Becoming - Part II

News media have always used anxiety as a hook to grab people’s attention. But let’s, for a moment, go beyond that and ask ourselves: what is that characterizes the present times? One way to answer that question is by looking at where leaders' and people's attention is now focused on. That certainly drives, in different degrees, how both popular and academic culture look at the present and at the past.

Energy. Natural resources and the environment. Population growth and migrations. New technologies – IT, biotech, nanotech, robotics, etc. – and their pervading character – in particular their utilization in biological, nuclear, and conventional weaponry. These seem to be large-scale themes – at least encompassing the planet and modernity. There are institutional issues, like the continuous instability of the nation-state, and education, health, and justice systems, and the particular approach we take with outliers of these institutions. We have then more immediate issues, like the current crisis of the financial system.

It is difficult to know what brings change and at what pace. But if the recent American elections are a sign of the times, it seems that the anxiety is high, and so is the appeal of hope – not only in the United States but around the world. The post WWII anxiety of the annihilation by nuclear disaster has been substituted by the anxiety about population management, resources, and environment. Whether that anxiety is justified is an open question – but it is fair to assume that the above listed issues can be disruptive. And this can drive people to believe that there is an opportunity for changing the way we are and we live our lives. The combination – of historical events and society emotional response to those – is certainly at an interesting juncture. A new direction seems possible.

If we think at power as the ability to drive change, then the question became: where is power? Geopolitically power seems currently in the hands of Russia, China, the EU, the USA, and to a lesser extent to India, Japan, South America, Africa, the ME and Iran, and Central Asia. This power is based on the ability to lead masses in some coordinated and synchronized fashion through the availability and control of technological and socio-economical means. Whether that is possible depends on how leaders can evoke a coherent emotional response from the individual components of the masses. A constructive resonant phenomenon needs to take place. To that end, the connectedness that media and in general IT can provide is certainly essential. But what is the message? And where should the message drive people emotions?

Events shake the course of society as perturbations on top of more massive waves, the massive wave of the narrative that defines us and our society. And we are probably surfing both growing and fading waves. Razionalization – in Max Weber’s sense. Monotheism. Slavery and exploitation of the many by the few. Are these waves still growing or fading? Are these merging in other growing waves?