Half full – optimism or complacency?

Change is relentless and the impact of change has no pity for those who are its victims. It has always been so and history is full of the miseries of those caught up in periods of significant social, political or economic transformation. We appear to suffer collectively from an innate urge to improve our lot on the one hand and a paradoxical attachment to the status quo on the other. One of the illogical consequences of this inner tension is a strange and often unsupportable belief that ‘things’ were better in the past.

Given the many strands of change that appear to be weaving themselves into our destiny, is this generation heading unerringly for victimhood? These strands of change include globalisation, urbanisation, technological development, de-industrialisation of the developed world, industrialisation of the developing world, climate change, greater competition for natural resources, shifts of political and economic power. Will they provide the means for emerging power hubs to dominate and control the world population at large? Possibly but not necessarily so. While recognising that there are too many places in the world where the cost of change is still paid in blood and destruction, there are enough signs of creative stamina and resilience to persist in hope. We must grab hold of those aspects of the strands of change that liberate, inspire and enable individuals to participate fully in the societies and economies within which they live, pulling them into place as a global web of mutual interdependence. OK, so that is just some high-flown rhetoric but it is also possible to do …… only not in a blog.

This is not to say that writing does not help. The work of science fiction writers and futurologists has been invaluable in stimulating our thinking by framing possible futures; individuals such as Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Terry Pratchett, Raymond Kurzweil and Peter Schwartz come to mind as leaders in this regard and no doubt there are many others whose names should be added to this list. I expect that I will come back to this mishmash of a subject area and try to make more sense of it for myself.

The glass is half full; I am an optimist and enjoy the bounty with which I have been blessed but I am also aware that a glass supped from will in time be empty and that it is already time to give some thought to replenishment.