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FUTURES
Futures 40 (2008) 173189
www.elsevier.com/locate/futures

Every today was a tomorrow: An integral method for indexing

the social mediation of preferred futures$
Mark G. Edwards
Business School, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia
Available online 5 December 2007

Abstract
The visions we hold of the future, whether they are of utopias or dystopias, are not simply a matter of personal
imagination. Our conceptions of the future are mediated to us as much as they are privately created by us. To this point,
futures studies have not developed an integrative and broad-based framework for considering the social mediation of
futures. Understanding how social mediation impacts on our futures visioning requires an interpretive framework that can
cope with the multilayered nature of futures visions, the worldviews that are associated with them and a theory of
mediation that can be applied within such a context of depth. Using theory-building methodology, the current paper
attempts this task by describing a theory of social mediation that builds on the integral futures framework. An application
of the framework explores the relationship between various scenarios of health care futures, their associated worldviews
and the mediational factors that inuence our visions of future health care systems.
r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Creating our shared future

A drawing by the Australian cartoonist, Michael Leunig, depicts a timid yet hopeful human gure marching
along a pathway that is being laid down at his feet as he walks. The pathway is coming out of the top of the
gures head. It curls gracefully through the air, then circles down to become the path on which he expectantly
treads. The caption reads [1]:
Let it go. Let it out.
Let it all unravel.
Let it free and it can be
A path on which to travel.
This beautiful image conveys a hopeful message of personal spontaneity and creative freedom that we might
all aspire to on our pathways into the future. We might also imagine a similar drawing with a hopeful
community of such gures creating a broad pathway into its own collective future. While such images portray
a scenario of self-creation and of self-determined futures, the reality is that the pathways appearing before us
$

Christopher Edwards, Grade 1, West Coast Steiner School.

Tel.: +61 08 9448 9246.

E-mail address: mark.gerard.edwards@gmail.com

0016-3287/$ - see front matter r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.futures.2007.11.014

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M.G. Edwards / Futures 40 (2008) 173189

are not ones of our own independent creation. Nor should they be. Our future is a matter of shared revelation
and co-construction. Clement Bezold draws a link between shared visions and the essential nature of
community:
Creating a shared vision for community is essential. The vision, in this context, is the shared commitment
by community to the future it will create. Visioning processes ask the community to consider what is the
best that could be achieved to which community members would commit themselves to creating. [2, p. 467]
The pathways on which we tread hopefully into the future coalesce out of a myriad range of factorslocal
and global, natural and manmade, the expected and the unpredictable. Even though the future arises out of an
innitely complex mix of occurrences, the sense-making process of stepping out into the imaginary is always a
communal one [3]. This means that others share in the creation of our future. To use the terminology of the
culturalhistorical school of human development, we can say that we are all involved in the shared mediation
of our futures. The sunlit side of this perspective is that we co-create our visions of tomorrow and that these
images shape our future realities. The shadow side is that powerful social organisations and institutions,
dominant worldviews and controlling media will have a commensurate mediating inuence on what we
ourselves consider to be our preferred futures. These mediating factors are powerful shapers of our individual
and collective dreams, hopes and expectations of the future. Consequently, they are also pivotal in creating
our interpretations of present and past realities. Powerful agents of social mediation form as well as feed into
the plans and visions generated by what individuals and organisations regard as possible and even preferable.
In this paper, I want to develop an understanding of social mediation as it applies to futures studies. While
the power of the mediating image [4], and the role of inuential social agents [5] have been frequently
recognised, to this point, futures studies has not developed an integrative framework for considering the social
mediation of futures. Understanding how social mediation impacts on our visioning of the future requires an
interpretive framework that can cope with the multilayered nature of futures visions, the worldviews that are
associated with them and a theory of mediation that can be applied within a critical and nonreductive context
of depth [6]. Using theory-building methodology, I attempt this task by describing a theory of social
mediation that builds on the integral futures framework. An application of the framework explores the
relationship between various scenarios of health care futures, their associated worldviews and the mediational
factors that inuence our visions of future health care systems.
2. Mediationpast, present and future
In the context of social change and development, mediation means something more than the standard
dictionary denition of the activity of an intermediate agent or mechanism [7], or the relationship between
two differing persons or things [5]. Because humans possess reexive consciousness, mediation not only
refers to the nature of what goes on between peopleintermediate mechanismsbut also to the process of
co-creation between the social world and the internal world of ideas, feelings, and personal development.
Mediation is an active process that transforms the agents involved. Quoting Vygotsky [8] on this issue,
Wertsch and Alvarez [9] point out that we are thoroughly changed by the mediational means by which we
communicate:
Mediational means such as language and technical tools do not simply facilitate forms of action that would
otherwise occur. Instead, by being included in the process of behaviour, the psychological tool alters the
entire ow and structure of mental functions. It does this by determining the structure of a new
instrumental act, just as a technical tool alters the process of a natural adaptation by determining the form
of labour operations.
Consequently, mediation is intimately involved in social transformation. The concept of social mediation
comes from the sociogenetic school of human development represented in the works of such pioneers as Lev
Vygotsky, James Mark Baldwin, Josiah Royce and George Herbert Mead [10]. This perspective considers
that, Inner consciousness is socially organised by the importation of the social organisation of the outer
world [11, p. 406]. That importation occurs through the process of social mediation and, for this reason; the
social dimension of consciousness is regarded as primary in time and in fact [12].

