The Three Pillars Framework

Our approach to imagining and governance is based around these three core pillars: future unborn generations, nature and the more-than-human world, and ancestors and the past. Our work exists to embed these three pillars into decision-making, policy, governance and practice to help bring about a Life-centric society. We work with collective imagination which we take one step further into what we call “moral imagination” — using shifts in perspective to “look through the eyes” of these three pillars and embed the perspectives into our systems. Find out more about the framework below.

Background: Paradigm Shift — from Enlightenment to Entanglement

Our current economic, political and democratic systems in the west sit on a history of 400 years of industrial, mechanistic thinking built upon a scientific paradigm that has favoured reductionism, categorisation, subject-object separation, mind-body dualism, and most obviously, a separation from the natural, living world. This way of thinking has led to the design of systems, services and products that embody, encapsulate and reinforce that way of thinking.

There is a growing movement and shift in paradigm that is gaining momentum, backed by new discoveries in the biological and physical sciences, reinforcing a worldview and way of being, seeing and thinking that indigenous cultures and living heritage have stewarded over 1000s of years to this day. This worldview is one of symbiosis with the natural world, with each other, consideration of future generations and with the past, and moves us from enlightenment to entanglement, separation to connection, competition to collaboration, atomisation to networking.

The implications of these shifts are huge. We have to rethink and redesign everything, from our food systems to our housing, to how we build cities to how we do transport, to shifting cultures in our organisations but also more personally, at home and in our families. We need to rethink ownership, value, rights and responsibilities, and even legal personhood. 

The Three Pillars Framework helps catalyse this shift

The Three Pillars Framework is designed to catalyse and scaffold these shifts. It’s a unique framework centred around bridging imagination and governance. Centred around “Three Pillars” of Future Generations, Nature and Ancestors, it offers a blueprint for organisations, policy-makers and designers to use imagination to bring the real considerations, rights and sovereignty of these three “stakeholders” to life. 

What are the skills and capabilities that will be necessary in a rapidly changing world where rivers have legal personhood, nature has rights, and future generations are given a seat at the table? How do we accelerate the expansion of who is considered a stakeholder in decision-making? And how do we encourage looking to the past, as well as the future, to encourage reparation, reconciliation and mending the consequences of the past? 

Moral Imagining widens the circle of moral concern — and links to governance and legislation

Moral Imagining is an act of prefigurative governance, future-making a world where future generations, nature and ancestors are integrated into decision-making, politics and governance. In this future, rivers, mountains, trees and non-human living beings are included in deliberative decision-making as stakeholders who need to be considered, respected and represented. In this future, human beings have a key role in representing their needs and views - and there are responsibilities held by those who qualify to speak on their behalf. The Three Pillars Framework helps develop these capabilities across imagination, care, protection, economic investment and commitments through governance.

Moral imagination is the act of looking beyond our own immediate needs and considering a wider set of consequences. It’s the use of our incredible capacity to imagine something different from what is now and use this imagination for the welfare of the whole. What this framework does is make a link between changes in governance and legislation that integrate future generations, nature and ancestors, and the capability of imagination required to speak on behalf of them. This is a different skill and capability to visioning the future.

Although the term ‘moral imagination’ only dates back to the late 18th century, the idea of using the imagination to shift consciousness and generate empathy with future generations and other species goes back much further. Indeed, a lot of ideas that can feel innovative in modern Western societies (long termism and regenerative design, for example) never went away in many cultures. 

We think moral imagination in the 21st Century means imagining the perspectives and protecting the rights of future generations and all Life to exist, and repairing the actions of ancestors. Moral imagination is a core civic capacity and one that can help us bridge divides, build empathy, shift perception, and ultimately, create a world in line with our values.

There are three pillars to the Moral Imagining Framework:

For each of the Three Pillars, we provide the governance framework and imaginative tools to implement the Three Pillars in governance and policy making. One of the most powerful aspects of the framework is that it gets people to think differently about who gets a voice, and who should be a stakeholder in decisions. These Three Pillars catalyse: responsibility and accountability to non-human creatures and future beings, commitment to historical equity, restoration and solidarity, shift in worldview and reconnection:

The framework prompts questions such as:

• What would a member of the future generations say, if they could be present right now?

• What would nature say if nature had a voice?

• Where is there a need for restoration or solidarity as we look to the past?

• Who is qualified to speak on behalf of nature or future generations?

• How do we include future generations, ancestors and the more-than-human world in policy making and decision making?

The Three Pillars make the implicit explicit:

• We exist within an interdependent natural ecosystem; every decision we make has an impact on the natural systems that support life. 

• Our systems and hierarchies are the product of colonial histories and historical inequalities that continue to play out in the present. 

• Our choices have long term implications and will have outsized consequences for future generations. 

Working with the Framework: Creative Commons Licence