In August, I was honoured to have been invited to Care Mabon to attend and speak at a gathering of local leaders from across North Wales - arguably the spiritual epicentre of the Welsh people - about the global transformation which is upon us and why Wales is so important during these prophetic times - its the first country in the world to appoint a Future Generations Commissioner. It was an exciting venue at which to speak, and to kick off my public speaking again after substantial period of silence. Furthermore, I had just emerged from a very deep period of introspection and a complete rethinking of my life - and just moved to Wales. This is a synopsis of my talk and conversations I had over the course of the days we were all together.
From here I was due to attend the UN Resilience Frontiers event in Korea, speak at Horasis Global Summit in Turkey and then on the topic of the future of Britain at Anthropy hosted at the Eden Project. I also plan to update this sub stack more frequently now and consider a new name for it.
These will not be fully developed essays but more in the Japanese “zuihitsu” style or “running brush”. Wikipedia defines it as “a genre of Japanese literature consisting of loosely connected personal essays and fragmented ideas that typically respond to the author's surroundings”. I will refer to everything from technology to economics to culture to spirituality.
Living in Prophetic Times
My understanding, for some time, has been that our global civilisation (assuming such a thing exists) was facing a confluence of crises - some existential - including ecological, economic, geopolitical, social and even spiritual. [The World Economic Forum now calls this the ‘poly crisis’ but I am not so sure they focus on the spiritual dimension.] These crises would intensify from 2020 through the 2020s and come to some form of crescendo by 2032: the ‘tumultuous twenties’. My analysis came from experience looking at cycles whilst in the investment world (learning from top investors similar to Ray Dalio) , research on big cycles and trends of macro history, and time in deep contemplation and harnessing the imagination to try and look around the corner. The future rarely progresses in a linear , easily forecastable way as mainstream society seems to believe. In the 2010s - through a haphazard series of encounters - I was most surprised to find that many spiritual leaders and indigenous elders not only agreed with my prognosis ahead, but had ancient prophecies which pointed to the end of an epoch at this time and the beginning of a new one. Many also had remarkably similar timelines.
In the first few months of 2020, biblical levels of locusts plagued Africa, geopolitical tensions continued to rise with battles between India and China in the Himalayas and the intensification of US/China rivalry, and of course the global pandemic struck. The common joke was that the science fiction genre of books was moved to the current affairs section.
“The world is getting both better and worse at an accelerating pace”
Our old world is unravelling, and this might be frightening for those attached to the old ways or for those who think they are benefitting from the anciene regime. We can see this future by looking at the relentless fall in trust in old institutions including government, journalism, bureaucracy, police, judicial system, and international multinational organisations. If you take the largest and more influential economy in the world, the USA, the data is quite shocking. I’ve been monitoring this for a long time. The fact that the military might be the only major institution left with serious trust says something quite profound - and worrying.
The next few years will likely see a further escalation in geopolitical tension and possibly more war, such as the proxy war in Ukraine between NATO and Russia. Taiwan will be a hotspot, but there will be other nations in the global south where revolution and war will occur. The West will not be spared. I foresee further civil unrest and even revolution. The US will have another electoral and constititional crisis going into the 2024 election with some pretty crazy possible outcomes. One future scenario is that there is no winner. Longer term, some states might opt for further ‘soft secession’. By 2032, the notion of the nation state itself might be challenged.
One of the mechanisms of transitioning to a new civilization will likely be inflation, at least in the Western world which currently dominates leadership internationally. I had been anticipating high inflation before we entered the tumultuous twenties as I call them. This would be driven by further unravelling and localising of supply chains as geopolitical trust breaks down, food crises associated with both war and ecological crisis, ecological and climate crisis, and high debt levels in the West, ensuring that central banks will continue to print too much money over the medium term. High inflation causes social tension and civil unrest resulting in more inflation. I touched upon the inflation drivers in an article at the Swiss think tank Horasis. Just because it might have fallen from the peaks currently does not mean it won’t come back to haunt us again throughout the 2020s. That all said, deflation does not preclude this transformational moment and China and parts of Asia might well suffer deflation as they are left with excess productive capacity.
