| |
o The modernization, urbanization and globalization of China, India and other Asian nations will be the most dynamic and convulsive events of the coming decades. Billions of people will have their personal and collective lives transformed to a greater degree, in a shorter space of time, than has been experienced by any people ever before. This will eventually have profound consequences for all nations.
o Russia and the Eurasian landmass will continue to be a source of uncertainty, and possible instability, for some time to come. Russia has not yet truly entered a “post-Communist” era, as most of its political and industrial leadership was shaped by the influence of Communism. Even the Moscow Times noted, “There can be no denying that contemporary Russia is in its very essence a product of the Soviet legacy. Our whole life is still shaped by the influence of Soviet-style expectations. We are still governed by Soviet-reared rulers.” It may be a generation before the psychology of Russia is truly free of the influence of seventy-four years of Communist rule.
|
Assessing Global Trends and Decision-Making |
|
|
|
 |
o Science is in the process of redefining our understanding of terms first given us at the dawn of human consciousness: such terms as “life,” “nature” and “human.” Increasingly, scientists are subordinating humans to technology. In essence, we may be abdicating our own psychological center of being and handing it over to the computer. Scientists tell us that when artificial and human intelligence are eventually merged (around 2025), we will enter the “Post-human” era. Thus by 2030, we may have reached the point where the primary question will be, “What are humans for in a world of self-replicating technological capability completely independent of human control?” We thus face a policy and human crisis without historical precedent.
o Globalization has moved far beyond economics and finance, and has now moved to a stage where western political, social, cultural and philosophical ideas are gradually seeping into the fabric of the rest of the world. While we Americans believe what works for America will work for all nations, we sometimes forget that cultural differences between the U.S. and other nations represent profound psychological differences. The critical question for globalizing nations is, “How can we modernize without losing our traditions, which represent our psychic roots?” Thus we Americans need to be far more sensitive to the acute emotional trauma nations are experiencing as they confront the varied effects of globalization.
o We have moved from a relatively slow pace of change to an exponential rate. The rate of technological change is estimated to double every decade. Thus, so much is happening so fast in every part of the world, we no longer have any frame of reference within which to understand contemporary events. Life has become a passing blur. Thus leaders lack any larger order of purpose and significance, any guiding narrative that transcends short-term objectives and might offer common purpose to disparate cultures. At such a critical moment, only America seems to have the global reach and structure required to suggest some common pattern of meaning offering collective human existence a modicum of intelligibility and coherence (if we can regain the trust of the world). Just as the Founding Fathers expressed new themes and concepts for a fresh stage of America’s development, so now must America offer a fresh vision for a new stage of the human experience.
o Due to electronic global communication, as well as massive worldwide migration, people of totally different psychological and cultural expressions are being forced into a single, globalized cultural and technological context. Yet as individuals, not all people have the same psychology. The indigenous people of the Amazon basin exhibit a different psychology than the computer researcher in Silicon Valley. This is not a value judgment; it’s not to say one is better than the other. They’re just different. This psychological difference, which generates unconscious reactions, is one of the prime factors at the heart of world terrorism.
o The largest migration in history is changing the face of nations. The U. S. accepts more immigrants than the rest of the world combined. In China, one hundred million people are moving from the country to the city. In the West, the European Union will need over a hundred-million immigrants in the next three decades simply to keep its population at 1995 levels, as well as to keep the current ratio of retirees to workers. In Brussels, over fifty percent of the babies born are Muslim. In Germany, the death rate has exceeded the birth rate for decades, so they now have to depend on immigrants to maintain their high tech structure. In England, there are now more practicing Muslims than Anglicans. In Italy, the Archbishop of Bologna warned that Italy is in danger of “losing its identity” due to immigration from North Africa and Central Europe. The Catholic Church is facing the distinct possibility that in coming years, Islam will be the largest European faith. As migration increases, the historic legends that are the basis of national identities tend to wane. As one British historian put it, “ A white majority that invented the national mythologies underpinning modern European culture lives in an almost perpetual state of fear that it and its way of life are about to disappear.” This fear of the potential consequences of immigration is the subtext for everything else happening in Europe today.
