become
complex and incorporates knowledge based on Big Data, dubious and opaque
mathematical models, racialised artificial intelligence, weaponised disciplines,
and what is described as ‘forbidden knowledge’ (such as genetic engineering and
synthetic biology). It has thus acquired a strong toxic component – ‘the smog of
ignorance’ which cannot be isolated or quarantined through existing disciplinary
structures. [57] Knowledge production then has to embrace social construction
of ignorance as one of its central themes; the role of ignorance as a methodology,
as a tool for valuing and managing the unknown in science, technology, and
medicine; the use of ignorance as power and as an instrument of oppression;
ignorance as economic theory, risk management, and security studies [58] as well
as strategic ignorance and the role of ignorance in foresight – all play a major role
455 BEYOND POSTNORMAL TIMES

in the production of knowledge. [59] We need to rethink what exactly is science

and how it should function in ‘the Anthropocene’. [60] Trans normal therefore
implies transdisciplinary structures; a clear movement toward multi-, inter-,
and transdisciplinarity; serious engagement with all varieties of ignorances; and
generating new, more diverse and open discourses of knowledge. Transnormal also
requires us to embrace what is uncommon or infrequent, what is unconventional
and extraordinary, and come to terms with uncertainty. In a transnormal world,
knowledge, ignorance, and uncertainty will be deeply integrated.
Toxic knowledge is also a by-product of technological determinism, the view
that technology and innovation must proceed whatever the moral consequence to
become the primary drivers of economic, social, cultural, and political change. This
dogma turns technology into an ideology. As the economist Glen Weyl and computer
scientist Jaron Lanier categorically state in the technophile Wired magazine, ‘AI is
an ideology, Not a technology’, at its core is the ‘perilous belief that fails to recognize
the agency of humans’. [61] Similarly the promotion of synthetic biology, genetic
engineering, and killer robots are based on instrumental rationality – the pursuit
of ideological goals by any means necessary without moral qualms. ‘Because our
technological creations are challenging historical limits through climate change,
artificial intelligence and synthetic biology’, says the Chinese philosopher Yuk
Hui, ‘it is critical to re-examine the diversity of cosmotechnics, or how technology
is infused with a worldview’. [62] To go trans from instrumental rationality and
technological determinism is to explore ‘how non-European thought and corollary
ways of being can affect the development of technology.’
This brings us to the worldviews that have to be transcended to realise the
transnormal: modernity and postmodernism. Modernity can be traced back to the
Enlightenment, while postmodernism emerged in the 1970s. Both worldviews have
shaped the world and brought us to postnormal times. As the English sociologist
Anthony Giddens has shown in his classic work, The Consequences of Modernity, the
social order of modernity is capitalistic in both its economic system and its other
institutions. [63] Modernity ‘ensures that political, military, and ideological power
come together in hitherto unimaginably concentrated form’. [64] Postmodernism,
with its emphasis on absolute relativism and the collapse of the grand narrative, has
led to the fragmentation of the world, increasing strife and discord, and ushered
in the post-truth regimes. It has served as a hand-maiden to neoliberalism and
the ‘death cult’, as British comedian John Oliver describes it, of free market and
has arrived at a globalised levelling of differences which threatens the extinction
of culture altogether in what the Canadian author Richard Appingnanesi has
described as ‘terminal post-culture’. [65] Both modernity and postmodernism are
failed projects that have brought us to the postnormal condition. They function,
to use the words of German sociologist Ulrich Beck, as ‘zombie categories’, which
govern and direct our thinking, ushering us toward self-destructive outcomes. [66]
The Indian intellectual and cultural theorist, Ashis Nandy, described modernity
as a secular theory of salvation. [67] Postmodernism attempted to replace modernity
456 AFTERTHOUGHTS

by constructing secular liberalism as a new theory of absolution. Both theories

trap us in a manufactured normalcy field: a product of our perception of what is
and what is not normal. The postnormal condition, as futurist Liam Mayo notes,
‘is a cultural crisis owed to humanity’s inability to move beyond a manufactured
normalcy that perpetuates a familiar sense of present’. [68] Our desire for stability
and certainty, ‘to deemphasise change, and make all things normal, fundamentally
expedites a sense of crisis’, which itself ‘nurtures ignorance and fosters uncertainty;
the distinguishing characteristics of the postnormal condition’. Thus, the demand
for a return to normal, or even an acceptance of a modified new normal, is a yearning
for the safe bosom of the manufactured normalcy field.
To locate ourselves in a transnormal domain, we need to break the chains of the
manufactured normalcy field and move beyond modernity and postmodernism. [69]
This demands the creating of a radically novel cultural space that synthesizes
the best of tradition and modernity; does not privilege any cultural standpoint
or orthodoxy; and creates radically transformed social and cultural dynamics.
Transmodernity provides us with such a framework.

