Abstract
The dialectic is a very ancient device long used to comprehend historical process. Its versatility as a tool for informing on numerous issues of interest to those involved in futures studies is self-evident yet under-appreciated, not as a predicting device but as a framing one, much as with how catalysts work in chemistry. This piece first briefly describes the basics of the dialectical process and its application as an outcome framing method. Its connections with other forecasting methods especially with emerging issues analysis is discussed. The properties of dialectical processes are dynamic and do not necessarily conform to human-scale either temporally or spatially. Dialectical process related to social change and worldview are not subordinate to cyclic time except when artificially imposed as with political elections. The dialectical process being consistent with quantum mechanics especially as applied to technological impacts and legal enactment process will be discussed. In the latter instance, the dark matter and dark energy conundrum bear the hallmarks of a dialectical process thus far leading to an indeterminable resolution. While several examples of persistent issue contradictions to which dialectical analysis can be usefully applied are available, American health care policy is highlighted here.
Dialectical Analysis as a Framing Device
The dialectical process as a concept is at once elegantly simple, and versatile, yet is also prone to be misunderstood and/or misapplied. The generic model is not dualism in the Cartesian or theological sense, although it does involve the dynamic interactions of opposing concepts/systems through thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. As applied here, it is also not dialectics of classical Greek philosophical tradition, nor the Hegelian model. It is better expressed in Marx though not as an ideological map of socio-economic historical process. It is certainly not Marxist in determining inevitable outcomes, though it can highlight key conceptual contradictions. Sorokin’s (1985) work on social and cultural dynamics with its appreciation of historical process is also useful. Yet as a basic template for grasping historical process, it is specifically oriented toward assessing the range of potential pathways between poles with implicit understanding that neither is totally annihilated nor entirely dominant. In this, it is not dichotomous in forcing resolution into one pole or another. The synthesis is thus bounded by thesis and antithesis but is not entirely either, but a new species that transforms into the new thesis. Dialectical analysis is most aligned with Taoist philosophy though less focused on the unity of opposites than their interactions (Baxter and Montgomery 1996; Sabelli 1998).
The generic dialectic can be graphically rendered as in Figure 1.
Generic dialectical process.
Oppositional elements can be plugged into this model in conjunction with emerging issues analysis. The utility for futures studies is thus seen first in framing oppositional forces as they interact to an ultimate resolution of this interaction often through a climatic episode that results in a transformed state that is neither thesis nor antithesis. Dialectical analysis thus provides a useful means to determine range of potential outcomes that can mitigate some biases. 1 It is also useful in identifying quintessential forces, much as causal layered analysis (CLA) does, in connecting underlying historical forces at levels ranging from the psychological to the cosmological. Dialectical analysis can thus help contextualize excavating the forces of history and then contextualizing events going forward within those foundational interactions, which provides a holistic perspective.
An example of where dialectical analysis might be useful in framing narrative interplay is between the thesis of Newtonian physics and the Darwinian contradiction. Newtonian physics’ “seed of destruction” is the second law of thermodynamics. Simply put, the physical universe will break down as it expands like cigarette smoke in the cosmic void. This fundamental Newtonian physics process is also known as “the law of entropy,” as well as, in the vivid language of pop cosmology, “the heat death of the universe.” In other words, at the most common level of all mechanisms and the most profound levels of existence, everything breaks down and at zero degrees Kelvin, atomic movement freezes. Present observations of an accelerating expansion of the universe are confirming this prospect confounding a hope that the cosmos might recollect.
Then comes the confounding Darwinian antithesis applied beyond biology to include living purpose on a cosmological level (Blitz, 1990; Hodgson 2002). Where the Newtonian universe points toward disintegration in its second law of thermodynamics, the Darwinian is integrative in nature. With the former, order inevitably goes to disorder while the latter moves from disorder to order. Synthesis is manifested in the near universal human impulse to impose order on the world by literally straightening things out (Scott 1998). It may be that this is the ultimate purpose of life (including our species and what supersedes it). One need only observe the artificial world as comprised almost entirely of lines where even pictures of nature scenes are almost invariably contained in a square or rectangular frame. Our species imposes either linear or curvilinear symmetry for the asymmetric world creates cognitive unease. One need only fly over developed lands to see this effect in cities and rural areas. Figure 2 also captures this tension.
