Reconciling Differing Worldviews

* Essay: Solving the Wickedest Problem: Reconciling Differing Worldviews. Tim Morgan. Journal of Futures Studies, Vol 24, No. 4, 2020

URL = https://jfsdigital.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/08-Morgan-Solving-the-Wickedest-Problem-ED-8-2.pdf?

Abstract

"Values and worldviews arise as a side effect of society’s attempts to improve life. Each set of interventions changes the structure of society, dominant technologies, and dominant values. Today we find ourselves with multiple deeply conflicted worldviews, each protecting their solutions to prior problems. Emergent sets of values are trying to solve the wicked problems of today but are blocked by older worldviews. This values deadlock is our wickedest problem. Conflicts and deadlocks will persist until we apply new social organization tools which incorporate new values and organization forms while preserving the role and place of older worldviews and their structures."

Excerpts

Archetypal worldviews and their matching social forms

Tim Morgan:

"The emergence of sets of values as abstract worldviews is not a new idea. We see similar values emergence patterns in models like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development, Grave’s ECLET (extended by Beck & Cowan into Spiral Dynamics), Ayala’s Evolution of Ethics, and others. Andy Hines (2011) researched a number of these theories and found a common pattern of emergent values, identified in his book Consumershift: How Changing Values are Reshaping the Consumer Landscape.

Each of these archetypal worldviews is centered on a core organizing value.

They can be reframed as:

 Traditional – Kinship & Hierarchy

 Modern – Materialism & Achievement

 Postmodern – Postmaterialism & Meaning

 Integral – Situational Pragmatism & Systemic Effectiveness

Hines shows in Consumershift: How Changing Values are Reshaping the Consumer Landscape how individual values transform across the four worldviews. One example is Duty → Achievement → Enjoyment → Contentment.

This values progression is consistent with Christakis’s idea that emphasis of certain social-suite traits over others produces different social values and behaviors. What it does not explain is how archetypal worldviews create social organization responses to problems and opportunities encountered by a society. This is key to understanding how a society with diverse and conflicting worldviews can address wicked problems.

What is needed is way to tie the emergence of these or similar worldview archetypes to social organization forms.

We need a framework which can characterize both archetypal social forms and the worldviews which co-evolve with them.

Fortunately, political scientist David Ronfeldt created a social forms framework which can be used to link social organization forms with values. His 1996 paper Tribes, Institutions, Markets, Networks: A Framework About Societal Evolution lays out a consistent emergence pattern of four cardinal forms which underlie organization of all societies.3 He lists four identifiable forms: Kinship-based Tribes, Hierarchical Institutions, Competitive Markets, and Collaborative Networks.

Ronfeldt notes that each cardinal form is an easily recognized node along a continuum. For example, a “chiefdom” would likely lay between Tribes and Institutions as an intermediate form combining aspects of both. Mercantilism would similarly be an intermediate form between the Institutions and Markets forms. This lines up nicely with values emergence theories which treat values as a continuum with discretely recognizable stages or levels, Maslow’s Needs Hierarchy or Grave’s ECLET/Spiral Dynamics. Ronfeldt refers to his emergent social forms framework as the TIMN Quadriform.

Ronfeldt asserts that incipient versions of each TIMN form were present in ancient times, but that each matured in different epochs over the past several thousand years. Kinship Tribes developed as the first organizational form, Hierarchical Institutions next, then Competitive Markets, and now Collaborative Networks. Each form emerged as a governance response to historical evolution and increasing social complexity.

A key TIMN concept is that new forms do not supersede older ones. The old forms still function to organize certain aspects of society. Each new form thus requires the active presence of older forms to function properly. Societies organized around Hierarchical Institutions are built upon Kinship-like in-group (tribal) dynamics. Ones organized around Competitive Markets are built atop both Tribal and Institutional forms. Newly emerging Collaborative Networks are built on all three prior organizational forms. Each form represents a system the incorporates both the new form and the prior forms in a working system. If the old system does not allow enough space for the new form to develop, that new form will fail to function well, or emerge at all. All the forms must work together to create a functioning social system.

Ronfeldt’s forms progression is:

 Tribes (T) → T

 Institutions (+I) → T+I

 Markets (+M) → T+I+M

 Networks (+N) → T+I+M+N

If we try to match Ronfeldt’s forms with Hine’s worldviews, we get the following:

 Tribes (T) – Traditional (Kinship)

 Institutions (T+I) – Traditional (Hierarchical)

 Markets (T+I+M) – Modern (Materialism & Achievement)

 Networks (T+I+M+N) – Postmodern (Postmaterialism & Meaning)

This shows good alignment between Ronfeldt’s forms and Hine’s worldviews. Hines merges Ronfeldt’s Tribes and Institutions into a single Traditional worldview, and Ronfeldt omits a form matching Hine’s Integral values. This is understandable since Ronfeldt claims that the +N form is still emerging, and Hines says the same for Integral values. It seems convenient to use Ronfeldt’s TIMN nomenclature going forward to indicate both an archetypal worldview and its preferred organizing form.

Synthesizing the two we get a combined forms-worldview framework:

 T – Trust-based social form with a narrative-driven worldview that values group unity and mutual support. (Tribes/Kinship form with Narrative worldview)

 +I – Top-down hierarchical form with a rigid, purposeful worldview that values social order and stability. (Institutions/Hierarchies form with Authoritarian worldview)

 +M – Competitive form that values objective measures of achievement and status. (Markets/Exchanges form with Modernist/Materialist worldview)

 +N – Collaborative egalitarian form that values shared meaning and purpose within a connected community. (Networks/Nexus form with Communitarian/Postmaterialist worldview)

Ronfeldt noted that the ability of these forms to work together as a system was crucial to their evolution. Tying archetypal worldviews to each form makes it easy to see why. Each new complexity-driven worldview emergence disrupts the existing system because it calls into question the assumptions and values of earlier worldviews. A new social form will be similarly disruptive of the working balance between the existing forms in that society until a new balance between the forms is achieved. New complexity begets new worldviews, which begets new social forms, which begets disruption and adjustment. That is the essence of the social forms evolutionary path."