A past decade that leaves us
guessing for the future
By Elaine Storkey, Chair of Fulcrum
Smart social theorists used to be good at forecasting future trends. They could be relied upon for recognizing the likely impact of demographic changes, shifts in values and lifestyle, technology and communication. When everyone else was living in an unreflecting modernist haze, they came up with accurate predictions. Over the last four decades they have spotted key changes in Western culture: the death of communism, the silicon society, the postmodern condition, the impact of relativism on religion, hyper-reality, effects of over-consumption and the growth of new spiritualities. Yet there have been few theorists who have been able to predict with any detailed accuracy the changes over this last decade. And, so far, even fewer have stuck their heads over the parapet and had the courage to forecast what the world might look like in 2020.
There are plenty of reasons for this. The ‘West’ has virtually ceased to exist as a definitive concept, as the worldviews which connected Western cultures have themselves shifted or disintegrated. The world is now more complex and interconnected than at any stage of our human history. Whole continents change and the shock-waves from those changes reverberate across the globe. The Communist ethos which dominated China for half a century is now derided by them as an ‘unfortunate experiment’. The espousal of economic growth as the linchpin of Western economies has been seen to be hollow at the core in the crisis of the last two years. The irresponsible use of fossil fuels and the recklessness of carbon emission have resulted in the melting of the polar ice-caps, the swelling seas and erratic weather conditions as the planet warms. We cannot predict the future unless we know how much further human short-sightedness will take us.
Towards the end of the last millennium Tony Blair assured the NATO Summit ‘Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war, or sending our children to war.’1 Social commentators listening to Blair then could hardly have predicted that he would join President Bush in authorizing an invasion of Iraq without a mandate from the United Nations. Nor would they have foreseen a decade marked by the deaths of so many young soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and the carnage of civilians. War has marked each of the last ten years, whether in Sri Lanka, the Congo, Somalia, Sudan or South Ossettia. A decade ago few people had heard of Osama Bin Laden or Al Qaeda. Now we are forced to think about them every time we board a plane. And even though global communications, at the disposal of the individual, enable us to view atrocities as they happen, it is no easier to prevent them or stop the injustices. Alexander Litvinenko still died of polonium poisoning in 2006, Robert Mugabe still assassinated opponents and stays in power in Zimbabwe.
What has clearly happened over the last decade is that change has itself speeded up faster than our normal analysis can cope with. This has happened particularly in the area of communication and technology. Millions of people now spend their days fully involved in process which have only come into being over the last five or six years. A decade ago, no-one asked you to be their friend on Facebook because it did not exist. Nor did MySpace, Youtube or Twitter, but today there are 200 million registered users on MySpace. A decade ago we still went to libraries and browsed through books in reference sections. Today, there are 31 billion searches on google every month yet only 6.2 billion people in the world. Mobile phones, Blackberries, Ipods have brought information and opinion into the pocket of anyone who can afford them; it has been estimated that the number of text messages sent and received every day now exceeds the total population of the planet. This democratization of knowledge and information means we can view, listen, read, absorb, comment, and form opinions without the aid of preachers, teachers, politicians, biblical scholars or social theorists. We can, more than ever, decide for ourselves.
It would have been difficult to predict in 2000 the extent to which all this would happen. Similarly, it is all but impossible to forecast the next decade. Yet one thing remains clear. Unless Christians move out of their parochial concerns and address the issues which are dominant in the rest of our world, we will be increasingly marginalized, and our contribution to the events of the coming decade will be minimal. Not only that, but the way people hear the Gospel and the implications it has for the whole of life, will be blurred and confusing. As those who believe that Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life, we surely have something significant to say about the way this impacts on the world we live in. My prayer for Fulcrum in this coming decade is that as we pray and work together to renew the evangelical centre, we will enable more Christians to think through how we might speak effectively and prophetically into our times and culture.
1Tony Blair at the NATO-Russia Summit, May 27, 1997
Elaine is a writer & broadcaster, lecturer and author. She was President of Tearfund from 1996 to 2014, has lectured in many continents, is a member of Newnham College, Cambridge and an Ambassador for Restored. She served on The General Synod of the C of E for 28 years, until 2015.. Her most recent book is “Scars Across Humanity: Understanding and Overcoming Violence Against Women”. elainestorkey.com