Working With Drivers of Change
Social Change, Week 10
This week marks a huge shift in the class. Having spent the last several weeks examining various theories of change that have been developed by students of change throughout the centuries, comparing them and teasing out their implications, we now shift to how to integrate these ideas with the concepts in Foresight more broadly.
Drivers
A good place to start is with drivers of change, because they explicitly describe the factors in a domain that bound the changes we are likely to see. During Intro, I defined drivers as underlying forces influencing change, invisible but evidenced by clusters of trends, issues and other signals that orbit around them. But this isn't the only way they're understood. JT Mudge collected this very helpful set of definitions of drivers:
Note that there are two basic orientations described here: intuiting drivers empirically from the scanning signals, and identifying them a priori based on existing information about the forces at play (perhaps using the categories from the domain, as pre-identified sources of power). The nice thing about the former approach is that the signals give the current directionality of the force, making it easier to extrapolate to the baseline scenario. Either way, these drivers as a set should capture the vast majority of the causes of change (or inertia).
Old Friends
Integrating change theory and Futures starts with the most familiar and beloved tools of the trade. I mentioned in Intro how drivers can be classified using the Futures Triangle as exhibiting the Weight of the Past (inertia), the Push of the Present (momentum), or the Pull of the Future (aspirations and vision). This can be done in a ternary way (by aligning each with one of the corners) or embracing complexity by positioning each inside the triangle as a blend of the three poles.
The same process can be applied to the ideas in change theory as an organizing framework. For example, the Māori idea of tikanga, as well as indigenous ideas about lore more generally, are tightly aligned with the Weight of the Past (an anchor to traditional ways and practices); Polak’s theory of change is explicitly about societies being transformed by images of the future and the pull toward them; evolutionary ideas based on Darwin are closer to the Push of the Present because they focus on adaptation to present conditions, and pace layers1 are close to the middle because they show how present trends and future tugs change and are slowed by deeper levels.
Other Futures tools could be thrown in as overlays as part of some grand theory. The well-loved 3 Horizons model can be bent into a similar shape: maybe Horizon 1 is where we see the Push of the Present (and this is where the Baseline scenario lives), Horizon 3 is the realm of the Pull of the Future (and Transformation scenarios), and Horizon 2 is where they conflict or transition (via New Equilibrium or Collapse scenarios), all constrained by the Weight of the Past.
Yesterday’s Lessons
This week was also an opportunity to wrap up Krznaric’s History for Tomorrow. In his final chapter, addresses the challenge of a post-fossil-fuel world (where abundant energy is no longer available) and the potential collapse of civilization (what Nate Hagens calls The Great Simplification). Krznaric offers three cultural skills needed to survive this transition2: asabiyya, which is an idea from 14th-century Arab historian / change theorist Ibn Khaldun that basically means social solidarity, often born in hardship and weakened by wealth inequality; biophilia (a sense that we have an obligation to nature); and the ability to respond nimbly and decisively in crisis situations3. In his conclusion, he points to several reasons to have hope: the future isn’t fixed by any set laws, people can do amazing things together, and we’ve seen enough variety in history to know we have meaningful options. I appreciate the focus on agency, and overall I think the book is a good pick for people who want a broader view of human possibility or ideas on how to work constructively on civilization’s big problems.
Fourth time I’ve brought this idea up this semester. Two more and you get one free.
Which, of course, might look very different than Hagens and Krznaric predict: Malthusian predictions of overpopulation and material shortages have typically not fared well (even setting aside the eugenics undertones that are often associated with them).
Krznaric here posits a positive feedback loop here: crises make new/different ideas relevant, ideas inspire movements, and movements bring crises into deeper relief (or directly deepen them).