Transmodernity and Mutually Assured Diversity

Transmodernity is based on the assumption that cultures do not, and have never,
existed in isolation. All cultures interact, and all future actions are located in the
interactions of cultures. [70] It is a concept designed to address the positive element
of self-renewal and self-reorganization in diverse world cultures. It proposes
to encourage change transculturally, and it is decentred in its scrutiny of trans
cultures and characterised by a sense of mobility. Transmodernity aims to produce
a trans discourse of knowledge which gives equal importance to knowledge
systems of non-Western civilisations and cultures, including indigenous cultures,
tacit and intuitive methods, and promotes the realisation that in a diverse and
dynamic world, there are many ways to be human. It looks at cultural diversity ‘on
the move’.
Transmodernity offers the potential for new ways of looking at culture and
shaping the world that goes beyond all our conceptions and perceptions of normal
and pilots us in the direction of the transnormal domain. More specifically, the
trans dimension of transmodernity stands for:

1. The continuous and constant transformation of all cultures;

2. The ceaseless transmission of cultures between cultures;
3. The incessant and perpetual transitions within cultures;
4. The valid transitive relations within particular cultures;
5. The constant to-and-fro translation of cultures between cultures;
6. The regular translocation of cultures in geographical space in a globalised world;
7. The transparency of power relations between and within cultures;
8. The transference of cultural desires to new cultural goals;
9. Trans disciplinary modes of study and inquiry and understanding cultures; and
 457 BEYOND POSTNORMAL TIMES

10. Transcendence of the given future of modernity and colonized futures of

postmodernism into a plethora of viable and desirable, autonomous and
interconnected, transmodern futures.

Finally, there is one more relational notion that needs to be transcended: alterity. In its
conventional, philosophical, and anthropological sense, alterity refers to ‘otherness’;
something other than ‘sameness’, outside the dominant worldview, its conventions
and principles, external from the given notion of the normal and the new normal.
We are concerned with the fear of the Other, whether the Other is perceived as other
people or cultures; or other ways of being, knowing, or doing – other cosmologies.
It is about such things as fear of migration and Islamophobia, fear of different ways
of life, as well as representations of the Other, and the fear of the sacred and nature
itself. What we end up talking about is the fear of diversity in all its multiple forms.

BOTH OUR SURVIVAL AS HUMAN COMMUNITIES AND CULTURES AND THE

SURVIVAL OF OUR PLANET DEPENDS ON DIVERSITY – THE DIFFERENCE
THAT MAKES THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN SURVIVAL AND OBLIVION.

Diversity is more than acceptance and respect of other cultures or simply recognising
that each individual, culture, and community is unique. It is also appreciating the
simple fact that our own happiness and enrichment depends on the happiness
and enrichment of others. We are not just different; but our difference depends on
and is connected to all other different cultures and communities. If one different
culture becomes extinct, all humanity suffers. That’s where the notion of Mutually
Assured Diversity (MAD) enters the equation. [71] MAD is based on the assumption
that there is no such thing as a distinct culture: all cultures are always diverse and
always complex, never static but always adoptive and changing, particularly in a
globalised context. Moreover, internally, individual cultures or subcultures are
heterogeneous and speak with multiple voices; externally, they do not engage in a
dialogue but a polylogue, where different voices are talking simultaneously to each
other and Others. Thus, cultural relations are all about maintaining the external
and internal diversity of cultures and ensuring that all the different voices can be
heard. The notion of mutuality and respect are essential for polylogue and creating
spaces for the articulation of different voices and for them to be heard.
But ‘mutually’ in MAD is about more than mutual respect. It is explicitly a
definition of what we are being mutual about. And what is mutual is that the
human condition is a cultural condition, and that culture is an essential relational
attribute, an enabling feature of knowing, being, and doing. It is the acceptance that
all cultures are equally important, that culture is the source of identity for everyone,
and that identity provides a hand and eye to manipulate the kaleidoscope of
diversity, both within culture and between cultures. It is the acceptance that for all
458 AFTERTHOUGHTS

people everywhere, identity is not formed in a vacuum but within a cultural realm
that comes with values, history, traditions, contradictions, and perennial questions.
Mutually assured diversity is the universal acceptance of an obvious fact that there
is more than one way to be human; it requires rejecting the notion that there is only
one way, the right way; and recognising the multiple ways the world’s people have of
seeking meaning, of comprehending values, and means of delivering values in daily
life. What needs to be grasped is that all societies, cultures, and civilisations have
undergone change and are in a process of negotiating change. What is significant
is what kind of change they accept, find problematic, reject, or have mixed feelings
about and have alternate responses to, and for what reasons. It is the transmission
of identity across change that is the cultural reflex par excellence because identity
is the attribute of belonging that grows from knowing oneself so that one has the
ability to know others and learn about other cultures.
What are we giving assurance about? The assurance is the universal acceptance
of the continuity of cultural identity for everyone on the planet as a negotiated,
adaptive, and meaningful space. It is the acknowledgment that for difference to
exist as difference, it needs cultural space to be different. It is the proposition that
all cultures have the right to know themselves, to understand and interact with
their cultural self, and to do this within their own cultural space. In other words, all
cultures have a right to enhance their cultural power and to represent their cultures
with their own concepts and categories.

