Hindsight is...
It seems that we’ve witnessed a lifetime of events in just one year and we all can’t wait for things to go back to normal. But what if there’s no going back?
Hindsight is 20-20. I want to slap whoever coined that term. Especially after this past year.
Things started off innocuously enough. We all had big plans with our New Years resolutions. Plans for travel. Plans for our career. Plans for love and for family. That optimism lasted about a day.
We watched as Australia burned.
Were gripped by fears of World War III.
Witnessed the impeachment of the U.S. President.
And that was just the first 40 days.
It’d be impossible to attempt to recount everything that happened in 2020: from the outbreak of COVID-19, to the unjust death of George Floyd, to the economic devastation wrought by lockdowns, to the heightened civil unrest, to the reality TV show of the 2020 election cycle. And that’s just in the United States. Elsewhere in the world, we watched as the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize Winner presided over a brutal civil war, Chile voted to rewrite its constitution, and voices for Scottish independence grew louder.
It seems that we’ve witnessed a lifetime of events in just one year and we all can’t wait for things to go back to normal.
But what if there’s no going back? What if this is just the opening act? What if 2020 is merely the beginning of birth pains of a tumultuous decade? This is the question that haunts us.
There’s something deeply ironic about our present situation. Despite the apocalyptic headlines, humanity is at a zenith. Life expectancies and per-capita incomes are at all-time highs and are still increasing. Violent deaths are on the decline - from both war and homicide. And while COVID-19 killed an estimated 1.8 million globally through 2020, the 1918 Spanish Flu killed over 50 million. To put things in perspective, there are approximately 7.8 billion people alive today compared to the 1.8 billion alive in 1918. Thing were far worse for humanity just 100 years ago.
So why are we so anxious?
Just take a look at the state of the world.
Hunger is rising with over 800 million classified as food insecure. In 2020, an estimated 50 million Americans faced food insecurity Additionally, 40% of humanity experiences water scarcity in some form, a problem projected to only worsen over the next decade. And the infernos that consumed California, Australia, and Brazil seem to suggest that climate change is about to make life a whole lot more difficult.
Global politics are even more tense. The world’s preeminent power, the United States, is facing increased internal unrest and political polarization. The European Union seems to plod along from crisis to crisis. China’s meteoric rise has shifted from optimism to dismay as the Chinese Community Party has engaged in hostile actions such as bullying its neighbors in the South China Sea, imprisoning one million Muslim Uighurs in concentration camps, and invading Indian territory in the Himalayas.
With all the chaos and uncertainty, it certainly seems like the world as we know it is coming to an end. And that’s because it is.
Globalization - and by extension modernity - is founded upon complex systems of trade, governance and culture that assume certainty and stability. It assumes that the United States will not only remain the world’s preeminent power, but the world’s policeman. It assumes that China’s economic rise will result in it ultimately becoming a liberal democracy. It assumes that Europe will cast off the relics of national identity in favor of a pan-European identity. In short, modernity assumes that world we have today will be here tomorrow because it was here yesterday.
Think about that for a moment. We assume the world we have today will be here tomorrow because it was here yesterday.
Nothing we have is guaranteed. Our lives can change in an instant. We can wake up one morning to discover a loved one passed away during the night. We can lose our job unexpectedly because our employer went bankrupt. We can lose our home and community suddenly in a natural disaster. Events such as these are tragically permanent features of life. No amount of power granted to governments, corporations, or experts can ever remove the inherent uncertainty and fragility of the human existence.
We must acknowledge that globalization and modernity are at an inflection point. There is a growing feeling, particularly among young people, that something has to change. Whether you talk to someone from Brasilia or Chicago or Cape Town, the sentiment is the same: the world as we know it is, at its core, fundamentally broken. Globalization cannot continue in its current form. But it’s not enough to simply acknowledge that change is necessary, we must also understand why change is required. It’s the identification of the why that is the focus of Shatterpoints.
Shatterpoints is about examining how we got here, the challenges we face, and the mega-trends constraining our future actions. It’s about giving people frameworks to better contextualize the issues that will define the next decade. And as old systems and institutions breakdown, there is an opportunity for much needed reform.
In midst of this global uncertainty, there is room for optimism going into 2021. I don’t have a crystal ball. If I did, I’d be making bank placing bets in Vegas. Let’s just say I’m not quitting my day job anytime soon. But I do see the the chance to build a world that produces more equitable, sustainable economic growth in both developed and developing countries. And that is a reason to be hopeful of the future. Yet, we should also temper this optimism by recognizing that we can never know what the future holds. Just look at 2020.