Don’t stop (thinking about tomorrow)

The outlook for the future of humanity is not great at the moment. In the several years since I started taking a serious interest in this, including extensive academic research, substantial reading and study and direct engagement in online debate and discussion, not much has improved.

We have been strongly conscious of our collective ability to shape, transform, and in particular, damage our world and our societies, for at least fifty years. For much of this time, the focus of academic attention has been on Environmental ‘issues’ and the relationship between human exploitation of resources and ecosystems’ capacity to absorb this. More recently, the focus has shifted to the questions which arise from recent observations of the global warming of the planet’s ‘system’.

Today, more than has been apparent before, we live in a time when people who think about the bigger issues and problems of society are aware that our Human world is at least partially dysfunctional. Though it is hard to place a number on this outside the realms of serious statistical (quantitative) research, and though observation bias is no doubt in play, since I tend to socialise with people who share my world-view, or at least my concerns, my best guess is that a substantial minority of Northern Europeans, and a slightly smaller but still significant minority of Americans, Canadians, Australians, Africans, Asians and Southern/Eastern Europeans, are both aware of at least some of the issues facing our species and others, and also concerned about them with respect to the future.

For some time I have been working to map out a vision of how the near future of Humanity might progress and so, given that there may be some interest, intend to present some of my guesses, along with the reasoning behind them, here over the next few posts. For my own reasons, I have named this the ‘Morrow Project’. It would be more than helpful, in this case, were some readers to offer contributions, in particular where they think my reasoning has gone astray, or where they are not clear about my meanings, so come on, folks, say your bit…

Coming up next on the blog, then, the Morrow Project, Episode 1…