Artistic rendering of the mechanical (Newtonian)/biological (Darwinian) dialectic.
Thus, it may be our collective fate to go boldly forth to impose order on the universe, negotiating between perfect dissolution and perfect order. This is an eons-long dialectic with those tensions yet ever present. They permeate from the cosmological to the psychological and to other dimensions.
On the psychological dimension, the dialectic manifests the colorful Freudian terminology of individuals caught between the “Death Wish” and Eros. At the psychosocial level this manifests episodes of nostalgic popular culture narratives countered by utopian visions often technologically characterized by early adaption for erotic purposes as observed by Shirky (2012). As social “death wish,” it expresses a return to a mythical golden age or traditional order. As social “Eros,” it eschews tradition in favor of radical experimentation and unprecedented design. What both happen to share is antipathy toward prevailing social order and its dominant institutions, for either supplanting the golden age or impeding the path to utopia. Thompson’s (1985) quanternity illustrated in his book Pacific Shift captures this four-way dialectical relationship shown in Figure 3.
The ideological dialectic on the dimension of faith in existing institutions.
The American political system is very much a manifestation of a formalized institutional two-party dialectic nested within the zone of institutional faith where it is pointed out metaphorically by Watts (1966), that “Tweedle Dum” and “Tweedle Dee” agreed to have a battle in an artificially staged scheduled election cycle. This constitutional construct (thesis) ignores the shadow side (antithesis) of skepticism and outright rejection of “the system” where liberals and conservatives are deemed twins. Then come crises like the American Civil War where synthesis, the abolition of slavery, would lead later to the civil rights movement. Thus, synthesis begets thesis, and the contradictions unresolved in the initial iteration arise to confound the subsequent. Yet, however, the deeper anti-institutional contradiction builds. Pent up frustrations of a future-shocked electorate finds expression in the radical (Occupy/Sanders) and reactionary (Bannon/Trump).
Another example of this dialectic can be applied to the international system. Consider that the nation-state system is a synthesis or mediation between the forces of globalization and tribalization. Although there is a robust literature on globalization, as in Holton (2011), this dialectical understanding is absent. Globalizing forces (aka neoliberal economics) have been ascendant certainly since WWII now challenging national sovereignty. Its high-water mark may well have been the creation of the European Union and its many integrative policies. Certainly, that seems to be unraveling now. While any system that might supplant the present one is speculative, it would reside somewhere between the pure-type globalized world and a purely tribalized one. However, a retro-nationalistic system would not be a throwback to a system as it was a century ago. There would be many features of what created a globalized infrastructure especially in English-dominated communications though even here we are seeing a synthesis between the alphabetic and the ideographic in the form of logos, icons and emojis as common means of written expression. The rise of nationalism via media presented in the vernacular of the masses described by Anderson (2006) fed anticolonialism. To a large extent, it is still an unstable foundation upon which the stratified order of globalization rests (Huntington 2006). Conversely, utter tribalization is unlikely, despite the immense dystopian literature that imagines this, although social distress does tend to enhance such impulses. In the language of former U.S. president Obama’s “gaff” (unauthorized truth), distressed people cling to guns and religion. The “imagined community” of nation thus has competing imagined communities of like-minded factions of shared values that is the essence of politics. There is also what is called the first law of politics, stipulating, “The organized prevail over the disorganized every time.” That posited, there is absolutely a point of chaos as the dialectical process disintegrates both thesis and antithesis. However, this chaos, as unstable and volatile as it is, inevitably turns to the formation of synthesis. Remember that with biological systems generally and artificial systems specifically, the tendency is consistently toward creating and maintaining order and away from chaos. This principle reins in the tribal impulses under Constitutional frameworks that help to contain and subordinate them in both unitary and federal states.
Dialectical Analysis and Political Decision Making
Another absolutely key principle of dialectical process is that synthesis is not thesis plus antithesis divided by two. Even in the contrived framework of political negotiation, let’s say in legislative bargaining, it is not at all likely to be so simple. This is most obvious when multiple elements are treated as dialectical pure-types. An obvious example is the fabrication of a two-party system. The upshot is that one should not confuse invented false dichotomies found in politics with simple dialectic, certainly not in their unrefined aggregated forms. Ideally, individualized elements would be disaggregated and analyzed, though this would be misleading given the cross-issue bargaining that occurs in the larger political process. That noted, the overall principal of outcome indeterminacy remains.
