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To cope in changing society, to be able to answer to its needs and challenges, and
to build a coherent, stable identity calls for new basic skills. Yet
the new practices and institutions that would be solid, safe and
enduring by nature and thus offer us help in this process are still
missing, even though we desperately need them in order to develop those
skills. The old institutions offer old solutions that do not
necessarily work anymore in rapidly changing circumstances and in the
reality that weaves itself constantly anew. Due to and along with
technological development, especially information technology, the
reality has reticulated and become more and more difficult to specify.
It escapes parsing and avoids classifications; it does not bend itself
to definitions. Instead it is composed of increasingly abstract
phenomena, the parts, interrelations, causes and effects of which are
difficult to understand. The borders of “the possible” become
continuously redrawn in our reality, just to be overridden again the
next day by new information.
Something
strange is taking place: although Aristotle said long ago that “change
is the other name for time,” change itself has now changed. The codes
and laws that appertain to the ceding era do not appear as predictable
or logical anymore. Therefore also the traditional institutions,
organizations and acquired models of action that for so long served us
well, no longer produce the end result that we expect.
Cultural processes and implications
Barth (1996, 183-191) divides cultural process into three analytical
levels, i.e., macro, medium and micro. On the societal macro level, the
change of change and the weakening of aging institutions are due to
globalization in all its forms and modes. We can take the erosion of
the Nordic welfare state with the rupturing of its traditional safety
nets, a topic widely discussed in Scandinavia, as an example of the
outcomes of globalization. On the mid-level (that of organizations and
institutions), the forms of networking, new leadership and flexibility
come forth as a counterweight to aging and deteriorating hierarchical
and vertical structures and models of action. Therefore the change of
change does not leave any institution untouched; they either break down
or renew themselves in a way the forms and requirements of which are
not yet unequivocally open to us.
On the
personal micro level, one of the most demanding presumptions is that
one must constantly renew ones skills and education – we speak of
lifelong and life-wide learning. This presumption has its roots in the
tradition of the renewal of the workforce, which goes all the way back
to the beginning of the industrial era. Learning and education have
therefore been the main antecedents of modernity and the industrial
society, since they have ensured the availability of skilled workforce.
However, the meaning of learning is going through a transition, since
in the present information society, the very need for which the
learning institutions were once developed, is no longer the same.
People now study and learn more for their own sake, for their own
personal development, and for their personal market value than for the
needs of society. But, as a result, the process of learning has also
changed. Now, in order to cope, one has to learn and study the new and
unlearn the old whilst maintaining constant participation and
experiencing new things. Additionally, one has to be ceaselessly
available and ready for interaction in the 24/7 spacetime reality. We
feel that we are therefore forced to keep keen track of what is
constantly going on all around us, since if we do not, we fear that we
might fall off the ride and then be unable to catch up with the others
again.
In this turmoil, it is more and
more laborious for a single actor to be genuinely creative and to have
an effect on things and events – or even to feel that they can be
affected. Therefore, according to studies on images of the future
(Rubin 2000; Rubin & Linturi 2001), the images tend to reactively
emphasize more how to adapt to change and its new challenges instead of
proactively considering how the direction and quality of change could
be influenced. The future therefore appears as an inevitable force, not
as the aspired and shared end result of decisions and choices.
Whose is the future, then?
No one has the copyright for the future. Earlier choices and their
consequences form the basis of our present reality, and likewise, the
future will be built on what has already taken place. The future will
form as the synergic and complex entailment of decisions yet to be
made, and their consequences. Therefore the quality of the future can
be influenced by making good decisions and by considering their
possible consequences.
The media,
together with the development and innovations in information
technology, continuously bring new elements into our reality and
revolutionize our world view. At the same time, they move society
towards a new model of reality that is no longer in debt to modernity.
