lurures. Vol. 28, No. 2, pp.

109-200, 1996
Pubhshcd by Elscvier Science Ltd. Printed in Great Britain
UOl6-3287/96 $15.ClO + 0.00

BOOK REVlEW

Re-humanizing

the future

Richard Slaughter
Path to Gang Zhi
Katsuhiko Yazaki
Kyoto, Future Generations Alliance Foundation,
124 pages, free
Ways of Enspiriting: Transformative
Practices
for the Twenty-first Century
Warren Ziegler
Denver, FIA International, 1995, ix + 277 pages,
US$14.95
Edge of the Sacred: Transformation
in
Australia
David Tacey
Melbourne, HarperCollins, 1995, xv + 224 pages,
A$1 9.95

A familiar
polarity
within
the futures
field
is that between
those who
see the future
in external,
instrumental
terms and those
who see it in deeper human terms. Of course,
in the end these two perspectives can be
productively fused into a richer overall view.
Still, the dynamic of technical change shows
no sign of slowing,
so it is heartening to
see that a broadly humanistic
perspective
remains vibrant and strong. Although the three
examples considered here are very different
(coming, as they do, from three different
regions), they all help to further ground and
elaborate a view that the future can and must
be subject to higher-order human influence.

Richard Slaughter is Consulting Editor to Futures and

may be contacted at the Futures Study Centre, 117
Church Street, Hawthorn 3122, Victoria,
Australia
(Tel: +613
9 818 7574; fax: +613
e-mail: presents@ariel.its.unimelb.edu.au).

9 819

0876;

Katsuhiko Yazaki is a successful Japanese

business entrepreneur, whose life was changed
by a breakthrough
insight
during
Zen
meditation. The result was that he passed
responsibility
for the business over to a relative
and created the Future Generations Alliance
Foundation, which exists to promote the future
generations cause. To this end, the foundation
hosts meetings (such as the Kyoto Forum) and
publishes a series of books, of which this is
one. Most of the books are anthologies of work
by international scholars, but The Path to Liang
Zhi tells the story of Yazakis own awakening
and the development of his philosophy. Topics
covered include: realizing life as connection;
how to conquer egoism; getting beyond economics, science and nationalism;
turning lack
of a resource into a resource; and the search
for an eternal philosophy.
The book is short (barely 120 pages), but it
is beautifully produced and crystal clear. It is a
fascinating example of how a personal transformation can lead to a whole new world of
options for an individual-and
then for all
those touched by him or her. Here, then,
is part of the solution
to looming global
dilemmas:
individuals
are, or can be, very
powerful if they are willing to move beyond
the ego to pursue wisdom and spiritual insight.
These themes are also present in IDavid
Taceys impressive book Edge of the Sacred.
While
it IS written
from
an Australian
perspective, it is universal
in outlook.
Few
works lay bare the dilemmas of contemporary
Australian
society with the clarity achieved
here. While politicians, economists, educators,
social
theorists
and many others
pursue
rationalistic solutions,
Tacey takes us to the
mythopoeic
level as revealed by lungian
psychology
and the insights of artists and

199

Book review

writers.
However,
in Taceys
hands,
this
exploration
is not merely
literary.
He has
provided the clearest diagnosis I have yet seen
of the spiritual vacuum
underlying
Australian
culture
and experience.
By extension,
this
applies to the whole Western world. However,
what makes this book so outstanding
is that he
has also seen where the deep solutions
lie:
in the emergence
of an authentic
spirituality.
At the outset, Tacey takes the view that
despite the fact that Australia
appears to be
one of the most secular and godless societies in
the modern
world,
there is good reason to
suppose that an authentic
rediscovery
of the
sacred is already
in preparation
here.
He
suggests that an unconscious
compulsion
toward
sacrifice
exists
in the Australian
psyche, and explores this through the works of
Joan Lindsay,
D H Lawrence
and Patrick
White. Here the landscape is a key player: no
matter how we attempt to package or construct
it, the land will always break out of whatever
fancy dress we foist upon it. The only way out
is not to ignore the landscape by huddling
into
cities on its fringes, but to enter more into
the psychic field of nature; to shamanize
ourselves
in the image of nature.
Here the
taboo subjects of Aboriginal
degradation
and
spirituality
emerge and are treated with great
economy
and skill. As one who grew up in
Alice Springs, Taceys account bears the stamp
of lived experience.
The process of re-sacralizing
our experience emerges as a social and political
necessity. According
to Tacey, the ecological
crisis
is at bottom
a psychological
and spiritual
crisis. These deeper
roots to the problem
will have to be explored
if there is to be any
lasting change.
Hence, this is an outstanding
book
that goes right to the core of our
major concerns:
meaninglessness,
avoidance,
violence.
Society becomes a demonic parody
of sacred
reality
when
society
no longer
recognizes
the divine sources from which
its
own life springs. The more people who will
read this book and reflect on it deeply,
the
better. There are few richer and more reward-

200

ing starting points.

Whereas Tacey sketches in the territory of
myth and spirituality,
Warren Ziegler provides
a kind of step-by-step
practical
guide to the
recovery of a personal spiritual vision. Ziegler
is well known
in the futures field for the
workshops
on imaging the future developed
by himself
and Elise Boulding
over many
years. As a result of this work,
he steadily
accumulated
a wealth of understanding
and
knowledge
about group dynamics
and personal change
strategies.
In particular,
there
was a shift from fairly superficial
techniques
to a deeper understanding
of the central role
of spirituality
in coming
to grips with the
dilemmas of self and the world.
The book is a compendium
of such transformative
practices.
Topics covered
include:
deep listening, deep questioning,
deep learning and deep imaging. These are followed
by
what Ziegler calls the meta-disciplines;
that is,
intentioning,
discerning,
dialogue
and the
centrality
of deep learning. I find it impossible
to summarize
the contents of these chapters
because they are essentially experimental
and
need to be taken as such. The life of the work is
not in the text but in the many ways the text
can be applied. Ziegler not only speaks of the
sociability
of spirit, the book exudes it.
Anyone
who
is interested
in tools for
exploring
the path of spiritual awakening
will
find this book a treasure trove of insight and
applied
understanding.
It can be used as a
handbook
for a personal journey.
However,
its
best use is as a guide to the practice
of
enspiriting,
which
is essentially
a group
activity.
I imagine, therefore, that it will be
invaluable
to all those groups who are already
working
in this direction,
or would like to do
so. It is an impressive
and deeply facilitative
achievement.
I have often suggested that the solutions to
the global predicament
are all within
reach
and are prefigured
somewhere
within
the
broad futures literature. In their own way, each
of these fascinating
and productive
books
helps to substantiate that view.