The literature on decision-making has evolved to recognize that the pursuit of developing formulaic logical systems is illusionary (Lindblom 1959). Decision makers do not have access to comprehensive and perfect information. Decision makers, policy analysts, and political pundits are all “muddling through”; their only real method being doing the very best they can. Other decision-making models that incorporate the political variables of issue position, salience, and stakeholder power must rely on human judgment in assigning respective weights (Coplin and O’Leary 1983). There is also not only the patina of ideology, and conventional political deal making, but also complicating psychological factors that come into play. These complications are discussed in Lewis’ (2017) The Undoing Project, telling the story of the behavioral psychologists Kahneman and Tversky. Their work demonstrated how irrational human decision-making is (Tversky and Kahneman 1982). It suggests that the most insidious problem of all organizations everywhere is that they lie to themselves. These lies include optimism bias or plain old wishful thinking where aspirations override realities, as well as the now chronic hazard of organizational narcissism. Duchon and Burns (2008) describe this latter condition in their case study of Enron, though it might be even better applied to the Donald Trump empire. Flawed cognition leads to indeterminacy and a range of outcomes that are not predictable but can be framed. Dialectical analysis is not a decision making tool per se. In public policy though, it defines the field between “do nothing” and “kill them all.”
Another way to understand dialectics is through the quantum mechanics analogy, specifically in what is popularly known as “atom smashing.” Technically, the process involves accelerating nuclear particles to collide with others at nearly the speed of light. The collisions of these particles driven into each other produces more subatomic particles whose paths are indeterminate. 2 They also have the property of instantaneous transformation to other particles (See Figure 4 below). This represents a paradigm shift from the Newtonian to quantum worldview, which better describes the instantaneous nature of technological change on society most prominently seen in the information, medical, military, and aerospace fields.
Simulated image of Higgs boson.
Another human contrivance is found in market exchanges that also exhibit quantum shifts in corporate enterprises, national currencies, and GNP often in nanoseconds. Trading computers are as proximate to the exchanges as possible (Howorka 2015). The buildings next to the New York Stock Exchange are jammed with high-speed trading computers because, even at near-speed-of-light, proximity gives an edge.
Laws themselves have a quantum character in having instantaneous effect. Legal act or status can change in literally no time. Once through legislative deliberation, social reality can literally legally change. The process can be dialectical in emergent movements being antithetical. They may gain potency and prevail politically shifting legal statutes.
Dialectical analysis lends itself to the quantum paradigm by emphasizing the field of potentiality over prediction of outcome, which is an essential first step. Wild cards can be on the radar. With potentiality framed then a probability assessment might proceed that can include any possible “black swan” scenarios.
If the quantum paradigm seems inconsistent with current notions of social dynamics, this might be due to how deeply social sciences, largely created in a post-Newtonian world, has incorporated a Newtonian nomenclature that has dominated social description. Social processes are thus routinely described in Newtonian terms such as force, inertia, mass, impact, velocity, and so on, including its graphic imagery. Yet consider that many social interactions are quantum-like, such as with legal systems where legislated statutes take effect in a prescribed instant wherein a previous practice is transformed as legally sanctioned or no longer so. So too with the quantum nature of new technologies in their instantaneous shifts in, for instance, aircraft speeds, communications reach, or genetic traits, which create new normals all of the time.
Dialectical analysis operates within Newtonian and quantum metaphors. By establishing a frame, a range of uncertainty is established. Replication via computer modeling can be done to discern whether any patterns of outcome manifest as in the clinical sciences and, scrupulously recalling the Linblom caveat, social sciences. Again, dialectical analysis defines the field of play upon which any predictive model might more credibly be built from the interactions between thesis and antithesis.
