essay about the challenges faced by modern civilization

Proceedings of the First International Volga Region Conference on Economics, Humanities and Sports (FICEHS 2019)

Civilizations: Challenges and Answers of the Modern World

The article presents the analysis of one of the main components of modern society and state - civilization. According to the research on modern civilizations, the chronological framework of which falls on the XX-XXI centuries, this article considers the changes that have become epochal. The authors studied the scientific works of native and foreign scientists in the sphere of history, political science, cultural studies and sociology. The authors focus on the emergence of various challenges faced by modern civilization. They underline the need to study the civilizational processes that are a multifaceted phenomenon and have a significant impact on world history, world politics, world culture.

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The human challenge: Continuing civilization indefinitely

SAN FRANCISCO — Human beings have altered the Earth so much that human extinction is a real possibility if people continue on their current path. But if they can figure out a way to live sustainably, at least some human civilizations could become quasi-immortal, one researcher says.

The challenge is to change the societal outlook to one that is long-term and accounts for humanity's central role in shaping the planet's destiny, instead of one that reacts to immediate crises and thinks in the short term.

"For our civilization to become a new kind of entity on the planet, we need to live comfortably, over the long haul, with world-changing technology," David H. Grinspoon, an astrobiologist at the Library of Congress, said Dec. 12 here at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

Not everyone agrees that a long-term perspective is possible or that it will prevent Earth's demise. In fact, one astronomer said humans are hardwired to live in the world of the "immediate." [ Doomsday: 9 Real Ways Earth Could End ]

Human era For most of the last 4.5 billion years, Earth has been shaped by natural disasters, such as the dinosaur-killing asteroid , or biological forces, such as the rise of cyanobacteria that created the planet's oxygen-rich atmosphere, Grinspoon said.

But in the current epoch, humans are fundamentally altering the planet.

"The Earth is becoming unrecognizable from the planet it was before we became a geological force," a period that some have dubbed the Anthropocene Era , Grinspoon said.

Habitat destruction, unchecked population growth, global warming and other challenges of modern civilization have put humanity at risk. The problem is that right now, though humans have a large unintentional impact on the planet, they don't consciously control that impact, he said.

Civilizational crossroads Now, civilization is at a crossroads, Grinspoon says: If global warming and other Earth-altering phenomena continue unchecked, humanity could die out. But, if Homo sapiens can overcome those challenges, the people who do survive could build a longer-lived civilization than any that thrived in the past. In essence, at a bifurcation in history, civilizations could be capped at a few thousand years or, alternatively, last for hundreds of thousands — or even millions — of years.

"If even a small fraction of people come through the bifurcation in lifetime of civilizations, then they may become quasi-immortal," he said.

The good news, Grinspoon said, is that humans are now trying to shape the planet's future. For instance, nations consciously took political action to shrink the ozone hole , are working to curb carbon emissions and are looking for ways to prevent asteroids from bombarding Earth.

In the future, societies could learn to geoengineer their environment, prevent future Ice Ages, or even (in the distant future) stave off Earth's end, when the sun balloons into a red giant and engulfs the planet in scorching heat, Grinspoon said.

Central players In order for humanity to have any hope for survival, however, it must learn to harness technology wisely, Grinspoon said. Humanity must also shift from its short-term, regional outlook that denies humans' impact on the Earth to a multigenerational and global outlook that consciously accepts its crucial role in Earth's fate. [ Big Bang to Civilization: 10 Amazing Origin Events ]

That outlook may be disturbing for many people, including scientists accustomed to seeing humans as inconsequential specks in the vast story of the universe, and environmentalists who liken humanity to criminal interlopers guilty of destroying the Earth, Grinspoon said.

But Grinspoon argued that those views of humanity are counterproductive, because they make humanity's problems seem intractable.

"We are central to the story," Grinspoon said.

Instead, a better metaphor may be people who somehow awoke at the helm of a very large bus speeding down the highway, he said. "We have to figure out how to drive this thing to avoid the catastrophe," he said.

Civilization is facing a bottleneck, said Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer with the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif.

"Eventually, you either have to stabilize the population and reuse everything, or you have to do something else," such as go into space to live or mine for resources.

But Shostak questioned whether a more global, long-term outlook is reasonable to expect.

"The way we're wired is to be worried about the immediate problems," Shostak told LiveScience.

And it's not always possible to have a long-term perspective. For instance, London was engulfed in a miasma of toxic fumes from coal-fired home heating in the 1870s, and nobody could come up with a solution. Then, coal-fired heating gave way to other heat sources, and the problem solved itself, he said.

"You don't often see what's right around the corner," Shostak said.

Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter and Google+ . Follow us @livescience , Facebook and   Google+ . Original article on LiveScience.

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Civilization and Its Consequences

Professor of History & Politics and Director, International & Research, School of Humanities & Communication Arts, Western Sydney University

• Published: 11 February 2016
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This article outlines the origins and meanings of the concept of civilization in Western political thought. In doing so it necessarily explores the nature of the relationship between civilization and closely related ideas such as progress and modernity. In exploring these concepts, some of their less savory aspects are revealed, including things done in the name of civilization, such as conquest and colonization under the guise of the “burden of civilization.” The article outlines other important aspects, including the relationships between civilization and war and between civilization and the environment. It concludes with a discussion about rethinking and restructuring some of our perspectives on civilization.

Civilization refers to both a process and a destination. It describes the process of a social collective becoming civilized, or progressing from a state of nature, savagery, or barbarism to a state of civilization. It describes a state of human society marked by significant urbanization, social and professional stratification, the luxury of leisure time, and corresponding advancements in the arts and sciences. The capacity for reasonably complex sociopolitical organization and self-government according to prevailing standards has long been thought of as a central requirement of civilization.

There is widespread greement in the Western world that civilization is a good thing, or at least that it is better than the alternatives: barbarism, savagery, or a state of nature of some sort. In theory, as time passes and the further we get away from the Big Bang and the primordial soup, the more we progress both as a species and as individual human beings; the more we progress, the more civilized we become individually and collectively; the more civilized we become, the further we are removed from the vestiges of savagery and barbarism. In fact, for many in the West civilization, progress, and modernity are by definition good things (e.g., Stark 2014 ). Samuel Huntington has summarized the state of debate rather succinctly: to be civilized is good, and to be uncivilized is bad (1998, 40).

As with so many debates, however, rarely are things so clearly black or white; there are usually many more shades of gray. For instance, in stark contrast to the rosy picture of civilization and modernity suggested above, Zygmunt Bauman (2001 , 4, 6) has alarmingly highlighted the dark side, suggesting that the Holocaust was not so much “a temporary suspension of the civilizational grip in which human behaviour is normally held” but a “‘paradigm’ of modern civilization” and modernity. This is not necessarily to suggest that civilization is “bad” or not worth having or being a part of; it is just to highlight that along with the upsides there are some potential downsides, even a “dark side” ( Alexander 2013 ).

To enable a better understanding of the various perspectives on civilization, this article begins by outlining what civilization means, particularly in the history of Western political thought (for other traditions of thought see, for example, Weismann 2014 ). It then examines the significance and nature of the rather symbiotic relationship between civilization and concepts such as progress and modernity. The article then explores some of the potential consequences that go along with or are outcomes of the pursuit of these ideals, the less commonly acknowledged darker side of civilization. Included here are other important dimensions of the relationship between civilization and progress, such as the relationship between civilization and war and the exploitative nature of the relationship between civilization and the environment or the natural world more generally. The conclusion proposes a slightly different way of thinking about civilization that might help us avoid some of the pitfalls that lead away from the light and into darkness.

The Meaning of Civilization

The word civilization has its foundations in the French language, deriving from words such as civil (thirteenth century) and civilité (fourteenth century), which in turn derive from the Latin civitas . Prior to the appearance of civilization , words such as poli or polite, police (which broadly meant law and order, including government and administration), civilizé , and civilité had been in wide use, but none could adequately meet the evolving and expanding demands on the French language. Upon the appearance of the verb civilizer sometime in the sixteenth century, which provided the basis for the noun, the coining of civilization was only a matter of time, because it was a neologism whose time had come. As Emile Benveniste states, “ [C]ivilité , a static term, was no longer sufficient,” requiring the coining of a term that “had to be called civilization in order to define together both its direction and continuity” (1971, 292).

The first known recorded use of civilization in French gave it a meaning quite different than what is generally associated with it today. For some time civilizer had been used in jurisprudence to describe the transformation of a criminal matter into a civil one; hence civilization was defined in the Trévoux Dictionnaire universel of 1743 as a “term of jurisprudence. An act of justice or judgement that renders a criminal trial civil. Civilization is accomplished by converting informations ( informations ) into inquests ( enquêtes ) or by other means” ( Starobinski 1993 , 1). Just when the written word civilization first appeared in its more modern sense is open to conjecture. Despite extensive enquiries, Lucien Febvre states that he has “not been able to find the word civilization used in any French text published prior to the year 1766,” when it appeared in a posthumous publication by M. Boulanger, Antiquité dévoilée par ses usages . The passage reads, “When a savage people has become civilized, we must not put an end to the act of civilization by giving it rigid and irrevocable laws; we must make it look upon the legislation given to it as a form of continuous civilization ” ( Febvre 1973 , 220–222). It is evident that from early on civilization was used to represent both an ongoing process and a state of development that is an advance on savagery.

An initial concern with the concept of civilization gave way to detailed studies of civilizations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in large part instigated by the foundation and development of the fields of anthropology and ethnography (e.g., Bagby 1959 ; Coulborn 1959 ; Quigley 1961 ; Sorokin 1957 ; Melko 1969 ). Such a shift led to claims that a broader concern with the normative aspects of civilization had “lost some of its cachet” ( Huntington 1998 , 41). The result of this shift was a preoccupation with narrower definitions such as that offered by Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss (1971 , 811): “A civilization constitutes a kind of moral milieu encompassing a certain number of nations, each national culture being only a particular form of the whole.” A leading exponent of the comparative study of civilizations was Arnold Toynbee , who did not completely set aside the ideal of civilization, for he noted, “Civilizations have come and gone, but Civilization (with a big ‘C’) has succeeded” or endured (1948a , 24; 1948b). Toynbee also endeavored to articulate the link between “civilizations in the plural and civilization in the singular,” noting that the former refers to “particular historical exemplifications of the abstract idea of civilization.” This is defined in “spiritual terms,” in which he “equate[s] civilization with a state of society in which there is a minority of the population, however small, that is free from the task, not merely of producing food, but of engaging in any other of the economic activities—e.g. industry and trade—that have to be carried on to keep the life of the society going on the material plane at the civilizational level” (1972, 44–45).

Toynbee’s argument concerning the organization of society as marked by the specialization of skills, the move toward elite professions, and the effective use of leisure time has long been held in connection with the advancement of civilization (and civilized society). Hobbes (1985 , 683), for example, insisted that the “procuring of the necessities of life … was impossible, till the erecting of great Common-wealths,” which were “the mother of Peace , and Leasure ,” which was in turn “the mother of Philosophy ; … Where first were great and flourishing Cities , there was first the study of Philosophy .” This general line of argument has been made time and again throughout history. Such accounts of the relationship among civilization, society, and government fit with Anthony Pagden’s (1988 , 39) claim that the “philosophical history of civilization was, then, a history of progressive complexity and progressive refinement which followed from the free expression of those faculties which men possess only as members of a community.”

R.G. Collingwood has outlined three aspects of civilization: economic, social, and legal. Economic civilization is marked not simply by the pursuit of riches—which might actually be inimical to economic civilization—but by “the civilized pursuit of wealth.” The realm of “social civilization” is the forum in which humankind’s sociability is satisfied by “the idea of joint action,” or what we might call community. The final mark of civilization is “a society governed by law,” and not so much by criminal law as by civil law—“the law in which claims are adjusted between its members”—in particular (1992, 502–511). For Collingwood , “Civilization is something which happens to a community …. Civilization is a process of approximation to an ideal state ” (1992, 283). In essence, Collingwood is arguing that civilized society—and thus civilization itself—is guided by and operates according to the principles of the rule of law. When we combine these three elements of civilization, what they amount to is what I would call sociopolitical civilization, or the capacity of a collective to organize and govern itself under some system of laws or constitution.

This article is more concerned with the normative dimensions of civilization, but it is interesting to note a recent resurgence in international relations (IR) of studies focusing on civilizations, and not just in response to Huntington’s clash thesis. For example, reflecting on Adda Bozeman’s Politics & Culture in International History , Donald Puchala (1997 , 5) notes that “the strutting and fretting of states, and their heroes, through countless conflicts over several millennia accomplished little more than to intermittently reconstruct political geography, desecrate a sizeable proportion of humankind’s artistic and architectural heritage, waste wealth, and extinguish hundreds of millions of lives.” He adds that “the history of relations among states—be they city-, imperial-, medieval-, westphalian-, modern-, super- or nation-states—has been rather redundant, typically unpleasant and more often than not devoid of much meaning in the course of human cultural evolution.” He insists that in contrast to relations between states, “the history of relations among peoples has been of much broader human consequence.” Or as Bozeman (2010 , xv) sought to explain, the “interplay … of politics and culture has intensified throughout the world,” and this has been taking place “on the plane of international relations as well as on that of intrastate social existence and governance.” She concluded that “the territorially bounded, law-based Western-type state is no longer [if it ever was by this reading] the central principle in the actual conduct of international relations, and it should therefore not be treated as the lead norm in the academic universe” ( Bozeman 2010 , xl). The kinds of relations that both Bozeman and Puchala are referring to are relations between civilizations (see also Hall and Jackson 2007 ; Katzenstein 2010 ; Bowden 2012 ).

