lurures. Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 109-200, 1996

Pubhshcd by Elscvier Science Ltd. Printed in Great Britain

UOl6-3287/96 $15.ClO + 0.00

BOOK REVlEW

Re-humanizing the future

Richard Slaughter

Path to Gang Zhi Katsuhiko Yazaki

Kyoto, Future Generations Alliance Foundation, 124 pages, free

Ways of Enspiriting: Transformative Practices for the Twenty-first Century Warren Ziegler

Denver, FIA International, 1995, ix + 277 pages, US$14.95

Edge of the Sacred: Transformation in Australia David Tacey

Melbourne, HarperCollins, 1995, xv + 224 pages, A$1 9.95

A familiar polarity within the futures field is that between those who see the future

in external, instrumental terms and those who see it in deeper human terms. Of course, in the end these two perspectives can be productively fused into a richer overall view. Still, the dynamic of technical change shows no sign of slowing, so it is heartening to see that a broadly humanistic perspective remains vibrant and strong. Although the three examples considered here are very different (coming, as they do, from three different regions), they all help to further ground and elaborate a view that the future can and must be subject to higher-order human influence.

Richard Slaughter is Consulting Editor to Futures and may be contacted at the Futures Study Centre, 117

Church Street, Hawthorn 3122, Victoria, Australia (Tel: +613 9 818 7574; fax: +613 9 819 0876; e-mail: presents@ariel.its.unimelb.edu.au).

Katsuhiko Yazaki is a successful Japanese business entrepreneur, whose life was changed by a ‘breakthrough insight’ during Zen meditation. The result was that he passed responsibility for the business over to a relative and created the Future Generations Alliance Foundation, which exists to promote the future generations’ cause. To this end, the foundation hosts meetings (such as the Kyoto Forum) and publishes a series of books, of which this is one. Most of the books are anthologies of work by international scholars, but The Path to Liang

Zhi tells the story of Yazaki’s own awakening and the development of his philosophy. Topics covered include: realizing life as ‘connection’; how to conquer egoism; getting beyond econ- omics, science and nationalism; turning lack of a resource into a resource; and the search for an eternal philosophy.

The book is short (barely 120 pages), but it is beautifully produced and crystal clear. It is a fascinating example of how a personal trans- formation can lead to a whole new world of options for an individual-and then for all those touched by him or her. Here, then, is part of the solution to looming global dilemmas: individuals are, or can be, very powerful if they are willing to move beyond the ego to pursue wisdom and spiritual insight.

These themes are also present in IDavid Tacey’s impressive book Edge of the Sacred. While it IS written from an Australian perspective, it is universal in outlook. Few works lay bare the dilemmas of contemporary Australian society with the clarity achieved here. While politicians, economists, educators, social theorists and many others pursue rationalistic solutions, Tacey takes us to the mythopoeic level as revealed by lungian psychology and the insights of artists and

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Book review

writers. However, in Tacey’s hands, this exploration is not merely ‘literary’. He has

provided the clearest diagnosis I have yet seen of the spiritual vacuum underlying Australian

culture and experience. By extension, this

applies to the whole Western world. However,

what makes this book so outstanding is that he

has also seen where the deep solutions lie:

in the emergence of an authentic spirituality.

At the outset, Tacey takes the view that ‘despite the fact that Australia appears to be

one of the most secular and godless societies in

the modern world, there is good reason to

suppose that an authentic rediscovery of the sacred is already in preparation here’. He

suggests that an ‘unconscious compulsion toward sacrifice’ exists in the Australian psyche, and explores this through the works of

Joan Lindsay, D H Lawrence and Patrick

White. Here the landscape is a key player: ‘no

matter how we attempt to package or construct

it, the land will always break out of whatever

fancy dress we foist upon it’. The only way out

is not to ignore the landscape by huddling into cities on its fringes, but to ‘enter more into

the psychic field of nature; to “shamanize” ourselves in the image of nature’. Here the

taboo subjects of Aboriginal degradation and

spirituality emerge and are treated with great

economy and skill. As one who grew up in

Alice Springs, Tacey’s account bears the stamp

of lived experience.

The process of ‘re-sacralizing’ our experi- ence emerges as ‘a social and political neces-

sity’. According to Tacey, ‘the ecological crisis

is at bottom a psychological and spiritual

crisis. These deeper roots to the problem

will have to be explored if there is to be any

lasting change’. Hence, this is an outstanding book that goes right to the core of our

major concerns: meaninglessness, avoidance, violence. ‘Society becomes a demonic parody

of sacred reality when society no longer

recognizes the divine sources from which its

own life springs’. The more people who will read this book and reflect on it deeply, the better. There are few richer and more reward-

ing starting points. Whereas Tacey sketches in the territory of

myth and spirituality, Warren Ziegler provides

a kind of step-by-step practical guide to the

recovery of a personal spiritual vision. Ziegler

is well known in the futures field for the

workshops on ‘imaging the future’ developed by himself and Elise Boulding over many

years. As a result of this work, he steadily

accumulated a wealth of understanding and

knowledge about group dynamics and per- sonal change strategies. In particular, there

was a shift from fairly superficial ‘techniques’

to a deeper understanding of the central role

of spirituality in coming to grips with the

dilemmas of self and the world. The book is a compendium of such ‘trans-

formative practices’. Topics covered include:

deep listening, deep questioning, deep learn-

ing and deep imaging. These are followed by

what Ziegler calls the meta-disciplines; that is,

intentioning, discerning, dialogue and the

centrality of deep learning. I find it impossible

to summarize the contents of these chapters because they are essentially experimental and

need to be taken as such. The life of the work is

not in the text but in the many ways the text can be applied. Ziegler not only speaks of ‘the

sociability of spirit’, the book exudes it. Anyone who is interested in tools for

exploring the path of spiritual awakening will

find this book a treasure trove of insight and

applied understanding. It can be used as a

handbook for a personal journey. However, its

best use is as a guide to the practice of

enspiriting, which is essentially a group

activity. I imagine, therefore, that it will be

invaluable to all those groups who are already

working in this direction, or would like to do

so. It is an impressive and deeply facilitative achievement.

I have often suggested that the solutions to

the global predicament are all within reach

and are prefigured somewhere within the

broad futures literature. In their own way, each of these fascinating and productive books helps to substantiate that view.

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