If you are not into the woo-woo aspects of 2012, then A Vision for 2012: Planning for Extraordinary Change might be just the book for you. Not only do you not have to contend with the Long Count Calendar, baktuns, and haabs, you won't even find the word Maya in it. Maybe that's because the book was written by professional futurist, John Petersen, who first appeared here in an earlier post on The Mystery of 2012.
Petersen is the quintessential futurist: founder of The Arlington Institute ("a research institute that specializes in...global futures"), publisher of the on-line FUTUREdition Newsletter, and former board member of the World Future Society (an organization which I helped co-found way back when).
Pretty strong stuff.
And he doesn't get to these conclusions from Hopi prophecies, channeled messages, ayahuasca sessions, near death experiences, remote viewing or tea leaves (although he is apparently not totally ignorant of such approaches). Like a good futurist he looks at current trends, scientific data, expert opinion, and government reports.
His feet are planted firmly on the ground.....maybe a little too firmly for me, but more on that later.
Petersen sees these changes driven by all the usual suspects: e.g., the advent of peak oil, climate change, economic disruption, and, at least potentially, a global epidemic, terrorist attack and/or cataclysmic earth change. And regardless of the triggering event(s) he sees "social upheaval" as being almost unavoidable.
He also hints darkly and obliquely at "...a handful of groups who wield unusual influence on global geopolitics and economies" but shies away from naming names (maybe the Illuminati or the Bilderbergs?).
However, it's not all doom and gloom. He sees much hope in "...new capabilities and discoveries..." especially breakthroughs in such fields as energy production (e.g., cold fusion and zero-point energy), artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and the emergence of a "global brain" catalyzed by the internet.
Drawing on the work of Ray Kurzweil, MIT professor and "inventor extraordinaire," he postulates that "...bigger and bigger things are happening faster and faster." He quotes Kurzweil as saying that the overall rate of technological progress is "...doubling...every decade" and that "...the twenty-first century will see almost a thousand times greater technological change...." than in the twentieth century.
Petersen, like any good futurist, likes to deal in scenarios and in this case, given that disruption is inevitable, the real question for him is how we are going to respond to it. He outlines three possibilities, starting with the most optimistic:
1. Some extraordinary catalytic event or series of events shakes things up so much...that...we...decide we must live quite differently.
2. A series of major global disruptions...degrades existing institutions and systems, but almost all of the familiar systems remain in place.
3. Shocks to the global social system are so great that it fails.
And just to spice things up a bit he introduces the notion of wild cards, "... low probability, high impact events that are so big or arrive so fast that underlying social systems cannot effectively deal with them." Some examples he cites include a close call with an asteroid, human cloning, and time travel. Even spicier possibilities would be if "life is discovered in other dimensions/realms" or "extraterrestrials arrive and engage us."
Now I find his reference to the arrival of ET's as a wild card (i.e., a low probability event) to be just a bit disingenuous, but more on that later.
In anticipation of the potential disruptions in the future, he proposes that we embark on contingency planning on a global scale right now, e.g., creating new international agreements and conventions, sharing planetary problem-solving technology, and establishing multilateral initiatives.
Unfortunately, putting on his realist's hat, he glumly acknowledges that such initiatives would require "extraordinary leadership" by statesmen "...the likes of which neither the United States nor the rest of the world has produced in generations."
But a few pages later he takes off the realist hat and optimistically outlines his vision for a post 2012 future in which there is an "increased emphasis on connectedness and interdependence....a shift toward cooperation and away from competition....harmony with nature....new agricultural methods....and decentralized energy production." A world that "thinks and acts together for the common good."
This is a vision that he sees as closely aligned with The Earth Charter (a vision that I personally concur with wholeheartedly).
To be continued.............