The “Burden of Civilization”

Not too far removed from Collingwood’s concern with the elimination of physical and moral force via social civilization are accounts of civilized society concerned with the management of violence, if only by removing it from the public sphere. Such a concern is extended in Zygmunt Bauman’s account of civilization to the more general issue of producing readily governable subjects. The “concept of civilization ,” he argues, “entered learned discourse in the West as the name of a conscious proselytising crusade waged by men of knowledge and aimed at extirpating the vestiges of wild cultures” (1987, 93).

This proselytizing crusade in the name of civilization is worth considering further. Its rationale is not too difficult to determine when one considers Starobinski’s (1993 , 31) assertion: “Taken as a value, civilization constitutes a political and moral norm. It is the criterion against which barbarity, or non-civilization, is judged and condemned.” A similar sort of argument is made by Pagden (1988 , 33), who states that civilization “describes a state, social, political, cultural, aesthetic—even moral and physical—which is held to be the optimum condition for all mankind, and this involves the implicit claim that only the civilized can know what it is to be civilized.” It is out of this implicit claim and the judgments passed in its name that the notion of the “burden of civilization” was born. And this, many have argued, is one of the less desirable aspects and outcomes of the idea of civilization ( Anghie 2005 ; Bowden 2009 ).

The argument that only the civilized know what it means to be civilized is an important one, for as Starobinski (1993 , 32) notes, the “historical moment in which the word civilization appears marks the advent of self-reflection, the emergence of a consciousness that thinks it understands the nature of its own activity.” More specifically, it marks “the moment that Western civilization becomes aware of itself reflectively, it sees itself as one civilization among others. Having achieved self-consciousness, civilization immediately discovers civilizations.” But as Norbert Elias (2000 , 5) highlights, it is not a case of Western civilization being just one among equals, for the very concept of civilization “expresses the self-consciousness of the West…. It sums up everything in which Western society of the last two or three centuries believes itself superior to earlier societies or ‘more primitive’ contemporary ones.” He further explains that in using the term civilization, “Western society seeks to describe what constitutes its special character and what it is proud of: the level of its technology, the nature of its manners, the development of its scientific knowledge or view of the world, and much more.” It is not too difficult to see how the harbingers of civilization might gravitate toward a (well-meaning) “proselytising crusade,” driven, at least in part, by a deeply held belief in the “burden of civilization” (see Bowden 2009 ).

The issue is not only the denial of the value and achievements of other civilizations, but the implication that they are in nearly irreversible decline. From this perspective their contribution to “big C” Civilization is seen as largely limited to the past, out of which comes the further implication that if anything of value is to be retrieved, it cannot be done without the assistance of a more civilized tutor. Such thinking is only too evident, for example, in Ferdinand Schiller’s mistaken claim that “the peoples of India appear to care very little for history and have never troubled to compile it” (1926, vii; cf. Guha 2002 ). The British took it upon themselves to compile such uneven accounts as that which was prepared by James Mill and published as The History of British India in 1817. Despite never having actually visited India, Mill’s History relayed to European audiences a fundamentally mistaken image of Indian civilization as eternally backward and undeveloped.

Standards of Civilization

One of the primary justifications underpinning such thinking relates to the widely held view that a capacity for reasonably complex sociopolitical organization and self-government according to prevailing standards is a central requirement of civilization. The presence, or otherwise, of the institutions of society that facilitate governance in accordance with established traditions—originally European but now more broadly Western—has long been regarded as the hallmark of the makings of, or potential for, civilization. An exemplar of the importance of society to the qualification of civilization is J. S. Mill’s “ingredients of civilization.” Mill states that whereas

a savage tribe consists of a handful of individuals, wandering or thinly scattered over a vast tract of country: a dense population, therefore, dwelling in fixed habitations, and largely collected together in towns and villages, we term civilized. In savage life there is no commerce, no manufactures, no agriculture, or next to none; a country in the fruits of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, we call civilized. In savage communities each person shifts for himself; except in war (and even then very imperfectly) we seldom see any joint operations carried on by the union of many; nor do savages find much pleasure in each other’s society. Wherever, therefore, we find human beings acting together for common purposes in large bodies, and enjoying the pleasures of social intercourse, we term them civilized. (1977, 120)

The often overlooked implications of this value-laden conception of civilization led to what Georg Schwarzenberger (1955) described as the “standard of civilization in international law,” or what Gerrit Gong (1984) later labeled the “standard of civilization in international society.” Historically, the standard of civilization was a means used in international law to distinguish between civilized and uncivilized peoples to determine membership in the international society of states. The concept entered international legal texts and practice in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries under the influence of anthropologists and ethnologists, who drew distinctions among civilized, barbarian, and savage peoples based on their respective capacities for social cooperation and organization. Operating primarily during the European colonial period, the standard of civilization was a legal mechanism designed to set the benchmark for the ascent of non-European states to the ranks of the civilized “Family of Nations,” and with it their full recognition under international law. A civilized state required (1) basic institutions of government and public bureaucracy; (2) the organizational capacity for self-defense; (3) a published legal code and adherence to the rule of law; (4) the capacity to honor contracts in commerce and capital exchange; and (5) recognition of international law and norms, including the laws of war ( Gong 1984 ; Bowden 2004 , 2009 ). If a nation could meet these requirements, it was generally deemed to be a legitimate sovereign state, entitled to full recognition as an international personality.

The inability of many non-European societies to meet these European criteria, and the concomitant legal distinction that separated them from civilized societies, led to the unequal treaty system of capitulations. The right of extraterritoriality, as it was also known, regulated relations between sovereign civilized states and quasi-sovereign uncivilized states in regard to their respective rights over, and obligations to, the citizens of civilized states living and operating in countries where capitulations were in force. As the Italian jurist Pasquale Fiore (1918 , 362) explains, in “principle, Capitulations are derogatory to the local ‘common’ law; they are based on the inferior state of civilization of certain states of Africa, Asia and other barbarous regions, which makes it impracticable to exercise sovereign rights mutually and reciprocally with perfect equality of legal condition.” In much of the uncivilized world this system of capitulations incrementally escalated, to the point that it became large-scale European civilizing missions, which in turn became colonialism. Following the end of the First World War, this legal rationale contributed to the establishment of the League of Nations mandate system.

Despite criticism of them, standards of civilization remain influential tools in the practice of international affairs. Some prominent recent discussions of standards of civilization in IR and international law have focussed on proposals for appropriate standards for the late twentieth or early twenty-first centuries, ranging from human rights, democracy, economic liberalism, and globalization to modernity more generally (see Donnelly 1998 ; Franck 1992 ; Fidler 2000 ; Mozaffari 2001 ; Gong 2002 ). Much of this literature is largely uncritical of the sometimes damaging consequences of applying standards of civilization, insisting that the new missionary zeal for promoting human rights, democracy, and economic liberalism is somehow quarantined from the “fatal tainting” associated with colonial exploitation and conquest. Other studies have highlighted the dark side of standards of civilization and their role in European expansion, such as mimicking in the case of Japan ( Suzuki 2009 ), or the effects of stigmatism on foreign policy making in the case of defeated powers such as Turkey, Japan, and Russia ( Zarakol 2011 ). As these studies demonstrate, a number of ongoing legacies continue to have an impact on the conduct of international affairs.

Civilization and Progress

One of the primary reasons sociopolitics is central to considerations of civilization is evident in the following, often quoted passage from Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1985, 186):

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.

One of the important lessons generally drawn from this passage is that life lived outside of society in a state of nature is constantly under threat; there is little to no chance of peace among humans without society. A related point is that some degree of sociopolitical cooperation and organization is a basic necessity for the foundation of civilization. Social and political progress is said to come prior to virtually every other form of progress; moreover, progress within the other subelements of civilization is thought to be contingent upon it. Friedrich von Schiller (1972 , 329) later posited the situation in these terms: “Would Greece have borne a Thucydides, a Plato, and an Aristotle, or Rome a Horace, a Cicero, a Virgil, and a Livy, if these two states had not risen to those heights of political achievement which in fact they attained?”

The close relationship between civilization and progress is captured by Starobinski’s (1993 , 4) observation that the “word civilization , which denotes a process, entered the history of ideas at the same time as the modern sense of the word progress . The two words were destined to maintain a most intimate relationship.” This intimate relationship is also evident in Robert Nisbet’s (1980 , 9) questioning of “whether civilization in any form and substance comparable to what we have known … in the West is possible without the supporting faith in progress that has existed along with this civilization.” He adds, “No single idea has been more important than … the idea of progress in Western civilization for nearly three thousand years.” While ideas such as liberty, justice, equality, and community have their rightful place, he insists that “throughout most of Western history, the substratum of even these ideas has been a philosophy of history that lends past, present, and future to their importance” (1980, 4). Starobinski (1993 , 33–34) makes the related point that “ civilization is a powerful stimulus to theory,” and despite its ambiguities, there is an overwhelming “temptation to clarify our thinking by elaborating a theory of civilization capable of grounding a far-reaching philosophy of history.” Clearly the twin ideals of civilization and progress are important factors in our attempts to make sense of life through the articulation of some kind of all-encompassing or at least wide-reaching philosophy of history. Indeed, in recent centuries it has proved irresistible to a diverse range of thinkers from across the political spectrum.

The relationship between civilization and progress was central to François Guizot’s analysis of Europe’s history and its civilizing processes. In an account that captures both the sociopolitical and moral demands of civilization, Guizot (1997 , 16) insisted that “the first fact comprised in the word civilization … is the fact of progress, of development; it presents at once the idea of a people marching onward, not to change its place, but to change its condition; of a people whose culture is conditioning itself, and ameliorating itself. The idea of progress, of development, appears to me the fundamental idea contained in the word, civilization. ” As for Hobbes and others, for Guizot sociopolitical progress or the harnessing of society is only part of the picture that is civilization, on the back of which, “[l]etters, sciences, the arts, display all their splendor. Wherever mankind beholds these great signs, these signs glorified by human nature, wherever it sees created these treasures of sublime enjoyment, it there recognizes and names civilization.” For Guizot (1997 , 18), “[t]wo facts” are integral to the “great fact” that is civilization: “the development of social activity, and that of individual activity; the progress of society and the progress of humanity.” Wherever these “two symptoms” are present, “mankind with loud applause proclaims civilization.”

J. B. Bury (1960 , 2–5) similarly asserts that the “idea [of progress] means that civilization has moved, is moving, and will move in a desirable direction.” In keeping with the irresistibility of promulgating a grand theory, Bury contends that the “idea of human Progress then is a theory which involves a synthesis of the past and a prophecy of the future.” This theorizing is grounded in an interpretation of history that regards the human condition as advancing “in a definite and desirable direction.” It further “implies that … a condition of general happiness will be ultimately enjoyed, which will justify the whole process of civilization.” In short, the end of history is in close proximity to a state of humankinds’ individual and social perfectibility, in which the dangers and uncertainties of the Hobbesian war of all against all are left behind in favor of the relative safety and security of civil or civilized society.

One of the things that we have increasingly been confronted with and have fought to both survive and eradicate in centuries past is the scourge of war between communities, including civilized communities. In some ways this might seem a bit at odds with the ideas of civilization, progress, and human perfectibility, but just as there is a close relationship between civilization and progress, so too there is a close relationship between civilization and war, and between war and progress.

Civilization and War

Instinct would suggest that the more civilized we have become over time, or the further we have progressed from a brutish state of nature, the more likely it is that the violent and bloody realities of armed conflict will become ever more abhorrent and objectionable and to be avoided at almost any cost. Indeed, this is one of the key lessons we take from Hobbes (1985 , 186–188; see also Lorenz 1966 ; Keeley 1997 ) about the uncertainties and brevity of life in a state of nature, in which every man is an enemy to every man, and while not necessarily constantly at war with all others, is at least prepared for it. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, on the other hand, claimed that the state of nature was the playground of the noble savage, who by and large lived in a state of harmony with his fellow beings and the natural world more generally. It was only with the coming of civilization that the Garden of Eden was disturbed by war and the other ills associated with civilized modernity. As Rousseau (1997 , 161) eloquently put it, “The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, to who it occurred to say this is mine , and found people sufficiently simple to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders, how many miseries and horrors” would humankind “have been spared by him who, pulling up the stakes or filling in the ditch, had cried out to his kind: Beware of listening to this impostor; [y]ou are lost if you forget that the fruits are everyone’s and the Earth no one’s.” With these vastly different perspectives in mind, having studied the origins and evolution of war among humans across two million years, Azar Gat (2006 , 663) argues that of the two, “Hobbes was much closer to the truth.”

This conclusion fits nicely with assumptions about the spread of civilization underpinning an ever more orderly and peaceful, civilized international society in which resorting to armed conflict is becoming increasingly rare. But is the association between civilization and war really a straightforward, inverse linear relationship, or is there more to it than that? The suggestion that civilization and war share a common heritage, that “the cradle of civilization is also war’s cradle,” would seem to indicate that there is something more complex going on ( Meistrich 2005 , 85). As Ira Meistrich explains (2005 , 85), “War requires the kind of mass resources and organization that only civilization can provide, and so the fertile ground from which men harvested civilization’s first fruits also nurtured the dragon-tooth seeds of warfare.” Harry Holbert Turney-High (1971 , 23) makes a similar point, that the “war complex fits with the rest of the pattern of social organization.”

