Alternative Editorial: 12 Possibilities for the 2020s
Photo: tolgart/E+/Getty
Five days into a new decade and the public sphere is febrile.
Australia appears to be on fire. As we know, this is not a cheap-shot metaphor, but an observation borne of both mainstream reporting and social media. Yet the links to climate change and our responsibilities going forward are not yet making the front pages.
The USA – and possibly its closest allies – appear to be on the brink of war with Iran. Which could lead to triggering the escalation of conflicts across the Middle East, with global consequences. This again, is not an alarmist cry, but an observation of both mainstream reporting and social media.
Yet, apart from voting in the Presidential race, there is little exploration of how our economy and culture prompt the war industry and what we can do to change that.
At home, the Labour Party is pulling itself apart, making itself responsible for its failure to win an argument about ‘real change’. While one faction believes the pledge to promise free broadband to every citizen was too ambitious and irrelevant, another pins the blame on ambivalence on the Brexit agenda. All appear to accept the framing of the mainstream press that Labour got it wrong on the terms that the Conservatives set.
In the meantime, the climate champion George Monbiot, points out a pattern of election results across the globe – Trump in the US, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Morrison in Australia, Johnson in the UK – that not only have similar, highly successful methods of campaigning (even the same consultants) but similar agendas.
The first three have openly campaigned against the Paris agreement and climate regulation. The fourth – our PM – refused to turn up for climate debates during his campaign. As we predicted in our three election editorials, there are already signs that climate regulations which have barely kept us aspiring to our Paris targets will be quietly dropped in favour of economic growth.
The Progressive parties are now focusing together on the quality of our democracy. Yet again our political system gave overwhelming power to one party against the wishes of the majority of the voters. Who could argue against the Progressives’ insistence that this must change? They talk of a proportional system being possible over the next six years, IF the next Labour leader is in favour – which they haven’t been until now.
That’s six years into the ten years the IPPC report told us we have to turn our society around in order meet the demands of limiting ourselves to 1.5 degrees global warming. While this work is crucial to the changes we need, it’s also clear that a much wider and broader systemic change needs to be occurring simultaneously to give us a chance of success. If the people are going to be able to use their vote more effectively, will they have something to vote for that can transform the multiple crises we are now facing?
From a decade long perspective, that new agenda – captured in an electoral manifesto when the time comes – must start building now. Its job is to stand outside of the current mainstream agenda and imagine how we could, given the chance, bring the planet back from the brink in credible, operational ways. To do that, it cannot be a trickle-down theory of change that few people understand or are willing to enact.
It must be a whole-system ecology of possible changes that arise from multiple starting points, suiting the needs and circumstances of people in all sorts of conditions. Somewhat like the way different animal and plant wildlife require specific nutrients to grow. Or diverse children need particular kinds of stimulation and help to learn. What they have in common nevertheless is an ideal of flourishing that enables them to live and thrive together.
When we look at the wide range of predictions for the coming decade that are available in our mainstream media – newspapers, magazines, TV shows – we’ve been somewhat disappointed by the narrowness of what they see coming along. It’s as if they’ve given into the tramlines imposed upon them by the 2010s – or maybe even the 20th Century – and can only think forward in straight lines.
The problem is well known in futures studies. When the automobile was dominant, all that sixties futurists could imagine, decades hence, was flying or nuclear-powered versions of the same, in cities dominated by miraculous flyovers. Did they anticipate entire nations bent towards their tiny communication screens, buying furiously? How wrong will we get the next few decades - even the next one - if we just extrapolate from our current behaviours?
Are we doomed to only ever stand on the shoulders of those who came before us – an image that leads inexorably to a pyramid? Are we unable to lift the table because we are standing on it? How do we step off it and allow something different to come through? After all, wouldn’t most people prefer to save the planet and live healthier, happier lives—at ease together? More than being at war in a self-destructing planet?
12 Alternative Possibilities For The Next 10 Years
For this reason we are starting the new decade with audacity. We refuse to fall into step with the mainstreaming of ambition which falls so far short of the minimal targets for flourishing.
So we’re offering you 12 possibilities for the 2020s. Ten innovations that, if given enough attention – meaning relationship, investment, commitment - will grow together into a new system capable of making the old one obsolete.
As anyone who reads the Daily Alternative knows, this is not starting from scratch: each one of the phenomena we mention below has been several years, even decades in the making. What is new is their coming into focus for the way they can work together to get new, unexpected results. For more on any one of these, click on the key words with links to the Daily Alternative search engine.
Here are our 12 top Possibilities for the 2020s.
1) Increasingly complex self-organising forms, in relationship to both material and emotional needs. From affinity groups to place-based networks: Extinction Rebellion to POP Plymouth. A new architecture of relationship and decision making from friendship circles to neighbourhood forums to localism to ‘citizen action networks’ to independent politicians taking over parish, town and district councils (aka Flatpack Democracy). Using relational care and systems of conviviality to strengthen, the network power of communities. This will develop autonomy and resilience particularly in the face of climate emergency. And it will open up a ground of belonging, meaning and purpose.