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One of the benets of the sociogenetic approach is that it discloses the powerful links and immediacies
between the macro-world of social organisation and the micro-world of individual agency. Mediation draws
our attention to the social origin of personal processes. As another of Vygotskys students, Alexander Luria,
puts it,
In order to explain the highly complex forms of human consciousness one must go beyond the human
organism. One must seek the origins of conscious activity y in the external processes of social life, in the
social and historical forms of human existence [13, p. 25].
Social mediation has two major aspects. It provides (i) a clear explanation for how the social becomes
internalised within the personal, and (ii) it describes how those internalisations are related to the
developmental dynamics of human consciousness. In the rst aspect, we have a rich theory for how the
social becomes personal. That process involves cultural tools and artefacts, such as physical tools, gestures,
but also cultural symbols, signs and language. This aspect of mediation focuses on the means by which an
individual developmentally internalises the social dimension of their environment over time. One of
Vygotskys eminent students, Alexei Leontiev, summarises this view in saying that [14, p. 8],
Individual consciousness, as a specically human form of the subjective reection of objective reality, may
be understood only as the product of those relations and mediacies that arise in the course of the
establishment and development of society.
All social mediation is a cultural process passed on from one generation to another. As such, mediation is a
collaborative affair, continuously reconstructed and adapted by the members of that social collective. The
development of mediational means is grounded within sociocultural practices [15]. The second aspect relates to
the internalisation of processes that were once mediated through external means. This internalisation becomes
a self-reexive process by which images, inner speech and mental operations mediate an individuals own
experiential existence. Here, an individuals own subjective reality is mediated by his/her activity, perceptions,
internal dialogues, memories and expectations [16].
Taken together these notions form a understanding that people both individually and collectively
engage in a reciprocal process of identity building through mediating processes that are simultaneously
context sensitive and context producing [15]. In this sense, all memories and all imaginings are mediated.
All our pasts and all our futures are brought into the present through the intercession of mediating
go-betweens. Both foresight and hindsight are shaped by intervening means of communication and
interpretation. This is not only true at the personal level, where private worldviews and individual behaviours
lter and shape our particular readings of the past and future, but also, and perhaps even more signicantly, at
the social level where collective myth, science, culture, social institutions, and the mass media create their
versions of the past and project their versions of the future. Our understanding of what is gone and what is yet
to come is woven out of numerous, intermediating strands of such things as individual, group and institutional
sense-making, interpretive worldviews, natural events, cultural identities, empirical realities, historical
occasions, and developmental imperatives. We sometimes recognise this in the private sphere of personal life
where consumer behaviour is so closely tied to the mediating dream world of advertising, but we do not so
often acknowledge the impact of mediation on our future visions within the organisational, national, and
global levels of life.
3. Mediation and futures studies methods
All analytical methods concerned with tapping into what drives foresight and futures visioning need
to take into account the impact of mediating factors. Commonly used futures methods such as scenario
building, trend analysis, Delphi methods and forecasting do not necessarily expose the underlying factors
that set the boundaries of both content and context. They often simply create their plans and estimations
without considering the cultural and epistemological factors that shape our understanding of what the
future may hold. More recently, the concept of a multilayered social foresight has been proposed to
describe the emergent capacities involved in exploring futures [17]. Referring to this concept Hayward
notes [18],

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The expression of foresight is mediated by the historical, cultural and social milieu in which it is practiced
and what emerges is a layering of foresight.
The same might be said for the expression of hindsight. There is really no single, monological, uniformly
shared history that might be called the past. Or, perhaps it might be more realistic to say that the past is
always a negotiated coalescence of multiple histories; a manifold past born of local histories, objective
realities, grand historical movements, and cultural narratives. This does not mean that all histories are simply
imagined, but rather, that all history involves interpretative mediation. Just as there will always be numerous
futures for any present, there are also an abundant number of pasts from which we choose to make sense of
our current situation. Past, present and future inuence and recreate each other and constitute anything but
the simple linear timeline that mechanistic worldviews would have us believe. As Slaughter states [19],
To put it briey, our history, identity and achievements in the past affect our perception, understanding and
focus in the present which, in turn, inuence our plans, projects and future goals. These connections are
even richer since the ow between them is multidirectional. For example, hopes or fears about futures may
not just affect the present, they may also cause one to reconsider aspects of past experience.
The views we have of our probable pasts and possible futures are neither interpretive nor empirical givens
that are simply presented to us in our experience of the present. Each encountered moment arises out of the
convergence of histories and prospects that come to us via mediating processes, entities and conditions, some
of which we are aware and some of which we are not. Fig. 1 shows some of the mediating agents, i.e. the tools,
technologies, and internalised capacities that channel the past and the future into the present. These mediating
agents can function at the micro level of personal memory and visions as well as at the macro level of collective
history and futures planning.
The past and the future are identical in so far as they are both continuously recreated in the present by
mediating means. While our personal and communal accounts and remembrances of things past are grounded
in observable empirical traces and convincing social agreements they are also, at precisely the same time,
products of personal and cultural interpretation mediated by the interior and exterior realities we inhabit. And
so it is with our dreams and estimations about the future. There are multiple factors within both the private
and public realms that, in some way, mediate our visions of the future. These mediating inuences are present
in formal futures research just as much as they are present in the informal sphere of private dreams.
Futurist Fred Polaks book [4], The Image of the Future can be read as a catalogue of mediating artefacts
that have guided, inspired and deceived us in our visioningthe legends, myths, theologies, histories and

Collective means of
mediating the past:
mass media, books, news,
internet, scientific knowledge,
oral histories, national sagas,
museums, cultural traditions,
commemorative events

Past

Collective means of
mediating the future:
government planning, movies,
corporate advertising, TV,
marketing, futures markets,
organizational goals, political
discourse,religious myths

Present

Individual means of
mediating the past:
personal memories, physical
mementos, diaries,
heirlooms, photos, personal
narratives, family anecdotes,
written records, aging bodies

Future

Individual means of
mediating the future:
personal goals & plans, family
plans, day dreams, spiritual
beliefs, personal dedications &
resolutions, vocational callings,
personal visions & dreams

Fig. 1. The mediation of pasts and futures.