As Toynbee (1951 , viii) explains, the “possibility of waging war pre-supposes a minimum of technique and organization and surplus wealth beyond what is needed for bare subsistence.” At the same time, somewhat curiously, it is thought that war making is the all-important grit around which the pearl of civilization grows and acquires its luster. Robert R. Marrett (1920 , 36) suggests that it “is a commonplace of anthropology that at a certain stage of evolution—the half-way stage, so to speak—war is a prime civilizing agency.” Quincy Wright (1965 , 98–99) draws similar conclusions: “Primitive warfare was an important factor in developing civilization. It cultivated the virtues of courage, loyalty, and obedience; it created solid groups and a method for enlarging the area of these groups, all of which were indispensable to the creation of the civilizations which followed.”

William Eckhardt (1975 , 55–62; 1992 ) similarly argues that “anthropological evidence” points to the fact “that primitive warfare was a function of human development more than human instinct or human nature.” He further suggests that it “was only after we settled down to farming and herding that the land became of importance to us and, therefore, something worth fighting for.” In much the same way that Hobbes explains the process and outcomes of socially contracted civilized society, Eckhardt (1990 , 10–11) points out how the “agricultural revolution made available a surplus of food, which carried humans beyond the subsistence level of making a living to the point where the surplus could be used to pay some to govern others, and to engage in art, religion, and writing, and to engage in war in order to expand the benefits of civilization to others, or to get others to help pay for the process of civilization, or to defend oneself from those who might be tempted to take a short cut to civilization.” This suggests a rather different relationship between civilization and war than the argument that there is a direct correlation between civilized society and a propensity for peacefulness. On the contrary, it is claimed that “the more civilized people become, the more warlike we might expect them to be” ( Eckhardt 1990 , 15).

Wright (1965 , 99) makes the further point that as “primitive society developed toward civilization, war began to take on a different character. Civilization was both an effect and a cause of warlikeness.” Eckhardt (1990 , 9) makes a similar case, “that warfare really came into its own only after the emergence of civilization some 5,000 years ago.” Following Wright, Eckhardt (1990 , 14) concludes that in essence, “war and civilization, whichever came first, promoted each other in a positive feedback loop, so that the more of one, the more of the other; and the less of one, the less of the other.” This simultaneously civilized yet vicious circle forms the basis of Eckhardt’s (1990 , 9–11) “dialectical, evolutionary theory of warfare,” in which “more developed societies engaged in more warfare.” Moreover, “civilized peoples took to war like ducks take to water, judging by their artistic and historical records,” with “wars serving as both midwives and undertakers in the rise and fall of civilizations in the course of history.”

James Boswell (1951 , 35) once wrote, “How long war will continue to be practised, we have no means of conjecturing,” adding, “Civilization, which it might have been expected would have abolished it, has only refined its savage rudeness. The irrationality remains, though we have learnt insanire certa ratione modoque , to have a method in our madness.” Indeed, rather than civilization and all its trappings representing the antidote to or the antithesis of war, it would seem that civilization and war go hand in hand; mechanized industrial civilization in particular seems to be particularly adept and efficient in the art of war making. As Eckhardt (1990 , 15) put it, “war and civilization go and grow together.” And so “far as civilization gives birth to war or, at least, promotes its use, and so far as war eventually destroys its creator or promoter, then civilization is self-destructive, a process that obstructs its own progress.” A similar point is made by Toynbee (1951 , vii–viii), who concluded that while “War may actually have been a child of Civilization,” in the long run, the child has not been particularly kind to its creator, for “War has proved to have been the proximate cause of the breakdown of every civilization which is known for certain to have broken down.” This in effect brings us full circle in the relationship between civilization and war: war making gives rise to civilization, which in turn promotes more bloody and efficient war making, which in turn brings about the demise of civilization (or civilizations).

Civilization and the Environment

Anthropomorphic climate change, its associated consequences, and the delicate state of the natural world more generally are at the forefront of the new and emerging threats to civilization ( Fagan 2004 , 2008 ). In fact, the nature of humankind’s largely exploitative relationship with the wider natural world in general is being called into question and is forcing some of us to seriously rethink that relationship. While Rousseau might have characterized the relationship between human beings and the natural world as one marked by harmony and beneficence, for most the story of civilization has in large part been about humankind’s capacity to conquer nature: conquer the wild frontier, tame the animal world, and civilize the barbaric and savage peoples of our own species. As V. Gordon Childe (1948 , 1) explains, “progress” and “scientific discoveries promised a boundless advance in man’s control over Nature.” This attitude toward nature and natural resources has long predominated in European and Western thinking in particular. John Locke (1965 , 339/II:42), for instance, in his discussion of the Americas, Amerindians, and property rights, wrote, “Land that is left wholly to Nature, that hath no improvement of Pasturage, Tillage, or Planting, is called, as indeed it is, wast [waste].” The land was there to be improved and exploited in order to accommodate a greater number of people than the Amerindians were inclined to, and if they were not going to make appropriate use of it, then the British were entitled to take it—in fact, it was their duty to do so.

As outlined above in relation to progress, a significant aspect of civilization revolves around evolving or developing, whether from a state of nature, savagery, or barbarism, toward urbanized, scientific, technological civilization. A large part of this evolutionary process concerns society’s capacity to control nature and exploit its resources. This is illustrated by Adam Smith (1869 , 289–296) when he outlines four distinct stages of human social development: the first is “nations of hunters, the lowest and rudest state of society,” his prime example being the “native tribes of North America.” The second stage is “nations of shepherds, a more advanced state of society,” such as that of the Tatars and the Arabs. But such peoples still have “no fixed habitation” for any significant length of time, as they move about on the “whim” of their livestock and with the seasons in the endless search for feed. The third stage is that of agriculture, which “even in its rudest and lowest state, supposes a settlement [and] some sort of fixed habitation.” The fourth and most advanced stage is that of civilized, urbanized, commercial society, an efficient and effective exploiter of nature and all the fruits it has to offer. Similarly, Walter Bagehot (1875 , 17–19) argued that the “miscellaneous races of the world be justly described as being upon various edges of industrial civilization, approaching it by various sides, and falling short of it in various particulars.” The problem with those falling short, the uncivilized who were supposedly ruled by nature as opposed to rulers of it, was that they “neither knew nature, which is the clock-work of material civilization, nor possessed a polity, which is a kind of clock-work to moral civilization.”

In some ways, the relationship between civilization and nature is not so different from the dialectical relationship between civilization and war: the higher the level of civilization, the greater the exploitation of nature; the greater the exploitation of nature, the more civilization progresses. But as with civilization and war, this relationship cannot go on forever: natural resource extraction and exploitation is not a bottomless pit, but rather is finite and can only support so many people for so long. And of course as our planet is telling us, there are severe consequences associated with the processes of civilization, modernization, urbanization, and all that goes with them. The cycle of extracting more stuff from the ground, processing more stuff, building more stuff, producing more stuff, owning more stuff, throwing away more stuff, and buying more new stuff to replace it is proving unsustainable on such a large scale. The consequences of such excess, in the forms of environmental degradation and climate change, are many and varied; they include melting polar ice caps and rising sea levels, variations in air and sea temperatures, extended periods of drought in some parts of the world while others experience increased rainfall and flooding, and increasing frequency of extreme weather phenomena, to name just a few.

These environmental changes in turn impact our capacity to continue to inhabit certain parts of Earth and our abilityto continue to utilize and exploit resources as we have done for centuries. A knock-on effect is that these diverse changes and threats are often interrelated; one realm of security or insecurity can have a direct and dramatic impact on another, generating a kind of vicious cycle of insecurity. For instance, scarcity of and competition for essential resources such as land, food, water, and energy are potential catalysts for violent conflict ( Dyer 2008 ; Mazo 2010 ; Homer-Dixon 2001 ; Pumphrey 2008 ). And these are not just imaginary scenarios; the period 2007–2008 witnessed violent food riots in as many as thirty countries around the globe, some of them developed Western nations. If the dire predictions are correct, then this is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.

Rethinking Civilization

Just over a couple of hundred years ago, Edward Gibbon (1963 , 530) wrote that humankind may “acquiesce in the pleasing conclusion that every age of the world has increased and still increases the real wealth, the happiness, the knowledge, and perhaps the virtue, of the human race.” In many ways, the record of human history bears this out: for example, the life expectancy of a Roman during the days of the empire was around twenty-five years. Today the world average life expectancy is somewhere in the mid- to late sixties, and life expectancy is considerably higher in many parts of the world. Thanks in part to advances in science and technology, in the twentieth century alone, the “average national gain in life expectancy at birth [was] 66% for males and 71% for females, and in some cases, life expectancy … more than doubled” during the course of the century ( Kinsell 1992 ; Galor and Moav 2005 ). The twentieth century also witnessed unprecedented urbanization, a key marker of progress and development, with an increase from 220 million urban dwellers, or around 13% of the world’s population, at the beginning of the century to 732 million or 29% by mid-century and reaching around 3.2 billion people or 49% in 2005. With urbanization expected to continue apace, it is estimated that by 2030 almost 5 billion people will live in cities, equivalent to roughly 60% of the global population ( United Nations 2005 ).

In respect to the global economy, it has been calculated that in the past millennium, during which the global population increased some twenty-two-fold, global per capita income rose by approximately thirteen times, while global GDP expanded by a factor of almost 300. The vast majority of this growth can be attributed to advances made as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution; since 1820 the global population has grown by a factor of five, while per capita income has increased approximately eight-fold. This kind of development far outstrips the preceding millennium, when Earth’s population is estimated to have grown by as little as one-sixth, and during which time per capita income was largely stagnant ( Maddison 2006 ).

It might seem then that civilization is chugging along quite nicely, just as so many have imagined it; we live longer than our predecessors, we are better educated than ever before, and we have access to far more stuff than most of us will ever need. But at what cost have this civilization and progress come to us and our planet? The distinguished scientist, the late Frank Fenner—the man who announced to the world in 1980 that smallpox had been eradicated—recently stated that he is convinced that “ Homo sapiens will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years.” Like others, he argues that Earth has entered the Anthropocene, and while “climate change is just at the very beginning … we’re seeing remarkable changes in the weather already.” It is on this basis that he argues that humankind will collectively “undergo the same fate as the people of Easter Island.” The only things that will be left of us are our monuments to the excesses of a fallen civilization. Before then, as Earth’s “population keeps growing to seven, eight, or nine billion, there will be a lot more wars over food.” And not only are humans doomed, so are a “lot of other animals … too. It’s an irreversible situation” (Fenner in Jones 2010 ; Boulter 2002 ).

It is difficult to believe that the human condition is really that perilous, that the thin ice of civilization is melting away so quickly and so dramatically that its future is at risk. Are we really lurching toward some sort of post-apocalyptic world like that depicted in Mad Max or The Road ? While climate change skeptics might beg to differ, at the very least, all is not well in the world of civilization. I suggest that a good part of the problem may well be the very way in which we conceive of civilization and progress, which for so long now has been predominantly all about the social, political, and material dimensions of civilization at the expense of its ethical and other-regarding dimensions. In considering human progress, Ruth Macklin (1977 , 370) is slightly at odds with Gibbon in her claim that it “is wholly uncontroversial to hold that technological progress has taken place; largely uncontroversial to claim that intellectual and theoretical progress has occurred; somewhat controversial to say aesthetic or artistic progress has taken place; and highly controversial to assert that moral progress has occurred.”

The question of moral progress appears to be at the heart of the major challenges to civilization outlined above. In respect to both the relationship between civilization and war and that between civilization and the environment, we can see two potentially self-destructive processes in which civilization brings about its own demise as it cannibalizes itself in a kind of suicidal life cycle. The relationship between civilization and war is seemingly one in which war making gives rise to civilization, the organizational and technological advances of which in turn promote yet more bloody and efficient war making, which in turn eventually brings about the demise of civilization either through overstretch or internal collapse. Similarly, up to this point in human history, the march of civilization has largely been at the expense of the environment and the natural world more generally. And now, in turn, the environment is threatening the future of civilization through the potentially catastrophic consequences of climate change. In both cases this represents a sort of vicious circle in which civilization is ultimately its own worst enemy. On top of this are the less than savory things done in the name of civilization; for centuries civilization has proven to be hell bent on expunging that which is not civilized, or that which is deemed a threat to civilization. The consequences range from European conquest and colonization to the global war on terror.