1. Mutually assured diversity is not focused on a single arena or issue. It is a holistic

concept, and, as such, to be meaningful, it must operate across a whole range
of cultural, social, political, and discursive fields. There are twelve varieties of
mutually assured diversities to be considered:
2. Mutually assured definitions: The greatest power we have is the power to define.
If we define other people out of existence, then there is no point to mutually
assured diversity! Other cultures have the right to use the categories and
concepts of their own worldview to define what are freedoms, what are rights
and responsibilities, what is important and what is not, and what they consider
to be immutable. Everyone must be allowed to live by the worldview which
seems true to them. This is not about absolute relativism of the postmodern
variety but about different ways of being human.
3. Mutually assured dissent: To make difference possible, to ensure the right to
critical engagement, and to agree to disagree.
4. Mutually assured discourse: Each culture has its own way of knowing, being,
and doing. We therefore need to appreciate other forms of knowledge and allow
the discourses of other cultures to come to the fore.
5. Mutually assured demarcations: To ensure that difference can exist as difference
and boundaries are negotiated. Not just that we do not know how to demarcate,
but it is a particularly difficult thing to do in a globalised world. This is something
we have to learn.
459 BEYOND POSTNORMAL TIMES

6. Mutually assured democracy: Which does not marginalise the minorities or lead
to their displacement from power. We need to conceive genuinely participatory
democracy which has priority over the orthodox and self-replicating mechanics
of politics.
7. Mutually assured degrowth: Which is essential to ensure sustainable futures for
all cultures, future generations, and the ecological survival of the Earth – the
terrestrial abode of humans as well as flora and fauna.
8. Mutually assured dematerialization: Reduction of growth depends on drastic
reduction in the sheer quantity of resources and materials used to serve the
production and consumption needs of our wasteful society; it is not just a
question of reducing carbon emissions but also a dramatic change in our
consumer-oriented profligate lifestyles.
9. Mutually assured defence: It is not just our security that matters. The security of
others is equally important. We cannot invade other countries simply to ensure
our security. By putting others in danger, we also put ourselves in danger.
10. Mutually assured dependence: Which is a prerequisite for an interdependent,
interconnected, and complex world.
11. Mutually assured desires: Our desires should not undermine the desires of
others. If we consume most of the resources of the planet, we deny others their
right to adequate and viable consumption.
12. Mutually assured dignity: Beyond human rights, we must also ensure that the
dignity of other individuals, cultures, and communities are maintained – so that
our own dignity is ensured.
13. Mutually assured destinies: It is not just our future but the futures of all cultures
and communities are equally important. The future belongs to every culture and
community on the planet, and every culture and community has the right to
determine its own future.

The verities of mutually assured diversities are a connected ensemble. Each

enhances the others across a range of human endeavours; collectively, they move
us past what futurist Richard Slaughter calls ‘the trap our species has created for
itself’ and the ‘mosaic-like but almost singular macro-future’ that we are hurling
toward. [72]
In the final analysis, transmodernity and MAD are all about power. They
seek to undermine the sources, means, and relations of dominance, control, and
subordination, as they are enacted in political, social, and cultural processes, and
structures and methods of knowing, doing, and being, between cultures and within
cultures. The aim is nothing less than transforming the world, moving it to a new
level, where mutual diversity and cultural equality are the norms.

Toward Transnormal
The transformations needed to move forward toward a transnormal world are
truly profound. They require abandonment of a great deal of what we have
 460 AFTERTHOUGHTS

hitherto taken for granted, natural, and normal. Moreover, we feel helpless at the
pace of accelerating change, increasing uncertainty and complexity, astounding
contradictions, and cumulative chaos. Think how the Covid-19 global pandemic
stopped the world in its tracks, isolated us from each other, and made us feel
exceedingly vulnerable. Future postnormal events could be even more devastating
and thus further enhance our feelings of powerlessness.

BUT AGENCY HAS NOT BEEN LOST. RATHER, BOTH AS INDIVIDUALS

AND COMMUNITIES, WE NOW HAVE MORE AGENCY THAN EVER
BEFORE. INITIAL CONDITIONS AND SMALL PERTURBATIONS ARE VERY
IMPORTANT IN OUR WORLD OF CHAOS. THE ACTION OF AN INDIVIDUAL,
OR AN APPARENTLY INSIGNIFICANT EVENT, CAN HAVE THE ‘BUTTERFLY
EFFECT’ – TRIGGERING A CHAIN OF REACTION THAT COULD LEAD TO NEW
DEVELOPMENTS OR EVEN A NEW ORDER.

