Conceptual Emergency

We live in the age of the missing elephant. Psychologist and futurist Don Michael was first to point out the implications of a world of boundless complexity, rapid change and radical interconnectedness for the familiar tale of the blind men who if they could only see the whole would have recognised the elephant. No longer. In today’s world there is little chance that even the most advanced among us will ever know more than one small piece of the elephant. Furthermore there are now so many different pieces, they change so rapidly and they are all so intimately related one to another, that even if we had the technology to put them all together we would still not be able to make sense of the whole.

These are powerful times, in which the world we have created has outstripped our capacity to understand it. We are experiencing a step change where complex human systems now operate within other complex systems, often with modes of thinking and practice developed in simpler days. This is a new world, raising fundamental questions about our competence in key areas of governance, economy, sustainability and consciousness. We are struggling as professionals and in our private lives to meet the demands it is placing on traditional models of organisation, understanding and action. The anchors of identity, morality, cultural coherence and social stability are unravelling and we are losing our bearings. This is a conceptual emergency.