The Nobel Peace Laureate of 1952, Albert Schweitzer , offers a different take on civilization that owes more to moral and ethical considerations than to sociopolitical and material concerns. He writes (1947, viii), “Civilization, put quite simply, consists in our giving ourselves, as human beings, to the effort to attain the perfecting of the human race and the actualization of progress of every sort in the circumstances of humanity and of the objective world.” This giving of ourselves is as much an attitude or frame of mind as it is a political, material, or cultural expression of civilization, for it necessarily “involves a double disposition: firstly, we must be prepared to act affirmatively toward the world and life; secondly, we must become ethical.” For Schweitzer (1967 , 20), the “essential nature of civilization does not lie in its material achievements, but in the fact that individuals keep in mind the ideals of the perfecting of man, and the improvement of the social and political conditions of peoples, and of mankind as a whole.” And as he put it slightly differently (1947, ix), “Civilization originates when men become inspired by a strong and clear determination to attain progress, and consecrate themselves, as a result of this determination, to the service of life and the world.” This call for service to life and the world is at the heart of Schweitzer’s philosophy of civilization, which in effect is also his account of ethics; it is what he referred to as the idea of Reverence for Life ( Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben ), which requires of us a “world-view” that is other-regarding and extends a right to life and an ethic of “responsibility without limits towards all that lives” (1967, 215; Cicovacki 2007 ). In the age of the “selfie” and the self-obsession that goes with it, perhaps this is too much to ask, but that should not and need not be the case.

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Follow the Live Stream of the Event “Ch@nge” in Madrid

Codes that break the myth of being a maths or a language person, openmind books, scientific anniversaries, why we know the lunar missions were real, featured author, latest book, 15 global challenges for the next decades.

Humanity is facing major global challenges that are transnational in nature and transinstitutional in solution. This essay confronts fifteen of the biggest issues, including how to achieve sustainable development, guarantee access to clean drinking water, foster ethical market economies and fight new as well as re-emerging diseases. While the panorama may appear pessimistic, humanity is winning more than losing – even if where we are losing is very serious. But these challenges cannot be addressed by any single government or institution acting alone. They require collaborative actions among governments, international organizations, universities, NGOs and creative individual. We need a serious focus on green growth, falling water tables, rising food/water/energy prices, population growth, resource depletion, climte change, terrorism, and changing disease patterns, otherwise the results may well be catastrophic.

Although many of the trends and possible future developments explained in this chapter can be quite depressing, based on sixteen years of research on the 15 Global Challenges identified by The Millennium Project, I have come to the conclusion that we have the resources and ideas to address them, and that there is more agreement about how to build a better future than is evident in the media, yet decision-making and institutional capacity — so far — is insufficient to make the decisions fast enough and on the scale large enough to build a better future.

Nevertheless, pessimism is unfounded, and it gives the excuse not to try to make better decisions that improve the future. Humanity is winning more than losing, although where we are losing is very serious. There is no guarantee that all will work out well, but the odds are in our favor — especially if more people and institutions understand that it is possible that we can all succeed, because we are already succeeding in many areas. If, however, more people and institutions do not get more strategic about addressing these challenges, then the negative scenarios are more likely.

When you consider the many wrong decisions and good decisions not taken — day after day and year after year around the world — it is amazing that we are still making as much progress as we are.

Fifty years ago, people argued that poverty elimination was an idealistic fantasy and a waste of money to try and eliminate; however, extreme poverty has fallen from 52 percent of the world in 1981 to about 20 percent in 2010. Extraordinary! The majority of the world was in extreme poverty just thirty-one years ago and now less than 20 percent?! Pessimists are just not doing their homework. And today people argue about the best ways to achieve that goal, not whether or not it is worthwhile to try.

Twenty-five years ago, people thought that civilization would end in a thermo-nuclear world war III between the USSR and the USA; today people think everyone should have access to the world’s knowledge via the Internet, regardless of income, nationality, or ideology. Extraordinary change! Within one lifetime. And now, an even more amazing thing: Google is making the phrase “I don’t know” obsolete.

It is possible within twenty-five years that anyone who wants it could have computational power many times beyond their individual brain’s capacity — and have that capacity available twenty-four hours a day, and seven days a week while walking down a street with just voice recognition from imbedded intelligent computer chips in buildings. You won’t need your own computer to access all that.

But we all know the future is not necessarily rosy. If current trends in population growth, resource depletion, climate change, terrorism, organized crime, and disease continue and converge over the next 50–100 years, it is easy to imagine a continually unstable world with a series of catastrophic results. At the same time, if current trends in self-organization via future Internets, transnational cooperation, materials science, 3-D printing, alternative energy, cognitive science, inter-religious dialogues, synthetic biology, and nanotechnology continue and converge over the next 50–100 years, it is easy to imagine a world that works for all.

Computational biophysics can simulate the physical forces among atoms, making medical diagnostics and treatment more individually accurate. Computational biology can create computer matching programs to quickly reduce the number of possible cures for specific diseases, with millions of people donating their unused computer capacity to run the matching programs (grid computing). Computational media allows extraordinary pixel and voxel detail when zooming in and out of 3-D images — making it seem more real than reality. Computational engineering brings together the world’s available information and computer models to rapidly accelerate efficiencies in design. All these are changing the nature of science, medicine, and engineering, and their acceleration is attached to Moore’s law; hence, computational everything will continue to accelerate the knowledge explosion. Tele-medicine, tele-education, and tele-everything will connect humanity, the built environment, and computational everything to address our global challenges.

The world is getting richer, healthier, better educated, more peaceful, and better connected and people are living longer, yet half the world is potentially unstable. Protesters around the world show a growing unwillingness to tolerate unethical decision-making by power elites. An increasingly educated and Internet-connected generation is rising up against the abuse of power. Food prices are rising, water tables are falling, corruption and organized crime are increasing, environmental viability for our life support is diminishing, debt and economic insecurity are increasing, climate change continues, and the gap between the rich and poor continues to widen dangerously.

Information and communications systems from simple mobile phones to supercomputers are augmenting human decision-making. It is reasonable to assume that the accelerating rates of these changes will eventually connect humanity and technology into new kinds of decision-making with global real-time feedback.

We have the resources and ideas to address them, and […] there is more agreement about how to build a better future than is evident in the media, yet decision-making and institutional capacity — so far — is insufficient to make the decisions fast enough and on the scale large enough to build a better future.

But history has taught us that good ideas and technologies can have unintended and negative consequences. These capabilities will eventually make it possible for a single individual acting alone to make and deploy a bioweapon of mass destruction and for organized crime to become far more powerful than today — when its combined income is already twice that of the total of the world’s military budgets. These and other dangerous future possibilities are not inevitable; there are many excellent solutions being pursued and making great progress, unbeknownst to the general public. Every year, The Millennium Project updates data about the global situation and prospects for the future, with most of the data updates going slowly but surely in a positive direction. Nevertheless, the world is in a race between implementing ever-increasing ways to improve the human condition and the seemingly ever-increasing complexity and scale of global problems.

So, how is the world doing in this race? What’s the score so far? A review of the trends of the twenty-eight variables used in The Millennium Project’s global State of the Future Index (SOFI) provides a score card on humanity’s performance in addressing the most important challenges.

An international Delphi panel selected over a hundred indicators of progress or regress for the 15 Global Challenges described later in this chapter. Variables were then chosen that had at least twenty years of reliable historical data. The resulting twenty-eight variables were submitted to an international panel selected by The Millennium Project Nodes to forecast the best and worst value for each variable in ten years. The results were integrated into the 2012 SOFI (Glenn, Gordon and Florescu 2012).

Where are we winning?

• Increasing access to water
• Increasing literacy rates
• Extending life expectancy at birth
• Reducing poverty (living on $1.25 a day)
• Reducing infant mortality
• Reducing war
• Reducing HIV prevalence
• Increasing the number of Internet users
• Increasing GDP per capita
• Increasing the number of women in parliaments
• Increasing secondary school enrollment
• Improving energy efficiency
• Reducing population growth
• Reducing the prevalence of undernourishment
• Reducing nuclear proliferation

Where are we losing?

• Increasing total debt
• Increasing unemployment
• Increasing income inequality
• Increasing the human ecological footprint/reducing biocapacity ratio
• Increasing greenhouse gas emissions
• Increasing terrorist attacks
• Reducing voter turnout

Where is there either no significant change or change is not clear?

• Freedom rights
• Electricity from renewables compared to non-renewables
• Forest lands
• R&D expenditures
• Physicians per capita

Evolution of the 15 Global challenges

In 1996, The Millennium Project3 asked several hundred futurists around the world what was going on now that could become very significant to the future in twenty-five years’ time and that is either not know or misunderstood. A total of 182 developments were collected by the Delphi survey. Another set of Delphi surveys and interviews collected and rated 131 actions to address these developments. These were all distilled into fifteen global issues with overviews and strategies.

These global issues identified by the Delphi surveys and interviews in 1996–1997 were:

• World population is growing; food, water, education, housing, and medical care must grow apace.
• Fresh water is becoming scarce in localized areas of the world.
• The gap in living standards between the rich and poor promises to become more extreme and divisive.
• The threat of new and re-emerging diseases and immune micro-organisms is growing.
• Capacity to decide is diminishing (as issues become more global and complex under conditions of increasing uncertainty and risk).
• Terrorism is increasingly destructive, proliferating, and difficult to prevent.
• Population growth and economic growth are interacting adversely with environmental quality and natural resources.
• The status of women is changing.
• Religious, ethnic, and racial conflicts are increasingly severe.
• Information technology offers both promise and peril.
• Organized crime groups are becoming sophisticated global enterprises.
• Economic growth is bringing both promising and threatening consequences.
• Nuclear power plants around the world are aging.
• The HIV epidemic will continue to spread.
• Work, unemployment, leisure, and underemployment are changing.

With sixteen years of hindsight, these issues are still indeed critical to the future. However, The Millennium Project’s Planning Committee at that time felt these issues stressed the problems more than the opportunities, giving an unbalanced view of the future. To correct this, the same process of collecting judgments and research conclusions of futurists via Delphi surveys and interviews was conducted in 1997–1998. This time, the international panel of futurists was asked what positive developments could evolve over the foreseeable future to significantly improve the human condition. A total of 180 developments were identified with 213 actions to increase the likelihood that they will improve the human condition; the results were then distilled to 15 Global Opportunities with overviews and strategies.

The global opportunities identified in 1997–1998 were:

• Achieving sustainable development
• Increasing the acceptance of global long-term perspectives in policymaking
• Expanding the potential for scientific and technological breakthroughs
• Transforming authoritarian regimes to democracies
• Encouraging diversity and shared ethical values
• Reducing the rate of population growth
• Evolving strategies for world peace and security
• Developing alternative sources of energy
• Globalizing the convergence of information and communications technologies (ICT)
• Increasing advances in biotechnology
• Encouraging economic development through ethical market economies
• Increasing the economic autonomy of women and other groups
• Promoting inquiry into new and sometimes counter-intuitive ideas
• Pursuing promising space projects
• Improving institutions

The following year we combined the two lists into 15 Global Challenges through a series of Delphi surveys and interviews, and we identified 213 actions. At this point the representatives for Finland on The Millennium Project Planning Committee said, “Stop! Don’t keep changing. This is a good list. Keep it; we want to use it to evaluate progress in our country. If you keep changing, it will be difficult for us to compare progress from one year to the next.” So the Global Challenges have remained the same.

The 15 global challenges in 2012

The 15 Global Challenges from 1999 to 2012 are:

How can sustainable development be achieved for all while addressing global climate change?

How can everyone have sufficient clean water without conflict, how can population growth and resources be brought into balance, how can genuine democracy emerge from authoritarian regimes, how can policymaking be made more sensitive to global long-term perspectives, how can the global convergence of ict work for everyone, how can ethical market economies be encouraged to help reduce the gap between rich and poor, how can the threat of new and re-emerging diseases and immune micro-organisms be reduced, how can the capacity to decide be improved as the nature of work and institutions changes, how can shared values and new security strategies reduce ethnic conflicts, terrorism, and the use of weapons of mass destruction, how can the changing status of women help improve the human condition, how can transnational organized crime networks be stopped from becoming more powerful and sophisticated global enterprises, how can growing energy demands be met safely and efficiently, how can scientific and technological breakthroughs be accelerated to improve the human condition, how can ethical considerations become more routinely incorporated into global decisions.

The order of each of the issues, opportunities, and challenges are not prioritized by any definition of importance. Challenge 1 is not more or less important than Challenge 15. The volume of responses from the international panel was used to order the items in each list. The challenges are interdependent: an improvement in one makes it easier to address others; deterioration in one makes it harder to address others. Arguing whether one is more important than another is like arguing that the human nervous system is more important than the respiratory system. These challenges are transnational in nature and transinstitutional in solution. They cannot be addressed by any government or institution acting alone. They require collaborative action among governments, international organizations, corporations, universities, NGOs, and creative individuals.