o The information environment in which the individual lives has been radically altered. Through history, the transmission of information, ideas and images took place slowly, taking weeks, even months, to move around the world. Such a slow pace of information travel gave people time to adjust psychologically to a new information environment. Today, we zap information, ideas and images across the globe in nanoseconds. People have no time to adjust, no time to assimilate the new information and shape it into coherent meaning. One result is disorientation and uncertainty.
o We are adopting world-changing technologies with minimal understanding of how they will affect our institutions and us as individuals, or what their unintended consequences might be. The emphasis on constant technological change has created a clash of different time scales. The time scales created by instant technology clash with the time scale required by natural life. Unhurried time is essential for natural growth. Yet speed, which is the forced compression of time, is increasingly necessary for the modern economy. Yet we have virtually no comprehension of how this will affect individual psychology, our social and institutional arrangements, or relations between nations. The 1999 Rudman-Hart report of The United States Commission on National Security/21 st Century concluded that due to the epochal changes being brought by accelerating technology, “we may not recognize many of the threats in our future…..they may consist of the unraveling of national identity itself…..democracy may be hollowed out from the inside.” Surely such a warning warrants further investigation of proposed technologies, how they might affect us, and whether further R&D of particular technologies is in our long-term best interest.
o The ability to create change, as well as the attitude that change is desirable, is now a global possession. Throughout history, in all civilizations, continuity rather than change has been the desired state of affairs. No society on the planet knows how to cope with the social, policy or psychological dimensions of constant, radical change. Thus every nation is, concurrently with all other nations, in a state of intense crisis as we try to manage the impacts of an ever-accelerating pace of change.
o Ultimate destructive power once held only by major states, is now in the hands of psychotic individuals as well as failed states such as North Korea.
o For the first time in history, what constitutes a family is being redefined. This has extreme psychological implications for government, education, national security and “civil society.” We are experimenting with the most basic societal institution, minus any clear guidance.
o Also for the first time in history, the Caucasian race is no longer reproducing itself. No European country is reproducing its population; nor are Caucasians in North America reproducing themselves. For the U.S., this emphasizes the need for non-Caucasians to enter into and assume greater responsibility for all aspects of national life, especially in diplomacy and national security.
o For thousands of years the environmental question was how to protect humans from the ravages of nature. Just in our lifetime, the issue has now become how to protect nature from the multiplying excesses of human beings. In one sense, we humans have declared war on all forms of Nature. The critical question now is, “Are we at—or have we passed—the ‘tipping point?’”
o According to Joseph Campbell, perhaps the world’s foremost authority on the symbolic and psychological meaning of myths and religion, we are in the midst of “the greatest spiritual metamorphosis in the history of the world.” Look at the section on religion in any American bookstore. As well as books on Christianity, there are books on New Age spirituality, Buddhism, Nostradamus, yoga, fundamentalism of every stripe, channeling, angels, miracles, Eastern philosophy, addiction, psychic health, mysticism, or finding meaning in life. All evidence of a massive spiritual uncertainty, and a search for some new spiritual dispensation.
Thus while there are millions of Christians and Jews in America, the spiritual impulse that gave highest value and meaning to Western civilization is no longer the inner dynamic of the collective Western psyche. It’s no longer the informing force in the soul of America and Europe’s “cultural creative minority” who give us our literature, science, technology, education, theater, cinema, and music. In this sense, the Western world no longer has any collective myth or story by which to live. Our collective myth instead is now power and pleasure—the power of technology and the pleasure of mass entertainment. This forms the basic “schism of the soul” confronting America and Europe. The need to understand the significance of this spiritual reorientation and what it means for each individual, as well as for the world, is crucial. This issue is not a matter of personal preference; it’s an age-old question of collective survival.
^BACK TO TOP
|
