Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Friday, August 15, 2008
Kates Playground 2009 Movies
What future awaits us?
Many analysts such as James Lovelock, Martin Rees, Samuel P. Huntington, Jacques Attali and others make gloomy predictions about the future that awaits us. It is true that history has no laws, as it moves into the realm of freedom which are subject to uncertainty principle, Bohr / Heisenberg and the amazing emergency own evolutionary process. However, a long-term perspective enables us to see some constants that can help us understand, for example, the emergence, expansion and fall of empires and entire civilizations. Who stopped more carefully on this issue was the British historian Arnold Toynbee (+1976), who wrote a work of twelve volumes on known historical civilizations: A Study of History. That manages a key category, real socio-historical constant, which sheds some light on the subject in question. This is the challenge-response correlation (challenge-response). Notes that a civilization is maintained and renewed to the extent that it succeeds in balancing the potential challenges with the potential answers she can give them. When the challenges are of such magnitude that exceeds the response capacity, begins the decline of that civilization is in crisis and disappears.
I believe that we are now facing this kind of phenomenon. Our civilizational paradigm, developed in the West and spread around the globe, is taking on water everywhere. Challenges (Challenge) are so serious global, especially those of ecological, energy, food and population, we are losing the ability to give a collective response and inclusive. This type of civilization will dissolve.
What next? There is only conjecture. The renowned historian Eric Hobsbawm predicted: either adopt a different paradigm or we will get out of the darkness.
I dwell on the forecasts of Jacques Attali, economist, former advisor to F. Mitterand and French thinker, in his book Une histoire de l'avenir brief (2006), because I seem plausible, even dramatic. He painted three likely scenarios that summarize briefly.
The first is the superimperio. This is the United States and its allies. They confer a Western face to globalization and to give direction that serves their interests. Its strength is around type, but mainly military, can kill the entire human species. But it is declining, with many internal contradictions that are shown in the inexorable depreciation of the dollar.
The second is the superconflicto. Is next to the collapse of imperial order. It comes in a collective process of chaos (not necessarily generated). Globalization continues, but with domains predominantly regional balkanization may create conflicts of great destructive power.) International anomie open space for the emergence of groups of pirates and privateers to cross into the air and oceans, looting large brewing companies and a climate of global insecurity. These forces can access weapons of mass destruction and, in the limit, threatening the human species. This extreme situation calls for a solution too extreme.
The third scenario is the superdemocracia. Humanity, if not to self-destruct, you must develop a global social contract instantiation of global governance and collective management of scarce natural resources. If you succeed, it would inaugurate a new era of human civilization, possibly with less conflict and more cooperation.
We can only pray that this last scenario is the one that happens.
Leonardo Boff
Many analysts such as James Lovelock, Martin Rees, Samuel P. Huntington, Jacques Attali and others make gloomy predictions about the future that awaits us. It is true that history has no laws, as it moves into the realm of freedom which are subject to uncertainty principle, Bohr / Heisenberg and the amazing emergency own evolutionary process. However, a long-term perspective enables us to see some constants that can help us understand, for example, the emergence, expansion and fall of empires and entire civilizations. Who stopped more carefully on this issue was the British historian Arnold Toynbee (+1976), who wrote a work of twelve volumes on known historical civilizations: A Study of History. That manages a key category, real socio-historical constant, which sheds some light on the subject in question. This is the challenge-response correlation (challenge-response). Notes that a civilization is maintained and renewed to the extent that it succeeds in balancing the potential challenges with the potential answers she can give them. When the challenges are of such magnitude that exceeds the response capacity, begins the decline of that civilization is in crisis and disappears.
I believe that we are now facing this kind of phenomenon. Our civilizational paradigm, developed in the West and spread around the globe, is taking on water everywhere. Challenges (Challenge) are so serious global, especially those of ecological, energy, food and population, we are losing the ability to give a collective response and inclusive. This type of civilization will dissolve.
What next? There is only conjecture. The renowned historian Eric Hobsbawm predicted: either adopt a different paradigm or we will get out of the darkness.
I dwell on the forecasts of Jacques Attali, economist, former advisor to F. Mitterand and French thinker, in his book Une histoire de l'avenir brief (2006), because I seem plausible, even dramatic. He painted three likely scenarios that summarize briefly.
The first is the superimperio. This is the United States and its allies. They confer a Western face to globalization and to give direction that serves their interests. Its strength is around type, but mainly military, can kill the entire human species. But it is declining, with many internal contradictions that are shown in the inexorable depreciation of the dollar.
The second is the superconflicto. Is next to the collapse of imperial order. It comes in a collective process of chaos (not necessarily generated). Globalization continues, but with domains predominantly regional balkanization may create conflicts of great destructive power.) International anomie open space for the emergence of groups of pirates and privateers to cross into the air and oceans, looting large brewing companies and a climate of global insecurity. These forces can access weapons of mass destruction and, in the limit, threatening the human species. This extreme situation calls for a solution too extreme.
The third scenario is the superdemocracia. Humanity, if not to self-destruct, you must develop a global social contract instantiation of global governance and collective management of scarce natural resources. If you succeed, it would inaugurate a new era of human civilization, possibly with less conflict and more cooperation.
We can only pray that this last scenario is the one that happens.
Leonardo Boff
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)