Total human-induced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are about 49.5 gigatons of CO2 equivalent per year.5 Nature absorbs about half of this annually, but its ability to do that is diminishing. Global ecosystem services are being depleted faster than nature can resupply. The world is warming faster than the latest IPCC projections.6 According to NOAA, the first six months of 2012 were the hottest in the US since record-keeping began in 1895. Glaciers are melting, polar ice caps are thinning, and coral reefs are dying. Rapid population and economic growth over the past hundred years has reduced environmental viability for life support; the impact over the next hundred years could be far greater. It is time for a US–China Apollo-like ten-year goal and global R&D program to address climate change. These two countries are the greatest emitters of GHGs and have the largest economies. Such a joint program — with other countries joining in — could focus on accelerating the development of new technologies like electric cars, saltwater agriculture, carbon capture and reuse, solar power satellites, pure meat without growing animals, maglev trains, urban systems ecology, and a global climate change collective intelligence to support better decisions and keep track of it all. These technologies would have to supplement other key policy measures, including carbon taxes, cap and trade schemes, reduced deforestation, industrial efficiencies, cogeneration, conservation, recycling, and a switch of government subsidies from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

Over two billion people have gained access to improved drinking water since 1990, but 783 million people still do not have such access. Water tables are falling around the world, 40 percent of humanity gets its water from sources controlled by two or more countries, and global water demand could be 40 percent more than the current supply by 2030 (2030 Water Resources Group 2009). The slow but steady Himalayan meltdown is one of the greatest environmental security threats in Asia. Its mountains contain 40 percent of the world’s freshwater, which feeds 40 percent of humanity via seven great Asian rivers. Breakthroughs in desalination — such as the pressurization of seawater to produce vapor jets, filtration via carbon nanotubes, and reverse osmosis — are needed along with less costly pollution treatment and better water catchments. Future demand for freshwater could be reduced by saltwater agriculture on coastlines, hydroponics, aquaponics, vertical urban agriculture installations in buildings, the production of pure meat without growing animals, increased vegetarianism, fixes for leaking pipes, and the reuse of treated water.

The UN mid-range forecast estimates that world population is expected to grow by another two billion in just thirty-eight years, creating an unprecedented demand for resources. Most of that growth will be in low-income urban Asia. Today Asia has 4.2 billion people and is expected to grow to 5.9 billion by 2050. By 2030, the global middle class is expected to grow by 66 percent — about 3 billion more consumers with increased purchasing power and expectations (McKinsey Global Institute 2011). Population dynamics are changing from high mortality and high fertility to low mortality and low fertility. The world’s fertility rate has fallen from 6 children in 1900 to 2.5 today.7 If fertility rates continue to fall, world population could actually shrink to 6.2 billion by 2100, creating an elderly world difficult to support. Today life expectancy at birth is 68 years, which is projected to grow to 81 by 2100.8 By 2050 there could be as many people over 65 as there are under 15,9 requiring new concepts of retirement. Scientific and medical breakthroughs are likely over the next 20–30 years that could give many people longer and more productive lives than most would believe possible today. People will work longer and create many forms of self-employed tele-work, part-time work, and job rotation to reduce the economic burden on younger generations and to maintain living standards. If new concepts of employment are not invented, increased political instability seems inevitable.

Current demographic shifts and improved education, compounded by economic volatility, are increasing demands for more transparent democratic systems. Although democracy has been growing for over twenty years, Freedom House reports that political and civil liberties declined in 2011 for the sixth consecutive year. New democracies must address previous abuses of power to earn citizens’ loyalties without increasing social discord, slowing the reconciliation process, and reducing human rights. An educated and correctly informed public is critical to democracy; hence, it is important to learn how to counter and prevent various ideological disinformation campaigns, information warfare, politically motivated government censorship, reporters’ self-censorship, and interest-group control over the Internet and other media, while reinforcing the pursuit of truth.

Old ideological, political, ethnic, and nationalistic legacies also have to be addressed to maintain the long-range trend toward democracy. Since democracies tend not to fight each other and since humanitarian crises are far more likely under authoritarian than democratic regimes, expanding democracy is sine qua non for building a peaceful and just future for all. Meanwhile, international procedures are needed to assist failed states or regions within states, and intervention strategies need to be designed for when a state constitutes a significant threat to its citizens or others.

Humanity needs a global, multifaceted, general long-term view of the future with long-range goals to help it make better decisions today to build a brighter future. Attaining such long-range goals as landing on the moon or eradicating smallpox that were considered impossible inspired many people to go beyond selfish, short-term economic interests to great achievements. Short-term, selfish economic decision-making has led to many problems, ranging from the Euro crisis to the political stalemate in Washington and insufficient actions from Rio+20. The options to create and update national, global, and corporate strategic foresight are so complex and are changing so rapidly that it is almost impossible for decision-makers to gather and understand the information required to make and implement coherent policy. At the same time, the consequences of incoherent policies are so serious that new systems for collective intelligence are needed to improve resilience.

National legislatures could establish standing “Committees for the Future,” as Finland has done. National foresight studies should be continually updated, improved, and conducted interactively with issue networks of policymakers and futurists and with other national long-range efforts. Decision-makers and their advisors should be trained in futures research (Glenn and Gordon 2009) for optimal use of these systems. Governments could add foresight as a performance evaluation criterion, add foresight to their training institutions, and require a “future considerations” section be added to policy reporting requirements. Government budgets should consider five-to-ten-year allocations attached to rolling five-to-ten-year SOFIs, scenarios, and strategies. Governments with short-term election cycles should consider longer, more stable terms and funds for the staff of parliamentarians. A successful Global Future Collective Intelligence System should help policymaking become more sensitive to global long-term perspectives. Participatory policymaking processes augmented by e-government services can be created, informed by futures research. Universities should fund the convergence of disciplines, teach futures research and synthesis as well as analysis, and produce generalists in addition to specialists.

These challenges are transnational in nature and transinstitutional in solution. They cannot be addressed by any government or institution acting alone. They require collaborative action among governments, international organizations, corporations, universities, NGOs, and creative individuals.

Over two billion Internet users, over six billion mobile phone subscriptions,10 and uncountable billions of hardware devices are intercommunicating in a vast real-time multi-network, supporting every facet of human activity. It is reasonable to assume that most of the world will experience ubiquitous computing and eventually spend most of its time in some form of technologically augmented reality. The race is on to complete the global nervous system of civilization. Ericsson forecasts that 85 percent of the world’s population will be covered by high-speed mobile Internet in 2017. Humanity, the built environment, and ubiquitous computing are becoming a continuum of consciousness and technology reflecting the full range of human behavior, from individual philanthropy to organized crime. New forms of civilization will emerge from this convergence of minds, information, and technology worldwide.

One of the next “big things” could be the emergence of collective intelligences for issues, businesses, and countries, forming new kinds of organizations able to address problems and opportunities without conventional management. Collective intelligence can be thought of as a continually emerging property that we create (hands on) from synergies among people, software, and information that continually learns from feedback to produce just-in-time knowledge for better decisions than any one of these elements acting alone. Real-time streamed communications shorten the time it takes from situational awareness to decisions. The Web is evolving from the present user-generated and participatory system (Web 2.0) into Web 3.0, a more intelligent partner that has knowledge about the meaning of the information it stores and has the ability to reason with that knowledge, using conceptual descendants of today’s Jeopardy-beating Watson from IBM and Apple’s affectionate Siri.

Low-cost computers are replacing high-cost weapons as an instrument of power in asymmetrical warfare. Cyberspace is also a new medium for disinformation among competing commercial interests, ideological adversaries, governments, and extremists, and it is a battleground between cybercriminals and law enforcement. Fundamental rethinking will be required to ensure that people will be able to have reasonable faith in information. We have to learn how to counter future forms of information warfare that could otherwise lead to the distrust of all forms of information in cyberspace. Nevertheless, the value of ICT for reducing the divisions among people outweighs its divisiveness. It is hard to imagine how the world can work for all without reliable tele-education, tele-medicine, and tele-everything. Universal broadband access should become a national priority for developing countries to make it easier to use the Internet to connect developing-country professionals overseas with the development processes back home, improve educational and business usage, and make e-government and other forms of development more available.

Assuming no new European crisis and that Europe’s recession will only shrink their economy by –0.3 percent, the IMF estimates that the world economy will grow at 3.5 percent in 2012. With world population growth at 1 percent, humanity will get about 2.5 percent wealthier by traditional standards. According to the World Bank, extreme poverty ($1.25/day) has fallen from 1.94 billion people (52 percent of the world) in 1981 to 1.29 billion (about 20 percent) in 2010, while world population increased from 4.5 billion to nearly 7 billion during the same time. At this rate, however, about one billion people might still be living in extreme poverty in 2015.11 World unemployment grew to 9 percent in 2011 from 8.3 percent in 2010.12 The landscape of geo-economic power is changing rapidly as the influence of BRIC and other emerging economies as well as of multinational enterprises is rising. Lower- and middle-income countries with surplus labor will be needed in higher-income countries with labor shortages. This could continue the brain drain problem, yet online computer matching systems can connect those overseas to the development process back home.

The 2012 State of the Microcredit reports that the number of very poor families receiving a microloan rose from 7.6 million in 1997 to 137.5 million in 2010, affecting more than 687 million people. The rapid increase of entrepreneurship, self-employment and SMEs, plus global communications and an international division of labor that develop new forms of business governance and relationships, all have the potential to raise living standards and reduce income disparities among nations.

Ethical market economies require improved fair trade, increased economic freedom, a “level playing field” guaranteed by an honest judicial system with adherence to the rule of law, and by governments that provide political stability, a chance to participate in local development decisions, reduced corruption, insured property rights, business incentives to comply with social and environmental goals, a healthy investment climate, and access to land, capital, and information. Approximately one billion people in ninety-six countries now belong to a cooperative, according to the International Co-operative Alliance. Since half of the world’s major economies are multinationals, these businesses play a crucial role in poverty alleviation and in building a sustainable economic system. Direction from central government with relatively free markets is competing with the decentralized, individualized private enterprise for lifting people out of poverty. The world needs a long-term strategic plan for a global partnership between rich and poor. Such a plan should use the strength of free markets and rules based on global ethics.

Humanity, the built environment, and ubiquitous computing are becoming a continuum of consciousness and technology reflecting the full range of human behavior, from individual philanthropy to organized crime. New forms of civilization will emerge from this convergence of minds, information, and technology worldwide.

The health of humanity continues to improve. The incidence of infectious diseases is falling, as is mortality from such diseases as malaria, measles, and even HIV/AIDS.13 New HIV infections have declined 21 percent over the past 12 years, and AIDS-related deaths dropped by 19 percent between 2004 and 2010.14 The US Food and Drug Administration have approved Truvada, the first drug approved to reduce the risk of HIV infection in uninfected individuals.15 However, a new infectious disease has been discovered each year over the past forty years, twenty diseases are now drug-resistant, and old diseases have reappeared, such as cholera, yellow fever, plague, diphtheria, and several others. In the last six years, more than 1 100 epidemics have been verified. International collaboration to reduce HIV, SARS, and H1N1 (swine flu) has built better global health systems. The dramatic improvements in health and medical services over the past twenty years could be reduced by the ongoing economic problems that are cutting health budgets around the world. The global public debt is about $40 trillion, while the world’s GDP in 2012 is about $80 trillion (PPP). Bill Gates and others supporting health programs are pleading with G20 governments to keep their pledges of $80 billion annually from 2015 onward to create a healthier world.16 Because the world is aging and is increasingly sedentary, cardiovascular disease is now the leading cause of death in the developing as well as the industrial world. However, infectious diseases are the second largest killer and cause about 67 percent of all preventable deaths of children under five (pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, and measles). Nevertheless, the last twenty years have seen a 30-percent drop in deaths of children under five. Mortality from infectious disease fell from 25 percent in 1998 to less than 16 percent in 2010.17

High-density population growth and slow progress in sanitation in poorer areas keep many preventable diseases active. Some of the largest health impacts remain schistosomiasis (200 million cases), dengue fever (50 million new cases a year), measles (30 million cases a year), onchocerciasis (18 million cases in Africa), typhoid and leishmaniasis (approximately a million each globally), rotavirus (600 000 child deaths per year), and shigella childhood diarrhea (600 000 deaths per year).18 The best ways to address epidemic disease remain early detection, accurate reporting, prompt isolation, and transparent information and communications infrastructure, with increased investment in clean drinking water, sanitation, and handwashing. WHO’s eHealth systems, smartphone technology, international health regulations, immunization programs, and the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network are other essentials of the needed infrastructure.

The acceleration of change and interdependence, plus the proliferation of choices and the growing number of people and cultures involved in decisions, increases uncertainty, unpredictability, ambiguity, and surprise. This increasing complexity is forcing humans to rely more and more on expert advice and computers. Just as the autonomic nervous system runs most biological decision-making, so too are computer systems increasingly making the day-to-day decisions of civilization. The acceleration of change reduces the time from the recognition of the need to make a decision to completion of all the steps to make the right decision. As a result, many of the world’s institutions and decision-making processes are inefficient, slow, and ill informed. Institutional structures are not anticipating and responding quickly enough to the acceleration of change; hence, social unrest is likely to continue until new structures provide better management. This may also trigger a return to the city and subregional cooperation as the locus of policy leadership and management. Today’s challenges cannot be addressed by governments, corporations, NGOs, universities, and intergovernmental bodies acting alone; hence, transinstitutional decision-making has to be developed, and common platforms have to be created for transinstitutional strategic decision-making and implementation.

Although the vast majority of the world is living in peace, half the world continues to be vulnerable to social instability and violence due to growing global and local inequalities, falling water tables, increasing energy demands, outdated institutional structures, inadequate legal systems, and increasing costs of food, water, and energy. In local areas of worsening political, environmental, and economic conditions, increasing migrations can be expected, which in turn can create new conflict.19 Add in the future effects of climate change, and there could be up to 400 million migrants by 2050,20 further increasing conditions for conflict. Yet the probability of a more peaceful world is increasing due to the growth of democracy, international trade, global news media, the Internet, NGOs, satellite surveillance, better access to resources, and the evolution of the UN and other international and regional organizations.

