Talking about liminality and chaos and turbulence - and the necessity of chaos to create room for transformative action and creativity.

1. From Walking
against the
Winds
to Flying
on the Winds
Wendy Schultz
WFSF XXV
Paris, France
25 October 2023

2. … all our futures encompass
the interplay of myriad
changes…

4. …their collisions create
turbulence, and we adapt; each
adaptation drives a different
outcome…

5. PASTS PRESENTS FUTURES

6. the warped plate of the
present
is a liminal space
and a threshold, a portal
between chaotic phase spaces of the pasts and
futures

7. Futures studies is inherently focused on
chaos;
how people as complex adaptive systems
navigate the turbulence of change
Those complex adaptive responses can
reify existing systems as a defense;
or adapt incrementally;
or transform radically to a new form of complexity.

8. Liminality
During the liminal stage, the participant’s identity, their
relationship to their environment, family, and, more
broadly, society, as well as their relationship to time,
space, and existence as such, is in flux. In more general
terms, liminality refers to a state of flux and in-between-
ness in which the dominant or governing logic of a given
situation is temporarily suspended.
https://indeterminacy.ac.uk/dictionary/liminality/

9. Three Horizons
Liminal Space
Postnormal Times

10. Deep Transitions
Liminal Space
Postnormal Times

11. Postnormal Times
Postnormal times (PNT) are characterized by a
context “in which ‘facts are uncertain, values in
dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent…’”
Funtowicz and Ravetz, “Science for the post-normal age,” Futures, 25 (1993), pp. 739-755

12. "Postnormal times was theorised as ‘an in-between period where
old orthodoxies are dying, new ones have yet to be born, and very
few things seem to make sense’. Or, as the Italian journalist, Ezio
Mauro put it in his conversation with the late British sociologist
Zygmunt Bauman, ‘we are hanging between the “no longer” and
the “not yet” and thus we are necessarily unstable’.
Zygmunt Bauman and Ezio Mauro, Babel, Polity, Oxford, 2016, p 20
We are thus living in ‘a transitional age, a time without the
confidence that we can return to any past we have known and with
no confidence in any path to a desirable, attainable or sustainable
future’.”
Serra del Pino, Jones, Mayo, “the postnormal perfect storm – part 1. The nature of the crisis

13. Portals and rituals…
One's sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about
disorientation, but also the possibility of new perspectives.
…liminality …potentially can be seen as a period of scrutiny for
central values and axioms of the culture where it occurs. One
where normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior
are undone. In such situations, "the very structure of society [is]
temporarily suspended.
from Turner, Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites of Passage (1967)

14. …portals and rituals
…liminality refers to an intermediate ritual phase during
initiation, in which initiates can be considered either sacred
or potentially polluting to the mainstream society because of
their anomalous social position. New social rules are
commonly taught during the liminal phase, and strong,
endearing, and creative bonds often develop between fellow
initiates.”
from van Gennep, Rites de Passage (1909)

15. Liberating portals and
rituals
What are constraining rituals in futures studies?
How do we free ourselves from them?
What are liberating rituals in futures studies?
How do we develop more?

16. Enhancing futures studies capacity for creating rituals and
portals
to move across the threshold – to shift
from walking against the winds of change
to flying on the winds of change.
From the liminal postnormal
through metamorphic portals
to the transnormal
- what new rituals [methods] do we need?

19. Thank
you.
Dr. Wendy L. Schultz,
Infinite Futures
and Jigsaw Foresight
wendy@infinitefutures.com
wendy@jigsawforesight.com
Senior Fellow, Center for
Postnormal Policy and
Futures Studies
Fellow, World Futures Studies
Federation
C H A O S T U R T L E S
P A R T T H R E E