Historical periods and social processes are given specific labels. The significance of the labels is not only to draw vague boundaries in regard to historical dates and periods but mainly to define the spirit, values, morals and rituals of certain ages in history. Huge social changes during the Middle Ages are commonly referred to as Renaissance, presumably signifying a revival of previous ideal forms. Thus we have the Renaissances of the 9th, the 12th the 14th and 15th centuries. From the 16th century onward radical changes began to be labeled Revolutions, e.g. the American, French, Industrial, Liberal, and so on. During the European Middle Ages people expected the Second Coming and the installment of heaven upon earth – there was no point in revolting against the current order that had been grasped as installed by God and managed by kings who were scions of gods or anointed by people who represented God on this earth. Allegedly there were only distortions of the right forms. Hence – renaissance and reviviscence.

The 16th century had been the century of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and also of many Utopias, e.g. that of Thomas More, Campanella’s The City of the Sun and Francis Bacon’s The New Atlantis. Francois Rabelais even established a new ideal state among the teeth of Gargantua. All those Utopias were inspired by the discovery of America which ignited great expectations and anticipation for a new, better, even an ideal social order. Among other things, the 16th century brought forth the beginning of national states, national languages and the concept of individualism. However, contrary to the original Utopias, modern once, from Jonathan Swift (17th century) to George Orwell, began to depict the future as bleak and dejected.[1]

The 20th century introduced many new terms in relation to major social and political changes. After the end of the First World War (1914-1918) the term “war” became so popular that it has been widely applied to all kinds of activities, e.g. war on poverty, cancer, ignorance, smoking, and so on. By its mere nature, the term war is mentally associated with army and hence it denotes hierarchical social order. (The Salvation Army had been organized along military lines since 1878). Kings and nobles were replaced in the social pyramid with managers, executives, CEO’s and similar terms in all spheres of social life, from politics to industry. Another term that became popular in political terminology, especially during the 20th century, was that of national sovereignty.

The last century had produced new sovereign states in abundance; all of them have been evolved in almost unending chain of wars and revolutions. The trouble has been that the main representative of those state-shreds from the disintegration of the big empires, is the United Nations, an organization that has never been united but more resembles a multi faced, medusa-like creature, a trickster that has the ability to speak at one and the same time in multiple and sundry voices. Each tiny piece of a new country, or so called sovereign state, had its own social and political hierarchy with some kind of a principal at its head, e.g. king, president or prime minister. Each also has had a separate control system of laws and regulations. In principle, the political map of the world gave the vague impression of a democratic approach among different sovereign states.

As long as the cold war played a significant role in international relations the small sovereign states were nourished and sustained either by the USSR or by the USA. However, since the nineties of the last century something serious was happening to the understructure of those states. While the show was going on above, according to the conventional scripts and enveloped in traditional costumes with a familiar setting in the background, the underpinning of the global stage was being radically converted, to the point that it no longer could support the old show.

In general terms we could say that the tendency in the era of revolutions has been to erase or destroy structures from the past. Each century expunged different structures or parts of previous ones. The French Revolution and the following Napoleonic era eliminated kingdoms, the two World Wars of the 20th century dismantled empires, now we are witnessing the beginning of the total collapse of the structure that developed not only during the last four centuries but, in some respects, since the commencement of our civilization. In this sense it seems that what we are experiencing now should be treated more as a collapse rather than a revolution, but what is it that has been collapsing?

I would like to cite here a passage from my 1995 article “Towards a World with no Yesterdays. ” (On this website):
The future looks more like an evolutionary leap into a different plane than a linear extension of the past. We cannot just extend existing roads but we do know that we are entering a landscape of perpetual change. In order to survive we will have to think in terms of process, metamorphosis and relationship. Institutions confined to national borders are expiring in the atmosphere of global interaction, even if they are strongly established ones such as parliamentary systems and schools. We are beginning to realize that in the process the principle of government is being superseded by that of self-regulation through a perpetual all embracing dialogue. We are becoming aware that all things are connected, and that altruism is the natural strategy for survival. Unless we relate to the "them" of the developing world as if they are "us", we may perish in the meltdown of incorrectly maintained atomic reactors, suffocate from third world pollution, or succumb to a deadly virus. We can secure our own future only by sharing our knowledge, our energy and our insight with the rest of the global population.

The current crisis is seemingly economical but in effect it embodies a total collapse of all the systems that formed the foundation of our very young civilization. This civilization started with man the tool maker, followed by economic systems based on exchange of products, but now is in transition to an economy based mainly on exchange of ideas and information. We now act more as one body or a system whose ability to operate and respond depends upon the rapid exchange of in-formation that leads to a perpetual change of its form.

The biggest obstacle in dealing with the current all encompassing crisis is probably the existence of national states, which, in an effort to keep their sovereignty and institutions, attempt to overcome the crisis within the confines of their own borders. Considering the current state of globalization, in which each action, anywhere on the globe, affects every other body in the globe, this line of action and reaction is equivalent to mission impossible. The current situation will most likely necessitate the creation of non-governmental bodies to deal with the global aspects of the crisis. If successful, those bodies will surely gnaw at many aspects of the individual states. We also should consider the fact that the current political institutions, from states to parliaments and democracy, are founded upon Newtonian mechanical principles that were formed within the confines of what was believed to be a solid, three dimensional universe. However, they can no longer be applicable in our multidimensional and expending universe. The new situation and our new knowledge of the nature of the universe necessitate the creation of an independent non-governmental global organ that will sketch, if not a full constitution, then at least the main principles for the handling of a global universe.