Think of the Arab Spring, the rapid globalisation of the MeToo movement triggered
by accusations against Harvey Weinstein, and the swift evolution of Black Lives
Matter after the murder of George Floyd. Recognising the legal rights to flora and
fauna as living entities, as granted to the Whanganui River in New Zealand or to all
rivers in Bangladesh, is a small step that can trigger a chain reaction. [73] What we
think and do as individuals and communities is important; our actions can multiply
in geometric proportions, leading to chaotic events with the potential to usher
both positive and negative change. Postnormal time is a period of change: what
happens next is up to us. We can use the period of change to elicit the change we
want. We need to realise that in these transformative times, ‘everyone can lead’ and
that ‘everybody contributes to, and in fact cocreates, the world we live in, whether
conscious of their agency or not’. The transnormal world will be created through
what futurists Alfonso Montuori and Gabrielle Donnelly call ‘transformative
leadership’ which ‘invites everybody to ask what kind of a world they are creating
through their thoughts, beliefs, actions, and interactions’ – to think creatively and
imaginatively about their ‘being, relating, knowing, and doing’. [74]
What distinguishes us from all other species on the planet is our ability to
understand that futures exist, our inclination to study and explore alternative
futures, and our willingness to shape viable, sustainable, and ethical futures. [75]
Postnormal times force us to take our futures seriously. To use all the agency we have
wisely and steer our communities and societies toward the transnormal. Historic
societies used stars to navigate. Then, maps were provided as additional tools.
Nowadays, we rely on GPS (although there are many other technology-based ways
of navigating). Navigating postnormal times requires us to use the metaphorical
461 BEYOND POSTNORMAL TIMES

equivalent of all three. Metaphysics and other cosmologies are our guiding stars.
Transmodernity and mutually assured diversity provide us with a map of the terrain
we need to navigate. Our moral conscience, creativity and imagination, and our
abilities to perceive and shape better futures are our GPS. Collectively, they can
guide us toward the transnormal – our destination out of these postnormal times.
In his online 2020 Easter Sermon, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury,
reflected on what should happen after the Covid-19 pandemic has been brought
under control around the world. ‘After so much suffering’, he said, ‘so much heroism’
and ‘so much effort’, ‘we cannot go back to what was before as if all is normal. There
needs to be a resurrection of our common life, something that links to the old, but
is different and more beautiful’. [76] The transnormal is the first step toward that
‘more beautiful’ world we all ought to be seeking; beyond that, its beauty depends
on the magnificence of our collective visions. The journey to transnormal requires
both thoughtful future visions as well as serious future-oriented action.
462 AFTERTHOUGHTS

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CONTRIBUTORS
Michael Anderson, an arts educator, is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of
Education and Social Work at The University of Sydney. His research and teaching
concentrates on how arts educators begin, evolve, and achieve growth in their
careers and how students engage with arts and technology to learn and create
in education. He has published several books on research methodology and arts
education. He is the author of Partnerships in Education Research: Creating Knowledge
that Matters with Kelly Freebody, and with Peter O’Connor, Applied Theatre and
Research: Radical Departures.

Richard Barwell, a professor of mathematics education, is currently the Dean of the

Faculty of Education at the University of Ottawa. His research focuses on the role of
language in teaching and learning mathematics, an interest which first arose prior
to his university career, when he taught mathematics in the United Kingdom and
Pakistan. He is also interested in how mathematics education can address climate
change and environmental sustainability. He is currently Chair of the Ontario
Association of Deans of Education. He co-led the 2022 publication of the Accord on
Education for a Sustainable Future, a report which emphasizes the importance of
Indigenous knowledge, relationality, social justice, well-being, advocacy, and hope
in education research and policymaking on the climate emergency.

Marcus Bussey, a renowned futurist, educator, and poet, is a senior lecturer in

history and futures studies in the School of Law and Society at the University
of the Sunshine Coast in Australia. As a researcher with USC’s Sustainability
Research Centre (SRC), his core interests are social learning and adaptive capacity
that grounds theory in practice and hope. He is interested in the intersection of
cultures and their languages and loves to run embodied workshops that build
personal agency and capacity along with inclusivity and a tolerance for complexity,
chaos, and open-ended processes (rather than answers), particularly advocating
for these in professional and community contexts. He has authored over 150
articles and book chapters and co-edited several publications with colleagues in
futures studies.

