Transitional Decade
Establish the urgency and ambitious goals needed to succeed in the next ten years.
according to Design Revolution we need to work together to change the way that we operate our world—World That Works. We know that it’s important. This pattern explores why it’s also urgent.
Our ability to destroy ourselves far outweighs our ability to restrain ourselves from doing so, and it’s only going to get more dangerous over the next decade. We tend to think of the future as something that’s far off in the distance, but in our case, we’re accelerating toward the future.
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We live in a time when human development is dangerously asymmetrical: we’ve learned a great deal about how to create technology, but not so much about how to live peacefully together. We compete for resources, often violently, use technology against one another, and rationalize why some people can live comfortable and safe lives while others can’t. You can argue that it’s been like that for a long time, but all evidence points to the fact that it can’t be like that much longer.
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We are now in the midst of a major transition. Maybe you can feel it. The internet has changed everything and we no longer have a single source of truth. More and more our identities are founded on our differences rather than our common humanity.
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We reached an important milestone about 50 years ago, when the Apollo 11 mission landed on the Moon and returned the astronauts safely to Earth. Buckminster Fuller declared that we had now reached the technological capability, with all the advances made as part of the space program, that if we chose to, we could provide so much life support to the people of Earth with so few resources that we could build a sustainable and successful world for all humanity.
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Some evidence suggests that Fuller was right. It was right about that time in the U.S. that our use of resources started to level off while our production continued to increase. We are doing more with less, but human wisdom has failed to keep up with the technology we’ve created.
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Our power to change the planet is growing exponentially. It has been for a long time, but now the curve is getting steeper, so the change is far exceeding our ability to grasp and manage the consequences of our decisions. In addition, the power that this tech brings is no longer limited to a few governments or individuals, it’s increasingly decentralized, meaning it’s available to everyone. In that circumstance, we can’t afford to have just a few wise people: everyone needs to be wise or a few could end up destroying all of us.
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It’s not clear how much time is left, but we know that we don’t have very much time to reach critical wisdom.
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There are several organizations working to create big change in the next decade or so. The Buckminster Fuller Institute has declared 2020-2030 to be the new Design Science Decade and the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals are I line to be met by 2030 if not sooner. These kinds of timelines help us understand how urgent it is to make changes now while we still have some control and influence. It’s important that this transition not turn violent, or our risk goes up substantially.
Therefore:
Expect major changes over the next ten to twenty years, and prepare yourself for them, ideally by helping create them.
We can prepare by following the [[ Infinite Path ]] and developing ourselves as World Creators