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political and economic reications that have encouraged and constrained our deepest aspirations. Polak
points out that the mediating image of the future images can lead us on to strive for futures that nurture
what is best in us but can also tap into our meanest intents and can be manipulated to lower our vision to the
narrow elds of self-interested parochialism. Polak goes so far as to suggest that the analysis of mediating
images provides a method for forecasting the future [4, p. 300].
The concept of the image of the future has made possible the move from diagnosis to prognosis. This is
possible because of the intimate relationship between the image of the future and the future. The image of
the future can act not only has a barometer, but as a regulatory mechanism which alternatively opens and
shuts the dampers on the mighty blast furnace of culture. It not only indicates alternative choices and
possibilities but actively promotes certain choices and in effect puts them to work in determining the future.
A close examination of prevailing images, then, puts us in a position to forecast the probable future.
One of the implications of Polaks view is that the control of collective images, mythologies, interpretive
frameworks, political discourse and shared worldviews, i.e. those social means of mediating visions of the
future, can not only inuence our choices but can also substantially determine what those choices might be.
Research methods that analyse images of the future, such as preferred futures visioning [20], need to tackle the
task of uncovering the layers of mediation that promote certain kinds of futures over others. As with all
complex social processes, collective means of mediating futures exist at a number of levels. Some relate to
cosmetic issues such as what type of running shoe I might want to buy next week. Others can involve global
matters concerning, for example, global warming or fair trade. Some images of the future signicantly
inuence individual choices while others determine international policies and multilateral agreements that
impact on billions of lives.
Fig. 2 shows the iterative nature of this inuence. Our preferred futures have a powerful inuence on the
actual direction that we focus our creative and material resources. These preferences are valuable commodities
over which other social entities compete for positions of inuence. For example, a future that values the
consumption of the latest technology has immense importance for organisations that produce high-tech
gadgets. Visions of futures framed within the assumptions of endless economic growth are of great importance
for certain political and organisational entities whose existence relies on such assumptions. Preferred futures
that value global approaches to addressing environmental, ecological, and social concerns will attract the
interests of NGOs and community groups who seek to have input into alternative visions. These mediating
entities develop technologies, craft messages, implement strategies and build infrastructures that are designed
to shape or, at least, signicantly inuence our preferred futures. The mediating means for doing this are
numerous and include those elements listed in the top right box of Fig. 1. These mediational means can also be
seen in hierarchical terms, ranging from simple material tools and signs [21] all the way up to sophisticated
technological systems and ideologies [14]. Zinchenko [22] has developed an extensive model of mediation at

Processes & entities

that mediate our
visions of the future

Our

Our

Present

Preferred
Futures

Fig. 2. The mediation of preferred futures.

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The Overall Direction of Development

178

Spiritual activity
Holistic activity
Personal activity
Social activity
Goal-directed activity
Self-consciousness act
Intentional operation
Physical motion
Signposts of
Development

Sacred
Art/Practice

Spiritual Ego

Conceptual
Frame

Autonomous Ego

Collective
Myth

Independent Ego

Communicative
Symbol

Relational Ego

Sense-making
Behaviour

Membership Ego

Functional
Word
Physical
Sign
Mediational
Means

Corporal Ego
Undifferentiated
Forms of
identity

Fig. 3. Mediation and personal development.

the level of individual human development (see Fig. 3) and similar processes occur in the sphere of collective
development [23].
Collective forms of mediation, e.g. electronic media, economics structures and public policies, perform
precisely the same role in the social sphere as signs, gestures, and symbols do in the personal sphere. They can
open up or, alternatively, severely limit our collective visions of the future in the same way that the
expectations we have for our personal lives inuence the choices we make, the plans we develop and the visions
we nurture for our long-term future.
There are large-scale social changes that are dramatically increasing the importance of social mediation in
the collective spheres. First, the process of mediation becomes more important as the distance grows between
the agents involved. The sense of economic and political disempowerment and dislocation is growing in both
developed and developing countries across the globe [24]. That distance creates a space where the role of media
becomes ever more important. Second, as the complexity of the work, educational and informational
environments grows, people rely more heavily on channels of communication and sense-making that are easy
to access, simpler to understand and more diversionary and entertaining. Various forms of mass media,
especially electronic media, are once again moving to ll those functions in peoples lives. For many decades,
organisations have recognised the crucial importance of the media as a tool of social communication and
inuence.
Given the importance of social mediation to the development of preferred futures, it is puzzling that futures
studies has not devoted more attention to theory building in this area. In the following sections, I propose a
general framework for conceptualising mediational processes within a futures studies context. To do this,
I will draw on ideas from the emerging eld of integral futures studies [19,25] and from the study of mediation
in human development [26].
4. The mediation of depth
Mediation does not only occur at the level of conscious awareness. As depicted in Fig. 3, mediation also
operates within multiple levels of contextual reference. For example, when we watch a movie or a play in a
theatre, it is not only a specic plot and its characters that enter into our inner life. Primordial fears, myths,
stereotypes, deep ambitions, desires and spiritual sensitivities also become internalised into the complex mix of
our interior world. Social exchange, even in the passive spaces of mass media and entertainment, is inherently
multileveled. Consequently, mediation is as much about depth and the layering of the human psyche as it is
about the communication of information and news.
Several authors have drawn attention to the layered nature of interpretation in futures thinking [31]. The
eld of critical futures studies (CFS) has considered ways of systematically studying the depth dimension of