On the positive side, what might be obvious to visionaries and activists now building the new earth, will become obvious to everyone by 2032. Our societies will obviously be entering a transition as significant as the Industrial or Agricultural Revolutions. It will be like a phase transition in physics -like water to ice or water to steam - where all the laws and principles which applied to the previous state will no longer apply. Human civilization will reharmonise with nature again and be driven by the evolutionary impulses observed in nature: a movement to greater connectivity, greater complexity, great creativity, and greater diversity: something that the late futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard would often say. This will occur as the command and control system of centralisation breaks down - the complete antithesis of nature which is self-organising. In some ways, this is exactly why we need Empire and nation states to fail - to a degree!
Power Shifting from the Centres to the Periphery
One role of the futurist is to constantly monitor the periphery or the fringe. For this is where new ideas will first likely appear and grow. This is especially so at moments of great change. There are already groups and communities who are holding the keys to our future civilization, if not are already embodying it - althoughusually one aspect it.
This is true geographically. When I sat in Hong Kong in 2015, soon after my daughter’s birth, I thought that many of the major cities would see incredible disruption in the coming 15 years. An inner voince suggested moving to a stronghold where change could be nurtured. First I moved to live by a sacred mountain in South Korea - Dragon Phoenix Mountain. Then I spent a year by the Mayan pyramids in Mexico and Guatemala, a civilisation which worshipped the feathered serpent, Kukulkan, and had a profound understanding of the stars and cycles. Now I have moved to another land famous for dragons, North Wales and Snowdonia! Its even on the national flag - there seems to be a dragon theme here.
The mountains of Snowdonia has always been a stronghold in the realm during times of uncertainty and war. It is where the druids had key outposts and is also famous for the prophecies of Merlin and the red dragon on the Welsh flag. The Island of Yns Mon (Anglesey) nearby was a place of learning and was where the famous university of the druids was located - like the ancient Nalanda in India. It is said that it took druids 19 years of study. And the Lyn Peninsula is an incredibly fertile piece of land, some say it was the actual place many of the Arthurian legends played out. Merlin is said to be buried on Bardsey Island or the “Island of 20,000 Saints”, which was also recognised by the Vatican as a Holy place for pilgrimage.
Cae Mabon
Cae Mabon is located in a temperate rainforest on the edge of lake Padarn and opposite the village of Llanberis, the gateway to Mount Snowdon. Eric Maddern, an incredible storyteller, set it up nearly 40 years ago. He is the charismatic man in the photo above. Originally it was just one storytelling hut and has grown to become a village of Hobbit-like wooden huts which attracts spiritual seekers from around the country.
It can be tricky addressing a group of leaders at a place like Cae Mabon because many are already embodying or creating the new civilization. In a way, all I could say is keep going!
The stories of the various speakers and participants at the Cae Mabon gathering were indeed a microcosm of the bigger trends on the planet. We heard about how one man - Ianto Jones - is commercialising an ancient medicine from the island of Anglesey developed by his ancestors using slate as a key ingredient. Alice Gray and Franklin Scrase from the Tyddyn Teg farm touched on their journey into co-operative power sharing, regenerative land management and community ownership. The farm harnesses social intelligence through sociocracy and is one of a number of farms which embraces elements of permaculture and ancient practices which regenerate and don’t kill and poison our topsoils. Ali Bates of Pandy Farm, who’s delightful farm I visited, emphasised how there is growing scientific evidence that health and happiness are best served by having a good relationship to nature. Steven Nines, is another farmer next door, who is striving to put the more spiritual dimension (the woo-woo’ back into permaculture as he describes it’ ). Danny Nemu spoke about his adventures in the amazon, plant medicine, and the importance of looking at the fungal internet - which I think is the perfect model for humankind to imitate in our organisational structures.
