The World in Transit: Going Beyond Myopic Visions

• Main Author: Alexander Likhotal
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Risk Institute, Trieste- Geneva 2018-05-01
• Series: Cadmus
• Online Access: http://cadmusjournal.org/article/volume-3/issue-4/world-transit-going-beyond-myopic-visions
• ISSN: 2038-5242; 2038-5250

The world has entered the new Axial Age. Numerous transformations are taking place in the models of social, economic, and political activity, in projections of power and authority. The political landscape and its relevant “content structures” (democracy and liberalism, right and left, globalisation and nationalism etc.) are acquiring new systemic qualities. If we want to avoid fighting with the ghosts of the past, it is necessary not only to take into account these transformations but examine them from within. To see the complexity of things, to understand the transformation of the world in transit, we need to get rid of myopic, linear interpretations of seemingly familiar but morphing notions like “globalism and nationalism”. Who can manage the complexity of the “plurilateral” world we are stepping into? What kind of political architecture will be needed to support the nascent multi- or rather “pluripolarity”? How can we synchronise governance with inevitable digitalisation of politics? How can we enable decision-making mechanisms at the global level? These questions need to be answered. Nobody will miss the train to “a bright tomorrow”. Historical time flows for everyone—you cannot hide “behind the wall” to avoid it. No actor of a historical process can bury his head in the sand of the comfortable present, indulging in “counter-clockwise revolt”. The future will come for everyone, but not everyone will hold an equal place in it.