It is difficult to escape the notion that our in our present time we experience a new threshold of history. Much can go wrong, much can still go well. And many interests worldwide are at stake. Today’s financial muddle is just a symptom of a more profound and substantive historic agony. It extends beyond mere economic stagnation or ‘climate’. Our world – our planet – is on the verge of a burst. We have arrived at a stage where every inspiration, every ideology, every invention and – most specifically – every resource has reached its near exhaustion. In baffling speed we have broken down the traditional fabric of our communities to the point where either we secure the continuity of our advanced, high tech and interdependent global society or we fall back to the greatest disarray that humanity has ever experienced. In both scenarios we pay a considerable price.
Continuity implies great adjustment. This includes a sizeable investment in new technologies to sustain the level of material comfort to which we have become accustomed – and in which most people living today were born. Previous generations lived through adversities – both in material and in humanitarian terms – which we consider unthinkable. All we – should – know is that there is nothing romantic about a world falling into collapse, with everything that is bound to follow.
But a future of sustained welfare and ongoing advancement is far from certain. We truly have come the end of a history that is crying for another rebirth. Before we know it our world of privilege – particularly our Western World.- will find itself in the same position that some hundred years ago the elite of kings, emperors and their entourage found themselves in: abundant, ignorant of the true needs of their people, consuming wealth they did not really earn. At a global scale, we are now that elite, potentially oblivious of the needs of the rest of our world, its huge population, its dying wildlife and its barren fields. Are we going to defend our privileges at all cost, our access to the last remaining oil wells, the last gallons of fresh water, our last kilos of beef and tons of steel to just continue as we are?
I am not in the habit of being a doomsayer. It is merely a contemplation of possible futures that occupies me. My understanding of history – at every stage – in the past thousands of years is that it very much derives its character from discontinuity, manifold perils – not limited to the perils of war and conflict – which caused humanity to readjust, not necessarily for the better at every instant. It can be a gradual, creeping process that suddenly hits, or it is an unexpected great disaster. The Roman Empire took decades if not a hundred years to finally collapse, both from within and outside. The old European world of Kings and Emperors required one irreversible shot to trigger its demise, however much it was a world at its end anyway.
Hotspots of our present world
One could also look for examples in history where progress was achieved beyond prevailing paradigms without any cataclysm. Can societies arise above stagnation by the force of their own energies? Some civilizations did manage to do so, at least to some extent, but never without great sacrifices amongst themselves, such as the Chinese. But we can also think of the Renaissance of Europe, in the 14th and 15th centuries. Battlefields and disease did accompany it, but it was a substantive transition.
Paradigm shifts are called for, in many fields, whether or not technology will help us to overcome the emerging material scarcity. We should ask the question whether indeed we can allow the pressure to mount, populations to grow, resources to remain exploited in the way we do now. We actually know that we can not.
Among the futures that we face are those which we better do our utmost to escape. We are world filled talent and youth to achieve this. At the same time we tend to waste it and we allow our consumer habits to rule our interests as human beings living on a lonely but highly precious planet. We accommodate sizeable migrations, there seems very little choice, but we fail to invest sufficiently in blending newcomers into the rhythm of our societies.
Vulgarization, alienation and complacency may threaten us more – from within - than any present day conflict or natural crisis may do from outside. To sustain what we have and what we are is not enough. Stagnation means disintegration. Strong, forward looking ambitions should guide our world to a new horizon. It will demand every leadership and inventiveness available.
My sincere wish is that such leadership will also take us away from the antagonisms that plague our present world and articulate new, inspiring missions for humanity. Traditionally we look at the Western World – the US or Europe – to mobilize the critical mass to this end. But this another great question mark. It is not because such leadership may be absent, but because we have become too self-interested to understand its necessity.
The world in 2050 will be vastly different from the world we know. By reasonable reckoning I will not live to see it. I am nonetheless as much concerned about that world as anyone belonging to our younger generations. We have to be. Most of the decisions – and hopefully: breakthroughs – of the next couple of years will determine the parameters for the longer term. We either strike out the potential for disaster, or we will have to embrace it.
