Happy New Year!

Predictions for 2008? No.

Go longer.

What are the macro trends, the emerging patterns, the paradigm shifts that will shape and guide our lives for the next 30-40 years? Here are eight long-term changes I foresee:

1. Increasing global-virtual connectedness / decreasing isolation – affecting every facet of life and culture. The impact of peer-to-peer and ubi-peer networks is still in its infancy. The global ecclesia will see profound displacement resulting from these new, unfiltered, direct forms of interpersonal communication. Inherited models of religious “hierarchy and authority” will begin to fall away, replaced by myriad forms of lay eldership and servantship. The paradox of God’s strength being perfected in human weakness (2Cor12) will define much of this change. Forty writers explore this topic HERE.
2. Energy politics – the era of cheap energy is over, and global demand (China, India, EE, etc.) is skyrocketing. Virtually everything we do is made possible by access to affordable energy. As our population increases (9 billion by 2050) and energy becomes increasingly more expensive, life will change – perhaps dramatically. Big-box megaklesia will, by 2050, be in decline – partially due to its numerous inefficiencies (including energy) and partially due to a growing desire for more intimate, inclusive, simple gatherings.
3. Social philosophy will be increasingly driven by the engines of existentialism / relativism / postmodernism / uncertainty-as-virtue ….. pushing against the engines of meaning / absolutes / authority / uncertainty-as-weakness. Curiously, hard-line scientists and religious dogmatists with continue to rely on the latter tools to support opposite positions. Growing numbers of sensitive Christ-followers will understand this in light of its spiral-like Ecl 6:11 conundrum, leading to decreasing reliance on endless religious duality, replaced by increasing desire for Jn17-like union with the person and Spirit of Christ. (see Brad Sargent’s insightful sidebar on Subcultures as Barometers of Social Change HERE scroll down).
4. Population and water politics: closely related to (#2). Diverse areas of “sustainability” will all come into focus, showing the interconnectedness of all things and the fragility of the global system we’ve created. We forget that organic life forms (plankton, plants) control our atmosphere – the air we breathe. In just 100 years, we’ve greatly exceeded all historical Methane, CO2, and N2O concentrations, and that imbalance is growing – severely impacting the very life forms that give us breath. Air and water: by 2050, many of today’s values will revert from unessential to essential; from technical-complex to agrarian-simple. In many cases, this will be a forced retreat.
5. Consciousness and sentience will be increasingly seen in ways that transcend rational argument. When “self-watching, cognitive machines” mimic (and eventually exceed) human abilities to parse and argue philosophy and theology (any theology), the nature of faith will (must) change and adapt to something far more visceral than text and logic. Religion will become less about inherited doctrine, and more about spiritual attributes which distinguish us from “sentient machines.” Aspirations for transcendent, unifying, personal and ecclesial experience (per 2Cor12, Jn17, etc.) will partially displace logic / reason / argument in religious priority. The person of Jesus will stand in stark contrast to the written word (HT Brandt for some exceptional blogging on this distinction).
6. Lay-led house / organic / simple local ecclesia, with Berean-like reliance on the resources of a global-virtual community, will be embraced by at least one-fourth of non-Catholic Western Christianity by 2050. Others without religious freedom, such as Chinese Christians (along with Falun Gong, etc.), will remain house-centric by default.
7. Rapid advances in gene science, nanotechnology, metamaterials, regenerative cell medicine, and life-as-code, will conspire to vastly reduce birth defects and inherited diseases, provide for organ growth and regeneration (including eyes, inner ears, and most internal organs), and extend the average life span well beyond 100 years, among many other “miraculous” advances in human biology. These changes (among many others) will trigger profound reinterpretation of religious- and humanist-based ethics and social norms – at levels of Darwinian complexity that will baffle both faithful and agnostic.
8. By 2050, these same advances in gene science and nanotechnology (#7) will be applied towards military applications, leading to weaponization that could dwarf atomic warfare in its killing effectiveness. Terror groups will continue to find new ways of disrupting diplomacy and will eventually gain access to such bio-warfare. Bio-terrorism, and perhaps nuclear terrorism, will see increasing reach and effectiveness, leading to more frequent and larger populations of human casualties. Global governance and basic human freedoms may be radically altered by a confluence of efficient terrorism, resource scarcity, environmental blight, and prolonged economic disruption.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 1:55 am and is filed under Transition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.