2) A fully ecological framework for our economies and societies. Developments in data collection, “the internet of things” and artificial intelligence point towards new socio-economic systems. Ones where every “externality” of a trade or transaction - every waste product and unconserved energy usage - is measured and accounted for, in terms of its biospheric cost. This drives a huge revolution in, and reduction of, the role of stuff in our lives - from disposability and obsolescence, to durability and repairability. This will be a system where advertising’s concoction of desires appears literally toxic, and less wasteful systems of need satisfaction become inevitable.
3) The growth of the Fourth Sector Economy. These enterprises will be an integrating force, binding groups in purpose by means of shared values, narrative and goals. Their forms will include new-style co-operatives, commoning, P2P cosmo-localism and social enterprise with ‘for benefit’ and B-corps corporations.
4) A radical redistribution of power through devolution/subsidiarity/autonomy. This means smaller nation states and regional confederalisation (populations around 5m), giving massive new powers to clusters of cities and mayors, capable of responding to the new architectures of democracy arising from the grassroots. This also implies V-Taiwan levels of digital consultation of the people.
5) Proliferation of transnational and international networks at city and regional level, making real socio-economic decisions together. This is the best chance we have of enacting the SDGs and reaching our climate targets. It’s also the only chance we have of getting beyond the military-industrial complex to make war obsolete. If innovation, social cohesion and productivity start to arise from the networked mutual interest of enlightened, confident municipalities, old geopolitical concentrations of power will begin to break down.
6) Accelerated self-development institutions based on neuroscience, psychology and newer forms of human-potential technology. Some call it transhumanism, others meta-modernism, others the new maturity. This domain will especially enable those who explicitly reject “life as a machine” framework, which only realised the economic dreams of the few. It will satisfy the need for autonomy and self-reliance while developing the capacities for collaboration. Aka bildung.
7) The rise of Sociodelics. Evidently psychedelics - that is, the means and techniques of producing changes in the psyche - will continue to have their place in personal transformation. But we also need to explore how our collective and social powers can also be more consciously refined and designed - particularly as we fail to address our collective crises. How can arts, media and ICT become actively “sociodelic”, makers and transformers of our social bonds? What new micro- and meso-solidarities, fluid yet unifying, can we construct to transform society?
8) A new idea of health that focuses on prevention to achieve leaps in health-span rather than life-span. Diets - healthy, cheap and planet-friendly - will fuse together. We’ll take advantage of Artificial Intelligence for better research and diagnosis, expect a better life at every age.
9) A new idea of work. With the aid of automation, the possibility of shorter working weeks and / or a citizens income expect wild new ideas about how people can create value in a newly liberated system, playing and making within the “safe operating zone” of our planetary boundaries.
10) A post-news, purpose-&-meaning driven media. Following the disenchantment with media barons including Zuckerberg, expect multiple forms of local and individually generated new media carrying the new narrative of human ingenuity and creativity to become popular.
11) A new political system. New hybrid forms of political entities will put the pressure on the old political systems to change. Proportional representation will come into being when the old binary system collapses through fragmentation. New parties will appear, but will quickly give rise to democratic systems that barely require parties to run them. (See the SF visions of “infomocracy” in this post).
12) Holding all this together is a new story about the age of reckoning with ourselves. Both our response-ability and our ingenuity for going forward. This is unlikely to puncture the mainstream news, but will become the hallmark of local organizing and a rising people’s sensibility. This in the face of increasing attempts to constantly trigger our emotions and keep us in thrall to the old system.
Get up and fight
While all these possibilities exist in the present, we have to work to bring them into better relationship with each other, to accelerate impact. Our hope in this coming year is to give you access from wherever you are into the heart of the system where you live.
If this is a future that rings true with you – or simply that you like the sound of it - join the co-creators group who will be meeting regularly from March this year, both locally, nationally and internationally.
If you just want to lend us your support, please consider donating regularly. Give up one thing you know is buying into the old system e.g. a tank of diesel once a month – or that extra doughnut with your coffee - and give it to us instead. We’ll promise to make the best possible use of that for your future.
One more thought: at the beginning of the 2020s, all of these 12 areas of growth are distinct possibilities – the roots are in place. However, unless there is enough attention given to and investment in these possibilities – and the thousands more appearing daily - they could disappear.
These are still relatively stable times, but ignoring the climate catastrophe could move us into sudden chaos. If you have any doubt about that, bring to mind the many dystopian futures that Hollywood has committed to over the past few decades. Maybe even Years and Years on our own BBC.
To get an alternative future, we’ll have to get up and fight for it. Happy 2020.