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Surface level

The Litany approach:

simple documenting and
extrapolating from trends & surveys

179

Nave theory and

mass media

Systems level

The Structural approach:

searching for causes, analysing
policy, applying conventional theory

Paradigm level

The Critical approach:

questions frames of interpreting &
legitimating discourses

Postmodern theory,
qualitative research

Multiparadigm
level

The Epistemological
approach: considers fundamental
assumptions and forms of knowing

Multiparadigm theory,
mixed methods

Metatheoretical
level

The Integral approach:

considers all levels ranging from
popular to the systematic

Mainstream theory,
quantitative research
Possible and
Preferred
Futures

Integrated metatheory, &

mixed research methods

Fig. 4. Layers of analysis in futures studies.

those powers, discourses, and interpretive frameworks that have formative inuence over our collective visions
of the future [2729]. CFS has drawn attention to the multilayered nature of this process and developed several
analytical methods for unwrapping these layers [30,31]. The analysis of how futures views are mediated
requires a critical focus that not only identies the layers of social power involved but also an epistemological
focus that can uncover core assumptions. As Naismith explains,
Futures studies can be undertaken at a supercial level extrapolating trends, at a pragmatic level which
tends to be quite empirical and focused on particular problems, or at deeper epistemological or critical
levels that focuses on the assumptions that frame particular worldviews. [32]
The analysis of the mediation of preferred futures needs to involve at least these critical and epistemological
capacities. While the descriptive and structural analysis of social problems, trends, survey ndings and the like
is important in gathering futures-related information, a much deeper analytical disclosure of worldviews,
frames of reference and epistemologies is needed here. Moreover, I maintain that a systematic examination of
the layers of social mediation is only possible at an integral level of analysis, i.e. one that not only considers
particular worldviews but how those worldviews relate to each other. It is only at this level of interpretive
depth that the fundamental drivers that shape our visions are disclosed. As such, integral theory offers a form
of what is called a generalised layered methodology (GLM) framework.
GLM enables the practitioner to seek greater interpretive depth and to progressively move to deeper levels
of understanding as new layers of meaning and sense-making are uncovered or constructed-to whatever
depth is necessary or appropriate given the nature of the foresight engagement. [19]
Fig. 4 shows the layers of analysis that are available to futures studies in the context of the social mediation
of preferred futures [see also 30,31]. The surface level approach of simply documenting and describing the
litany of problems and popular conceptions of the future is facilitated by na ve personal understandings and
mass media. Deeper levels of analysis come from the application of conventional empirical approaches for
researching structural causes. The critical and epistemological levels delve into the interpretive layers of
explanation. Finally, integral futures methods bring together multiple perspectives and levels of analysis into a
coherent framework for uncovering and situating the truths of as many approaches as possible. The following
section outlines how an integral futures approach can explore the impact of social mediation on our images of
the future.
5. Integral theory lenses and futures studies
A detailed introduction to integral theory and its relevance for futures studies has previously been provided
by Richard Slaughter [33]. In that paper, Slaughter describes the basic elements of integral theory and their

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M.G. Edwards / Futures 40 (2008) 173189

potential application to futures research. Readers may refer to that paper for more information regarding the
basic elements of the theory. The following discussion concentrates on the particular features of integral
theory relevant to the topic of the social mediation of preferred futures.
Integral theory, as developed largely by the American philosopher Ken Wilber [34], is a theory-building
endeavour that attempts to integrate as many valid systems of knowledge as possible into an inclusive,
metatheoretical framework. This endeavour is not a synthetic one, in that it attempts to supercially unify the
plurality of views, rather, integral theorists use a method of integral pluralism to acknowledge the multiplicity
of perspectives [19]. The aim of applying this method is to develop conceptual frameworks for critically
examining the contributions as well as the limitations of specic theories and traditions of knowledge
acquisition.
For the purposes of this paper, it is useful to consider integral theory as a system of analytical lenses (critical
frames of reference) that can provide a clearer, more comprehensive picture of social occasions. Table 1 lists
the major lenses currently used in integral approaches, including some that I have recently proposed. In
several publications [3537], I have added to the integral toolkit a number of conceptual lenses that have not
been previously accommodated, in particular the learning lens (integral cycle of knowledge/learning) and the
social mediation lens.
The conceptual lenses described in Table 1 combine to form powerful tools for thinking about social events.
For example, Wilber frequently crosses the interiorexterior and individual-collective dimensions to form his
well-known Four Quadrants model. The quadrants model can be combined with other lenses, such as the
transformational change lens (the spectrum model) and the developmental lines lens, to derive various forms
of Wilbers All-Quadrants, All Levels (AQAL) framework [37]. Another example of how these lenses can be
creatively linked is seen in the work of Bradbury and Lichtenstein [38]. These organisational theorists cross the
perspectives lens with the interiorexterior dimension to form a model of organisational relationality. In an
ambitious attempt to bring multiple lenses together into an integrated meta-system, I have amalgamated
several lenses to form, what I describe as, the integral holon [36]. These are all examples of the exibility of
integral metatheorising model in analysing social situations.

