The refugee crisis is one of the most pressing issues of our era.
"...we are officially in the Holocene (“entirely recent”) epoch, which began 11,700 years ago after the last major ice age. But that label is outdated, some experts say. They argue for “Anthropocene” — from anthropo, for “man,” and cene, for “new” — because human-kind has caused mass extinctions of plant and animal species, polluted the oceans and altered the atmosphere, among other lasting impacts.”
The effects of humankind in this “Anthropocene” era extend far beyond the possible species-destroying effects of climate change. Our decisions and actions — and non-actions — in technology, politics, economics, science, and medicine have launched forces of power and impact unprecedented in human history. The great uncertainties surrounding these momentous transformative forces mean that almost anything we might dream up, no matter how wild, lies in the possible range of future scenarios — from dystopia to utopia, from the end our species to the beginning of an era of unimaginable human flourishing, including living on other planets and the extension of healthy human life well beyond 100. Already, recent news reports include editing the genes of a human embryo, refugee crises in most regions of the world, artificial intelligence eliminating or radically reshaping our current jobs and leisure time or creating an era of unprecedented human productivity.
Children wave goodbye as displaced Syrians who fled from their villages to escape bombing by Syrian ... [+]
Jim Collins recounts on the first page of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't, that the idea for his book came from a remark I made at a salon dinner I convened in 1996. Thinking about our future in this Anthropocene Era was well beyond my own knowledge and cognitive abilities. Why not another Jim Collins salon dinner — but this time with my friends and colleagues from 20 years of teaching, advising and observing at Stanford University? In attendance with Jim Collins were deep experts in many relevant fields: Gretchen Cara Daily, Bing Professor in Environmental Science. Susan Athey, Economics of Technology Professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Lloyd B. Minor, Carl & Elizabeth Naumann Professorship for the Dean of the Stanford School of Medicine. Ram Shriram, a founding board member and one of the first investors in Google and Stanford Trustee. Randi Zeller, Partner Emeritus of AT Kearney. Steven A. Denning, chair of General Atlantic and Chair of Stanford’s Global Advisory Council; Mike McGavick, recently retired CEO of XL Group, a global reinsurer.
The salon dinner discussion questions for this eclectic group of powerful thinkers?
"How do you view the human-caused transformative forces of our time and what are your speculations about their impact? How should society respond? Will we need new political, organizational and leadership approaches to ensure that we continue to thrive?"
"Oh heaven! that one might read the book of fate, and see the revolution of the times"
Climate change is having a profound effect in Greenland, as the rate that glaciers and the Greenland ... [+]
Since spring these transformative forces have morphed in my mind into the simpler pneumonic of the “Five FATES,” an acronym for "Forces in the Anthropocene Transformational Era.” Here goes:
1) Climate Change, including sustainability.
2) NextGenn Technology, certainly including artificial intelligence, data science, and the forces already unleashed by social media and the accumulation and use of our data.
3) Biomedical Science, on the cusp of revolutions in genetics, neuroscience and IT while also posing ethical quandaries with Frankenstein-ian dreams and nightmares.
4) Social Justice: The disparity in income and wealth distribution in most of the world is creating profound social problems. As a Persian friend whose family immigrated to the United States after the fall of the Shah in the late 1970’s once observed ominously to me, “You know, at some point the people are going to come after us…”
5) China vs. the United States and Authoritarianism vs. Democracy: Our world’s future will be largely shaped by the rivalry between the United States and China — economically, politically, technologically, ideologically. At the same time, authoritarian capitalism — once called fascism — is on the rise, as capitalism more than democracy is prevailing as the dominant driver for political change. We have placed a global bet that the rising middle classes will claim and seize increasing political power to match their growing economic power.
Sometimes, one chart can depict complex changes better than many words:
Exponential growth in recent human history
In this case, time is the variable on the horizontal (bottom) axis. What captures the FATES so clearly is that you can match each transformational force to a vertical axis variable: carbon dioxide levels for climate change, computing power for technology, mortality and longevity for the advances of science, magnitude of wealth owned by the top 1% of earners for inequality, and the GDP and population of key developing countries for shifting global power, to name just a few. Many orders of magnitude change in so many factors — yes, of course, some are correlated with each other — we have never seen anything like this in human history. And we are the dominant cause.
And of course there are other forces currently at work which one might argue should be included in my list of Five FATES — say, the changing roles of women, the continued discrimination against ethnic, racial, religious and other minorities, and urbanization. I make no argument against you adding them. The Five FATES are daunting enough and form the basis for my future columns on the leadership challenges we face.