Ethical market economies require improved fair trade, increased economic freedom, a “level playing field” guaranteed by an honest judicial system with adherence to the rule of law, and by governments that provide political stability and business incentives.

The number of nuclear weapons has fallen from 65 000 in 1985 to 11 540 in 2011.21 Wars — as defined by 1 000 or more battle-related deaths — have been steadily decreasing over the past two decades, although the past two years have seen an increase, mainly due to the Arab Spring/Awakening.22 Terrorism is changing from transnationally organized attacks to attacks by small groups and single individuals.23 Mail-order DNA and future desktop molecular and pharmaceutical manufacturing could one day give single individuals the ability to make and use weapons of mass destruction from biological weapons. Ubiquitous sensor systems in public spaces plus better mental health and education systems will be needed to reduce such future threats. Governments and industrial complexes find themselves under multiple daily cyberattacks (espionage or sabotage) from other governments, competitors, hackers, and organized crime. It seems intellectual software arms races will be inevitable. Backcasted peace scenarios should be created through participatory processes to show plausible alternatives to the full range of conflict possibilities.

The empowerment of women has been one of the strongest drivers of social evolution over the past century and is acknowledged as essential for addressing the global challenges facing humanity. Women are increasingly engaged in decision-making, promoting their own views and demanding accountability. Women account for 19.8 percent of the membership of national legislative bodies worldwide, and in thirty-two countries the figure is over 30 percent. Women represent 14.3 percent of the total 273 presiding officers in parliaments.24 There are twenty women heads of state or government. Patriarchal structures are increasingly challenged around the world. Women hold 41 percent of the world’s paid employment, but hold 20 percent of senior manager positions.25 The process toward gender political-economic equality seems irreversible. Meanwhile, violence against women is the largest war today, as measured by deaths and casualties per year. In some areas, violence against women at one point in their lives can be as high as 70 percent.26 About 70 percent of people living in poverty are women, who also account for 64 percent of the 775 million adult illiterates.27

The world is slowly waking up to the enormity of the threat of transnational organized crime (TOC), but it has not adopted a global strategy to counter it. In the absence of such a strategy, TOC income has grown to more than $3 trillion a year. Its potential ability to buy and sell government decisions could make democracy an illusion. Havocscope.com estimates the total black market in only 91 of 196 countries in the world to be valued at $1.93 trillion. There is a degree of double accounting in some of these numbers, but to share the scope of Havocsope’s estimates: corruption and bribery represent $1.6 trillion; money laundering, $1.4 trillion; counterfeiting and intellectual property piracy, $654 billion; global drug trade, $411 billion; financial crimes, $194 billion; environmental crimes, $138 billion; and human trafficking and prostitution, $240 billion. These figures do not include extortion and data from 105 countries; hence, the total organized crime income could be over $3 trillion — about twice as big as all the military budgets in the world.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has called on all states to develop national strategies to counter TOC as a whole. This could provide input to the development and implementation of global strategy and coordination. It is time for an international campaign by all sectors of society to develop a global consensus for action against TOC. OECD’s Financial Action Task Force has made forty good recommendations to counter money laundering, but these crimes continue unabated. Two conventions help bring some coherence to addressing TOC: the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, which came into force in 2003; and the Council of Europe’s Convention on Laundering, which came into force in May 2008. Possibly through an addition to one of these conventions or the International Criminal Court, a financial prosecution system could be established as a new body to complement the related organizations addressing various parts of TOC. In cooperation with these organizations, the new system would identify and establish priorities on top criminals (defined by the amount of money laundered) to be prosecuted one at a time. It would prepare legal cases, identify suspects’ assets that can be frozen, establish the current location of the suspect, assess the local authorities’ ability to make an arrest, and send the case to one of a number of preselected courts. Such courts, like UN peacekeeping forces, could be identified and trained before being called into action, so as to be ready for instant duty. Once all these conditions were met, then all the orders would be executed at the same time to apprehend the criminal, freeze access to the assets, open the court case, and then proceed to the next TOC leader on the priority list. Prosecution would be outside the accused’s country. Although extradition is accepted by the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, a new protocol would be necessary for courts to be deputized like military forces for UN peacekeeping, via a lottery system among volunteer countries. After initial government funding, the system would receive its financial support from the frozen assets of convicted criminals rather than depending on government contributions.

In just thirty-eight years, the world should create enough electrical production capacity for an additional 3.3 billion people. There are 1.3 billion people (20 percent of the world) without electricity today,28 and an additional 2 billion people will be added to the world’s population between now and 2050. Compounding this is the requirement to decommission aging nuclear power plants and to replace or retrofit fossil fuel plants. About 3 billion people still rely on traditional biomass for cooking and heating.29 If the long-term trends toward a wealthier and more sophisticated world continue, our energy demands by 2050 could be more than expected. However, the convergences of technologies are accelerating to make energy efficiencies far greater by 2050 than most would believe possible today. So the world is in a race between making a fundamental transition to safer energy fast enough, and the growing needs of an expanding and wealthier population.

About half of the new energy generation capacity comes from renewable sources today.30 IPCC’s best-case scenario31 estimates that renewable sources could meet 77 percent of global energy demand by 2050, while the World Wildlife Fund claims 100 percent is possible.32 The costs of geothermal, wind, solar, and biomass are falling. Setting a price for carbon emissions could increase investments. If the full financial and environmental costs for fossil fuels were considered — mining, transportation, protecting supply lines, water for cooling, cleanups, waste storage, and so on — then renewables will be seen as far more cost-effective than they are today. Without major breakthroughs in technologies and behavioral changes, however, the majority of the world’s energy in 2050 will still come from fossil fuels. In 2010, the world spent $409 billion on fossil fuel subsidies,33 about $110 billion more than in 2009, encouraging inefficient and unsustainable use.

The continued acceleration of science and technology (S&T) is fundamentally changing what is possible, and access to the S&T knowledge that is changing prospects for the future is becoming universal. Computational chemistry, computational biology, and computational physics are changing the nature of science, the acceleration of which is attached to Moore’s law. R&D on 3-D printers is merging the industrial, information, and biological revolutions. Synthetic biology is assembling DNA from different species in new combinations to create lower-cost biofuels, more precise medicine, healthier food, new ways to clean up pollution, and future capabilities beyond current belief. Swarms of nanorobots are being developed that should be able to manage nano-scale building blocks for novel material synthesis and structures, component assembly, and self-replication and repair. Although synthetic biology and nanotech promise to make the extraordinary gains in efficiencies needed for sustainable development, their environmental health impacts are in question. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, announced that it has discovered a Higgs-like boson particle that might explain the fundamental ability of particles to acquire mass, giving rise to future applications of energy and matter unimaginable today. We need a global collective intelligence system to track S&T advances, forecast consequences, and document a range of views so that all can understand the potential consequences of new S&T.

The acceleration of S&T change seems to grow beyond conventional means of ethical evaluation. Is it ethical to clone ourselves or bring dinosaurs back to life or to invent thousands of new life forms from synthetic biology? Public morality based on religious metaphysics is challenged daily by growing secularism, leaving many unsure about the moral basis for decision-making. Many turn back to old traditions for guidance, giving rise to the fundamentalist movements in many religions today. Unfortunately, religions and ideologies that claim moral superiority give rise to “we–they” splits that are being played out in conflicts around the world. The moral will to act in collaboration across national, institutional, religious, and ideological boundaries that is necessary to address today’s global challenges requires global ethics.

Collective responsibility for global ethics in decision-making is embryonic but growing. Corporate social responsibility programs, ethical marketing, and social investing are increasing. New technologies make it easier for more people to do more good at a faster pace than ever before. Single individuals initiate groups on the Internet, organizing actions worldwide around specific ethical issues. News media, blogs, mobile phone cameras, ethics commissions, and NGOs are increasingly exposing unethical decisions and corrupt practices. Advance software experts in the self-organizing international group called Anonymous have become a new force increasing world attention to help the Arab Spring, Wikileaks, the Occupy movement, and opposition to police brutality.

Global ethics are emerging around the world through the evolution of ISO standards and international treaties that are defining the norms of civilization. They may also be evolving from protests around the world that show a growing unwillingness to tolerate unethical decision-making by power elites. The proliferation and scope of unethical decisions that led to the 2008 financial crisis seem not to have been addressed sufficiently to prevent future crises. We need to create better incentives for ethics in global decisions, promote parental guidance to establish a sense of values, encourage respect for legitimate authority, support the identification and success of the influence of role models, implement cost-effective strategies for global education for a more enlightened world, and make behavior match the values people say they believe in. Entertainment media could promote memes like “make decisions that are good for me, you, and the world.”

Collective responsibility for global ethics in decision-making is embryonic but growing. Corporate social responsibility programs, ethical marketing, and social investing are increasing. New technologies make it easier for more people to do more good at a faster pace than ever before.

Some conclusions distilled from sixteen years of research on the global challenges

Without a serious focus on green growth, falling water tables, rising food/water/energy prices, population growth, resource depletion, climate change, terrorism, and changing disease patterns, catastrophic results around the world are likely and will force migrations over the next few decades to make much of the world increasingly unstable. To prevent this, fortunes will be made in areas such as green nanotech manufacturing, synthetic biology for medicine and energy, methods to increase human intelligence, retrofitting energy plants to produce construction material and buildings to produce energy, transferring agriculture from freshwater to saltwater on coastal regions of the word, electric vehicles, growing pure meat without growing animals, and using the principles of urban systems ecology to make cities become conscious technologies.

The global challenges facing humanity are transnational in nature and transinstitutional in solution. No government, international organization, or other form of institution acting alone can solve the problems described in this report: climate change, cybersecurity threats, organized crime, rich–poor gaps, environmental pollution, international finance, gender discrimination, changing disease situations, and the need for sustainable development. The world may have to move from governance by a mosaic of sometimes conflicting national government policies to a world increasingly governed by coordinated and mutually supporting global policies implemented at national and local levels.

Although many people criticize globalization’s potential cultural impacts, it is increasingly clear that cultural change is necessary to address global challenges. The development of genuine democracy requires cultural change, preventing the transmission of AIDS requires cultural change, sustainable development requires cultural change, ending discrimination against women requires cultural change, and ending ethnic violence requires cultural change.

Economic growth and technological innovation have led to better health and living conditions than ever before for more than half the people in the world, but unless our financial, economic, environmental, and social behaviors are improved along with our industrial technologies, the long-term future is in jeopardy.

Many see the world as a fixed-pie, zero-sum game, with someone’s gain becoming another’s loss. Others see an expanding pie, grown by new efficiencies and innovations, “a rising tide lifting all boats.” And a few others see the world as an exponential growth of pies — with the Internet redistributing the means of production in the knowledge economy, cutting through old hierarchical controls in politics, economics, and finance. They expect a world of unlimited possibilities and think that synergetic analysis will create a better world than decisions based solely on competitive analysis. Countering the “me-first, short-term profits” mindset may be essential to engaging the world in more serious consideration of long-term strategies.

Economic growth and technological innovation have led to better health and living conditions than ever before for more than half the people in the world, but unless our financial, economic, environmental, and social behaviors are improved along with our industrial technologies, the long-term future is in jeopardy. The world needs a long-term strategic plan for improving the human condition for all.

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• Much of this material is based on research and analysis from previous State of the Future reports and is used with the permission of the authors and The Millennium Project. See www.millennium-project.org
• Jerome C. Glenn is the lead author of the annual State of the Future report from 1997 to 2013 and CEO of The Millennium Project.
• The Millennium Project is a global participatory think tank created in 1996 under the American Council for the United Nations University that is now an independent organization with forty-six nodes around the world. It identifies thought leaders and scholars to participate in research, connecting global and local perspectives.
• The complete text of the 15 Global Challenges totals 1 900 pages. It is available at http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/2012SOF.html
• US Department of Energy, Energy Information Agency, http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/pdf/industry_mecs.pdf
• Distillation of multiple sources: http://www.global-warming-forecasts.com/underestimates.php
• See United Nations World Population Trends at http://www.un.org/popin/wdtrends.htm
• See World Health Organization figures at http://www.who.int/gho/mortality_burden_disease/life_tables/situation_trends/en/index.html
• See UN Population Division report, World Population Ageing: 1950-2050 at http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/worldageing19502050/
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• United Nations. 2010. Rethinking Poverty. New York: Department of Economic & Social Affairs, ST/ESA/324. Available at http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/rwss/docs/2010/fullreport.pdf
• International Labor Organization, Global Unemployment Trends 2012. Available at http://www.ilo.org/global/research/global-reports/global-employment-trends/WCMS_171571/lang—nl/index.htm
• World Health Organization, “MDG 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Other Diseases.” Available at http://www.who.int/topics/millennium_development_goals/diseases/en/index.html
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• Innovative vision from Bill Gates at the G20 Summit. Realizing a ‘Green Economy’ http://southgreeneconomy.blogspot.com/2011/11/innovative-vision-from-bill-gates-at.html
• World Health Organization. Millennium Development Goals: progress towards the health-related Millennium Development Goals (May 2011). Available at http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs290/en/index.html
• World Health Organization. Global Health Observatory Data Repository. Available at http://apps.who.int/ghodata/
• International Organization of Migration. Migration, Climate Change, and the Environment. Available at http://www.iom.int/jahia/Jahia/activities/by-theme/migration-climate-change-and-environment
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• 09 December 2019

When did societies become modern? ‘Big history’ dashes popular idea of Axial Age

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It’s an idea that has been influential for more than 200 years: around the middle of the first millennium BC , humanity passed through a psychological watershed and became modern. This ‘Axial Age’ transformed an archaic world of divine rulers, slavery and human sacrifice into a more enlightened era that valued social justice, family values and the rule of law. The appeal of the general concept is such that some have claimed humanity is now experiencing a second Axial Age driven by rapid population growth and technological change. Yet according to the largest ever cross-cultural survey of historical and archaeological data, the first of these ages never happened — or at least unfolded differently from the originally proposed narrative.

