Γνωριμία με κάποιες σκέψεις του Hasan Ozbekhan

I post passages from a paper presented by Hasan Ozbekhan at the Symposium on "Long-range Forecasting and Planning" held at Bellagio (Lake of Como) in 1968.

Planning and values

Is there any way to free us from the present – or, what can we do to will the future?

In my view there is no more important question in planning discourse; it is truly the hearth of the matter.

Let me begin by saying. "Yes, we can will the future," but only if change is caused to occur in values rather than in the object's other attributes.

What I mean is that any change that is not a fundamental change in values merely extends the present rather than creating the future. It seems to me that from this general postulate one can derive five statements which govern all planning.

1. Only changes in the overall configuration of values can change the present situation.

2. Only individual will can bring about such value changes.

3. Value changes cannot be predicted.

4. Value changes always occur as individual ideas, or responses, or insights concerning betterment, and when they become socialized over a large part of the system we have 'progress'.

5. Planning is the organization of progress. Thus the main subject of planning is the willed future.

Planning as willing the future

Willing the future means willing a situation whose value configuration differs to a considerable degree from the value configuration of the present.

Progress represents such a new value configuration.

This new value configuration must be conceived of first in terms of the ends to be achieved, and only afterward should consideration of the attainability of such ends be introduced into the discourse.

In this manner of proceeding the dynamic of planned change follows a course which is not always obvious but which is of great importance. Namely: that the point of planning is to change the present to fit the image of the willed future rather than to project the present into a conception of the future which is derived from the logical vectors that happen to inhere to it.

Planning and the environment

Environment is a general term used in many different ways, depending on its context. For my purpose I shall use environment, without repeated qualification, as that which planning acts on, while at the same time being a part of it.

In empirical terms I call environment the entire experiential milieu of man. This encompasses nature in all its dimensions, society, institutions, and the multiplicity of artefacts which man has created through his technologies. It also encompasses the intangible aspects of experience we call cultures, ways of life and all manner of informal relationships, both in time and space.

So large an array of elements clearly needs some ordering if one is to talk about it meaningfully. It might be useful to make certain couplings and distinctions such as life/nature-centered environment, or social-human centered environment, or thing/technology centered environment, as long as we remember that these are arbitrary constructs. Reality does not abide by such distinctions.

In their daily experienced details, these dimensions add up to one fundamental Phenomenon: our ecology has entered a phase of overall dissonance with human biology, physiology and psychology.

It is clear that rational change – namely planned change, must address itself to the readjustment of our ecological base and to the reestablishment of a long-lasting consonance between our general environment (in terms of life, nature, things, technology and society) and the human being.