What's Coming in 2013 and Beyond - And How to Deal with It
Winter Solstice of 2012 has come and gone; we are now part of a new "B'ak'tun" (or Mayan long cycle). And of course, our lives are physically the same as before. But is there something different? And if so, how can we deal with it?
To all appearances, one day is still pretty much like the next. And yet, there are huge changes - immense changes - going on all around us. And what is perhaps most indicative of the times is that all these changes are converging. We're dealing with not just one or two big things, but a great number of very big things, all of which are crashing into each other - more or less all at once.
Antarctic ice mass crashing
Climate changes are evocative of other sweeping forces impacting our lives
Last night, I read a column by Sara Nunnally, who described our current situation an economic winter. The contributing factors included an ongoing crisis in confidence, a credit crunch, falling interest rates (to be followed by a rise, then a much lower fall), and others. The overall impact pointed to long-term economic challenges.
So we start putting this together. Our big picture?
We have a rate of change in our lives that is absolutely unprecedented in human experience.
It's not just one thing, or another. It's not just the collision of a growing world-wide population with a decrease in "cheap energy."
It's not just an maturing demographic, with more workers reaching retirement and wanting Social Security and Medicare, with fewer workers earning dollars to support the government expenditures. It's not just the financial collapse of 2008-09, with others on the horizon.
It's all of these factors, plus more.
It's the simple fact that our technical growth - the rate of change in our communications, in our data storage, and many other factors is now racing towards an unimaginable future. Literally. We're heading into scenarios where our minds - our imaginations of what the future will be - will not be able to keep up with what the future is actually becoming.
(To be continued ...)