The revolution in information technology, the restructuring of the
global economy, and the cultural responses to those phenomena have all
converged towards redefining the concepts of production, power, and
human experience. All this portends the emergence of a new kind of
society in which the relationship among these three entities –
production, power, and experience – undergoes a structural
transformation into a new alliance which replaces the industrial and
modern rationale. A consequence of this switch is social transition, as
the rational of the industrial society is little by little yielding to
the rationale of the information society. In the institutions, there
are gradually growing pressures that result from changed needs and
expectations.
In the last couple of
years, society has strongly invested in top learning and the creative
economy. Both topics have been hyped in public speeches and in the
media, almost as if they offered magical tools to guide the economy to
safer waters, away from the current recession and from the threatening
global depression. Educational institutions and curricula have been
established, development programmes launched and political agendas made
public. As a result, for instance, quite a lot of money and resources
have been directed to high-level education and research programmes and
through this, to those educational institutions that have been regarded
as having a high potential in this respect. On the other hand, this
situation has led to a state in which those schools, polytechnics and
universities that are tasked with providing a general education and
that try to fulfill the educational needs of society as such, fall
further and further behind in public funding and the distribution of
economic resources. Funding therefore has become the most critical
determinant in the survival of many such educational institutions,
since the mere fulfillment of the basic educational task – however ably
it has been carried out in the past – does not seem sufficient anymore.
As a result, even primary schools have started to brand and market, to
feature and advertise – a personal edge and a distinctive and inviting
attraction in the study programme (or in addition to it) is more the
rule than the exception. We can still think that what counts in the end
is the general level of national education, not merely the achievements
of the education elite.
On the other
hand, the social atmosphere which favors competition, specialization
and originality, also emphasizes networking, interaction and
cooperation. These seemingly contradictory features can be traced back
to the changing needs of society – there is a reminder of the old, even
though the new is already pressing on. This is a typical feature of
changing social rationality – the old does not disappear completely,
but its meaning and raison d’etre in social activities transforms into
something else, when the general denominator of the everyday
rationality changes. For example, when we slowly moved from
agricultural society to industrial society, agriculture did not cease
to be. Rather its situation and meaning as the main social determinant
of everyday life merely diminished. Now we can see the same thing
happening to industry and to the institutions which were established
and developed for the needs of industrial society.
Identity – the new “tribes”
Findings in neurological research show that the human brain is affected
by technology. New synapses are born, when we get to know more and have
to continuously connect things in fresh ways and create new things.
Even though creativity is increased together with those new neural
combinations, still, according to studies (Nyman 1988), our ability to
perceive our environment still has not changed or become any faster
over time. Processing things still requires the same operations, and we
still analyze our reality in the same logical sequences as before, even
though the information society keeps on producing real-time information
for our senses to deal with. Our human destiny is then to try to find a
sensible life course and meaning in the information society with the
same mental and perceptive abilities with which our ancestors were
equipped in the Stone Age.
The identity
process forms an important part of the social and community organism,
against which we reflect our hopes, future expectations and personal
characteristics and features. This way the identity process acquires
its significance and gives a meaning to the existence of a person as
well as a society. The identity is a representation that is born from
the process of looking for the features in other people with whom we
either want or do not want to identify. Therefore, in order to develop,
the process of identity growth requires constant interaction and
dialogue with the others. With the help of this dialogue, we create the
borders between our personality and those of others and understand who
we are and where we belong at different phases of our lives.
Interaction helps us to figure out and define how we are different from
the others and what in that difference is truly relevant – what it is
exactly that makes me me. Therefore the stability and perseverance of
the identity are also dependent on how permanent we understand those
differences between people to be. (Taylor 1991)
However,
the relationship between stable characteristics and changeable and
flexible features in the process of identity building has changed. The
construction of an identity is an endless and life-long process – we
are never complete in that sense. Still many of the features which were
earlier regarded as persistent and solid, unchangeable and fixed in our
personality – e.g. attitudes, values, ways of reaction, etc. – are now
seen as mutable. We are expected to be resilient and able to adapt to
the constantly changing situations and challenges this transition
brings about. We learn and re-learn again and again new ways of
reaction, models of action, tools, technologies, etc., but, at the same
time, this also means that as a part of identity construction, we now
have to learn to unlearn all that has become old, meaningless, and
useless in light of new challenges. This process of unlearning
sometimes proves to be much harder than that of learning new things.