Table 1
Conceptual lenses used in Integral metatheory
Integral theory lens (conceptual frame of
reference)

Lens description and domain of application

1. Perspectives lens

Focuses on 1st, 2nd and 3rd person accounts in both their singular and plural
settings; discloses the subjective, relational and objective worlds
Recognises subjective (tangible) and objective (intangible) realities; discloses
relations between the world of consciousness and the world of behaviour
Provides a window on the micro-world of personal events, the meso-world of
group events, and the macro-world of socio-cultural events; situates human
activity within the spectrum of ecological environmentsmicro, meso and macro
Discloses the spectrum of developmental stages (paradigm changes) in the
personal and collective
Recognises the various domains of development; discloses the complex world of
multidimensional development
Is sensitive to unifocal, self-directed realities and multifocal, other-centred,
communal realities; discloses agentic and relational identities
Sees the distinction between transformational change and translational change;
discloses the need for both hierarchical and heterarchical understandings of
change
Recognises the validity of evolutionary and integrative dynamics; discloses the
world of growth and integrative sustainability
Recognises the validity of single-, double- and triple-loop learning; discloses the
world of learning through action, reection, interpretation and validation
Opens up the world of social mediation and the sociogenetic sources of
consciousness and behaviour

2. The interiorexterior lens

3. The individualcollective lens (multilevel or
micro, meso, macro lens)
4. The developmental lens of levels/stages
5. The streams lens (domains or lines)
6. The agencycommunion lens
7. The lens of transformational and
translational change
8. The transition process lens
9. The learning lens
10. The lens of social mediation

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Of particular importance in our discussion of mediation and the creation of our visions of the future is the
notion of integral perspectives. The importance of perspectives in the discussion of human social relations has
been a consistent feature of the organisational theory of Bill Torbert [39]. Wilber [40] has also described how
the perspectival structure of language, as represented in the use of rst, second and third person pronouns in
their single and plural forms, provides a window into a fundamental characteristic of reality [40, para. 259].
perspectives y are embedded in all major natural languagesnamely, rst person (singular: I; plural: we);
second person (singular: you; plural: you/we); and third person (singular: him, her, it; plural: they,
them, its).
These lenses are relevant to the present discussion in that they disclose fundamental paradigms for
conceptualising social realities. Because of this, these integral lenses tap into the worldviews that structure our
interpretations of reality. Integral analyses of social events have, to this point, focused on the developmental
levels identied through the transformation lens as the primary generators of worldviews [see 41]. Slaughter
has drawn attention to the importance for futures studies of the integral analysis of the spectrum of sociocultural worldviews [33]. However, levels of transformation are not the only way of conguring a model of
worldviews using integral metatheory principles. Fundamental paradigms and worldviews can also be
identied and analysed using the other lenses listed in Table 1.
A basic matrix of worldviews, derived from the ten integral lenses described above, is presented in Table 2
(in the form of ideal types). The worldviews correspond to the dening elements of each of those lenses. For
example, the individual-collective lens is dened by the distinction between individuals and groups. The
corresponding worldviews for this lens are those that see the causal source of social events in terms of those
distinctions. The ideal type of the individualist worldview sees the individual person as the causal means for
achieving worthwhile social goals. They also see the behaviour and/or attitudes of individuals as the cause of
social ills. Consequently, the mediational means by which they hope to achieve their preferred futures always
involve the targeting of individuals (and individual groups, e.g. families) and the denial or neglect of collectives
(and collective networks, e.g. unions). In contrast, collectivist worldviews do the same with groups. Their
pathways to the future target collectives through social policies and tend to underplay the importance of the
microlevel of individuals and family units.
Moving on from the worldviews associated with the individual-collective lens, we can also identify
commensurate sets of worldviews through the interiorexterior, individualcollective and evolutioninvolution lenses. The interiorexterior dimension identies worldviews that are denite by a focus on either the
intangible (subjective) or the tangible (objectives) aspects of reality. The individualcommunal dimension
refers to worldviews that focus on either the individual person or the collective group. The evolutioninvolution dimension relates to a regard for, on the one hand, expansion and transcendent growth or, on the other
hand, healing, sustainability and integration.
Healthy forms of worldviews hold in balance the interior and exterior, the agentic and communal, and the
evolutionary and involutionary aspects of life. When any of these basic worldviews are seriously imbalanced
and a social entity experiences, behaves and interprets life through this distorted lens then some form of
social pathology ensues. For example, when a social system develops a bias towards the exteriors and does not
nourish its interiors or acknowledge the interiors of others, we see the pathological forms of materialism and
positivism. Wilber has called one form of this exteriorism pathology Flatland [42] and rightly points out the
catastrophic impact that such distortions in the collective spiral have on all individuals and collectives that are
caught up in its biased and imbalanced worldview. We might also say that interiorist pathologies are also
apparent in individuals and collectives for example, in some aspects of the New Age movements and quietist
anti-social sects that focus entirely on interior transcendent worlds. More importantly, a type of interiorist
pathology is probably behind much of the withdrawal from active community and political participation that
is so characteristic of contemporary life. Similarly, Wilber has described the worldview pathologies that result
from an imbalance in the growth-integration dynamics. When the evolutionary progressivism pole is
dominant the result is the dissociative pathologies of the other-worldly Ascenders [see 43, for a discussion of
this growth pathology in economics]. When there is a bias to the involutionary regressivism pole then the
retrograde pathologies of this-worldly Descenders results [44].

