Intergenerational Challenges: Critical Thinking and Values Based Leadership Seminar

BlogSeminar

6 Sept

Written By Christine Maiden Sharp

Intergenerational Challenges Seminar Feedback, Introduction and Content

Tuesday 30 August 9.00am to 11.30am & 1.30pm – 4.00pm

Wednesday 31 August 9.00am – 11.30am

Moderated by: Neil Jacobstein, Bill English and Susan Houge Mackenzie

Feedback

Over three sessions participants from commerce, government, sport, and students studying engineering, foreign policy and philosophy discussed in-depth the facts, trends and challenges ahead of ‘becoming better ancestors’.

Here is what some had to say:

Had a great time connecting with the fine folks @NZAspen on this complex topic. Even better to talk with a few of our #USNZYouthCouncil members who also participated! Thanks for the stimulating discussion! U.S. Ambassador for NZ, Tom Udall.

I enjoyed the perspectives I heard immensely and wanted to thank you, the facilitators, and participants for the excellent materials and discussion. Catlin Powers, Biome Trust.

I commend the dialogue and thinking across generations and the relentless effort to include a broad range of voices. Questioning with a set of rules in a ‘safe’ environment is a great approach. The moderators were adept and sentient, which in the online space, is uber important, and the calibre of the young people impressive. The more we can converge thinking and dialogue across the generations, the stronger we will become. Keep up the great work! Trevor Moeke, Poutiaki – Director, Te Ao Māori Strategy and Performance, Treasury.

I really enjoyed the seminar last week. It is such a rare opportunity for me to take time out like that – and I do love reading and discussing the big ideas! The particular topic was right on point for our work at Taituarā. In 2019 we launched Navigating Critical Transitions for the 21st Century. The ideas expressed in (most of) the articles were very relevant to our work. We love the idea of promoting Council professionals as good ancestors! Karen Thomas, CEO, Taituara - Local Government Professionals.

I would like to sincerely say thank you, both you personally and Aspen as a whole, for giving me these opportunities to engage with a broad spectrum of thinking and hone my own critical and systems thinking skills. If you had told me five years ago I would be conversing with a KNZM and former Prime Minister I would have spat out my drink. These are things that just do not happen. Yet, thanks to your grace, this did happen, and I am extremely grateful. I hope that I have been able to contribute a tenth as much to these seminars as I have gained. Morgan Dolfing, Engineering student University of Auckland.

The Aspen Intergenerational Challenges Seminar was an invaluable experience for an undergraduate student like myself. Exchanging ideas with expert moderators and a diverse group of attendees was a unique and intellectually stimulating opportunity. I was particularly impressed with the seminar reading list which introduced me to the concept of systems change - an idea that has applications in a wide range of fields. Ethan McCormick, BA/BSc student University of Auckland.

Below is the material sent to the participants in advance prepared by the moderators.

Introduction

This Intergenerational Challenges seminar is the seventh in the Aspen Institute New Zealand series on Critical Thinking and Values Based Leadership. We anticipate continuing to focus on a set of challenging seminar topics including Democratic Threats and Opportunities, Conservation, Education, Public Health, Emergency Response, Polarization and Civility, and other topics.

This seminar focuses on the critical importance of the temporal aspects of decision making. Given the myriad tax, inflation, supply chain, daily news, and market pressures on decision making it is particularly difficult to think long term about the world we are leaving for the next generation. However, although the default framing on "planning for our children and grandchildren" is about financial inheritance, money will inevitably be an important but minority factor in determining the next generation's quality of life. Imagine packing up a small but hyper realistic digital globe, tying a bow around it, and bequeathing it with a flourish to your descendants. You can forecast the current and projected levels of international conflict and cooperation, CO2 levels and climate change, global economic health, ocean health, biodiversity, national and international conflict, and other trending quality of life factors. Whether your forecasts are mostly positive or negative, nonfinancial factors are likely to play the determining role in overall quality of life.

Is all the financial planning we do for the future a good proxy for handing off a positive future for our future generations? Is it an accident that many young people are angry - claiming that the prior generation has systematically mortgaged their future and not acted as responsible stewards of the Earth? Maybe the next generation will enjoy more degrees of freedom, superior health, and a higher quality of life than our own. Likely the actual results will be mixed in complex new ways. This seminar does not presume to provide final answers to these questions. It focuses on two "background" questions:

1) What do we think the longer term consequences are of current social decisions?

2) Is there anything we can do to systematically intervene and improve the probability of more positive long term outcomes?

Given the current practice of hyper discounting the longer term consequences of our decisions, maybe relatively small and early interventions (like compound interest in the financial sphere) could make a significant difference. These questions do not have simple answers, but they may be worth addressing thoughtfully.

What distinguishes this series is that it is inherently interdisciplinary, pairing a commitment to systems thinking, critical problem understanding, and a values-based approach to leadership. While many programs claim interdisciplinary approaches, they mostly stay inside relatively narrow frameworks - either social or technical. And yet our toughest problems such as borrowing and over-spending, racism, international conflict, and the sustainability of the environment persist and fester - often over decades or longer. This is not because the problems are totally impossible to improve systematically, but rather because we have not brought new and effective tools to our problem-solving efforts. We keep doing the same things and expecting different results. That is guaranteed not to work.

