I’m still travelling this week so sharing a few short thoughts on plans in lieu of the usual essay.
A subtle chain of countless rings
The next unto the farthest brings;
The eye reads omens where it goes,
And speaks all languages the rose;
And, striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form.Nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Plans summon the future out of non-existence into existence.
Some plans are inherent. When a child is first conceived there is a plan in their DNA looking to be expressed. As the embryo forms it becomes ever-closer to that initial blueprint. Aristotle called this process entelechy, making real the potential that exists within a creature.
Other plans are acquired. A beaver wishes to create a dam or a person imagines a house. These are plans that are consciously designed in response to viewing the environment.
In both cases the plan represents a formal structure with its own properties and impact on the world. Of course, it will never come true as originally described. All plans are continually contorted and modified in the process of being pursued. However, even if the result is partial and constrained the plan was able to bring something into existence that wasn’t there before.
In this way the plan and the sketch are closely related. A plan gives a structure for what could be. The sketch is the intermediate form on the path to the fulfilment of that plan.
Making plans is a fundamental human experience. We plan contracts, weddings, careers, and dinner. Our self-awareness gifts us with a knowledge of the future and the ability to organise ourselves in relation to that future to fill our time with projects.
However, we seem to be more wary of our plans now than we used to be. In the 1960s our leaders would say things like “We choose to go the moon”. Today they are more likely to point to platitudes about a “Green Revolution” contained within statements about the broad arc of history. By limiting our plans, or relying on prediction, we abdicate our ability to provide a structure to impact what is to come.
The truth is that ‘the future will arrive and it is going to be different from the present’. If we do not plan for it we may not like what comes. If we do plan we may be surprised by what we are able to pull out of non-existence.