WEDNESDAY, DEC 22, 2021: NOTE TO FILE

Academically Speaking

Consensus thinking in the Old Education system

Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS

TOPICS: WHAT WOULD H.G. WELLS SAY?, FROM THE WIRES, LIMIT COGNITIVE PATHOLOGY

Abstract: That universities are part of our problematique, and not of any real solutionatique, may be thinkable to some. This article was suggested for serious consideration by those who are working on a values reset strategy for saving the world so we humans can continue living in it. I managed to read a paragraph into it before facepalming. Sorry, but I need to confess my limitations. To consider the opening words, I had to parse them into an outline format, then translate the ideas into ones I could understand. In doing so, most intended obfuscation was lost.

 

Renewing Universities in Our Climate Emergency: Stewarding System Change and Transformation

Ioan Fazey1, Claire Hughes1, Niko A. Schäpke2, Graham Leicester3, Lee Eyre1, Bruce Evan Goldstein4, Anthony Hodgson5, Amanda J. Mason-Jones6, Susanne C. Moser7, Bill Sharpe3 and Mark S. Reed8
  • 1 Department of Environment and Geography, University of York, York, United Kingdom
  • 2 Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources, Institute of Environmental Social Sciences and Geography, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
  • 3 International Futures Forum, Fife, United Kingdom
  • 4 Program in Environmental Design, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States
  • 5 H3Uni, Glenrothes, United Kingdom
  • 6 Department of Health Sciences, University of York, York, United Kingdom
  • 7 Susanne Moser Research and Consulting, Hadley, MA, United States
  • 8 Thriving Natural Capital Challenge Centre, Scotland's Rural College, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Climate change brings three interconnected and urgent emergencies for universities: (1) Manifest emergencies such as risks to operations and business models; (2) Conceptual emergencies that arise because assumptions, ideologies, systems, and structures cannot match the scale of the manifest challenges; and (3) Existential emergencies where current identities and sense of purpose are incapable of supporting the changes needed to overcome the conceptual challenges. To be viable leaders in the world, universities will need to renew their commitments to serving the public good, be dedicated to an unwavering challenge-orientation, create post-disciplinary structures, and be the change one seeks to see in the world. Importantly, universities will need to overcome the emergencies on the inside if they are to help society address the scale of the challenges on the outside, to which both universities and human capacity are seriously cognitively and emotionally ill-prepared. Fortunately, new insights from research on system transition provide helpful advice on how to steward transformational change. This work highlights that successful transformation requires strong adherence to transformational intent and, in the case of universities, working with all three emergencies simultaneously. Successful transformation will also require harnessing opportunities to disrupt the status quo; supporting an interplay of different forms of management and orientations to the future; developing appropriate infrastructure to support transformation; and rapidly accelerating the development of capacities for transformational change. By actively developing capacities for transformation on the inside universities will then be in a much better position to help and lead others beyond the halls of the academy.

For the whole of it: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frsus.2021.677904/full

 

  1. Climate change brings three interconnected and urgent emergencies for universities [to meet]:
    1. Manifest emergencies such as risks to operations and business models;
    2. Conceptual emergencies that arise fail to match the scale of the manifest challenges due to cognitive failures.
      1. assumptions
      2. ideologies
      3. [cognitive?] systems
      4. [social?] structures
    3. Existential emergencies where current identities and sense of purpose are incapable of supporting the changes needed to overcome the conceptual challenges.
  2. To be viable leaders in the world, universities will need to renew their commitments to:
    1. Serving the public good
    2. Dedication to an unwavering challenge-orientation
    3. The creation post-disciplinary structures
    4. Be the change one seeks to see in the world.
  3. Importantly, universities will need to overcome the emergencies on the inside [within academia] if they are to help society address the scale of the challenges on the outside.
    1. Universities and human capacity are:
      1. Seriously cognitive
      2. Emotionally ill-prepared
    2. New insights from research on system transition provide helpful advice on how to steward transformational change.
  4. This work highlights that successful transformation requires strong adherence to transformational intent [because blah is the blah of blah].
    1. Universities need to work with all three emergencies simultaneously;
    2. Harness opportunities to disrupt the status quo;
    3. Support an interplay of different forms of management and orientations to the future;
    4. Develop appropriate infrastructure to support transformation;
    5. Rapidly accelerate the development of capacities for transformational change by actively developing capacities for transformation on the inside universities to then perhaps be in a better position to help and lead others beyond the halls of the academy [in overcomplex modern techno-industrial society who may not know what to do].

 

 

I still fail to grok the solutionatique to the problem of human ecological and civilizational overshoot (the meta-problem) that university academics and administrators envision. I'm not an academic nor an expert in anything, so I'm wondering, what would H.G. Wells or Klaatu type? One is dead, so I can but imagine:

  1. Climate change, being a symptom of modern techno-industrialized humanity's one-off plague-phase overshoot event, brings three interconnected and urgent emergencies for those who would rather know than believe to consider:
    1. Manifest emergencies such as addiction to growth, fossil fuels, short-term self interests, and business as usual;
    2. Conceptual emergencies;
      1. Hidden assumptions/agendas
      2. Ideologies/belief systems
      3. Tribal consensus narratives
      4. Belief-based ways of putative knowing
      5. Belief in belief norm
    3. Existential emergencies where current identities, culture, sense of purpose, and Anthropocene enthusiasm are incompatible with continued persistence of species (e.g. Homo s. sapiens var. narrator);
  2. To be viable leaders in the world, universities will need stand down from their hubris heights to:
    1. Abandon the public good, i.e. human short-term self interests;
    2. Dedicate themselves to an unwavering nature centric orientation;
    3. Create a post-belief focus on listening to Nature (who has all the answers) norm;
    4. Be the animal that can live properly with the planetary life-support system to maximize empower (or not and go extinct).
  3. Importantly, universities will need to overcome the error, ignorance, and illusion that academics swim in and pass on to posterity if they are to help society address the scale of the dysfunction all are part of and perpetuate (hence the need to stand down and LISTEN...to think is to listen, but not to human prattle).
    1. Modern techno-industrial monetary-culture-serving universities and humans educated by them are:
      1. Seriously cognitively impaired by the believing minds their overcomplex society selects for;
      2. Emotionally ill-prepared to find or face biophysical reality, aka Gaia, or know themselves as pathogens.
    2. Insights from research in system dynamics (going back to the 1920s if not late 1700s) provide helpful insights on how to manage hubris man's demands on Nature's resources.
  4. Universities need to get right with biophysical reality:
    1. Cease to be part of the status quo;
    2. Support an interplay of best-guess-then-test likely solutions, designs for viable complex societies, tested on a small scale (e.g. 25k watershed management units) to assess viability;
    3. Develop appropriate infrastructure to support rapid degrowth;
    4. Rapidly accelerate the contraction of the global economy via rapid power reduction (starting with fossil fuels) and population via rapid birth-off (to avoid die-off).

 

 

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