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People aim to diminish the consequences of this social fragmentation,
which also appears as the alienation of decision-making and governance
from everyday life, by increasing transparency and openness in these
processes. The problem is not necessarily in the lack of visibility or
intentional concealment of things and causes. Instead, in the deepening
development process of the information society, the forms of power
become increasingly abstract, while the issues that need to be decided
become more and more complex by nature. There is not too little
information available, but rather far too much of it. It is more and
more difficult to create opinions on general and shared issues and to
give out opinions on issues requiring decision, when the big picture
remains vague, when information is coming from all directions and on a
real-time basis, and when the complex synergy of different events and
things make the perception of the future, specifically of alternative
futures, more laborious day by day.
In
order for society to be at least somehow understandable and
controllable by its members, instead of a mere abstract power somewhere
out of reach, human beings must also organize their understanding of
that society in relation to their own identities. This is the basis
from which individualism upwells. Individualism has deepened and become
one of the most profound sources of meaning in contemporary Western
society. However, because the social environment is constantly widening
and the networks are thickening and expanding at the same time, what we
understand as society is also changing into a collection of diverse
overlapping, imbricate and partly virtual micro groups, or tribes
(Maffessoli 1996). This development leads to the situation where,
because human beings have a strong need to belong, morals and
sociability are more and more dependent on the values and choices of
the micro group that happens to be the most influential and strongest
at the time when the person is building his/her identity. As a result,
the experience (entertainment) industry and the lifestyle products
industry, which are often the most influential, become sources of
wealth. This impacts our experience of the workplace, where identity
becomes a product that is tied to the mechanisms of market economy –
that is, to the image, features and characteristics that are for sale
to the micro groups. In turn, this notion of identity often influences
one’s lifestyle in general. Therefore the difference between the slow
process of authentic identity building and the roles and lifestyles
that are to be adopted rapidly and consciously is becoming dimmer and
dimmer all the time.
Individualism in the “society of experience”
Individualism has become the main source of meaning for the citizens of the information society, and to have done this, it must have had to constitute a way in which it becomes applicable to everyone. This applicability is concretized in free and information-based consumerism: the brand, the story, and the image are becoming the most natural elements in our conception of the world and our life and roles in it, while the global media rework the criteria of acceptability and the norms of consumption and behaviour. Side by side with the traditional money economy, we now have the more and more profitable symbol economy with changing brands, images, etc. That is, we do not limit ourselves to “old-fashioned” money anymore. We now also use symbols that are far more abstract by nature than money ever was. Symbols of symbols, that is. Those symbols also have attributes, such as brands, images, etc. You just watch television for a while and see the next commercial of Visa or MasterCard. Or you can also show off your social status, desirability and popularity with a fancy car, hottest running shoes, fashionable taste in arts, going to proper restaurant, etc. However, you also know that the same things may not be “in” next week anymore. Therefore, you don’t consume just because you like something, or because you can, but because the way you consume and the things you consume symbolize your social micro group, or tribe – your chosen identity
At the same time, the varying personal development projects are the few
and rare occasions where a person still has a nearly full control over
something. For instance, you can control your eating. This does not
mean that for instance the growing problem of eating disorders among
young people can be explained inside out through this notion of
control. However, some doctors do agree on the idea that eating
disorders are associated with the problem of control. The forms of
personal development projects are diversified; for example, you can
develop your mental and psychical abilities and skills. Start with
neo-religious cults, transit trough new-age self-care groups and
spiritual growth ideologies and end up in healing or magic or shaman or
Asian ceremonies, etc. Or you can worship your own body – there are
thousands of gyms in which to exercise, body pump, grow your muscles
etc. The models of being and acceptability are formed and passed on to
us more and more through the market economy and media. The media feeds
young people those models in sweet wrappings with a hidden message:
everybody has the right to be like the model – i.e., to be beautiful,
fit and acceptable in the way the market has defined and re-defines
again tomorrow. The self – one’s own mind and body – is therefore
created and re-created over and over again. In the end it becomes an
experiment lab for new life-styles and roles. In this individualistic
consumerism, freedom is very much evaluated, but it is also ostensible
and fragile. (Beck 1992; Berger & Luckmann 1995). The
responsibility to be successful both economically and socially creates
a growing challenge to this controllability and through that, to true
and genuine life management.