Timothy Burns, a community leader and pastor, is the Community Development

Team Leader with the Sunshine Coast Council in Australia. He has a history of
working in the civic and social organisation industry and has professional skills in
social services and community building. Previously, he has served as the Chaplaincy
468 Contributors

Team Leader and a community development officer with the Churches of Christ in
Queensland. He was also a community pastor at Bracken Ridge Baptist Church.
He currently volunteers as the Project Development Coordinator for Eagles Wings
Australia and is the Chairperson of the Meridian Community Chaplaincy. He is also
a member of the International Association of Community Development.

Jane Gilbert, an educationalist, has a background in sociology and largely works

in the field of science education, philosophy of education, and equity issues in
education. She mainly focusses on educational futures, looking at the implications
for education of Knowledge/Network Age developments. In 2015, she completed
a three-year Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI)-funded research
project following a group of teachers as they participated in PLD (Professional
Learning and Development) designed to foster “future-oriented” thinking. Since
this project, she has been interested in complexity/systems thinking and unpacking
the way concepts like collaboration, partnership, interaction, and innovation are
being used in educational contexts.

Kjellrun Hiis Hauge is a professor of climate change, sustainability, and

education in the Department of Language, Literature, Mathematics and Interpreting
at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. Her research largely focusses in
the areas of critical mathematics education, fake news and education, education
for sustainable development, critical citizenship, and uncertainty in quantitative
information. She is associated with the Lived Democracy and Education for
Sustainability research groups and is also a member of The National Committee for
Research Ethics in Science and Technology (NENT).

Christopher Burr Jones, a futurist, is the founder of the Transnormal Institute

and a senior fellow at the Centre for Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies
(CPPFS). He was the Secretary-General of the World Futures Studies Federation. His
interests include space development, cyber security, women’s futures, indigenous
futures, global weirding and accelerating warming, non-Western futures, and high
technology. He has served on journal editorial boards, non-profit NGO boards,
and has published and presented extensively in the futures studies field. He also
has extensive experience teaching futures studies in higher education systems
throughout the US. His 2005 novel, Fire and Ice, explored eco-terrorism, alien First
Contact, and the collapse of Western civilisation.

Chris Jones is Chief Researcher: Systematic Theology and Ecclesiology and also
Head of the Unit for Moral Leadership at Stellenbosch University in South Africa.
He has published extensively in the fields of ethics and moral leadership. He has a
wealth of experience in theology, ethics, and community development, and holds
a C rating with the South African National Research Foundation (NRF). His book
Moral Issues in the Natural Sciences and Technologies, co-authored with Juri van den
469 Contributors

Heever, was recognised as the Most Downloaded Book of 2020 in the Humanities
& Social Sciences AOSIS Scholarly Domain.

C Scott Jordan, philosopher and political scientist, is the Executive Assistant

Director of the Centre for Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies (CPPFS). He is
also a writer, editor, and podcaster currently working extensively in Malaysia
and Southeast Asia. A specialist in East-West Studies, he writes extensively on
postnormal times, politics, governance, international policy, culture, philosophy,
and education, which he often explores through films. He is the author of A
Very British Muslim Activist: The life of Ghayasuddin Siddiqui. He has worked with
the Asian World Center at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, where he
produced the radio podcast show, Tea Talk Asia. He is also a Deputy Editor of the
influential quarterly, Critical Muslim.

Liam Mayo, a futurist and social theorist, was the first person to be awarded
a PhD for research in postnormal times theory. He has worked globally with
marginalized communities and vulnerable people in complex environments to
achieve sustainable, just, and desired futures. He is a transformational change
specialist dedicated to incorporating futures thinking in the design and delivery
of policies, strategies, and action plans. He is currently the Chief Executive Officer
of Comlink Australia, a large not-for-profit that supports aging, vulnerable, and
disabled people living independently. He is also a guest researcher with the
Department of Environment, Planning and Geography, at the Radboud University
in the Netherlands, a lecturer in Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of
the Sunshine Coast in Australia, and a Senior Fellow with the Centre for Postnormal
Policy and Futures Studies.

Shamim Miah, sociologist and expert on youth and identity, is a Senior Lecturer
at the School of Education, University of Huddersfield in the UK. His research is
concerned with the framing of race and religion in public policy and promoting
futures literacy amongst young people. His books include Muslims, Schooling and
the Question of Self-Segregation, Muslims and the Question of Security: Trojan Horse,
Prevent and Racialised Politics, and Ibn Khaldun: Education, History and Society. He has
over twenty years’ experience of voluntary youth work, community development,
and inter-faith work in Oldham, UK and has worked as a Senior Policy Advisor
and a Youth Worker for Oldham Council. He is a Senior Fellow of the Centre for
Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies.

