Relating Systems Thinking and Design 4 Working Paper, Banff, Canada, 2015.

Peter Jones
Designing flourishing societies as a practice of cultural futures
Abstract
Early theoretical work and a proposal for methodology are presented for the purposes of
identifying leverage and designing strategies for enhancing the flourishing of human societies.
I define the society frame as a cooperative social system that identifies itself as a society through
forms, social norms and material practices of culture. Society can be articulated as an “object”
of culture, in the sense of a motivated and preferred outcome of culture-producing activity, as
a medium for the collective development of social systems within society. Societies are not
designed as such by any deliberative process, but are social entities that emerge over time as
response to historicity and cultural development, and function largely by tacit agreement as
observed in social norms.

Introduction

The developed world is facing a continuous and (to many) an unforeseen crisis in the social identity of
people as participants in the future existence of their societies. The defining societal value acknowledged
throughout the modernist era was “progress,” the shared and unquestioned idea that the conditions of
everyday life would improve continuously over generations and across political eras. Notwithstanding
the general failure of postmodern philosophy to motivate alternatives to the meta-narrative of progress,
the outcomes of numerous failed projects of modernist civilization have left even the privileged winners
of the old regime puzzled and disempowered.

With the evidence of the significant changes to planetary conditions and settlements co-arising
throughout the world’s regions, the emerging era of the Anthropocene (Crutzen, 1992) has become
broadly acknowledged. The Anthropocene is defined as the named geological period representing the
stage at which the planet has become significantly affected by human activity and its geological
conditions show scientific evidence of deformation due to collective human enterprise. I have referred
to the Anthropocene as the “long crisis” (Jones, 2015) as it frames the corresponding continuous
concerns of “late” modernity. Concerns of the Anthropocene are primarily indicated by climate change,
exploitation of resource access, ecological degradation and the inability to manage waste effects, but
also those not recognized as interdependent to these, the resulting outcomes of war, distressed migration,
and the destructive political responses of declining governance systems.

Can societies deliberatively coordinate to design resilient alternatives? Or might the hopes of system-
level design at the scale of nations and polities remain hostage to politics and the historical movements
of social change?

In the 1960’s social systemicists such as Ozbekhan, Fuller, and Doxiadis advocated deliberative civic
planning as a normative science for designing sustainable and preferable societies and settlements. Even
though their original methodologies of normative planning (Ozbekhan), anticipatory design science
(Fuller) and ekistics (Doxiadis) did not gain the results hoped in applications over time, these arguments
could be lodged against most systems methodologies. Yet when we consider their views of the human
capacity to design future outcomes as a serious social and political project, we in our fragmented polities
in the postmodern era might take heed. An argument follows that we, as cultural innovators in our own

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 Relating Systems Thinking and Design 4 Working Paper, Banff, Canada, 2015.

societies, having access to the wisdom of successful past transitions or redirections, have also failed to
motivate and enact changes requisite to our common concerns. A systemic design approach is proposed
toward constructing such idealizations as a necessary initial condition. The approach reconciles wisdom
from our sociocultural histories with collaborative design practices of the current era to construct shared
pathways to desired and feasible societal futures.

I first present an initial understanding of the individual, social, and societal factors of human flourishing.
Flourishing entails both “a good life” and the sustainment of human and all life, future outcomes for
which we might expect to discover significant agreement. Yet there are many common barriers to
achieving even partial agreement toward a preferred future idealization. Ozbekhan (1970) identified
several of these among his 49 Continuous Critical Problems, with the most compelling barriers being
our collective inability to marshal our creative capacity to confront the future and the inability to evolve
new values systems. While these leverage points are well-known in social systems theory, we have seen
our societies demonstrate little resolution of action toward the wicked problems we share among the 49
CCPs.

The lack of agreement with respect to even shared scientific “matters of fact” in sustainability reveals
the compelling necessity for well-informed decisions leading to change. Recently, Latour’s (2013)
Modes of Existence proposed a normative agenda for cultural renewal remarkably aligned with the
seminal social systems thinkers. He proposed a framework for social value analysis and understanding
based on the proposal of (at least) 15 modes of existence that would continue in conflict with each other
without a common basis in language and valuing. The necessity for such an approach to “an
anthropology of the moderns” was proposed due to the continuing lack of action of the most basic
problematics of climate change, a monstrous matter of concern faced by all humanity.

