A Word about Context

From my book-to-be: Imagining your futures: the power of our worldviews and assumptions

Photo by Mariko margetson on Unsplash

I am taking a little time to explore ‘context’ in my Imagining our Futures book, because assumptions exist and emerge in and about the range of contexts in which we live and work, and futures work also always exists in context.

First, definitions

Werner Erhard (1983) wrote that “Context is decisive.” It is, everywhere, all the time, in all processes. As Porcelli (2017, bold added) wrote:

All things in time and space exist within a context. This includes our thoughts, words, actions, and relationships. Context is ever-present and multi-layered. Context is made of many components— environment, history, causes, conditions, decisions, agreements, as well as many other forces and factors. These components are what give shape and structure to context. Context influences our focus and attention. Context brings some things to the foreground while other things remain into the background. Some possibilities become more likely, while others, less likely.

The context of any situation is often implicit—unspoken, in the background. Or it can be explicit – spoken out in the open. Either way, it’s always there.

We can bring our ‘often implicit’ assumptions to a context and reinforce those assumptions, or perhaps have an assumption challenged so we see a different perspective at work. Or we can unconsciously believe something so strongly that we apply in it every context we experience. Without getting too philosophical, if our assumptions are conscious and we have open minds, the context shapes which assumptions we take to be true, and which we reject.

Erhard (1983) explains this in another way, using ‘belief’ instead of ‘assumptions’ (which is a synonym for belief, bold added):

None of us understands very much about the power of context. It’s useful to distinguish between believing that something is so and its actually being so, because the belief in that thing which is so is totally different from its so-ness. As a matter of fact, the belief that something is so keeps you from experiencing its being so. It actually ceases to be so, because you’ve got a barrier between you and it; and the barrier is your belief that it’s so. A belief in the truth is not the truth; yet the same thing, without the belief, is the truth.

In my book, the context is cognition (the noun) and cognitive (the adjective). Cognition is defined by the American Psychology Society (2024) as:

all forms of knowing and awareness, such as perceiving, conceiving, remembering, reasoning, judging, imagining, and problem solving. Along with affect and conation, it is one of the three traditionally identified components of mind, … cognitive is defined as “an individual percept, idea, memory, or the like.

Our cognition can also be individual or collective, and as a tacit or espoused idea or assumption which influences thinking and actions.

Being “in” Context

Erhard’s quote about how our belief in something prevents us from seeing it is somewhat similar to the saying that what we see is not always true, because our interpretation of meaning is constructed by our brains and worldviews. That is, our ontological interpretation of reality in any context is constrained unless we have open minds. We believe one thing and dismiss everything else.

I am a social constructionist at heart¹ which is focused on moving beyond the straitjacket of “conventional meaning …to approach the object [of interest] in a radical spirit of openness to its potential for new or richer meaning. It is an invitation to reinterpretation” (Crotty 1998, p. 51, bold added). That is, to better understand our realities and how we view them, we must be willing and open to go beyond what we believe we know in the present, and beyond meanings that may no longer make sense to us - and which we reject with challenging underlying assumptions. To expand and deepen our thinking and imaging about futures, we must accept this invitation to reinterpretation, openness and reframing of the present. The message is that our positioning (conscious or unconscious assumptions) to or in a context matters.

“The Future”

In the individual sense, you and I have developed rules/beliefs (assumptions), and use them subconsciously to inform our thinking about and imagining futures, and taking action in the multiple contexts we encounter them in our lives, including futures processes.

Thinking about futures take place in a range of contexts ranging from individuals to organisations, countries and globally. These contexts are all different to some degree and each requires customisation of futures process design. In the individual sense, you and I have developed rules/beliefs (assumptions), and use them subconsciously to inform our thinking about and imagining futures, and taking action in the multiple contexts we encounter them in our lives, including futures processes.

Futures process design has evolved into multiple formats over the years, and most adopt some form of imagining, visioning and/or scenario development and now, artificial intelligence. These processes are all designed for a specific context, and using an off-the-shelf format (for example, an amateur reading a book and leading a process - which one person told me they had done) usually doesn’t include a step that says, ‘identify and challenge your assumptions in this context now’. This step should be, for me, at the core of futures process design. Futures Literacy Labs, for example, are designed to take context into account from the first step and actively use co-design (UNESCO, 2023).

Context is decisive in our thinking, imagining futures and acting in the present. Our assumptions open up and shut down our thinking and imagining in every context - whether we acknowledge that or not. And our tacit assumptions are unlikely to be valid in every futures context we explore. I would like to add that our belief in the present in ‘the future’ is invalid in any context, but I think I’ve lost that argument.

As always, comments welcome.

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REFERENCES

American Psychology Society (2024), Cognition and the Brain. Available at: https://www.apa.org/topics/cognition-brain

Crotty, M. 1998. The Foundations of Social Research: Meaning and Perspective in the Research Process, SAGE Publications. Available at: https://philpapers.org/rec/CROTFO-13

Erhard, W. 1983. You Don’t Alter What You Know, You Alter The Way You Know It. Available at: Werner Erhard http://www.wernererhard.net/alter.html.

Porcelli (2017). The Power of Setting Context. Available at: Integral Centred Leadership https://integralcentered.com/power-setting-context/

UNESCO (2023), Futures Literacy & Foresight. https://www.unesco.org/en/futures-literacy

1. I realise that social constructionism is, like all theory, critiqued and challenged which is expected. For me, the essential core idea of re-interpretation of context and thinking in that context has remained appropriate, because that reinterpretation requires us to challenge our assumptions.