THE 10-D’s that might worry us in the Future

In early seventies, when I read the book “The Future Shock” by Alvin Toffler, it did make an interesting reading but it was indeed difficult to comprehend the situations he articulated just because one would not be able to imagine the speed of change that would haunt the human thought dynamics. His references to ‘the demise of geography’, ‘the Modular Man’ and ‘Bio-parenting and Pro-parenting’ did make an interesting reading. When he conceived of ‘the fall of institutions’ it was quite disturbing. But, the speed of change and the global access to information has almost validated many of his predictions and of course, much more.

Peter Dixon remarks in his book “The Future of (Almost) Everything” – “The developed world is cash rich, time-poor, and feels intensely impatient. Chapters of personal lives are measured in minutes, major events in seconds.”  This unstoppable course of events is ushering a society which is psychologically sick increasingly and is possibly crumbling institutional studies to individual studies. As individuals do make the society, in a larger perspective, there is an emerging constructive chaos in social dynamics. But how far this ‘constructive’ chaos will facilitate the human race to rise to higher levels of their existence and how far it will help in retaining their identity as a ‘humane’ race is anybody’s guess.

The fertile imagination of Michio Kaku in his book “The Future of Mind” in detailing the possibilities of the “Artificial Brain and Silicon Consciousness” is though bewildering sets us in motion to get ready for a ‘designed future’. The question arises whether the present human perceptions about life and its auxiliary systems will become increasingly irrelevant is indeed a subject for a potential debate.

The global pursuits in different dimensions of knowledge and the declining ‘life-time’ of knowledge systems leading to calculations of the ‘half-life period of knowledge’ like the radiating elements puts us into an unending race against matter and its meaning.

The context, I presume, presents ten important Challenges – the 10 Disturbing Ds. – if I may call them so.  I am an optimist and I always see a ray of light in every darkness. But it is equally important to acknowledge the fact that the light is relevant only in the backdrop of darkness. In detailing the following, I am not making a distress call, but I only hear some alarm bells from the far-end.  

1.   Disintegrating institutions – There is seemingly a potential challenge to all forms of institutions – State, Culture, Society, Religion, Family and the Marriage – and so on. Individual consciousness appears to be dominating over social consciousness with increasing self-centered appreciation of existence. Questions are often raised about their relevance in a ‘global context’. Conscious efforts to break the walls, however necessary they may be, is argued upon. While we can say with certain amount of optimism that they will not face their end of life, their re-engineering will lead to fractions and fractures with more modular, manageable and miniscule models, no doubt creating mutual-contradictions and conflicts.
2.   Disruptive Technologies – The rate of production being faster than the rate of consumption, newer disruptive technologies are likely to redefine the life needs and life styles. Unlimited consumerism has already impacted our ‘thought architectures’ and with a greater thrust on ‘fashion’ and on ‘competitive consumerism’ – the technologies will reorient our neural networks leading to “Throw-away Societies” as predicted by Alvin Toffler. The researches on the human mind, as stated by Michio Kaku on ‘Reading the Mind”, “Typing with the Mind’ “Telepathic helmets” – are phantoms to imagine, but are possibilities that cannot be ruled out.
3.   Declining Values - The conflict between the mind and the matter to seek their superiority has redefined the relationship between man and his co-habitation-both with people and products. In a life that has become quite fast and impatient, there is ‘no time to stand and stare’ for the racing humans. Hence their value relationship with men and materials is becoming increasingly short lived and contextual. The appreciation of permanent values is giving way to contextual values which are more gratifying than fulfilling. The social psychologists do argue that this is the natural dynamics of all evolutionary processes and hence they settle down based on the demands of time and space. The Future will define its own value system 

   4. Depressive emotions – Having acknowledged the fact that we are becoming increasingly an impatient society, the resultant stress and ‘achievement syndrome’ coupled with close assessment of the ‘performance profiles’ of people and systems will lead to emotional turmoil which would rather become unavoidable and a part of the life process. With a greater thrust on ‘becoming’ rather than ‘being’, the pain of existence and performance of the individual as well as systems could lead to periodic examination of the depressive emotions.

5.   Defeating speed – Imagine the day two decades before, when you sat before the computer system waiting for it to boot and you were happy even if it took a few minutes. In a world haunted by speed of everything that is mobile and performing, today the individuals are increasingly defeated by the speeds. “Coping up” issues calibrate the response levels and in turn the performance levels.  Consequently, there is evidence of a number of cases where people suffer from ‘the defeat syndrome’, though in reality they have a healthy response system. Whatever be the domain of performance, business, production, marketing, knowledge management, service sectors or elsewhere, the speeds redefine the performance and achievement levels – leading to hallucinated peaks in the performance curves.
6.   Divisive social structures – Thanks to the impact of divisive political thought patterns, people are divided into innumerable fractions in terms caste, community, race, geography, culture, language and all possible dimensions that could create social restlessness. Equity and equality are totally misrepresented in political arguments thus separating man from his own race resulting in divisive social structures that deprives holistic and integrated growth of communities, state and the nations.

   7.Diminishing wealth – With newer perceptions of wealth, it is associated with an economic power that leads to an articulated leadership deservingly or undeservingly. A large number of inputs to wealth – like health, knowledge, skills, family, relationships, eco-systems, values and peaceful existence – are sacrificed to position wealth in terms of ‘Money’ and ‘materials’. Thus ‘wealth’ – both at the individual and societal levels is fast diminishing which could indeed be a future threat to emerging societies  

   8.Distrusting Relationships- Relationships at all levels is becoming a ‘time-bound’ ‘event-bound’ or ‘context-bound’ affair where the ‘utilitarian value’ of the relationships have a dominance over ‘their intrinsic value’. No wonder, the bonding in relationship has become quite fragile, shaped by need, immediacy and availability. The ‘value profile’ in relationships are becoming scarce and rare. With an emerging focus on ‘self-gratification’ than ‘self-realization’ the ‘distrust’ in relationships might make people more insecure, stressed and neurotic, yet accountable.

  9.Disillusion in happiness – Happiness is a state of mind – a perception that triggers the well being of an individual. Researches indicate clearly that stress is indeed a threat to happiness if the stress is not a creative one. With disruptions all around, the human mind is dragged into different pathways of life seeking fulfilment everywhere which is practically impossible. Further, the urge to be ‘the other self’ which can never be achieved, the mind suffers from a sense of inadequacy and is thus disillusioned with happiness. The hallucinating obsessive mind sets newer and further goals for achievement and fulfilment, thus always living in a myth of an El Dorado. The social definition of happiness is likely to see newer interpretations.

10. Designed Eco-systems -  With an intense assault on Nature and challenges to natural habitat, the designer made eco-systems duplicating Nature in a blended model both artificial and virtual will be the choice of the seekers. Humans would tend to seek the joy of the real through the virtual, a kind of self-deceit, possibly because other options will either be not available or non-accessible. It appears that a more concerted effort has to be made to preserve the existing gift of Nature so that the future does not reside in concrete jungles decorated with electronic habitat.

The 10 Ds appear to create a sentiment “Hell is empty and all the devils are here” as Shakespeare said in The Tempest. But man lives on hope and optimism. As Norman Cousins put it “Drugs are not always necessary, but belief in recovery always is.”