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Distinct Characteristics of Modern Civilization

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• Loucas G. Christophorou 2  

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Modern civilization’s most distinct characteristics are due to science and science-based technology. In this Chapter, we exemplify these characteristics focusing on the prevalent impact of science and science-based technology on man, society, the environment and climate change, and on the fundamental role of energy in both science and society.

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Modern Civilization

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Short Essay on The Modern Civilization

A civilization is a “highly organized society with complex institutions and attitudes that link a large number of people together.” Thus, our modern societies are well organized with complex system of the police, the army, the civil service, agriculture, industry, business, education, means of communication, telecommunications (telephone, wireless, satellite communication), the mass media (radio, TV and the press), medicine, engineering, science, commerce, defence arrangements and so on. The populations in big and small villages, towns, cities, and countries are living a “civilized” life according to the means available to them. Culture particularly is the totality of beliefs, religious and artistic activities and thoughts in society. Thus, the religious, literary, artistic and philosophical in patterns of thought and behavior determine the cultural refinement of a particular society.

We cannot disregard the facilities and conveniences of life that are available all around. Electricity and now atomic energy has changed the whole pattern of life. Our homes and streets are well lighted, and we have changed the darkness of night into the brightness of day. We have all sorts of electronic appliances to provide entertainment at home. Atomic energy gives us cheap electric power to run. factories and ships at ease. So do we have thousands of inventions like the car and airplane, the computer, the tractor, and tube-well engine and medicines and surgical instruments that have given us pleasures and comforts that a hundred years ago were only dreams.[the_ad id=”17141″]

Modern civilization in the advanced Weșt is not an unmixed blessing. The cleverness of the advanced people has gone too far in using the scientific and mechanical facilities for the development of weapons of mass destruction. There is the rise of modern imperialism (domination of one country or countries by another country or countries), which means control of the natural resources and political and economic policies of the less developed countries by the more developed ones.

The developed countries themselves have distanced themselves greatly from moral and spiritual values (standards) in their zeal to advance materially, mechanically and scientifically. Their dependence on the ways of modern civilization, which means speed in worldly progress, has made them give up the old precious values of selfless devotion to a life of worship and prayer, love for other human beings and objects of nature.

While the constant threat of diseases like aids and cancer looms large (appears threateningly) and the danger of a nuclear (atomic) war constantly hangs over the developed world, the developments of modern civilization sometimes appear to be meaningless. Surely, if the world wants to enjoy and relish the sweet fruits of modern civilization, it will have to create a situation when

• All the countries or societies are equally developed
• when science and machinery are used positively and beneficially
• when the old moral and spiritual values of all societies (these being quite common) are practiced freely

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America and the philippines: modern civilization and city planning.

The Battle of Manila Bay in the Philippines on May 1, 1898, fundamentally changed the course of American history and America’s relationship with Southeast Asia. In the ensuing months, Spanish colonialism in the Philippines collapsed and was replaced by American sovereignty. As an upshot of this transition, the United States changed from being a republic based on the consent of the governed to, for the first time, being a ruler of a distant territory. Notably, too, its self-perception altered. America no longer viewed itself as “just another nation.” Now, America recognized itself as being a world power (Figure 1). It also viewed itself as being a nation fulfilling its destiny, a perceived birthright based in part on its history of continuous territorial expansion so as to redeem and enlighten “barbarous races” with the gift of civilization. 1 Crucial to this bestowing of civilization, at least in the context of the Philippines after 1898, was the development of modern cities through the practice of urban planning.

With the signing of the Treaty of Paris in December 1898 and its subsequent approval after bitter debate by only one vote in the US Senate on February 6, 1899, the US took formal possession from Spain of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam. In light of declaring independence from more than three hundred years of Spanish colonial rule on June 12, 1898, and establishing a Republic with Emilio Aguinaldo as president on January 23, 1899, many Filipinos opposed the new US presence. Tension between local citizens and the Americans ultimately led to armed combat. From February 1899 to July 4, 1902, when the US declared itself the victor, the Philippine-American conflict saw American soldiers and Filipino nationalists fight for control. Despite the American declaration, intermittent armed conflict continued in specific locales for several years afterward.

After the majority of Filipino nationals had been defeated, the colonial US mission was reaffirmed, and the colonial governmental strategy widened.

After the majority of Filipino nationals had been defeated, the colonial US mission was reaffirmed, and the colonial governmental strategy widened. As a consequence, American authorities initiated a separation of the Catholic church from the state. English was introduced as the official language; the education system reformed; port, rail, and road-building programs initiated; and war-damaged settlements rebuilt. Notably, Western architecture and urban planning forms were introduced as part of this “national development” process.

Modern Civilization and City Planning

Americans quickly recognized a number of social and environmental problems existed. These in- cluded poor quality housing, polluted waterways, widespread poverty, and the lack of a national education system. Likewise, the Americans viewed the cultural condition of the local population as being an issue of grave concern. Filipinos were perceived to be lacking in moral fiber and trustworthiness. 3 It was also noticed that they had no grasp of nationhood, but rather had an identity de- rived from the variegated assemblage of different ethnic groups to whom individuals had loyalty. 4 Simply put, the Americans viewed the Philippines as being a place in great need of “improvement,” and a strategy was formed to disassociate Filipinos from their past and portray the Philippines as an “uncivilized” place by creating a fresh culture, environment, and identity. 5

America strove to create a new governmental system for the Philippines while also manufacturing new surroundings for people to live and work.

To understand how America sought to bring betterment to the Philippines, it is important to understand the Philippine Commission, a small-sized governmental body formed in January 1899 by President McKinley to implement American rule across the Philippine archipelago. The commission recognized how important towns and cities would be to the process of importing “American” civilization. As a case in point, the commissioners outlined the significance of urban places to the process of governance. They concluded that American authority was wholly reliant upon developing urban communities because, as in the US, urban communities were the seats of government and places where the nation’s political and social aspirations had been realized.

Furthermore, given the nature of US culture by the 1890s, urban places were considered to be the foundation and hope of civilization—the locales where civic virtues were to be generated. 6 Developing urban places was considered central to successfully managing the Philippines. Guided by President McKinley’s “benevolent assimilation” proclamation of December 21, 1898, in which he defined the purpose of US colonization as a means to educate, civilize, and uplift Filipinos, Commissioner Dean Worcester asserted that urban development would assist in modeling Philippine society along American lines. In so doing, matters that had previously served to undermine “progress” would be eradicated while concurrently civil and religious freedoms, education, and quality homes would be bestowed to all. Thus, cities would aid the socialization of the local population, permitting America to instruct Filipinos in the duties of good citizenship and “practical political education,” i.e., the responsibilities necessary for self-government.

There was an immediate need to improve hygiene and health. For example, a cholera epidemic in 1902 killed an estimated 200,000 people across the country.

To understand the US desire to initiate “progress,” it must be recognized that Americans sought to place the Philippines “in the pathway of the world’s best civilization.” 7 America strove to create a new governmental system for the Philippines while also manufacturing new surroundings for people to live and work. In some regards, environmental improvement could not be ignored. In the capital city of Manila, urban renewal was desperately needed because so many buildings and districts had been destroyed by war. There was an immediate need to improve hygiene and health. For example, a cholera epidemic in 1902 killed an estimated 200,000 people across the country. Healthier environments had to be built. This would allow the indigenous population to live in healthier settings but would also provide the colonizers with familiar, comfortable surroundings in which to live and work, and thus “improve” the Philippines.

Burnham’s Philippines visit remains to this day in the form of two city plans, created in 1905, for the settlements of Manila and Baguio (Figure 2) in northern Luzon Island. The two plans were composed along the same lines as Burnham’s work for the Columbian World’s Fair—a scheme said to contain “many features of what an ideal city might be”—and the 1901–02 McMillan Plan in Washington, DC. 8 Burnham’s urban plans in the Philippines were to be of great value in helping sweep away predicaments that had previously blighted the country while helping forge a pathway to social, economic, and cultural development never seen before in the archipelago. Burnham was also interested in making cities more beautiful, which was a common aspiration in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American urban planning.

Conceived with no-nonsense objectives, the development of Baguio and the redevelopment of Manila played a fundamental role in pushing the Philippines to a state of being that contrasted greatly with the country’s perceived “uncivilized” past, a state of existence that, in the opinion of the Americans, would guide the Filipino population toward “progress.” American authorities assumed that Filipinos desired freedom from disease, poverty, and bad housing, and tutelage in “progressive civilization” through instruction and example.

In Manila, a city of about 225,000 in 1900, Burnham’s plan was to fuse colonialism with contemporary American urban design practices by establishing a new hub that consisted of a collection of public buildings, called the Government Group, which were to be laid out in strict geometric manner so as to form a single, coherent architectural unit, thereby bequeathing both beauty and convenience. 10 Burnham suggested laying down a circular plaza near the Government Group (Figure 3) where boulevards would radiate out across Manila and give civil servants the opportunity to look out to the people over whom they serve.

Burnham also suggested creating a mall close to the Government Group—an open area reminiscent of the monumental space in Washington, DC— that would present a grand vista toward Manila Bay, the scene of America’s military triumph over the Spanish Navy, and a locale said by Burnham to be as picturesque as the Bay of Naples in Italy. The central alignment of the mall was to be terminated to the east by the center of the circular plaza, marked by a statue, and marked along the axis by the dome of the principal public building, the Capitol (Figure 4), a vertical element explicitly symbolizing America’s power within the capital city of the Philippines. With the boulevards branching out from the civic center toward the suburbs, Burnham believed the roadways would provide practical as well as visual advantages in that they would aid the circulation of traffic and give accessibility to the civic core from all districts of the settlement. This he believed would grant “sentimental” benefits in that all parts of the city could look with reverence toward the civic center.

Baguio is located in the mountains of north Luzon, at about 5,000 feet above sea level. It was created as the summer capital when the climate of Manila became too uncomfortable for the Americans. Developed along the lines of a miniature Washington, DC, Burnham’s plan for Baguio, like that for Manila, sought to utilize the natural environment to proclaim the virtues of US civilization. For example, the design of the civic core is composed of two clusters of buildings, one belonging to the local government, the other to the national government. Each building was arranged in a geometric manner close to hilltops—not on the tops of the hills, as this would have broken the natural silhouette of the landscape, and Burnham saw this as a great quality of the local environment—the municipal and national government buildings faced toward each other from opposite sides of a valley that formed the heart of the settlement. 12 Thus, the creations associated with American power were artfully yet prominently visible.

Although smaller than Manila—Baguio was planned for a population of 25,000, and Manila’s re-development was to cope with the city’s growth to an anticipated level of 800,000—the plan for Baguio repeated many of the features found in the colonial capital city. One component was the recurring use of parks. In Manila, Burnham sought to create nine green areas that would not only beautify the city and provide shade from the tropical sun, but would also provide environments to permit social interaction. This, in the cultural context of the early 1900s, would inspire citizens to equate civic spaces with beauty, pride, cultural cohesion, and social equality, and consequently, new civic values could become manifest. In Baguio, Burnham Park was formed at the center of the city and laid down on the central axis between the municipal and national government buildings, similar to the mall in Washington. Radiating off Burnham Park, a geometric road pattern was created in order to supply approaches to the central district and its edifices. 14

The American narrative on the advancement of the Philippines in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries usually focuses on teaching English and building schools, ports, and rail systems. While accurate in many regards, this account ignores the use of city planning as another tool in the US vision of social improvement in the archipelago.

If one visits the Philippines today, Daniel Burnham’s city plans can easily be seen. In both Manila and Baguio, Burnham’s plans form a significant part of the cityscape (Figure 7). Baguio, for example, retains a great deal of the spatial character put forward by Burnham, and Burnham Park is a prominent place for leisure activities. Although much of Burnham’s original plan was not enacted in Manila, the partial development of the Government Center and the redevelopment of the waterfront south of the city center demonstrate Burnham’s imprint. As such, Burnham’s, and America’s, legacy endures. Burnham’s urban design proposals also influenced later Filipino architects, including Juan Arellano, who in the 1930s planned the campus of the University of the Philippines in Quezon City as an environment defined by a monumental axis marked at its ends by the university’s administrative building and library.

Historians are familiar with American achievements in the Philippines after 1898, particularly successful efforts to improve health care and education. Urban improvements were also an essential element of American state building in the archipelago, and the tangible examples that still exist in Manila and Baguio illustrate this largely ignored part of the story.

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1. R.J. Bartlett, The Record of American Diplomacy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956), 385.

2. Victor Gillam, “The New Giant among Nations. Introduced by his Cousin, John Bull,” Judge  (New York: Arkell Publishing Company, July 9, 1898).

