Theorizing alternative futures of Asia: Activating enabling traditions

Abstract

This chapter explores culture, and its possibilities and limits, in the light of Asia’s great potential for recovery in the twenty-first century. It is not a question of Asian ascendancy but of how that ascendancy will be expressed that lies at the heart of futures thinking for Asia. Asian futures, and the traditions that inform them, are first framed though the biographies of two thinkers engaged in developing new criteria for thinking about Asia 2060. The concept of enabling tradition is offered as an alternative to traditional conservatism and an adjunct to critical traditionalism. In this light the concepts of renaissance and an Asian renaissance are also explored. The interrelated nature of this new emerging theoretical development provides the point at which this chapter closes. The concept that we all inter-are reminds us that the future belongs to us all, both humanity and its planetary system, and challenges the parochial to rethink its relationship with a world that is turning rapidly towards global understandings of Self and consciousness.