Others were passionate about the revitalisation of the Welsh culture and the return of the ancient stories. Lucas Davey performed his (mainly) solo drama called the Dragon’s Womb. (see photo below). And Eric Maddern shared many intimate and inspiring stories of his own life becoming story teller and the powerful stories of these lands.
Welsh is a really important indigenous language with 600,000 or so speakers, so significantly more than most out there (Maori and Navajo both have 150,000 speakers). J.R.R Tolkien called it the grandmother tongue of the British Isles and much ancient knowledge, wisdom and history is hidden in it like time capsules.
Stories are really important. For not only are they a key to our past, they are key to our future. To build a new civilization, of course, we need scientists, researchers, scholars, economists, policymakers and more. But the real mid wives of transformation are the story tellers, the poets, the artists and the singers. They are the creators and keepers of the collective culture.
Back to the Prophecies
As a former investment advisor and investor turned futurist, I have always had my own models and scenarios for the future - or futures as we often say nowadays. But as I travelled the world in the lead up to 2012 and beyond, it struck me how many ancient civilisations and tribes had prophecies about the times in which we live. Of course, many heard about the ‘end of the world’ in the Mayan prophecies. This merely was the end of a 12,600 year cycle and the beginning of a new one. The Dalia Lama’s seers, who I met in Dharmsala, agreed with much of my prognosis that we were entering a time of immense disruption, but with the district possibility of an evolutionary quantum leap in our consciousness.
One famous prophecy is that of the Eagle and the Condor. One interpretation is this. There were two groups of people : the eagle people who think with their head and develop advanced technologies and the condor people who are moved by the heart. It was prophesied that from 1500 the people of the eagle would dominate and repress the people of the condor which we saw with the colonisation of the indigenous people of the Americas. But after the year 2000, the eagle and condor would fly together.
In Wales we have our own prophecy which is actually marked on the national flag - the red dragon. At Dinas Emrys, Merlin famously said that the red and white were fighting in pool beneath the castle reflecting a disturbance in the land. The white dragon represented the Saxons (or the new) and the red dragon represented the Welsh or the Celtic Britons more likely (or the ancient). Whilst the red dragon was suffering and weak at that moment , it would eventually recover. I like to see this prophecy as the imbalance in the land between change and technology vs tradition/the ancient. Merlin’s actual prophecy might be that this balance will be restored as we remember our ancient ways.
In Eric Maddern’s own words (from his book Snowdonia Folk Tales) after the period of destruction, Merlin’s prophecy was that the Earth Goddess will return to the lands.
“Then root and branch shall change place, And the newness of the thing shall seem a miracle. The healing maiden will return, her footsteps bursting into flame. She will weep tears of compassion for the people of the land, Dry up polluted rivers with her breath, Carry the forest in her right hand, the city in her left, And nourish the creatures of the deep. With her blessing Man will become like God Waking as if from a dream: Heart open and filled with light, Radiant face, glowing like the rising sun, Shining eyes, like twin silver moons, Radiant ears, shimmering with song, Shining lips, that dance over words, Words of magic that burst into the air becoming swallows. The soul shall walk out; the mind of fire shall burn. And, in the twinkling of an eye, the dust of the ancients Shall be restored."
To me then, Merlin was pointing to a future restoration of harmony - when our civilization who have a greater balance between the ancient and the new as well as the feminine and the masculine (or the ying and the yan).
I am excited to see Wales’ role in this enormous global transition. Already it is being spoken about in the context of the Future Generations Act around the world and I expect it will be bright light in United Nations Summit of the Future in 2024. Even more interesting perhaps, will be it’s dance as a country embracing its indigenous language, culture, and stories whilst also embedded in a powerful G7 country. What happens in Wales will probably not stay in Wales, and might well echo around the world.
Soon to come
I will update my views on the global economy and my travels to Korea with the United Nations Resilience Frontiers and a walking pilgrimage between Rome and Assisi along the St Francis Way.