3. John M. Bass, dispatch of August 30, 1898, in Harper’s Weekly 42 (October 15, 1898), 1008.

4. “Filipinos Unfit to Rule Themselves,” The New York Times , November 3, 1899, 6.

5. Julian Go and Anne L. Foster, The American Colonial State in the Philippines: Global Perspectives (Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2003), 3.

6. Charles Zueblin, A Decade of Civic Development (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1905), 167; and minutes of the meeting of the Philippine Commission, Report of the Philippine Commission , no. 1, January 31, 1901.

7. “The Imperialism Myth,” The New York Times , March 23, 1899.

8. John Coleman Adams, “What a Great City Might Be—A Lesson from the White City,” The New England Magazine 14 (March 1896), 3.

9. Daniel H. Burnham and Pierce Anderson, Report on the Improvements of Manila (Washington, DC: United States Federal Government, 1905); and Daniel H. Burnham and Pierce Anderson, Report on the Proposed Plan for the City of Baguio (Washington, DC: United States Federal Government, 1905). Both images were published in Charles Moore’s tome Daniel H. Burnham: Architect Planner of Cities , no. 2 (New York: Houghton Mufflin Com- pany, 1923).

10. Burnham and Anderson, Report on the Proposed Improvements at Manila , 631.

11. Gerard Lico, Arkitekturang Filipino: A History of Architecture and Urbanism in the Philippines  (Quezon City: The University of the Philippines Press, 2010), 249.

12. Burnham and Anderson, Report on the Proposed Plan of the City of Baguio , 10–11.

13. Photograph of Baguio in 1925, Rizal Library, Ateneo de Manila University.

14. Charles Moore, Daniel H Burnham: Architect, Planner of Cities , 2 (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1921), 201.

15. Photograph of Baguio in 1926. Source: Rizal Library, Ateneo de Manila University.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS AND REPORTS

Bartlett, Ruhl J. The Record of American Diplomacy: Documents and Readings in the History of American Foreign Relations . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1954.

Burnham, Daniel H., and P. Anderson. “Report on the Proposed Improvements at Manila.” Report of the Philippine Commission . Washington, DC: United States Federal Government, 1905.

_________. “Report on the Proposed Plan of the City of Baguio.” Report of the Philippine Commission . Washington, DC: United States Federal Government, 1905.

Go, Julian, and A. L. Foster. The American Colonial State in the Philippines: Global Perspectives . Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2003.

Moore, Charles. Daniel H Burnham: Architect, Planner of Cities , 2. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1921.

Philippine Commission Report 1. Washington, DC: United States Federal Government, 1901.

Zueblin, Charles. A Decade of Civic Development . Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1905.

NEWSPAPER AND JOURNAL ARTICLES

Adams, John Coleman. “What a Great City Might Be—A Lesson from the White City,” The New England Magazine 14 (March 1896): 3.

Bass, John M., dispatch of August 30, 1898. Harper’s Weekly 42 (October 15, 1898): 1008.

“The Imperialism Myth.” The New York Times , March 23, 1899.

“Filipinos Unfit to Rule Themselves.” The New York Times , November 3, 1899, 6.

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The problems facing modern civilization

• Section: Problems & Solutions

A contemporary commentator once observed that just as perversion has set in Western society, it has also taken root in Muslim society. Then how do you regard Western civilization as being wrong and Islamic civilization as being right? This objection, if we examine it, will be found to be ill judged, because our comparison of Western and Islamic civilization makes a judgment on the basis of standards versus behavior.

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Critics of Modern Civilization in India Essay

Critics of modern civilization in india, kim’s identity, works cited.

Gandhi presented his critics of modern civilization in Hind Swaraj book, which most people opposed even without reading it. Majority disagreed with the issues that Gandhi discussed, and regarded the book as ridiculous. Jawaharlal was one of the close followers of Gandhi, and he disagreed with the views of Gandhi.

Some people considered Gandhi as a representative of the old ages. The few people, who were interested with the book, did not get a chance to analyze it, as the government banned it as soon as possible (Gandhi 13). During the congress rule, the book was then revived in the market.

In the book, Gandhi concentrated on various issues that were affecting the contemporary society. He wanted to realize the reason behind the increment of violence and terrorism trends. This issue had attracted international attention, as everyone looked for violent revolution in India as it was highly increasing.

According to Gandhi, in his book, he said that the future of India was interconnected with peaceful events. This idea led to his strong opposition against the growing terrorism and violence. His intention was to introduce an alternative to replace violence and chaotic acts. During this period, British had dominated the Indian land, in efforts of spreading their way of life to the Indians (Gandhi 21).

The introduction of formal education with regard to the British system, use of railways, medicine, and the incorporation of the legal system brought much change to the Indian society. Gandhi says that, he decided to examine further, the nature of British colonialism, and he realized the cause of all the problems was the modern civilization. According to his views, he defined modern civilization as more dangerous than colonialism. Adoption of modern civilization was the cause of the problems that Indians faced.

Gandhi tried to compare the modern civilization with the ethical practices of the Indian people, and discovered that the strength of the Indian people depends on their ethical living. Gandhi confessed that, his main theme was preserving the moral characters of the Indians.

The question, of successfully convincing the Indians about the negative effects of modern civilization was extremely challenging him. Even the educated people, who could easily understand the evils of modern civilization, were already brainwashed.

At one point, Gandhi tried to argue and to convince other Indians how the country was degrading, due to accepting the western institutions, and their way of life (Gandhi 35). Gandhi was convinced that the acts of western civilization and the increased cases of violence were inseparable. The only solution according to him was to eradicate the influence of British for the well-being of the Indians.

The use of dialogue in Hind Swaraj helped him to convey the message of evils of civilization. The dialogue was between a reader and the editor. He considered the use of dialogue of two equal partners to air the views of challenges faced by the contemporary society, as the most effective.

His efforts were to put India in its prominent position with other nations. Gandhi made some arguments of the fact that, the strength of India did not rely on the work of its military, but in Indians ethical behaviors (Gandhi 57). Although, he thought politics played a significant role in solving peoples problems, politicians were supposed to serve people, but not to dominate. Gandhi honored the strength and powers of nationalism, due to its capability in solving the Indians problems.

Gandhi made people understand that modern civilization was based on acquiring material wealth, and hence could not give ethical living a chance. Indians could not stick to their ethical practices, as they used to rush regularly to grab wealth. The greed for wealth affected the development of the individual’s personality, ethical practices, and moral values, which are relied on promoting peace and cohesion in the society.

Gandhi claimed that moral values and admirable qualities were not present in the modern western civilization. The quality of lives for Indian people was to be emphasized through embracing ethical and moral moorings. He emphasized on culture more than civilization, as it was considered the cause of all problems that Indians faced. Factory civilization that resulted from modern civilization affected the value of a human being negatively (Gandhi 61)

The introduction of industrialization widened the gap between the wealth people and those below the average. In addition, industrialization resulted to hatred and discrimination among the Indians. Modern civilization led to alienation according to Gandhi. On the other hand, it was also raised that, through class struggle, there would be a high likelihood of violence and hatred among the Indians.

Centralization of power was also believed to result to some evils, as only few who will acquire power and dominate the rest. Through industrialization, the cities were believed to grow and expand, hence destroying the harmonious lives in rural areas. Exploitation and acts of inequalities were high in cities and towns than in rural surroundings.

Nevertheless, Gandhi still knew of positive effects of western civilization such as the introduction of law and constitutionalism. Western civilization also entailed some positive impacts such as civil liberty, and economic development. On the other hand, Gandhi discovered western civilization mainly resulted to competition and becoming rich, and greed for power (Gandhi 69).

This analysis brought the conclusion that; positive impacts of western civilization were small, compared to the problems it brought. The improvement of people’s quality of life was Gandhi’s principal concern, as opposed to the quantity development aimed by the British. The introduction of modern civilization was making machines overtake men; hence, the human labor was acting like slavery.

According to Gandhi western civilization was based on animosity, he declared that even for West modernization was wicked. The views of Gandhi proved that colonialism was one of the many fruits of western civilization. In his book, Gandhi requested the Indians to adopt technology only suitable to their needs (Gandhi 71). He focused his interests mostly about the youths and concentrated much on educational reforms.

Kim is a very intriguing book and most people prefer reading it. The people, who read this book outside India, always developed an urge to visit the place. Kimball O’Hara is the main character in the book, mainly known as Kim. He appears in the first page of the book sitting on enormous cannon in the middle of the city of Lahore. The author of the book portrays Kim fighting other boys, who intended to take his position.

On this very day, Kim starts a journey that shapes his life fully later. The hero of the author was this young boy known as Kim. Kim looked and behaved like any other normal Indian. His father was an English man, who died and left Kim with notes specifying his identity. Kim always carried with him those notes concerning the secret of his identity (Kipling 11).

Kim was a knowing young boy and ever searching for his identity. Kim accompanied Iama, a Buddhists priest, who wanted to be shown his way to wonder house. It was a fantastic opportunity for him to search what his father had indicated in the notes. Kim’s father had indicated that one day; Kim would be befriended by a red bull on a green environment, accompanied by colonel on his horse in a group of nine hundred devils (Kipling 39).

The definition that his father had given was not clear to Kim about what he meant. It did not dawn on Kim that his father referred to his old Irish regiment, its ruling officer, and its followers of nine hundred men. When Kim found this group of people, he became a player in the great game of Indians spying. He got an opportunity to learn crucial skills such as map reading and map making in st. Xavier, as preparation for his role in Indians exciting game.

Kim disclaims the racist modes of characters and shows the future racial harmony. The identity of Kim is used in the book as the bridge between the colonizers and the colonized. The author of the book tries to demonstrate Kim’s identity crisis and his chameleon like characters (Kipling 66).

This is well demonstrated through Kim’s relationships with the natives. The culture aspect of Kim was significantly affected through the interaction of Asian and European practices. Kim’s identity crisis is because of native culture, which he feels being part of it. At a point, Kim considered Mahhub Ali as a traitor, because he betrayed him back to the British. Although Kim felt more superior to other Indians, he demonstrated feelings of closeness to the Indians.

The author describes Kim as a “Friend of the entire world”, which is seen as ironic, as he related with natives in a hatred way. He treated his friends and other natives in a negative attitude, except for the Iama to whom he showed love.

Although Kim insisted of perfect equality, he acted negatively when he removed the Indian boys who had occupied his place. He did this because he was English, and English people were superior. Despite that, Kim was a poor boy; the Indian boy whose father was rich could not manage to take Kim’s position.

Kim’s identity crisis was felt in all aspects of life. For instance, in st. Xavier where he considered himself a sahib, things were exceedingly different. Other children in school discriminated Kim and gave him unwelcoming response (Kipling 27). In this school, Kim learnt how to behave in a more superior manner over other natives by force.

What helped him most throughout the school life was that, he believed he was better compared to other Indians. The blood of white in Kim was seen to prevail, when he decided to join British secret service, and contribute to the fight against Indians. This aspect enforced the author’s belief of genetic differences between races.

When Mahbub Ali asked Kim who is exactly his people, Kim responded just like any other colonizer, and declared that great and beautiful land was his answer. The answer, which Kim gave, was a clear show, of the division between him and the natives. It was clear that it was not possible for Kim to do away with his white culture.

Kim severally showed fear of snakes, some of the incidences that proved that it was impossible for Kim to escape his British blood (Kipling 45). Other incidences, which portrayed Kim’s identity crisis, were how his mind functioned. For instance, when he was relaxed his mind functioned like a Hindi. When situations of confusion arose and needed to think deep, Kim’s mind functioned like an English person.

In several occasions, his mind shifted from the darkness that was burying it, and took refuge in English thinking. Although Kim had lived among natives for many years, the superiority of white blood and culture, could not allow him to believe the illusions of natives. Kim’s identity became questionable, when at times forgot he was a sahib he would later recall that he is a white.

For instance, when Kim was in Jain temple he bent down forgetting st. Xavier, forgetting his superior white blood, and even great game. He was in a status of confusion, and could not determine who he was. He went to the extent of asking, “Who is Kim-Kim-Kim” (Kipling 54).

In the same incidence, Kim is heard confessing to a shamlegh woman how he wrestled with his soul until he was strength less. It was clear that, it was not easy for Kim to handle the conflicting cultures and identities that existed in him. There were no fixed contours to define the identity of Kim, because his skin color was undecided, as he was black like any other native, although not very black.

Kim was Irish by birth the culture that was dominant in him was Asiatic, but he received treatment of an Englishman. His personality entailed conflicting characters. In addition, Kim did not have a well-defined or social identity, because at a point in the book he is heard asking, whether he is a Hindu, Jain, or Buddhist (Kipling 19).

Mahbub Ali who was acting like his biological father could also not define the real identity of Kim. The most confusing point is when Kim could not decide whether he would like to be a sahib with dignity of education or to be a colonized native. He later managed this status of choosing his identity by becoming a colonizer.

Gandhi, Mahatma. Hind Swaraj . New Delhi: Rajpal & Sons, 2010. Print.

Kipling, Rudyard. Kim. New York: Create Space, 2009. Print.

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IvyPanda . 2023. "Critics of Modern Civilization in India." December 22, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/modern-civilization-essay/.

1. IvyPanda . "Critics of Modern Civilization in India." December 22, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/modern-civilization-essay/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Critics of Modern Civilization in India." December 22, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/modern-civilization-essay/.

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