It is most likely that in a relatively short time the political map of the world will change radically, that we shall soon witness the creation of conglomerate blocks of nations managed mainly by non-governmental, a-political bodies. It might take a bit longer but it’s not clear whether the existence of such blocks of states will enable the survival of national sovereign states ruled by government that derive their legitimacy from parliamentary-like elected bodies. Such systems of representative rule will most likely survive, but only in limited areas, such as cities or districts. Also, it probably will not happen at once throughout the whole globe. However, in time it should draw in all other countries if they wish to survive. We are moving towards an era in which all the different parts of the global system will be connected and shaped by joint information but act independently according to their own needs and characteristics. That is - no world government, rather, non-governmental, not necessarily permanent, managerial bodies that probably will perpetually change in answer to the changes and demands of the environment.

The current crisis started in an economical babble but now it evolves into a whole range of organizations in almost all social and political systems. The old, traditional social sign-posts and roads now lead to a dead end. We can overcome the dire results of the crisis and install safeguards for the healthy functioning of the economic and other systems, but we cannot return to the old structures. The new systems will have to be founded upon completely new principles and foundations. They also would need to function in a new and different environment. We are most likely facing what can be identified as a new stage in human evolution. In essence we are probably moving not only from a society defined mainly by tool making, exchange of products, and an accent on answers, to an exchange of ideas and an emphasis on questions. This will necessitate a radical change in our approach to almost every issue, from education and medicine to new ways of dealing with the relationship between those who have and those who have not, both in societies and among states. If we take education, for example, it seems ridiculous (at least to me) to keep the immense economic structures evolved around it – from buildings to the printing of text books and the employment of so many teachers, while the screen of each computer “knows” more than any teacher and professor. I believe that we should instruct every member of society how to approach the information in a critical way. Students, from the earliest age should learn what kind of questions to ask, to find how each shred of information is linked to other subjects and what effect it could have on them if applied in different situations, how similar topics have been depicted in literature and art, and how specific historical events led to the current situation. In short, we should look more to education instructors that would work and inspire small groups from early age onward, rather than to teachers who inculcate in students yesterday’s information. My personal feeling while teaching at a few universities was that we are systematically preparing students more for life in the 19th, rather than for the demands of the 21st century

The world we live in is becoming more and more “flat,” with the result that many institutions are getting “shorter,” expanding the base and flattening the top of the pyramid. An exclusive fifth floor for the management of General Motors, for instance, got more down to earth, flattened almost to the level of bankruptcy. With the removal of kings, nobles lost their prerogatives and with the removal of privileged nobility, kings became more of a symbol rather than power centers. The question then is whether the structure of a social pyramid with a leader at the top and to some extent, an Orwellian “1984” mentality, can still be valid today.

A typical form of such regime and mentality was evident in the eight years of the rule of George W. Bush over the United States. In many respects the direct consequence of that period is the current global collapse, but we should notice that the process started during Ronald Regan’s presidency in the eighties when the greatest deficit in the history of the USA began together with the removal of regulations meant to keep the capitalist system in check. What Bush did was not only to farther extend the deficit and the extinction of regulation but also to clear away the content of the Constitution. His rule was based on the concept of authority propped by a shadowy excuse of a hollow constitution which pretended that checks and balances still existed, in spite of the fact that because of the spread of globalization all the global forms of parliaments got “flattened.” and became less relevant.

Considering the current challenges, the role of the new American president, Barack Obama, seems, first of all, to facilitate the stabilization of the global system through the restoration of the central role of the USA, not necessarily as an economic superpower, but rather by reinstating the original effect of the Constitution as an ethical document that refers to the rights of “all people.” The foundation of the new world order should be built upon ethical bedrock and not upon military or economical basis. If we remove the borderlines between “sovereign states,” we probably will also remove the phenomenon of fear mongering leaders who, like Bush and others, draw their strength from spreading panic and jingoistic, populist sentiments. We may then even replace the terminology from that of war over to that of dialogue with.

The theories supporting the current social and political structures emanated in a presumed solid universe and in many respects are in accord with certain characteristics of the Newtonian theory. The democratic assumption that all people are equal before the law is congruent thus with the Newtonian hypothesis that all particles in nature are subject to the same laws. The assumption that our genes form more or less a firm structure that through the DNA determines, even predict our future development and character also corresponds to the supposition that we live in a solid universe with fixed laws in which, according to modern Darwinism, evolution is mainly spontaneous. However, currently there seems to be scientific evidence that evolution can be affected by environmental circumstances.[2]

After the current crisis or collapse, we are bound to find ourselves in terra incognita, experiencing a new stage in human evolution. The effects will probably not be radically significant on the Individual level; the atoms are the same in the most primitive and most sophisticated structures. Human beings will most likely be the same, falling in and out of love, benevolent or mean, and still be affected by poetry written even five thousand years ago, but the cultural and other essential factors will radically differ. The social body will face different problems and the answers will lead to continuous changes in approach, sensitivities and attitudes. And if we accept the new Neo-Lamarckian, four dimensional assumptions on evolution, in the long run we may even witness differences also in human characteristics.

[1]. Please see my 1983’s Utopias and Counter Utopias on this website. Also in Modernity and Religion, W. Nicholls (ed.), Wilfrid University Press, Canada, 1987.
[2]. See: Evolution in Four Dimensions, Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb, MIT