原文: Not Knowing What We Need

One of the challenges with complex systems is that understanding of the problem and solution co-evolve -- you can't determine root causes, you can't identify all the variables that affect the outcomes, and you can't predict what will happen. That makes it hard to 'solve' problems like global warming, world poverty, violence, corporatism, unaffordable health care and dysfunctional education systems. What makes it even harder is that we often don't know what we need -- what the 'future state' would look like if we 'solved' the problem. When it comes to global warming, for example, some see the ideal future as one of strict conservation, while others see it as one of miraculous new technologies that allow energy consumption to increase forever. It's hard to figure out how to get there when you can't even agree on the destination. The School for Designing a Society focuses the attention of activist groups on collectively answering the questions "What are you for?" and "What would you consider a desirable society?", questions that identify the destination, the future state, before attempting to prescribe a way to get there. Matt Dineen at Passions and Survival interviewed the School's ecological design instructor, Rob Scott. He said that the school's objective is to go beyond available alternatives. In our modern world of horrific imaginative poverty, solutions are presented to us as dichotomies: Party A or Party B, socialism or capitalism, SUV or hybrid, Brand X or Brand Y. All these 'choices', which are not really choices at all, have the effect of focusing us on the available alternatives, and precluding consideration of other possibilities that don't currently exist, but could exist. As globalization succeeds in McDonaldizing the planet, these limited available alternatives become ubiquitous, and it becomes harder and harder to find, or imagine, additional possibilities: a society without political parties, a gift economy, a world where cars are unneeded, buying NoLogo products from people we know and trust. By starting with an imagined Future State, one not directly or obviously connected to the Current State, we open ourselves up to additional possibilities, beyond available alternatives. The problem is, we are now so rooted to the Current State and its limited choices that in imagining the Future State we subconsciously start with the Current State and linearly, incrementally design the Future State from there. In so doing, we short circuit the innovation process. Because we have forgotten how to imagine, we no longer know what is possible, and therefore, we no longer know what we need. The iPod was the product of imagination -- if you asked people in the days of vinyl and cassette tapes how they would like the distribution of recorded music improved, you would have received responses anchored to the Current State of the time: make records unscratchable; make cassettes that you don't have to turn over to play the other side. So the School is a great idea. But only if its enrollees either haven't forgotten how to imagine, or have relearned to do so. My guess is that imaginative people are a tiny minority, and in the fracas of a brainstorming session with the huge majority of unimaginative people, they would be drowned out. They wouldn't be heard. The vast majority could not imagine what they were talking about. Suppose it was you, in 1970, surrounded by a pile of disks and people invested hugely in them, imagining a future where all music could be downloaded free over the airwaves, in seconds, onto a device that would hold your whole music collection in your breast pocket. Can you hear the laughter? How do we re-learn to imagine, so we know what we really need? I've already written about that.

译文: 不清楚我们需要的是什么

      在复杂的体系中所面临的挑战之一就是如何理解：随着问题的发展，其解决方法也应随之发展。你无法确定根本性的原因；你无法识别对结果产生影响的所有变量；你无法预测将要发生的事情。这就使一些问题难以“解决”，如：全球变暖、世界上的贫困、暴力、社团主义、难以负担的卫生保健和功能不当的教育体系。

      更为严重的是我们常常不清楚自己需要的是什么——如果我们“解决”了这个问题，未来的情形将会如何？例如：提到全球变暖的问题，有些人认为理想的未来有赖于严格地保持现状，而其他人则认为理想的未来要靠神奇的新科技。这种新科技能使能源消耗在持续增加的情况下不会导致全球升温。当人们无法就共同的目标达成一致时，就难以想出解决问题的良策。

      如何设计一个理想社会？学校教育把注意力集中在一些激进组织对这些问题的共同回答上。这些问题是：“你拥护什么样的社会？”和“你认为什么样的社会是一个理想的社会？”这些问题帮助人们先确定远景目标，然后再尝试找出实现目标的途径。

     一家名为Matt Dineen at Passions and Survival的网站采访了学校的生态设计教师罗布·斯科特。他说学校的目标是让人们的思维超出现实可用的选择。在我们的现代社会中，人们的想象力异常贫乏，两种解决方案往往摆在面前：A党或B党，社会主义或资本主义，运动型多功能车或混合车，X牌或Y牌。所有这些选择都不是真正的选项，它们影响了我们的思维，使思维集中在可用的抉择上，排除了对那些当前虽然不存在、但却有其存在的可能性的其它情形的考虑。
 
      随着麦当劳在全球的成功扩展，这些有限的可用抉择变得无处不在。发现或想象更多的可能性也就变得越来越困难，如：一个没有政党的社会，赠送型的节约措施，一个不需要小汽车的世界，从我们认识和信任的人那里购买不带标识的产品。

      想象和现在的情形没有直接关系或没有明显关系的未来情形，这样做可以使我们开阔思路，想到更多的可能性，超出那些现实可用的选择。

      问题是：现在的情形在我们的意识中如此根深蒂固，它限制了我们对于未来情形的想象。我们潜意识地从现在的情形出发，并由此直线地延伸和增加对未来情形的设计。这样的做法只能使我们在革新的进程中出现“短路”。

      因为我们已经忘记了如何去想象，我们也就不知道什么是可能的。因此，我们不知道自己需要什么。iPod是想象的产物——如果你在那些只有乙烯基和盒式录音带的岁月里向人们询问：你们打算怎样改善录制好的音乐唱片的销售？你听到的将是类似于现在情形的回答：让唱片不会被划掉；制作无需换面播放的盒式磁带。