Foresight and the Seven Dimensions of Experience

Abstract

How we understand and treat time says a great deal about our worldview. The major global crises we are enmeshed in are largely the result of dominant worldviews that do not correspond sufficiently with the realities of how the cosmos works. Although what humanity has learned through science has some areas of correspondence it does not have the requisite variety to correlate with the complexities unleashed in the Anthropocene. This is clear from the feedback that the world system is giving us in areas of, for example, climate change, species extinction, mental stress, and endemic violence. In this article it is proposed that the resulting deficiency of foresight occurs because our current notions of time and our resulting way of organizing and interpreting our world that follows from that seriously restricts our understanding where it is most needed. This article introduces an alternative view of time as only one of seven dimensions of our lived experience and opens more scope for practical as well as theoretical understanding.