In the field of futures studies, it provokes anticipating contradiction to novelties of all sorts. For instance, on the dimension of “disruption,” a term in vogue broadly describing transformative impacts to organizations that can include everything from economic collapse to technological innovations. This can describe the production of “chaos,” accommodating not only the disruptive antithetic element but also the implicit synthetic reaction to it. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, social systems abhor chaos, and thus disruptions are treated as threats, problems, nuisances, or opportunities but certainly never as ends in themselves. The post hoc rationalization of disruption is quantum-like in it being an instantaneous response with justifying narratives normalizing synthesis into thesis. At a fundamental level, dialectical analysis anticipates a collective compulsion to establish order from the disorder of thesis/antithesis interaction.
Another attribute of the dialectical analytical approach is its dynamism and association with ongoing “struggle” that aligns with historical process that is implicit in much of futures studies. Dialectical analysis eschews “happy ending” scenarios as episodic at best and instead suggests continuous scanning of emergent contradictions latent in the synthesis turned thesis, thus anticipating the next round of rising antithesis and reestablishing the field of resolution. An example is found in nineteenth-century North America when France “lost” Haiti to a successful slave revolt. Assessing that nothing as economically lucrative could be extracted from its American continental holdings sold “Louisiana” to the United States. Haitian independence and the subsequent French withdrawal from America would normatively be viewed as a positive historical synthesis. However, this American acquisition of Louisiana would make viable the American slave economies in the South. Resolution of one contradiction would enable American slavery that would then persist for another sixty years (C-SPAN 2017). This is a backward-looking scenario, but the dialectical elements can be projected forward into informed speculation. Thus, dialectical process can be extended to several iterations from a given dialectical moment opening other potential contradictions. Figure 5 extends the basic dialectical analytical model to better conform to its dynamism over time.
Extended dialectical process.
In this iteration, there is a chess-like element in its anticipation of outcome consequences from one point of dialectical resolution to the next. Once again, if each increment of process were run iteratively to reveal a range of probabilities, this might have utility for decision makers. This can be useful in developing a variety of contingency strategies in risk management where outliers would be critical to identify and capture.
Dialectical analysis, while applicable to any organizational dynamic, seems especially suited to public policy contexts. This includes application to relatively low-intensity local conflicts to highly kinetic ones as seen with the Trump presidency. In the latter instance, the probability of the aforementioned “do nothing” and/or “kill them all” extremes and its repercussions can be explored.
The other clear area that lends itself to dialectical analysis is in the realm of technological innovation. True innovation, as opposed to fashion or fad, is, in fact, born of crisis and itself can be considered as a species of synthesis consistent with the concept of technological fix. An innovation that is adapted by institutional or market forces generally leads to peripheral impacts that can set up subsequent emergent contradictions. For example, the chronic problem of vehicle crash deaths spurs a minor industry in auto safety devices culminating in autonomous, self-driving cars and trucks. Each increment al change was dialectical in nature.
Figure 6 below shows these safety developments as dialectically driven by incremental technological fixes.
Dialectical process as applied to vehicular safety.
Another useful example of dialectical process related to innovative imperative is within military contexts where intra or international conflict can lead to profound societal and even cultural change, for example, vehicular safety improvements depicted above the “crisis/chaos” event is often the result of an “antithesis/contradiction” developed well outside of the “thesis/convention” as with the rise of religiously inspired movements such as the Tai Ping Rebellion, Ghost Dance/Buffalo Cult, Al Qaida, and ISIS. The tipping-point event in this instance was the 9/11 attack inflecting federal policies away from a social welfare to a national security policy agenda. Dialectical analysis can conceivably mitigate the tendency to react to extreme cases that, in turn, produce bad laws. This forecasting potential could also be applied to elections and referenda in which the candidates’ policy agendas or initiative outcomes are laid out. Such an analysis can then be incorporated into a variety of contingency analysis and risk management scenarios in areas such as disaster preparedness or international treaty agreements.
Dialectical analysis can help set data ranges for determining strategies for gathering, and statistical measurement either with measures of central tendency or analysis of variance. It lends itself to either approach as it can identify outcomes in normal ranges as easily as outliers. Recall dialectical process, while indeterminate in outcome, does not annihilate thesis or antithesis in manifesting synthesis.
Another very useful dialectical analysis analogy is sexual biology. The specific traits of an offspring from any two mating pairs are presently considered indeterminate though almost entirely sourced from the parents’ respective twenty-four chromosomes with some potential for mutation as well. That noted, the field of indeterminacy is the range of possible paired chromosomes between the parents, with no predictability as to which combined pairs will issue. Thus, Darwinian “error and trial” evolutionary struggle is a useful template for the dialectical process generally in the biological context.