On the
other hand, the challenge of individualization also produces several
parallel ways to understand reality, ways that are distributed and
shared in real-time in the social media. Different and also
contradictory values, attitudes, role expectations, idols, ideals, and
norms are competing in and between those messages and dialogue. It is
left to the individual to make a choice between those antinomies.
(Rubin & Linturi 2001) The traditional concepts and ways of action
are not of help to those choices, because there are not even names for
many of the new phenomena and things yet, let alone history from which
to learn. It is an old truth that only experience creates wisdom. It is
through that wisdom that new concepts, models and attitudes can be
developed, finally resulting in new institutions, traditions and other
tools for managing the reality. However, we do not have the experience
or history of the information society, and therefore the tools are only
just beginning to develop.
Sources:
Barth, F. 1996. Manifestasjon og prosess. Universitetsforlaget, Oslo.
Beck, U. 1992. Risk Society. Towards a New Modernity . Sage Publications, London, Thousand Oaks & New Delhi.
Berger, P. L. and Luckmann Th. 1995. Todellisuuden sosiaalinen rakentuminen [The Social Construction of Reality]. (Finnish translation by T. Aittola & V. Raiskila). Like, Helsinki.
Giddens, A. 1991, Modernity and Self-Identity. Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Polity Press, Blackwell Publishers, Cambridge.
Maffessoli, M. 1996. The Time of the Tribes. The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society. (Translated by D. Smith) Sage Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi.
Nyman, G. 1988. “ Tietotekniikka ja havaitsemisen psykologia.” Psykologia 6/1988, ss. 425-431.
Rubin, A. 2000. Growing up in Social Transition: In Search of a Late-modern Identity. Annales Universitatis Turkuensis, Series B, Tom. 234, Humaniora. University of Turku, Turku.
Rubin, A. & Linturi, H., 2001. “Transition in the Making. The Images of the Future in Education and Decision-making.” Futures Vol. 33 No. 3-4, April/May 2001, ss. 267-305.
Taylor, C. 1991. The Ethics of Authenticity. Harvard University Press, Cambridge and London.
Anita Rubin,
adjunct professor in futures education, Turku School of Economics since
2002, is the recipient of the first Tulevaisuuspalkinto (Futures Prize)
of the Finnish Society for Futures Studies, awarded in 1990. The author
of five books as well as 45 research reports and articles in scientific
books and journals, her degrees include Doctor of Social Sciences
(sociology) and Master of Social Sciences (degrees in sociology,
psychology, social policy and foreign literature) from the University
of Turku. In addition, she has completed special training courses in
futures studies in Dubrovnik, Andorra, and St. Petersburg as well as in
Finland. A member of the Finnish Youth Research Society since 1995, Dr.
Rubin has held several posts in the World Futures Studies Federation
and chaired the international scientific committee and national
organising committee of the methodology seminar in futures studies in
Turku in June 2000. In addition, she coordinated the establishment of
the futures abstract database “Futurum,” organized post-graduate
futures courses for the Finland Futures Academy (FFA), coordinated more
than 100 futures workshops, presented more than 30 papers in scientific
conferences and seminars, and has served on the Editorial Boards of FUTURA and the Journal of Futures Studies.
In 2002 she received the Aurelio Peccei Prize by Associazione Culturale
L'Eta Verde. Experienced in both field and case studies as well as
theoretical research, Dr. Rubin’s professional interests include young
people's images of the future; the concept of images of the future; the
information society and identity; modernity, value changes,
marginalisation, and social empowerment; and education including
foresight studies.
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