Why should we expect that values-based leadership will produce different results? That is a long conversation, but the heart of the answer is that too often leadership is tainted by vested interests, tribal ideology, and short-term thinking. Values based leadership is about taking actions consistent with our highest values such as honesty, integrity, critical thinking, human health, economic flourishing, and environmental sustainability. Rather than promoting slogans or polarized points of view, values-based leadership recognises that effective problem solving results from evidence based solutions, and honouring legitimate tensions between economic efficiency and iv community, as well as tensions between individual freedom and equality. The Aspen Institute has sponsored over 60 years of productive and civil dialog about the trade-offs between these values.

Greta Thunberg, Time Magazine's 2019 Person of the Year said in her first big address at the U.N. Climate Change Conference: “You say you love your children above all else, and yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes.” Thunberg is not a political party leader, billionaire, pop music star, or scientist. However, she has galvanized the outrage of her generation about the failure of prior generations to match their commitments and claims of caring for the future with effective climate action. There are similar expressions of outrage from many diverse communities. And yet, there are real questions about whether all this outrage leads to effective long term solutions.

What makes pairing critical thinking with systems dynamics promising? Critical thinking is about systematically avoiding the bugs and biases that permeate ideology driven systems of thought. It attempts to substitute evidence and rationality for unexamined assumptions and closed minded decision making. Systems dynamics was specifically designed to represent complex problems that change over time, often with feedback effects and temporal trade-offs that are difficult for humans to understand without explicit modelling. Systems thinking is about modelling how systems work and how they develop pathologies. All people inevitably use models for decision making - however simple or complex. Values are about the quality of our goals, but values don't guarantee effectiveness in our systems implementations. Together, these disciplines reinforce both the quality of our objectives and our effectiveness in achieving them via the systems that we design and manage. We claim a thoughtful combination of these approaches is worthy of our examination.

Aspen Institute Seminars are not about delivering simple answers and neat conclusions at the end. Rather, they are an opportunity to read relevant materials for common grounding, engage in open and disciplined inquiry, and discover a 360-degree perspective on polarized issues. This requires informed and thoughtful deliberation about the tensions between social values. This perspective is what is required to respect, honour, and work with people who seem to be on the "other side" of the issues you are most passionate about. We need to take the edge off our polarized political squabbling and accelerate effective solutions to our common problems. Many of these problems have been tolerated for way too long. They will not wait. The consequences of ignoring them have the potential to increase misery and even damage the prospects for the human experiment. This seminar is one of your many opportunities to work with others to fight chaos with reason and civility.

Three 2.5-hour sessions over two days.

Day 1: Morning Session - Long Term Stewardship and Systems Dynamics

We examine six approaches to long term thinking, based partly on some early work by Stewart Brand and the Long Now Foundation on the concept of long term responsibility and stewardship for the future. We then consider Donella Meadow's lessons from the practice of simulating businesses and government systems with systems dynamics modeling. When done well, this type of modeling includes variables in addition to today's headline economic issues, and eventually incorporates whole systems and considerations of sustainability. We address questions around what interventions might be effective in leaving a significantly better (not perfect) world to our descendants. Finally, we examine the pioneering "Limits to Growth" work of MIT and Dartmouth scientists in using systems dynamics to forecast key global trends. Now that we have the advantage of a 50 year perspective using data since the models were first developed, how do we assess the accuracy and insight provided by this body of work?

Day 1: Afternoon Session - Planning for Future Generations

This session starts with an article by Hans Rosling, on "Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World — and Why Things Are Better Than You Think". This material is critical for a 360 degree understanding of different data driven perspectives about present and future trends. We then examine "The Case for Optimism", an article by Kevin Kelly, the founder and Editor in Chief of Wired magazine. It speaks to whether people have any rational basis for thinking that they might actually improve the outcomes for future generations. Finally, we examine "Indigenous Mãori Knowledge and Perspectives of Ecosystems." This reading outlines key facets of te ao Mãori (Mãori world view) that relate to how we care for a range of resources intergenerationally. It has been used to inform regional planning policy in NZ.

Day 2: Morning Session - Intergenerational Policy Tradeoffs

This session focuses on the planned and potential future policies designed to address a variety of global and New Zealand intergenerational problems. Richard Heinberg's article on "Deadly Optimism, Useful Pessimism" provides a counterpoint to excessive optimism. Neil Chilson's "A Simplified Pretense of Knowledge” raises questions about what we can aspire to know, even in the context of reasonably accurate but limited systems dynamics forecasts. Finally, we analyze excerpts from the NZ Treasury Department Report "He Tirohanga Mokopuna 2021" which provides context for framing problems of intergenerational planning in New Zealand.

None of these articles is offered as final or gospel, but rather a common point of departure in what should be a lively and informative dialog.

Each reading in the seminar Table of Contents is worthy of your attention. Some may be a bit long or complex, and it is okay to skim parts of them if you feel the need. However, we will refer to them specifically in each session. We will be asking you first about what the readings say, and then what you think about them.

During the seminar, what you say will not be recorded or used for attribution. It will serve you well to listen carefully to others, rather than just think about what you will say next. The moderators want to know what you think. They already know what they think. The focus of the discussion is centered on what the participants think about the readings. Rather than provide answers, the moderators will provide the questions for you to consider and answer. Please do not redirect by asking different questions. Please click on the Zoom Chat hand icon to be called on to speak to the specific question on the table. Click to lower your Zoom hand icon after you speak. Please be succinct and make your single point comment one or two minutes maximum. You are free to speak your mind, but please do so politely. Everyone will appreciate you staying focused, on topic, and committed to building a better future for our descendants.

We look forward to a thoughtful and constructive conversation about the systems, values, and policies associated with a critical examination of intergenerational challenges, and values based leadership. Neil Jacobstein