A cycle of publications - the most actual tendencies

This article, the first in a series on the subject of coming change,  is taken from his recently published book, A Vision for 2012: Planning for Extraordinary Change.  © 2008 John L. Petersen



Rapidly Converging Global Trends


The world is stepping off of a precipice into an era of extraordinary change. All around us we see anomalous, highest-ever, once-in-a-century events, whispering to us that something big is coming our way. These faint signals are trying to tell us that they mean something—they are carrying an important message. Each is a harbinger, confiding more loudly than the last, “Don’t concentrate on me. Look where I’m pointing.”


When you gather up a handful of these indicators and stand them together, they point very clearly toward the looming likelihood of historical, epochal change—a rapid global shift unlike any that our species has lived through in the past. It will be a test for all of us, and especially government, unlike any other.


The coming years will strain the capabilities and emotional capacities of individuals, organizations, agencies, and administrations in ways both strange and overpowering. There are no direction-pointing precedents for what is coming; previous big, fast, world-changing shifts happened in a world that was much simpler than ours, and there is no one alive today that lived through anything like what we’re anticipating. In order to survive, we must all, starting at the highest levels, not only understand what is coming, but also adapt and adjust to the new reality. The shift has to come now, not in the middle of large-scale disruptions that will consume all efforts and resources as we just try to stay alive. Preparation is only useful before the fact.


The message is getting clearer, transmitted by many sources. They make up an odd collection that begins deep in the heart of conventional science, works its way through business and the economy, checks in with the attitudes and unease of common people, holds a finger to the wind of ecological and climate studies, and sits down quietly to listen to indigenous wisdom. You don’t have to look hard to find it prominently embedded in religious writings, ancient philosophers’ musings, and even metaphysical messages, coming from other dimensions or the collective unconscious.
After a while, it starts to add up. One after another, week after week, the messengers line up to slip through your computer, manifest themselves as friends, show up on the news and the silver screen, jump out of books, and even poke you relentlessly in the dark from the fluid world of dreams.


It’s not like this is a secret or anything. Priests, shamans, and holy men have been talking about the coming decade for hundreds if not thousands of years—some explicitly fingering 2012 as the year to focus on. Even some traditional scholars (good ones to be sure), logically extrapolating from the cycles that have described all of history, have reasoned that the coming years will be extraordinary. They weren’t channeling anyone; they just discovered an underlying pattern that says in the next few years we’re in for an inevitable major upheaval that will likely shake the underpinnings of society and government as we know them.


Breakdowns: The Coming Disintegration of the Present Global System


Consider this recent BBC headline: “Current global consumption levels could result in a large-scale ecosystem collapse by the middle of the century, environmental group WWF has warned.” One that followed read, “Climate change threatens supplies of water for millions of people in poorer countries, warns a new report from the Christian development agency Tearfund.”


About the same time The Washington Post wrote, “Birds, bees, bats and other species that pollinate North American plant life are losing population, according to a study released yesterday by the National Research Council.”
Reuters added, “Failing to fight global warming now will cost trillions of dollars by the end of the century even without counting biodiversity loss or unpredictable events like the Gulf Stream shutting down.”
Author James Howard Kunstler chimed in: “The Long Emergency is going to be a tremendous trauma for the human race

… We will not believe that this is happening to us, that two hundred years of modernity can be brought to its knees by a worldwide power shortage … The survivors will have to cultivate a religion of hope, that is, a deep and comprehensive belief that humanity is worth carrying on.”1


Then, in a landmark report compiled by Sir Nicholas Stern for the UK government, comes the admonition: The world has to act now on climate change or face devastating economic consequences. He estimated that at most humanity has ten years before the shift is unrecoverable.


What’s going on here? What does this all mean? These are extraordinary statements about massive earth changes. Are they just random trends that happen to be coincidentally showing up at the same time? Or perhaps they reflect some big, historic, underlying dynamic? Maybe the world is about to experience a shift unlike anything ever seen before.


There are reasons to believe the latter could be the case. Many sources, both conventional and unconventional, suggest that we are living in a special time—that between now and 2012, the world will undergo an epochal shift to a new era. This rapid evolution will produce a world that operates in fundamentally different ways than it has in the past.


The indicators are there. Take a closer look at what is already happening.


Demographics


More people have been born on this planet in the last 50 years than in all of the preceding 5000 years.  Nearly a half of those alive now are under the age of 25.2 That’s the largest youth generation in history. The overwhelming majority of these young people live in the developing world, and almost a quarter are surviving on less than a dollar a day.3 Most of them live in huge, urban ghettos without sewer systems and the service infrastructure that the rest of us take for granted. In addition to the social stability issues, these millions of people are most at risk from threats like global pandemics and would produce an overwhelming governmental and social system failure in the face of such an event. Most of them know about the quality of life in the West. Many have access to television and have been exposed to a computer or a mobile phone. They are aware of their position in life. The awareness of one’s relative adversity has always been a prerequisite step on the path to major social disruption.



John L. Petersen

23.10.2008. Views: 2659

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