A renowned systems theorist has predicted that human civilization is on the brink of a “giant leap”. This leap could see us embracing “networked superabundance”, but it may yet be thwarted by the rise of nationalist populism.
In a new study, investigative journalist and academic Nafeez Ahmed has argued that the world is facing unprecedented crises. “Industrial civilization is facing ‘inevitable’ decline as it is replaced by what could turn out to be a far more advanced ‘postmaterialist’ civilization based on distributed superabundant clean energy”, Ahmed explained in a statement. “The main challenge is that industrial civilization is facing such rapid decline that this could derail the emergence of a new and superior ‘life-cycle’ for the human species”
There is little denying that humanity is facing an unprecedented set of interrelated challenges. Of course, history is filled with various crises – but the sheer global scale of the present situation, its interrelatedness, and the potential for these challenges to all be amplified by one another makes this something different. In essence, we are increasingly realising that a crisis in one part of the global system can quickly feed back and cause issues in other parts.
However, this framework for how to understand the current situation and see future changes is still underdeveloped and lacks ways to empirically base foresight perspectives. At the moment, foresight methods have been limited by disciplinary specialization, even though the scientific community is increasingly aware that it needs larger-scale, transdisciplinary thinking to understand it properly.
In his new paper, Ahmed offers a massive effort to synthesize huge amounts of scientific literature across the natural and social sciences to provide a new theory of the rise and fall of civilizations. He argues that civilizations evolve through a four-stage process consisting of growth, stability, decline, and transformation. This life-cycle, he claims, encompasses both material-technological and cultural-organizational change across time.
Today, industrial civilization is moving through what Ahmed believes is its final stages – decline – and soon could enter into the transformation phase. In particular, Ahmed uses vast amounts of empirical data to suggest that a whole new material-technological system could emerge across the world that will replace the old industrial order.
There is, Ahmed writes, “[c]ompelling evidence that industrial civilization is moving into the final reorganization stage of its adaptive cycle” which can be “gleaned from empirical data across foundational sectors of material production, demonstrating simultaneous interconnected phase transitions in energy, transport, food and information.”
The fossil fuel industry is facing a decline due to various factors, which are allowing new “disruptive” renewable energy technologies to emerge, such as solar photovoltaics, wind turbines, and battery storage. All these technologies are experiencing significant cost declines and “exponentially increasing adoption rates”.
Solar, wind, and batteries are projected to disrupt, dominate, and transform the global energy system within the next two decades. At the same time, food production, transportation, and artificial intelligence are all set to experience similar advancements and changes, with developments in cellular agriculture, electric vehicles, and computer processing.
Taken together, and if carefully designed, these new material capabilities could create new forms of “network superabundance” that protect the earth and its systems.
Dangers are ever-present
While these projections may look positive, Ahmed warns that there is still significant space for regression to occur, with disastrous implications.
He argues that the increase in authoritarian politics – such as the incoming presidency of Donald Trump, as well as reactionary efforts to protect fossil fuels – could undermine and jeopardize civilization.
As new technologies emerge to disrupt the existing order, they are nevertheless distributed and decentralized in a way that cannot be governed by the old centralized industrial hierarchies. This is increasingly leading to a widening gulf between what Ahmed calls the “industrial operating system” – the old order – and the emerging system. This results major political and cultural disruptions across the world and could cause the rise of authoritarianism to push back, preventing a transition to a new life-cycle.
“An amazing new possibility space is emerging, where humanity could provide itself superabundant energy, transport, food and knowledge without hurting the earth. This could be the next giant leap in human evolution”, Ahmed explained.
“But if we fail to genuinely evolve as humans by rewiring how we govern these emerging capabilities responsibly and for the benefit of all, they could be our undoing. Instead of evolving, we would regress – if not collapse. The rise in authoritarian and far-right governments around the world, increases this grave risk of collapse. The incoming Donald Trump administration, with its commitment to elevating fossil fuels while gutting clean energy – as well as its focus on centralizing power along ethnonationalist lines – could prevent us successfully moving through the planetary phase shift to the next stage of human evolution.”
The paper is published in the journal Foresight.
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