Discussion
"So for me - especially in this moment - that's really important. That we don't go future skipping, into some idea of what a future society could look like. Because our ideas are totally contaminated by the system that we're in, and the only thing that makes those future societies possible, is tending the very minute relationships of the moment."
#NoraBateson, 2020
"We're in systems change. And its going to be really confusing, because for a lot of people those stories around those heroes who built their country, or their culture, those stories are *real*."
#NoraBateson, 2020
https://futurethinkers.org/nora-bateson-heal-society/
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"My Mom is 91 years old, and she's like 'but Nora they're going to destroy the democracy', and I'm like 'but Mom, it was always as illusion, so how do you destroy something that was never there? What's happening?'
And ... I think we need to bring it up, we need to be able to talk about this a little. And I know that it's ... it's always a little bit dangerous, but like you said, it's dangerous not to. So ..."
#NoraBateson, 2020
https://futurethinkers.org/nora-bateson-heal-society/
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@strypey you might find this interesting. I was just recently testing a reconstructive process on Gregory Bateson's works. Take a look if you like. All my posts disappear in 7 days, and this one is 6 days old. FYI.
@Netraven
> Take a look if you like
Thanks, I will.
> All my posts disappear in 7 days
Just out of curiosity, why? Also, do you have a blog, or wiki, or anything else where you post longform writing that can live on beyond that time horizon?
@strypey Noooo, don't destroy the plutocratic, vaguely-representative oligarchy! Where will we be without a collection of grifting psychopaths draining our coffers to fund their friends' yacht aspirations?
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@syllusg I hear you. But I also sympathise with Nora's mother. For reasons Chomsky once tried to explain with the metaphor of representative government and its accompanying institutions (courts, etc) as a cage.
@strypey Yes... And future skipping can become another form of backcasting: we imagine a preferred society, then value the present only insofar as it appears to lead us there. In doing so, we risk reproducing the same logic of selection and erasure we are trying to escape, making one future seem inevitable while preventing other possibilities from ever becoming thinkable.
What this person is describing instead is what I call non-resolution survival dynamics: the practice of remaining with uncertainty without forcing it into a premature solution. Tending the minute relationships of the present interrupts the pressure to turn people, choices, and possibilities into steps within a predetermined story. It keeps the future open.
A different society cannot be designed from somewhere outside the conditions that have shaped us. It has to emerge through different ways of relating, attending, and deciding now. Survival, in this sense, is not simply endurance. It is the active preservation of unresolved possibilities long enough for forms of life we cannot yet fully imagine to become possible.
@Netraven well put. The thought that occurred to me when when Bateson said this though, is what implications does this have for solarpunk, and other practices of future visioning like some of the exercises used in Deep Ecology? Any thoughts?
@strypey I think this is where actively distinguishing between constraints and selectors on thought becomes especially important.
A selector acts before meaningful deliberation begins. It does not simply make some choices more difficult; it removes certain possibilities from consideration altogether. When an imagined future begins to function as a selector, it narrows the range of futures that can still be perceived. The present is then interpreted mainly in terms of what appears to support that preferred outcome.
A constraint works differently. It sets limits on what can be done, but it does not necessarily determine what must happen next. Because more than one path remains available, the system can still respond to feedback, revise its assumptions, and change direction.
Even under constraint, however, a system may develop in different ways. It may settle into the easiest stable pattern available and begin repeating it, becoming caught in a self-reinforcing cycle. Or it may remain in a state of provisional tension (a preference for non-resolution) in which competing possibilities are kept open long enough for the system to potentially discover a more viable and rewarding pattern.
This offers a useful way to think about solarpunk and other practices of future visioning. Do they create conditions that help people perceive, experiment, and coordinate differently? Or do they begin to function as selectors, defining the desirable future so narrowly that other possibilities disappear before they can be explored?
A well-formed vision, then, would provide enough structure to support movement without turning the present into a mere instrument of a predetermined future. It would guide action while remaining open to correction, allowing new possibilities to emerge from relationships and conditions that the original vision could not have anticipated or conceived in advance.
This is how systems remain corrigible and in contact with reality: by leaving room to be wrong.
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