Posted on 01/28/2010 10:06:35 AM PST by buttonman
Substantial and unmistakable signs of profound change in the global strategic framework have become concrete in the past year. The stress in the structure has already developed into fissures. The transformation, in reality, has been underway since the end of the Cold War, and will continue and compound for at least another decade.
The balance of power is changing. Apart from the wave of globalization, which was really a precursor event, what is now emerging is the first truly fundamental change since the end of the Cold War, and, in global terms, it is a change which may redefine entire civilizational blocs. It is the most profound geopolitical change since the end of World War II, and part of possibly the most profound change in human history since the Industrial Revolution.
Some of what we will face will include the following:
1. Globalization is dead, and heightened nationalism and xenophobia, hallmarked by draconian political correctness (a heightened sense of narrowly-defined populist conformity), is returning to take its place, at least for a period of transition through the collapse or total reframing of global society. This entails a revival of protectionist policies, and new forms of what is essentially racism and other forms of chauvinism (ie: distrust and distaste for anyone who isn’t “us”), as societies and nations rush to protect themselves from their neighbours and, particularly, to protect themselves from the great and predatory powers, including the US;
2. Democracy, as the West has evolved it in recent decades, is also dead, already replaced by the “guided stewardship” of professional politicians and bureaucrats. Elected and bureaucratic officials who, overwhelmingly, have never been self-employed or worked in private enterprise, increasingly not only fail to protect the interests of the society as a whole, but actually fear and distrust the competition of free minds and entrepreneurs, and anything else which they cannot control. As a result, Western societies are polarizing into those members who produce and those who govern;
3. Personal freedom, the phenomenon which actually legitimizes democracy, has been dead or dying, or increasingly rare, for some time. Its rediscovery, and with it the phenomenon of true leadership and naturally-respected hierarchy, will be the thing which rebuilds societies;
4. Human numbers are set to decline significantly
Full article at: Geopolitical Megatrends
Basically, the return of the feudal society. We get to be serfs.
Your reply is dead wrong, your tagline dead right. Well done.
I dunno. I don’t buy it. It’s too negative. The human spirit ultimately isn’t.
13. Professional talkers will give way to autocracies and dictators. One by product of wealth is the relegation by all individuals of some of their individual powers to others. As wealth increases, individuals assign the more onerous of their tasks to others — cleaning, road repair, and so on — while also assigning to group action those things which are too big, or too complex, for the individual: the construction of houses, or aircraft, or automobiles. And as wealth increases, or conversely decreases to the point where individuals are preoccupied with survival, the function of governance is assigned to, or seized by, those who would take power for their own sake. This has led to the current age of the professional politician — “leaders” who have gained all their status through talking, rather than actually having achieved or built — but the “professional politician” will morph into new forms of Cæsarism or Bonapartism. This is already underway, as “leaders” with no practical experience of the world increasingly fear the uncertainties of markets and the confidence of those who can actually create, manage, and build. Thus, the “new socialism” is a system built by leaders who demand central control of societies and who genuinely fear freedom.
I agree it is a bit miserable. But if you look at the bottom the article it was first sent to subscribers in march 2009 - they seem to have gotten things pretty right so far. But i do agree about the human spirit - somehow we’ll pull through
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