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Table 2
Integral lenses and fundamental worldviews
Integral lens

Corresponding worldviews

1. Perspectives

First person: values independence, self-focus, and selfagency

2. Interiorexterior

Interior: experiential, interpretive, artistic

3. Individualcollective

Individual: worldviews that see the individual as the source of good and bad Collective: worldviews that see groups as the source of all good and bad

4. Development levels

The spectrum of developmental worldviews

Physiocentric, Egocentric, Ethnocentric, Sociocentric, Worldcentric, Kosmocentric
Worldviews related to particular developmental lines

Exterior: material, functional, behavioural

Spirituality
line

Economic
line

Technological line

6. Transformation
translation

Transformation: see change in terms of qualitative shifts in a hierarchy

Translation: see change in terms of conservatism, status quo, stability

7. Agencycommunion

Agency: masculine, directive, unifocal, top-down leadership, competitive

Communal: feminine, networking, consultative, bottom-up leadership

8. Growthintegration

Growth: interprets all social events in terms of the need for growth and
expansion

Integration: interprets all social events in terms of the need for integrative
health

9. Learning

Worldviews related to learning styles

Active

Interpretive

10. Mediation

Reective

Validative

Unmediated: interprets experience, activity and development as unmediated Mediated: interprets experience, activity and development as mediated,
socialised

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Needs line

Third person: values science, the big picture, the objective

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M.G. Edwards / Futures 40 (2008) 173189

5. Developmental lines

Second person: values

relationality, family,
communal processes

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Table 3
Forms of pathological reductionism in social worldviews
Integral lens

Type of basic
reductionism

Examples of pathological reductionism

1. Perspectives

First person
Second person
Third person

Egocentrism, consumerism, social dislocation

Co-dependency, the rescuer syndrome, enmeshment
Scientism, dissociated abstractionism, social indifference

2. Interiorexterior

Interiorism

Social disengagement, voter apathy, solipsism, New Ageism, some

fundamentalist movements, quietism
Wilbers Flatland, radical behaviourism, physicalism, narrow
empiricism, logical positivism, materialism

Exteriorism
3. Individualcollective

Individualism
Collectivism

4. Developmental levels

Pre-Rational

Rational
Trans-Rational

Thatcherism, market capitalism, laissez faire economics, rational

economics, war on drugs/terror
Communism, National socialism, cultural and political
totalitarianism, military institutions
Hedonism, physical/sexual addiction, body and sensory
infatuation, fundamentalism, literalism, lack of critical culture, the
descenders
Dissociative rationalism, extreme scepticism, extreme secularism,
Spiritualism, elevationism, spiritual escapism, spiritual
consumerism, the Ascenders, physical and mental mortication

5. Stream/lines

Lines of development

Line absolutism, over-specialisation

6. Transformationtranslation

Transformational
growth

Pathological forms of the spectrum of development stages, e.g.,

fundamentalism, secularism, relativism, developmentalism

Translational growth

Legitimisation of status quo, lack of risk taking, excessive

resistance to change

7. Agencycommunion

Agency
Communion

Egocentrism, domineering boss, the CEO as saviour

The indecisive boss, leaderless organisations

8. Growthintegration

Evolutionism (the
Ascenders)
Involutionism (the
Descenders)

Growth fetish, corporate expansionism, self-development fads,

personal makeovers, pathological consumption
The desire for romantic fantasy, hedonism, morbid nostalgia,
regressivism, pre-forms of anarchism, anti-development

9. Knowledge and learning

Injunctive
Reective
Interpretive
Validative

Methodological reductionism, learning by rote, positivism

Solipsism, mentalism, rationalism
Interpretivism, deconstructionism
Social constructionism, parochialism

10. Mediation

Reality as mediated
Reality as unmediated

Media blame, abrogation of personal responsibility

Emergentism, developmentalism

A similar logic can be followed to generate ideal types of worldviews for each of the other integral lenses
(see Table 3). For bipolar lenses that there are three ideal types of worldviews that can be identiedthe two
extremes ends and the position of balance that represents a middle way. This middle position recognises the
validity of both ends of the worldview dimension. The extreme worldview positions represent forms of social
pathology that might also be regarded as a type of worldview reductionism. For example, in the
individualcollective dimension the extreme positions of individualism and collectivism are reductionist
worldviews that ultimately do not achieve their desired ends and often result in unhealthy outcomes. The
middle position, i.e. one that includes strategies aimed at both individual (micro) and collective (macro) levels
of society, avoids these extremes and engages with multiple levels of social causation.
Various combinations of these lenses can be used for indexing the fundamental worldviews of agents
involved in the social mediation of futures. This integral indexing of worldviews and their associated

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M.G. Edwards / Futures 40 (2008) 173189

