They anticipated a "Great Transition" in 2002. Twenty years on, how is the report card? Worrying and hopeful at the same time
Scenario map from 2002’s Great Transition: The Promise and Lure of the Times Ahead
A good measure of the present is to match your current state against early predictions. If your original future scenario was at least thoughtful and well-evidenced, the steps ahead - for the next twenty years - can seem very clear.
Thus it seems with this new piece from the Great Transition Initiative website, which looks back on its founding essay, 2002’s Great Transition: The Promise and Lure of the Times Ahead.
We excerpt below from its section where comparisons are made with 2002. (The bolded categories are taken from the twenty year old scenario map above - where the options we hope are self-explanatory):
It is certainly not the best of times; in many ways, it is the worst of times. Surely, the dismal developments of the recent past have extinguished any remaining optimistic twinkles in the eyes of those paying attention. Still, near-term descent does not negate the long-term possibility (not probability!) of a better world fashioned through visionary struggle. That kind of action, based on militant hope, is the better friend of change than passive optimism.
In fact, all the scenarios depicted in GT—the good, the bad, and the ugly—begin with a downward historical spiral rife with conflict and disruption. Indeed, the narratives envisioned a convulsive “systemic crisis” for this period even direr than what has actually transpired to this point. The Great Unravelling that is the sine qua non for a Great Transition still gathers. Our long-term global prospects are not diminished by what has happened. The grave concern is what has not happened, as I explain below.
The story of the past twenty years, told with an upbeat bias, would foreground advances in digital and medical technology, expansion of rights to excluded communities, surging renewable energy, and poverty reduction in China and other growing economies.
But a balanced account would spotlight, as well, the brutal wars, financial meltdown, massive displacement, runaway ecocide, climate crisis, soaring inequality, revived nuclear threats, devastating pandemic, demagogic politics, reactionary movements, and the list goes on.
The comforting notion of “business-as-usual,” always an illusion, seems a quaint relic from a naïve past. The force fields of historical change that were at play in the complex world of 2002 have evolved and the social-ecological dynamics driving change have clarified. While today’s world remains a complex mélange of competing forces, their composition has shifted.
Market Forces limps on as the dominant mode of development, even as cacophonous wake-up calls—resurgent nationalism, political-economic instability, the specter of ecocide—have interrupted the pipedream of frictionless transnational markets. But the swirling chaos vitiates faith in unfettered capitalism and neoliberal nostrums. On cue, corporate globalists and political centrists, concerned about the survival of the system, have embraced a reform agenda.
This Davos crowd of technocrats and latter-day social democrats, together with burgeoning civil society activists, have strengthened Policy Reform. Localities have been primary arenas for corrective action, and international negotiations have yielded significant, albeit largely rhetorical, successes, such as the UN sustainable development goals and climate agreements. Although such incremental reforms demand our support as an ethical and strategic imperative, they will remain an anodyne prescription for systemic disease so long as entrenched interests and behaviors quench real progress.
In the wake of fading Market Forces delusions and floundering Policy Reform corrections, a zeitgeist of fear and anger has churned. The alienated and disoriented become vulnerable to the cynical manipulations and false answers of demagogues, fascists, and political cultists as Conventional Worlds cedes space to its evil cousin Barbarization.
Fortress World despots, charlatans, and authoritarians feed off the chaos. They may prevail and, unless they are able to fashion a coordinated global police state, make Breakdown ultimately an ever more plausible scenario.
What of Great Transition? The great uncertainty of 2002 was whether a progressive force would consolidate to supersede reform and neutralize barbarization. The planetary predicament could be expected to spur a unified movement, but the fragmented oppositional landscape and legacy of mistrust had to be overcome. What landscape do we stand in today?
Over the decades, the preconditions for a systemic movement have evolved. We see it in the uptick of civil society campaigns across the spectrum of justice, peace, labor, and environmental issues. We see the millions in the streets under the banner “system change not climate change.” We see it in youth culture growing attuned to the need for a progressive political shift.
We see it in expanding scientific knowledge on the fragile biosphere in what has come to be called “the Anthroposphere.” We see it when engaged academics and social visionaries critique the reigning system and posit alternatives.
We see it in the turn toward post-consumerist lifestyles, cooperative economies, and indigenous ways and worldviews. We see it in the visionary search in the Global South for a better model of civilization.
We see all this, but not yet the critical global movement we need. Because this has not happened, the years have not been kind to a Great Transition, The critical actor missing from the 2002 stage—a genuine global movement for system transformation—has yet to make its appearance.
That movement “would be systemic, connecting across issues, themes and regions; it would promote a positive vision of global development; and it would build an organizational framework for common action, not only as protest but also as affirmation of the alternative vision”, as the original essay put it.
Twenty years on, the uncertainties of 2002 remain:
How do we foster a politics of trust that bridges divisive polarities: unity-pluralism, identity-solidarity, global-local, top-down-bottom-up?
What structures of collective coordination can catalyze a diverse yet unified movement? Who will change the world?
Does a Great Transition movement stir in the wings?
Those of us committed to the fight for a civilized future have done much to kindle hope. But as time grows short, we urgently need answers to these vexing questions. Hanging in the balance: the future humanity will be living in twenty years from now (see scenario bubbles below).
This piece was originally published on The Great Transition Initiative website, and is reproduced here under their Creative Commons license—with thanks.
