2100... How will the world change?
The world is a' changing.
The purpose of this thread is to do some creative thinking. Make it realistic and take all things into consideration. How will the geo-political, scientific, and cultural world change in the next 100 years? This is an attempt at Nostramadizing the future... Predict it. You'll be surprised by the exactitude of some of the answers if you re-read this thread in 50 years time (not 100 years time because most of us will be dead).
So here's my prediction:
The current world structure is being split between two major forces that regiment all other political and cultural changes. These two forces are the force of nationalism and the force of utopianism.
The force of nationalism has been ongoing since the revitalization of the ideal from Roman times by Louis XIV. Before Roman times, the effect of nationalism was more regionalized. Men fought for their city states, not for their cultures. This changed, however, with the Punic Wars, when two antagonized cultures clashed in an apocalyptic scenario. Rome almost collapsed and faded into the sands of history, but held to its last breath and fought back after Cannae. After more than 60 years of conflict between these two powers, nationalism, in its modern sense, was born out of the victorious Roman republic after Zama. This sense of nationalism would last only a few hundred years and then fade with Rome's growing imperial prowess and its subsequent cultural desensitivization.
After Louis XIV revived this form of nationalism in his France by institutionalizing the economy with French state and culture and therefore by providing the first modern state since Rome, other nations, including Prussia, and England, immitated the progress. In the 1700s, the early stages of nationalism made one more leap in France after the revolutionary war, which established the first military conscription, and in the United States, after the first pragmatic and lasting national constitution was created. In the 1840s, nationalism had its big breakthrough and reached global scale. Latin America, Europe, and parts of Asia experienced nationalist surges. By 1914, the conflict between nationalist forces came to an abrupt and bloody confrontation. Millions died, the economies of Europe were ruined.
In 1917 with the successful revolution in Russia, a space was made for the coming of the third wave of utopianism: communism. Nationalism did not fade, however. It was revitalized by the revolutionary ideals of Mussolini who merged both nationalism and utopianism to form fascism. Mussolini also idealized the future of our world state economy: corprorate globalization. The Nazi party, which followed fascist ideologies, soon engulfed Germany. WWII took place. Millions more died, and infrastuctures of entire nations were ruined. WWII paved way for the re-emergence of the second wave of utopianism: World state utopianism. The United Nations was formed, the first attempt by human kind to unify the world under one authority. The European Union was then formed in Rome in 1955, another major breakthrough in utopian politics.
There are three waves in utopianism. The first wave of utopianism is the most basic one: the theoretization of it. The first wave of utopianism has its cultural roots in Greek philosophy with Plato's Republic, and later with Thomas More's Utopia, and it can even be traced back even earlier with the Garden of Eden in the Genesis or with hanging gardens of Babylon. But these ideals did not spark off actual political and cultural influence up until the age of Enlightenment by men such as Tommaso Campanella, Johann Andreae, and Bacon, who begun the second wave of utopianism in which actual communes that sought to create perfect societies where started within Europe and the U.S.. Finally, an adaptation from pure utopianism came with Marx, who created the third and final wave of utopianism, and who espoused that perfect utopianism was unachievable. He proposed a series of theories that compounded the possibilities of an imperfect utopia, or a dystopia, that could filter and tame men's most instinctive traits. Marx's teachings devolved into communism, an even less pure form of utopianism, but one whose influence in world affairs prior to 1989 cannot be disregarded.
So how are these two current powers at play in modern times, and what will be their effects in the future course of human kind? Unlike most people, I believe the future will hold a gradual progression, not an abrupt one. I believe there will be no major conflicts in the next 100 years or more between two large entities. But why? To understand why, one must first understand how the two powers of utopianism and nationalism are at play in deciding societal progression. Nationalism is dying. Today, we find ourselves in a world where global politics are the norm. We have the internet, which allows us to communicate with any person around the world, like we are doing now, and which unifies different cultures, nations, viewpoints, races, all into one. We have global scale economies and corporations who influence what we buy and use, and as such, what we think as well. We live in a world of such cosmopolitan diversity that to be different is to be the same. Differences are ignored, nay, disregarded, for they cause no effect within the economic scope of the world. What's in our minds matter not anymore. What's in our pocket does.
This is where the effects of Mussolini's fascism on our current corporate world come into my argument. I believe we are currently being led by the combination of the third and second waves of utopiamism. Nationalism is still alive and to deny this fact is to deny the conflicts in Africa and the Middle East, but nationalism is quickly being undermined by globalization. The world is uniting under mighty capitalism. Lenin was wrong in saying that imperialism is the highest state of capitalism; corporate globalization is. Companies are merging, China and India are adapting into market-style economies and providing billions of more clients into the World economy, the European Union, although suffering a few setbacks, is strong and united in its unification strategy, and the U.S. is leading the world, not with its politics, but with its economy. The power of the American economy is not that it lies in the United States, but the influence that it wields over world affairs. Bush knows this and that is why he attempted the war in Iraq. Not to steal Iraq's oil, as leftists often say, but to influence the economy in the Middle East so as to force them to adapt to globalization and therefore ease the process of transition. Market-style capitalism has reached global scale, and even former communist counties such as Russia and the former Soviet states have implemented its use. We are living in a world in which it does not matter where we come from, because we all have reach to the same things. Whether one goes to China or the U.S. will not make a difference in 20 years because although there will be different-looking people in China and in the U.S., globalization will ensure that one will find the same things in China as one will find in the U.S., both culturally and materialistically. The world is changing from the nationalist thought process of working for one's own country to working for one's own self. This is becoming a world in which individuals who consciously seek to work for their own comfort, subconsciously follow a systematic control over world affairs. Individuality, although widespread in today's world, will not matter in tomorrow's world. Why? Because if everyone is an individual, it means no one is an individual.
A World State, in its purest form, will start to be created in 50 years. The last obstacle to this course of action is, quite ironically, the Middle East. This obstacle might throw things off balance in the future if left unwatched. It might spark off the most basic force of progression and regression that was thought to be extinguished from its influence by the early 1800s through Napoleon's France: religion. If the Middle Eastern obstacle is not dealt with, Europe might be overtaken by it, or even worse, react aggressively against it by restarting its deadly cycle of nationalism and throwing the European Union out. This event could potentially start a mass world conflict which would set the world centuries, or even forever, in time. China and India will continue to expand, but as they are showing, they will easily be reigned into the market-capitalism sphere of influence. They will wield enormous power in the future, but the power will be centered on economic aspects, not on political ones. THey will keep their borders almost intact, and unions will be formed in Asia to increase the productivity of these economies. A conflict between China and Japan, however, might occur if China attempts to take Taiwan by force, but I believe this conflict will not happen and Taiwan will eventually merge with China under peaceful terms. Japan will continue to excert some economic influence but will be surpassed by China. China's union with Indonesia and India will create a bloc of influence that will be unprecedented. The United States will continue to be a major power, but its economy will suffer some set-backs.
After years of economic wars and the stagnation of nationalism, the world will slowly, but surely, unite under one if the Middle Eastern question is dealt with. By 2075, the first world premier will take power. Utopianism through corporate power and influence will take effect. I've never even considered a utopia to be possible, but considering this chain of events, I believe we are reaching the break point in human societal progression that will finally enable us as a race to unite under one. Not that it's a good thing... there's nothing more depressing than a monotonous mass of nothingness, but is a diverse compound of nothingness any better? I could go on, but I'm a bit tired. I hope this provided some entertainment. Now think of your own theories.
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Originally Posted by Turnus