Alfonso Montuori is a Professor in the Transformative Inquiry Department

at California Institute of Integral Studies. He is the author of several books and
numerous articles on creativity, transdisciplinarity, complexity, the future, social
change, management, leadership development, and education. His books include
the two volume Social Creativity co-edited with Ronald E. Purser, Journeys in
470 Contributors

Complexity, and The Routledge International Handbook for Creative Futures, which
he co-edited with Gabrielle Donnelly. He is a San Francisco Library Laureate. He
was the founder and General Editor of Advances in Systems Theory, Complexity, and
the Human Sciences. He is currently Co-Editor of World Futures: The Journal of New
Paradigm Research, and on the editorial board of numerous academic journals.

Maru Mormina is a Senior Researcher and Ethics Advisor at the Ethox Centre at
Oxford Population Health in the UK. Spanning ethics, political philosophy, social
epistemology, and science and technology studies, her research is concerned with
the relationship between strategic ignorance and epistemic injustice, and how
these might shape processes of scientific knowledge production and of knowledge
use in evidence-based policy, particularly in public health. She has applied these
conceptual lenses to the study of global inequalities in knowledge production and
their intersection with colonial and postcolonial structures that help maintain and
reinforce historical patterns of injustice. Her current work focuses on the use and
non-use of expert knowledge in public policy during crises, especially considering
the Covid-19 pandemic.

Yelena Muzykina, researcher, lecturer, and futurist, is a co-founder of the Central

Asian Futures & Foresight Association. Her research interest and work cover
education, planning, Islamic societies, futures studies, and postnormal times.
Yelena also has extensive experience in the banking sector, private and international
business, trade, and bidding. A member of the editorial board of Islamoved, a peer-
reviewed journal of the Dagestan State University in Russia, and an invited editor
of the World Futures Review, she has published extensively in Russian as well as
translated a number of books and papers. Her engagement with Postnormal Times
started with her doctorate research, since then she has been organising workshops
and lectures on postnormal matters in Russia and Central Asia. She is a Fellow of
the Centre for Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies (CPPFS).

Lata Narayanaswamy, a research practitioner, consultant, and lecturer in gender

and development, is Associate Professor in the Politics of Global Development at
the University of Leeds in the UK. Her expertise is in decolonising development,
gender and development, knowledge, civil society, and power particularly in South
Asia and East Africa. Her research, inspired by her time working as a knowledge-
for-development practitioner, critically reflects on gendered/intersectional
and post/decolonial dynamics of development knowledge and its perceived
contribution to global development challenges. She is currently involved in
applied, interdisciplinary research related to climate change, water security, and
decolonising development.

Olga Van Oost, a museum consultant and coordinator, is the general manager
of FARO, a Flemish cultural heritage centre in Brussels, Belgium. Her personal
471 Contributors

research interests lie in the field of museology, with ‘museum in transition’ as a

common thread. She has published articles on the digital, the liquid, the agonistic,
and the postnormal museums. In Museum of Feeling, she laid the foundation for her
vision of the ‘museum of the future’ in which equal attention is paid to thinking
and feeling. In addition to her work at FARO, she teaches cultural issues at the
Department of Communication Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

Caroline Osborne is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of the Sunshine

Coast, Office of Community Engagement, in Australia. Her current research is
investigating participatory community engagement models as part of an innovative
partnership between universities and local government that can strengthen
connection, social capital, and community capacity to respond to opportunities
and challenges in the coastal city-region in Southeast Queensland (SEQ). She has
also conducted extensive post-graduate research into seniors housing preferences
and neighbourhood design. As an urban planner her research examined how social
capital can contribute to best practice urban planning outcomes. She has also
served as a Community Planning Officer with the Sunshine Coast Council.

Jerry Ravetz, a renowned philosopher of science, is known for his challenging works
on risks, scientific objectivity, and history of science. His Scientific Knowledge and Its
Social Problems is regarded as a seminal work. His other books include The Merger
of Knowledge with Power; (with S.O. Funtowicz) Uncertainty and Quality in Science
for Policy; and (with Ziauddin Sardar) Cyberfutures and Introducing Mathematics.
Regarded as the father of postnormal science, he developed, together with Silvio
Fontowicz, a notational system, ‘NUSAP’, for the representation of uncertainty in
quantitative information. Currently he is an Associate Fellow at the James Martin
Institute for Science and Civilization at the University of Oxford.

Ziauddin Sardar, writer, futurist, and cultural critic, is an internationally

renowned public intellectual. He has published over 50 books, including Rescuing
All Our Futures, Islam, Postmodernism and Other Futures: A Ziauddin Sardar Reader,
and Future: All That Matters. He was editor of Futures, the monthly journal of policy,
planning and futures studies, from 1999 to 2012, and served as a Commissioner
on the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission, UK, from 2006 to 2009. He
currently edits Critical Muslim, a quarterly literary magazine that focusses on
topics important within Muslim thought and between Muslims and the rest of the
world. He developed the postnormal times theory and established the Centre for
Postnormal Policy and Future Studies.

