Entirely disrupted in the next decade.
Let me put it straight. It is the end of the two centuries-old World Order and the start of a new post-globalisation era with new rules.
A drought is “a deficiency of precipitation over an extended period of time (usually a season or more), resulting in a water shortage.” Drought indicators include precipitation, temperature, streamflow, ground and reservoir water levels, soil moisture, and snowpack.
What is going on on the planet Earth?
Obviously, we are drawn into a set of natural disasters coming from everywhere. No land is untouchable by the invisible forces of nature. They may strike by a quake, hurricane, pandemic, or drought, you name them.
The question is, how will we survive all of these? Especially, with a 20th-century carved wandering mind that still thinks in a modest growth-oriented worldview? I am suspicious that we, all the inhabitants of planet Earth, have already passed that threshold into a post-globalisation era. I assume the main reason for this transformation is the call of nature and the unsustaining powers of business as usual in crawling economies. It is almost impossible to sing the words of the song “We are the World”. In the glimpse of a disruptive nature, we are on the pathway to disunited nations. I suspect we will be asked to build up our local presence for a sustainable future and united in a different way.
Do we have a game plan for what is coming?
I do not think so.
The change is inevitable, and it is coming at lightspeed ahead.
Here are three major nonlinear shifts that will disrupt almost everything in the next decade
- The World population is ageing.
The size of mature workers is migrating to the retirement age without proper funding to support them, at least under the current economic outlook. The demographics are the black swan; nobody speaks until it is broken. Even if it is not broken in the next decade, the financial power of baby boomers will diminish, and we will face much more lazy money in the financial markets. Who will fund the new ventures and innovation? We must depend on Gen Y and pray for their economic leverage. If they fail, we are still far from the performing Gen Z.
- The World is getting warmer.
Global warming is a net outcome of the industrial revolution era. Climate change will disrupt almost everything in the coming years. You name the level of disasters. What we have so far is only a taster of our reality in the coming decades. If nothing changes in human behaviour, there is no prescription to cure the planet other than greenwashing. More slaps of mother nature are on the way.
- Machines are learning faster than humans.
The level of the data accumulated, the algorithms and the computing power make it inevitable for a new generation of decision-makers without blood in their veins. Even if the general AI is still decades away, the current machine learning experience, combined with automation, is enough to diminish a large population of white collars to become obsolete. I am not talking about the robots walking around; I am talking about the administrative service staff in the doctors’ offices to be replaced soon. The middle-level workforce in the offices, if I may. If you are not working on a farm, helping the public work, repairing pumps, waiting tables or writing high-level codes for an enterprise, I am sorry, you are disrupted.
What do we expect to come?
The answer is simple. Whatever it is, it is nothing related to what we have been through since the industrial revolution or the child theme of the 19th century. It is nothing on that type of establishment. The nation, the society, the organisation and the school structures, in the sense that we know, all are disrupted.
Obviously, we will insist on them.
Obviously, we will define problems with the same mind that created them.
Obviously, we will fail for solutions.
And obviously, some will learn through all this mass and move on.
Let me put it straight. It is the end of the two-centuries-old World Order, and it is the start of a new post-globalisation era with new rules.
Meanwhile, we must prepare for sticky inflation, power shifts between cultures and nations, more neo-authoritarian leaders, broken supply chain, money matters, hotter weather and social unrest in between for at least, … a decade.
Then it is a new beginning…