Latour presents a comprehensive sociological response to the dire consequences of human and
environmental catastrophe in the context of climate change by positing a model for inquiry into the
multiplicity of perspectives. Taking a realist view of the sustainability predicament, this potential for
catastrophe necessitates an inclusive understanding of values and conflicting interests across the
multiple ontologies realized by modernism. Across Latour’s configuration of 15 “modes of existence,”
consensus on definitions or actions is not considered achievable within a common ontological
framework. Instead this model embraces a cross-referencing of concerns and values associated with the
modern condition, compatible with reflexive modernization, rethinking of boundaries and values across
multiple perspectives, commitments, and social identities. Latour’s project also aims to restore trust to
science and other human institutions necessary to assure a common interest in survival and stewardship
of the planet, which is also a key tenet of a successful society.

The “inquiry into modes of existence” provides a new basis for stakeholder identification and
engagement, a process Ozbekhan asserted to be an essential ethical requirement, from which we might
develop a research and practice model. My research adapts this model as means of assessing and
understanding initial conditions. In this proposal I address the ways in which intentional actors –
professional planners and designers, decision makers and engaged citizens – can facilitate the design of
civil societies to stimulate and sustain human flourishing. An initial understanding of the social,
individual and societal factors of human flourishing is presented, toward the development of an
acceptable definition of flourishing across the scales from individual to the context of a globalized
society.

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 Relating Systems Thinking and Design 4 Working Paper, Banff, Canada, 2015.

Extending the inquiry to stakeholder discovery

How might stakeholder concerns, biases, power relationships and risk entailments be defined?
Stakeholder theory – Mingers,
Stakeholder discovery – Cassel,

This normative turn appears to assign our motives and actions to those of social change, or even
activism. Will we see these emerging new roles for designers evolve toward ethical, reflective
facilitators for social action? The turning toward committed outcomes puts claims to skilled action at
risk. Design schools and practices do not teach or research practices for facilitating system-level
multistakeholder engagement. Most of the methodologies in contemporary modes are proprietary and
under-critiqued models developed in specialized organizational settings (such as appreciative inquiry or
Theory U) and have very little social research to support their efficacy. Design practice enjoys a highly
leveraged placement for cultural innovation, a position which offers ethically precarious opportunities
for control or mediated power. As Latour would also suggest we must now “extend the question of
design to politics.”

How might we enable collective valuing and coordinated action toward effective agreements and
progress on the complex systems of sustainability problems? For the question of flourishing we are
challenged to locate meanings by which a reasonable plurality of fellow humans can agree to resolve
various matters of concern to entertain a senior concern, that of sustaining the continuity of human
cultures, or civilization. I will present a framework of relevant models that tightly cohere to address
these issues, including:
• An evolving system map for collective description of a flourishing society (adaptation of the
Flourishing Business Model)
• The formulation of Modes of Existence as guidance for stakeholder analysis and selection for
articulating an inclusive, feasible flourishing society model
• The adaptation of dialogic design methodology to facilitate the identification, priorities and
agreements necessary to enact the flourishing society model.
Society can be articulated as an “object” of culture, in the sense of a motivated and preferred outcome of
culture-producing activity, as a medium for the collective development of social systems within society.
Societies are not designed as such by any deliberative process, but are social entities that emerge over
time as response to historicity and cultural development, and function largely by tacit agreement as
observed in social norms. Intensional groups – participatory design teams, community action groups,
mixed stakeholders - can evolve societies toward flourishing through systemic and direct collaborative
design practices. This model of a designable society is consistent with Giddens’ structuration, the
systemic model of ontological design, and the epistemic views of constructivism and transition design.

References
Nelson, H.G. & Stolterman, E. (2012). The design way: Intentional change in an unpredictable world.
Second edition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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