Julia Schönebergand, a post-doctoral researcher in socioeconomics, peace studies,

and political science, is a Research Associate with the Department of Development
and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Kassel, Germany. She focuses on
the theories and practices of post-development and has worked extensively on
472 Contributors

reinventing development theory. She is a co-founder of Convivial Thinking, an open

group of scholars thinking, working and writing on all issues related to post- and
decolonial approaches in the context of development and beyond.

Jordi Serra del Pino, futurist, consultant, and educator, is the Deputy Director of
the Centre for Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies (CPPFS) and coordinates the
CPPFS Barcelona Office. He is also Associate Professor at the Communication and
International Relations Faculty of Blanquerna University (Universitat Ramon Llull),
where he teaches Postnormal Times Theory and Foresight, and acts as the Academic
Director of the Social Economy Observatory (OES21). As a consultant, Jordi has
collaborated with a variety of public, private, and international organizations
all over the world, but mostly in Europe and South America. He has published
numerous papers and books in English, Spanish and Catalan as well as many articles
in newspapers and magazines. Currently, he is on the editorial board of Futures.

Philip Spies, a futurist and educator, is the Primary Consultant with Creative
Futures, an independent consultancy on futures studies, foresight, and strategy
formation. He was Professor Emeritus at Stellenbosch University in South Africa,
where he served as Director of the Institute for Futures Research, which he founded.
The Institute grew out of a unit established in Stellenbosch University’s Bureau for
Economic Research, while Spies was a lecturer in agricultural economics. It was the
first and remains the only futures institute of its kind on the African Continent. His
work has strongly focussed on the philosophy and methodology of futures studies,
especially in introducing it to a turbulent South Africa as it underwent monumental
change. He is also an enthusiastic wine farmer.

Elizabeth Stephens, a cultural critic and literary historian, is an associate professor

at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of
Queensland, Australia. She has also served as an Australian Research Council (ARC)
Future Fellow. Her research brings together critical theories and cultural histories
of the body, with a focus on gender studies, queer theory, critical race and disability
studies, and continental philosophy. She is a founding member of the Somatechnics
Research Network. She also authored the book Normality: A critical genealogy
amongst other books and articles. Currently, she is an Associate Investigator in the
ARC Centre of Excellence in the History of the Emotions.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Three articles in the Postnormal Times Reader Volume 2 originally appeared in
Futures, the monthly journal of policy, planning and futures studies. These include:
Ziauddin Sardar, ‘The smog of ignorance: Knowledge and wisdom in postnormal
times’ (Futures 120 102554 June 2020), which is based on the lecture given as
the recipient of Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS) 2019 Lifetime
Achievement Award presented at the Digital Futures Conference held at Tamu
Hotel & Suites, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 2 November 2019, and is reprinted
in his edited volume, Emerging Epistemologies: The Changing Fabric of Knowledge
in Postnormal Times (IIIT, 2022). Kellrun HiisHauge and Richard Barwell, ‘Post-
normal science and mathematics education in uncertain times: Educating future
citizens for extended peer communities’ (Futures 91 25–34 August 2017) revised
and modified in this volume as ‘Science and Mathematics Education in Uncertain
Times’. And Alfonso Montuori, ‘Going Beyond Postnormality’, which was originally
published as ‘Beyond postnormal times: The future of creativity and the creativity
of the future’ (Futures 43(2) 221–227 March 2011). These articles been reprinted with
the kind permission of Elsevier.
The influential quarterly, Critical Muslim, has been one of the leading
publications featuring articles and essays expanding on postnormal times theory,
several of which are featured here. Liam Mayo’s ‘Sea Glass’ is a modified version
of ‘Through the Sea Glass’ (Critical Muslim 34: Artificial, March 2020). Chistopher
Burr Jones’s ‘As Things Fall Apart’ first appeared as ‘When things fall apart: Global
weirding, postnormal times, and complexity limits’ originally published in Building
Sustainability Through Environmental Education edited by Ediola Pashollari (IGI
Global, Hershey, 2019, 149–165), a modified version was published in Critical Muslim
39: World Order, Summer 2021. Jerry Ravetz’s article ‘Adventures in Postnormal
Times’ is a modified version of ‘Postnormal Adventures’, published in the Critical
Muslim 35: Muslim Atlantic, July 2020. Christopher Burr Jones’s ‘Four Scenarios for
the Third Rock from the Sun’ is an extended and modified version of ‘Four Earths’,
originally published in the Critical Muslim 34: Artificial, March 2020. C Scott Jordan’s
‘Postnormal Times & Minced Words’ and ‘Afrofutures for Postnormal Times’ are
modified and updated versions of ‘Postnormal Words’ (Critical Muslim 28: Narratives,
October 2018) and ‘Afrofuturism in Postnormal Times’ (Critical Muslim 29: Futures,
January 2019).
In 2021, in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, CPPFS senior fellows Maya Van
Leemput and Christopher Burr Jones, and CPPFS fellow Linda Hyökki, served as
guest editors for a special issue of World Futures Review on ‘Postnormal Matters’
474 Acknowledgments