pathologies makes available a means for identifying the patterns by which we construe or misconstrue our
pasts, interpret or misinterpret our present and enable or disable our futures. In particular, the grouping of the
mediation lens with other integral lenses can provide a method for mapping the social development of
preferred futures. In the following section, the area of healthcare futures provides an example of how this
might be done.
6. An example application of the method in health care services
The future of health care is one of the most pressing public issues that countries are facing across the globe.
Health care is one of those areas where futures research is particularly relevant. Spiralling costs and the
intergenerational nature of changes in health systems combine to place health care rmly on the list of critical
futures issues. Health care scenarios also have implications for broader questions about our future. For
example, health futures often invoke issues concerning personal well being, social inequality and priorities in
government spending. Clement Bezold points out that [45, p. 925],
[Health futures] is often used to provoke us into thinking about futures that could be dramatically
differentboth because the future often turns out that way and to give us the option of considering what
we would want to create which might be far better than today.
Health is also a major battleground between many important and powerful social organisations and
agencies. One of the notable features of media reports on the increasing incidence of obesity is the conict
between health ministers, food company representatives, advertising agencies, parent groups and communitybased health organisations. There are many players within society wanting to inuence personal and public
visions of our health futures. This situation is likely to become more intense as public resources become
scarcer. Underlying these conicts lies a number of fundamental worldviews each battling to achieve priority.
In introducing a special issue of Futures journal dedicated to this topic, Bezold points towards two
fundamentally different health futures, each contesting for a dominant place in the minds of legislators, health
leaders, insurance agencies and health consumers.
Health futures will grow in importance as healthcare spending remains at 618% of the GNPs of developed
countries. Healthcare touches all of us. And health-care systems face major strategic choices, not the least
of which is where whether health-care will focus on health promotion and health gains, or limit itself to
after-the-fact treatment of symptoms [45, p. 924].
The two scenarios mentioned here, clinical treatment and health promotion, represent two very different
ways of thinking about health, two very different worldviews and values systems. On one hand, we have values
of individualism, personal choice, deregulation and the free market and on the other, we have collectivism,
social responsibility, regulation and the fair market. Of course, the reality is that a mix of these values can also
be present in peoples images of health futures. However, at the macro-level of politics and infrastructure, a
nations social and material resources are channelled towards one option among several, and those options
reect a consistent ideological and values base. Organisations, stakeholders and interest groups align
themselves with particular scenarios to further their own interests and those of their members. Alternative
worldviews go largely unnoticed in the public eye simply because they lack mediational power. That is, they
struggle to have a presence in all those public forums, such as electronic and print media, advertising, popular
culture and political forums that convey and contextualise the options that are available to us.
Bezold goes on to describe how the study of health futures can help to create new visions through the
application of such research tools as scenario building and vision development.
Health futures can provide effective tools for confronting these choices. y Scenarios will continue to be a
popular tool for summarising the inherent uncertainty and for pressing our thinking beyond current
conventions. Vision development and other public participation tools will likewise be important for
reminding us that we do create our futures and we can cooperatively dream, envision and inspire ourselves
to create far better futures. [45, p. 924]

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While such methods are invaluable for researching alternative visions, what is left out of this picture is the
understanding that futures methods must not only remind us that we do create our futures but perform the
epistemological task of examining how those visions are interpreted and mediated at the societal level. This
function pertains to the level of futures studies methods that are concerned with the connections between
collective and individual systems of meaning making and intersubjectivity, what Richard Slaughter calls
epistemological futures work. Applying the model of integral lenses and the concept of worldviews allows us
to analyse the social mediation of health futures at this epistemological level to which Slaughter refers. The
following provides an example of this method.
In a paper design to stimulate public debate on healthcare values William Rowley [46] presents three
value driven scenarios of health futures for the United States of America. The scenarios are as follows [46]:
Scenario 1: The best health service science can deliver
Amazing diagnostics, drugs and procedures make prevention and comprehensive management of chronic
disease part of everyday medicine in 2025. Success breeds high expectations, and healthcare remains the
economic engine of market-based economy, consuming 22 percent GDP y [However] the best of science and
free market place have failed to deliver health-care system that serves all Americans well.
Values base: prevention is scientific, behaviour modification, wide range of drugs and
nutraceuticals, market place resistant to policy initiatives, individuals look for medical
solutions, computer simulations, aggressive science, wellness y with a focus on
meaningful quality-of-life is not viewed as realistic or effective, the driver for effective
disease management is technology, physician-patient relationship is mechanical, medicine remains a private enterprise-based system, 93 million without insurance coverage.

Scenario 2: Health for all

American medicine is more caring, accessible and equitable than virtually any other system. Every
American is entitled to a basic tier of comprehensive health care, funded by the government. y This
surprising transformation only occurred because of a health care crisis.
Values base: a solution that was equitable, focused on needs rather than profits, public
debate on healthcare values, independent commission citizen input, listen special-interest
influence, shared employer-employee payroll tax, tax credits for y lifestyle changes,
provided primary through private enterprise with competition, insurance withered,
slowed development of new pharmaceuticals, proactive steps to maintain well-being,
efficient delivery, cooperation, openness, WE will create a powerful healing system,
openness to admit and learn from mistakes, prevention, teams of providers collaborate,
science and religion combined, health of the society and the whole planet

Scenario 3: Americans choose healthy life

Over the past 22 years healthcare was transformed into a shrinking industry focused on treating diseases
and an exciting new healthy life industry, which is devoted to promoting health and well-being with the
resulting elimination of disease y In 2025 almost one half of health expenditures are for healthy life.
Values base: creating health and well-being, done through their beliefs, Lords, and
actions, which a powerful in creating reality, basic science research y on health and wellbeing, eliminate diseases through beliefs, health behaviour, and preventative therapies,
money was being spent on wellness, the life coach, focused on creating health,
enhancing physical, mental, and spiritual well-being, enhancing health, not reacting to
diseases, people had to pay all the costs, many people are uninsured,

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Table 4
Integral indexing of worldviews for three health futures scenarios
Integral lens

Scenario 1
Science/free market

Scenario 2
Health for all

Scenario 3
Choose healthy life

1.
2.
3.
4.