In foresight, consulting the technique is elegant in that clients can be easily engaged in envisioning the field of indeterminacy. The technique can also be applied to qualitative as well as quantitative data, synthesizing competing public values against each other. This would be of particular utility in mediating institutional conflicts such as guns versus butter or workforce retention versus automation. In short, dialectical analysis is user-friendly, and scalable in number of decision makers engaged. When done well, it can provide pathways of probable outcomes through several iterations of process. It thus provides a kind of early warning system for the consequences of immediate decisions. That dialectical analysis gets clients to conceive of and systematically consider their decisions within the framework of dynamic process is itself a very valuable asset. That it also highlights the need for a more holistic informational stream from which to better and more effectively consider long-term consequences of decisions is a significant added value. Finally, as a tool supporting other existing forecasting techniques, its utility is in setting a broad framework from which other diagnostic questions can be formulated.
The versatility of dialectical analysis in a variety of contexts can be seen in Figure 7 where some post hoc outcomes from dialectical interactions are displayed.
Examples of dialectical tensions and outcomes.
To summarize, dialectical analysis is a useful tool in a forecaster’s toolbox that can disabuse the persistent hard-wired assumption that emerging issues come from nowhere and disappear when “solved.” When used in conjunction with other forecasting techniques such as CLA and emerging issues analysis, it can help shift perceptions of outcome certainty and open a field of new contingencies to anticipate. The dimension of uncertainty along a bounded range can counter deeply held cultural assumptions. It is a highly versatile technique that can be applied to a variety of broad social issues. It can lend itself to dynamic iterative historical processes that are persistent, or novel contradictions that occur in natural and artificial contexts. It is especially useful in public policy analysis where either Newtonian notions of inertia and impact, or quantum-mechanical transformation, might be considered. That dialectical analysis is also elegant in concept and easily comprehended by nonfuturists is also important.
Finally, it has utility in emerging issue analysis where appropriate conceptualization might help inform outcome probability. With these capabilities, dialectical analysis should find utility as a forecast framing tool. Dialectical analysis can and should be systematically applied by incorporating a step-by-step assessment protocol along the following lines.
Identify the prevailing norm, institutional structure, or process or convention that provides the thesis element of the analysis.
Identify emerging contradiction(s) to the norm, institutional structure, or process or convention that can manifest as antithesis.
Assess the nature of the contradiction(s) between thesis and antithesis, and the range of potential impacts antithesis may have.
Array the outcomes of contradiction resolution on a continuum from low antithetical impact to high antithetical impact framed as synthesis and then continue the analysis by treating each outcome as thesis and repeating the scanning for potential emerging contradictions
The method is simple but can be difficult to apply, best done with a collection of experts in a Delphi-type analysis either individually or preferably in a collective setting with initial results treated as having equal likelihood of occurring. Dialectical analysis is thus holistic in its incorporation of existing and well-established forecasting methods that refine and validate its overall efficacy.
Dialectical Analysis Applied to Health Policy
A simple example of dialectical analysis is in the area of broad national policy, in this case, using a perennial debate in the United States and elsewhere about public expenditures. The current debate includes expenditures for a social safety net to support vulnerable citizens, much of which are considered nondiscretionary spending, and debt. Many see carrying increasing national debt as unsustainable, while others are opposed to shrinking the social safety net, and instead seek expanding services. Since nine-eleven, American policy has inflected away from being a social welfare state to a national security state. The impetus to continue an eroding social welfare program was blunted with the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010. A subsequent ideological battle has raged over the intervening period crystalizing around whether health care is a right or a product. The ACA is itself a synthesis on this question as it expanded an existing health care entitlement for low-income people while supporting private insurers through the carrots and sticks of subsidies and regulations. The looming unsustainability of the ACA in its present form due to insurer losses has resurrected the right versus product debate. While this debate has largely been settled in fifty-eight countries that offer universal health care (Stuckler et al. 2010), the controversy in the United States lends itself to a dialectical analysis.
Step 1 is a determination that the American health care model is, at present, a hybrid public and private system with private insurers subsidized to cover otherwise uninsured citizens.