(Volume 13, Issue 2, June 2021). The following articles first appeared in this special
issue: Christopher Burr Jones, Jordi Serra del Pino, and Liam Mayo’s ‘The Perfect
Postnormal Storm’, a modified version of ‘The Perfect Postnormal Storm: COVID-19
Chronicles (p. 71–85), which was originally published as parts 1–3 of the CPPFS blog
Insights as ‘The Covid Chronicles’. The blog is available at https://postnormaltim.es/
covid-chronicles. Jordi Serra Del Pino’s ‘Building Scenarios in Postnormal Times’ is a
revised version of ‘Building Scenarios with the Three Tomorrows’ (p.101–114). Liam
Mayo and Shamim Miah’s ‘Zombie Disciplines’, was originally published as ‘Zombie
Disciplines: Knowledge, Anticipatory Imagination and Becoming in Postnormal
Times’ (p. 157–171) and reprinted in Emerging Epistemologies.
Ziauddin Sardar’s ‘Afterthoughts’, was originally published as ‘Afterthoughts:
Transnormal, the “New Normal” and other Varieties of “Normal” in Postnormal
Times’ (p. 54–70).
Other journals in the field of futures also published papers on postnormal times,
particularly, Ziauddin Sardar’s ‘On the Nature of Time in Postnormal Times’ Journal
of Futures Studies, (25(4) 17–30 June 2021) modified and presented here as ‘Time in
Postnormal Times’; and Liam Mayo, Caroline Osborne, Marcus Bussey, & Timothy
Burns’s ‘Engaging Communities Through Uncertainty: Exploring the Role of Local
Governance as a Way of Facilitating Postnormal Polylogues’ which appeared
in World Futures (77(4) 245–265 June 2021), and is revised and modified here as
‘Engaging Communities in Polylogues’
Elizabeth Stephens’s article ‘The End of the Ordinary’ was originally published
as ‘Post-normal: Crisis and the End of Ordinary’ in Media International Australia
(177(1):92–102 September 2020) and is available as open access. Philip Spies
and Chris Jones’s ‘The Postnormal Landscape’ is a translation of the article
‘Explorations in a post-normal landscape: South Africa this side of and beyond
Covid-19’, originally published in Tydskrif vir Geesteswetenskappe (Jaargang 60 No.
4–2: Desember 2020) doi.10.17159/2224–7912/2020/v60n4–2a2. The original article
was written in Afrikaans. A modified and updated version in English is included in
this volume. Maru Mormina, Julia Schönebergand, and Lata Narayanaswamy’s ‘Re-
Imagining Expertise for Postnormal Times’ was originally published as ‘Knowledge
and Science Advice During and After COVID-19: Re-Imagining Notions of Expertise
for Postnormal Times’ in Oxford Population Health (24/02/2021). Jane Gilbert’s
‘Education for the Anthropocene’ was originally published as ‘Transforming
Science Education for the Anthropocene – Is It Possible?’ in Research in Science
Education (46(2) 187–201 2016). A modified version of the article appears in this
volume. Michael Anderson’s ‘Drama Education and Applied Theatre in Postnormal
Times’ is a revised version of the original publication, ‘The challenge of post-
normality to drama education and applied theatre’ Research in Drama Education:
The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance (Volume 19 – Issue 1: Borders and
Translations 110–120 2014).
Yelena Muzykina’s ‘Confronting Postnormal Times’ has been translated from
Russian. It was presented at the XXIV World Philosophical Congress in Aalmaty,
475 Acknowledgments

Kazakhstan in 2018. It appeared in the Congress’s proceeding Learning to be Human,

edited by Yu Kolchigin (Kostanay: Centrum LLP, 47–62. 2018.)
Olga Van Oost’s ‘Museums in Postnormal Times’ has been revised from its
original publication as ‘More than Words. Museology in Postnormal Times
(Belgium)’ in The Future of Tradition in Museology: Materials for a discussion edited
by Kerstin Smeds (ICOFOM, Kyoto, 174–178, 2019). Ziauddin Sardar’s ‘Polylogues’
was first published as ‘Polylogues: Connecting Minds to Create the Future’ as part of
Expo 2020 Dubai, UAE, publication: World Majlis: The Essays – Conversations About
Our Future (Expo 2020, Dubai, 202) edited by Leonard Stall. Liam Mayo’s ‘Capturing
the Queen and Other Creative Moves in Postnormal Times’ was originally published
in The Routledge Handbook of Creative Futures edited by Gabrielle Donnelly & Alfonso
Montuori (Routledge, 2023) as ‘Postnormal Creativity’.