5. Developmental lines

Third person plural

Exterior
Individual
Physical, emotional, mental
egocentric/ethnocentric
Financial, technological

6. Agencycommunion
7. Transform/translate
8. Growth/integration
9. Learning
10. Social mediation

Agentic
Translational
Growth
Injunctive, instrumental
Unmediated

Multiperspectival
Balanced
Balanced
Physical, emotional, mental,
worldcentric
Technological, interpersonal,
futures-oriented, ethical
Balanced
Balanced
Balanced
Balanced
Balanced

1st and 2nd person singular

Balanced
Individual
Physical, emotional, mental,
spiritual health, sociocentric
Technological, interpersonal,
ethical, futures-oriented
Agentic
Balanced
Growth
Balanced
Unmediated

Perspectives
Interiorexterior
Individualcollective
Developmental levels

The values that underlie the scenarios give indications about the worldviews involved in each of the three
visions of healthcare futures. It should be noted that the present case is for exemplary purposes and that a
rigorous application of the model would require far more detailed information for the indexing of worldviews.
Table 4 categorises these values according to an integral metatheory model of worldviews.
In Table 4 we see that scientic and market driven vision of scenario 1 is characterised by worldview of
individualism, exteriorism, technology and the third-person perspective of science. To a large extent, this
worldview dominates the current health systems of many nations. In varying degrees, the other scenarios offer
a more balanced conception of a healthcare future that is holistic, collective/community focused and
preventative. The exercise of performing an integral indexing of worldviews opens the way up for a further
analysis of the agents involved in the mediation of preferred healthcare futures. We can now go on to ask such
questions as:








What types of worldviews are being mediated by special interests group?

How do the worldviews of mediating agents inuence public (or government) preference for one health care
future over another?
How do the particular worldviews of mediating agents align with those of other interest groups?
Do the worldviews of mediating agents rely on reductive assumptions or are they possessed balanced
worldviews regarding health issues?
Will the worldviews of the mediating agents be threatened by particular health scenarios?
How are popular worldviews inuenced by those of mediating agents?

The method described in the foregoing opens up a futures studies capacity for critically examining such
issues. An integral metatheoretical approach to the mediation of preferred health futures has the potential to
respond to such questions from a perspective of depth as well as breadth [17]. It includes paradigms from both
the interpretive as well as the behavioural domains of science. It includes micro-level paradigms that deal with
the psychological and macro-level paradigms that take a sociological perspective. More importantly, these and
other perspectives are situated within a cohesive conceptual framework. Each of the lenses described here can
be applied in great detail and, particularly when used in combination, they provide powerful means for
analysing the complex processes involved in the mediation of futures visions. Fig. 5 represents the inuence of
mediating agents on the selection of preferred health futures. Pathways to preferred futures are designed and
implemented under the ongoing inuence of multiple mediating agents. In turn, these agents operate from
particular worldviews and each of them has a stake in the type of future that is ultimately selected.
The process by which futures are mediated through social environments is a complex and iterative one.
Fig. 5 suggests that the pathways we build towards our preferred futures are co-constructed by many social
agents and that these need to be as transparent as possible to critical analysis. The capacity for futures studies

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Medical education & training

Clinical medicine interest groups
Medical Technology industry
Conservative political groups
Individualist worldviews
Pharmaceutical
Materialistic worldviews
companies
from popular media
Mediating agents
for Scenario 1
Current visions
of our future

Pathways to Preferred Futures

health system
Mediating agents
for Scenarios 2 & 3
Public health groups
Progressive political groups

Our future
health system
Scenario 1
OR
Scenario 2
OR
Scenario 3
Community organisations
Sustainable worldviews

General medicine interest groups

Holistic & Spiritual worldviews
Alternative worldviews from
public media & internet
Fig. 5. Mediating agents for alternative scenarios of health care futures.

to analyse the mediational processes involved in the construction of these pathways is crucial. As with the
cartoon gure described at the beginning of this essay, mediation transforms consciousness and that, in turn,
opens up new vision of what we regard as possible and preferable.
While the mediation of preferred futures is the result of both micro and macro level processes, it is also
arguable that powerful organisational entities are becoming increasingly inuential in mediating the cultural
worldviews that shape our visions of the future. Organisations are entering times of increasing complexity and
pace of change. Management theorist Dana Lightman has coined the word raplexity to describe the
hyperactive environments in which many businesses currently operate. In response, organisations are
developing sophisticated means for developing capacities of foresight, adaptive learning and long-term
planning. Organisations also react to the uncertainty and unpredictability of change through attempting to
inuence our future visions and the pathways that will lead us there. Political and corporate worlds are caught
between, on the one hand, the need to develop transformative capacities and, on the other, the desire to
maintain the status quo in spite of changing realities. Inuencing our assumptions about what tomorrow may
hold is one most powerful means that organisations have in determining what their futures will look like. Coal
mining companies and car manufacturers have a vested interest in maintaining our current relaxed attitude
towards global warming. If, different values lead to different futures as Rowley suggests, it follows that
maintaining the conventional values that dominate public life will lead to similar futures, or at least thats
what many institutions and organisations seem to hope. However, in wanting to maintain worldviews that
support unsustainable economic and social practices, organisations are placing at risk our capacity to develop
more balanced and integrated views of the future.
7. Conclusion
I have described here an integral method for analysing the worldviews involved in the social mediation of
preferred futures. Considering such issues requires us to consider the impact of powerful social agents on the
directions we set for our local and global communities. Achieving some inuence over our communal and
social vision setting is a prime objective for many individuals and organisations. This is true for both private
and public sectors. It is true for government, commercial, not-for-prot, and community-based organisations.
All visions of the future and products of foresight carry with them personal and cultural predilections that are
not often explicitly stated. The integral indexing of worldviews provides a means for analysing how imagined

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futures are given substance and signicance in the present. They provide a powerful set of tools that allow us
to, as Sohail Inayatullah puts it [30], look beneath the surface of social life, social being, and collectively deal
with the hidden realities and commitments that are found there.

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Mark Edwards is a psychologist and has a background in applied developmental psychology. He has worked with human service
organisations for the past fteen years and is currently completing is PhD with the Integral Leadership Centre, Graduate School of
Management at the University of Western Australia. Contact details: e-mail: mgedwards@graduate.uwa.edu.au.