The biggest assumption is that “Everything is fine.” Assumptions are the soft sand under the foundations of societies that is quickly eroded when social tragedies wash across communities and nations. David Bohm tells us,
“When things are going smoothly there is no way to know that there’s anything wrong — we have already made the assumption that what’s going on is independent of thought. When things are represented, and then presented in that way, there is no way for you to see what is happening — it’s already excluded. You cannot pay attention to what is outside the representation. There’s tremendous pressure not to; it’s very hard. The only time you can pay attention to it is when you see there is trouble — when a surprise comes, when there’s a contradiction, when things don’t quite work.
However, we don’t want to view this process as a ‘problem,’ because we have no idea how to solve it — we can’t project a solution.” 1
What are the reasons that most people do not engage a clear examination and analysis of change and the probability of negative change? Just guessing, it is probably the same reason that the “tulip bubble” caused an economic collapse that spread from Holland in 1637 to the rest of the world. Or, the sub-prime mortgage housing bubble and related derivatives collapse of 2008. Almost no one wants to be a nay-sayer during times when economies bloom before becoming mushroom clouds and financial meltdown. Everyone who invested in the later years of that bubble thought they wouldn’t get caught out by a rapid change of circumstances in the financial market. WRONG!!! Multi-millionaires made the same mistakes as Dick and Jane who bought investment houses in hopes of flipping them for a healthy profit. Some lost their own homes and the ones they bought on a margin.
The Schematic for Validating Social Sustainability has an uncanny knack for exposing assumptions of team members, their communities, and the assumptions of our larger societies, nationally and internationally. But it takes courage to begin. Perhaps the biggest assumption I’ve made is that citizens of democratic nations are concerned about their future. Or, perhaps Friedrich Nietzsche was right when he said, “People don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.” That certainly plays out for the baby boomer, X and Y generations, but not the Millennial Generation. Though some are nihilists others are social realists.
1 Bohm, David On Dialogue (2004): 68