Step 2 is not the incremental changes that were being debated in Congress as these retrograde fixes will have little impact. The legislation only obscures the contradiction between the enormous medical-industrial complex and its unsustainable costs that leave people unprotected or bankrupt. Properly identifying the correct level of contradiction, without being distracted by the bright shiny objects of daily headlines (litany), is critical. This is where consulting the supporting tool of CLA can be very helpful in dialectical analysis. Within futures studies, the analysis should go at least beyond that of litany to social causes or deeper. What may emerge as a bona fide antithesis is the simple demographics of an aging population cohort (the baby boomers), who will retire with low income qualifying them for Medicaid. The passing of this massive aging demographic from the workforce along with ongoing technological innovations will supplant employment that involves recursive human activity. A third thread affecting health care policy involves still speculative but probable quality of health innovations (Messner et al. 2015). These innovations will almost certainly have transformative effects on both quality of life and life span that will exacerbate and deepen the existing contradictions of existing American health care policy. The conundrum is that health care, whether a right or a product, is almost entirely medicalized (Conrad 2013). The product versus right dimension of health care is thus a false dichotomy and not a dialectical conflict. The antithesis to the current American health care model is thus what remedies its cost issues. This confronts a medical model that for millennia has resorted to either cutting or drug/poisoning people. The investment in refining these tools has been a major contributor to overall medical costs. The contradiction, of prevention/lifestyle changes, has gained significant traction in the face of costs. Synthesizing cost-benefit analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, and cost-utility analysis has yielded prevention-effectiveness models (Haddix et al. 2003). Prevention, hardly new, rooted in germ theory and inoculation therapies, may see new manifestations, as with self-driving vehicles. It is thus shifting from reactive responses to illness or injury and more fully embracing proactive modes to render as moot as possible the conventional medical model that so burdens the American economy and its people. This is a critical utility dialectical analysis brings in conjunction with CLA and emerging issue analysis in better identifying underlying contradictions to normative forecasting potentialities bound up in any given issue. Once a rising antithesis is identified, the clutter of incidental distractions is cleared.
Step 3 is comprised of an analysis of potential outcomes arising from the interactions of thesis and antithesis. A Delphi-type query of medical and health policy experts is a logical vehicle for this kind of analysis. Special attention should be paid to including advocates of proactive health care ranging from nutritionists to forensic geneticists best positioned to assess the impacts of nonmedical health strategies. Those on the periphery of conventional approaches to health policy might also include psychologists specialized in mind-body connections to health with some lines drawn to screen out charlatans. Results can be organized, reviewed, and further refined depending on the resources and time available to report out in Step 4 of the process for further policy development.
Step 4 is the consolidation of the process in which the range of syntheses can be arrayed and organized into a comprehensible format offering contingency pathways from findings. Each synthesis can then be treated as thesis with an eye toward identifying antithetical elements arising from it helping to extend the consequential pathways in time to mitigate unintended consequences. In the case of health care policy, this can enter into analyses of health as state of mind, in vitro interventions to stop deformities and/or health enhancements as a right (Conrad 2013; Rose 2009). Ideally, this is a recursive process that builds empirically and ultimately refines forecasting among the range of potentialities informing policymakers and policy scholars alike.
Dialectical analysis is a tool that recognizes, incorporates, and accommodates indeterminacy in complex and dynamic environments in general and in social environments in particular. When formally incorporated into a forecasting regimen, it helps to frame the range of outcomes from dialectical interactions. Such a systematic framing of historical process allows for the clearer examination of outcomes at all levels of probability, opening the way for contingency planning, paradigm shifts, and more refined policy formation. In conjunction with CLA, it can screen for false dichotomies. It also integrates emerging issues analysis/environmental scanning and Delphi techniques in a way that can optimize better policy formation, implementation, and assessment even within qualitative, quantitative, or quantum transformative perspectives, a testament to its flexibility of application. The technique for implementation outlined above will hopefully provide a template for others to augment their own forecasting and modeling endeavors, and aid in providing better understandings of how futures studies/foresight can offer useful menus of choices. Further investigation and adoption of dialectical analysis to augment forecasting in general and policy analysis in particular are thus encouraged.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.