I was recently asked to participate in a keynote fireside conversation with Christian Schmitz for the Lunar New Year , and the launch of PDIE Group’s new membership scheme. I was beamed onto a screen in Tokyo - which was a shame as I would be been delighted to have visited my old home for near enough a decade. But this is the post pandemic world of course, so I must accept it!
PDIE is a global ecosystem which focuses on the big issues facing humanity and the planet. It has nominated more Earthshot Prize winners than any other organisation around the world. After my talk, Christian distilled his experiences of attending Davos during the week of the World Economic Forum at the end of January.
"I desired dragons with a profound desire. Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighborhood. But the world that contained even the imagination of Fáfnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever the cost of peril."
J.R.R. Tolkien
Here is the essence of what I said in my talk.
Here There Be Dragons
Welcome to the year of the Dragon! Do you know how many nations in the world have a dragon on their flags? Until the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1912, China had a beautifully depicted dragon on its flag but alas that has disappeared. Today only Bhutan, Wales and Malta have dragons on their flags. Malta’s is tied up in St George slaying the dragon. So only 2 nations seem to revere - and dont try to slay - the dragon today, which is a great shame!
After 20 years living in Asia I recently moved to the edge of Snowdonia in Wales. Somehow the dragon has been my link between the East and the West. When I lived in Asia, I always saw dragons as representing an ancient primordial force, perhaps the force that some yogis tap into when they speak of kundalini or when qi gong masters harness ‘qi’ in their training. Or perhaps it is the spirit of the land itself. For 2 years I lived at the foot of Mt Gyeryong, or Dragon Phoenix Mountain, revered by Qi Gong practitioners, Buddhists and Shaman alike. I loved wandering on that sacred land.
I was most surprised when I returned to the UK and was reminded that there were so many stories about vanquishing dragons - think of St George and the dragon. I think it says something quite profound about modern (Western?) culture. I do not think it was always this way - the Welsh flag symbolises the dragon energy as linking heaven (white) and earth (green). I suspect in the more ancient celtic ways, the people (especially the druids) would endeavour to befriend and align themselves with the dragon. In fact, I recently spent 3 days with the druids exploring dragons. Another friend, Lucas, paints various depictions of Celtic mythology and recently painted a dragon being hatched (above). [Do let me know if you are interested in his work].
I think there is something to this ancient philosophy. And this is exactly what humanity needs to do at this important moment of history: stop trying to conquer nature but dance or align with her!
First The Unravelling
Christian Schmitz acknowledged that I am quite optimistic longer term but asked me what are the shorter term risks and sources of instability? Many of the institutions which have held together civilisation (especially Western civilization and the international order) continue to rapidly lose trust. Trust is the glue which keeps societies together. One reason I was able to forecast the tumultuous period we entered around 2015 in the West , was observing the statistics on trust. This decline is likely to continue short term. One mechanism by which this is likely to be amplified is inflation: although this is likely to happen either way, with or without inflation. [This is part of a larger conversation and must include the deflationary counter-forces emerging from China vs all the global inflationary forces. I will address that ina future article]. So here are a number of tectonic forces which will drive this instability:
a). Economics - after the forever wars, the explosive spending during the pandemic and overspending more generally, high debt levels are a challenge for most ‘advanced nations’. This might lead to further misguided central bank policy and printing of money. We have created a system which needs perpetual growth, which is just not possible in the West any longer. As long as governments only focus on GDP and profit growth, they will fail.
The only way to deal with this immense debt is either to a) balance spending and taxation (income) - tricky in a lacklustre economy or b) create money (so that debt can be repaid). Governments find it easier to do the latter which is inflationary.
b). Financial market shocks - Whilst markets seem to have weathered the slow down last year, behind the scenes after last year’s turbulence , corporate real estate is in pain and we do not really know how bad shape the PE and VC world is - or how easy it will be for unlisted companies to get funding. Stepping back, we might have also seen the end of a 40 year interest rate cycle. Many investments will have been made on the assumption of low interest rates (and perpetual growth) and this will be a problem if rates spike again. Valuations in many assets are very expensive here at the end of the ‘mother of all bubbles’.
c). Social fragmentation and discord - wealth and income disparities continue to worsen and in many countries. In the USA especially there is a cultural war which is intensifying to levels akin to a Civil War 2.0. The mainstream media actually exacerbates the differences and fuels the mutual distrust and hatred. You will see this turning to boiling point again in the US election this year. Expect another , perhaps bigger constitutional crisis than J-6.
d) Geopolitical - are China and Russia out to get the US and its allies? Or is the reality that the USA (and the West) refuses to accept the emergence of a new power, or accepting its role as Number 3 (my friend Hugh Peyman wrote a great book on the subject called America as Number 3). Either way, this break down in trust between China and the USA (the West and the Global South even) might see the break down of supply chains through friend-shoring. It will cost money to replicate the factory of the world outside China. We have only seen the tip of the iceberg in terms of the results of this tension. Imagine the ramifications of embargoes in rare earth materials etc. A fundamental restructuring of the global economy and trade patterns WILL be costly and highly inflationary.
e) Ecosystems collapse: the planet is seeing a wider ecological crisis than the one depicted by those talking of climate change. Climate change is the most difficult part to predict in fact. Biodiversity collapse, the destruction of our rainforests and the poisoning of our biospheres has already happened. We are now moving into an age of consequences: massive bursts of migrating refugees as well as spiking food prices.
f). Prolieration of information through technology - similar to after the invention of the Gutenberg printing press in Europe, the amount of information and differing ideas has proliferated, which caused instability in Europe at the time. This time, the big tech companies serve to create each chambers and exacerbate differences. The post GPT AI and deep fakes might serve to drive instability further. [In fact since my talk at the Munich Security Conference there was much talk of how to mitigate the impact of AI deepfakes in elections].
And remind us why you are so optimistic despite this backdrop?
I think it was the US Army War College which popularised the term VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) in the late 1980s/1990s. Futurists and management experts have been using the term ever since. The way our brains work - and especially the way we were educated - means that we associate VUCA with undesirability. In fact, those of us who are activists and want to build a new world might not want collapse but we should welcome a little VUCA - or chaos perhaps.
Futurists always seek to discern what are called weak signals (basically early signals and anecdotes which might be poised to become trends). I see the weak signals appearing - or green shoots - for a new civilisation wherever I look. It’s especially embodied in the youth I am encountering. But at the frontiers of all major fields, I see the cutting edge as showing the hallmarks of a technonologically-advanced ecological civilization. After hundreds of years (if not thousands of years) of separating from, exploiting and striving to conquer nature, we might be poised to move back in alignment. The late futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard wrote quite poetically about these topics. Here are some signs:
Our economies are currently designed on huge scale with supply chains which are meant to be efficient but are not resilient and do not foster resilience and certainly do not incoporate all costs into the equations, especially the damage to the biosphere. We will move from command and control to more decentralised.
The future of corporate governance points to less command and control towards systems which are less hierarchical, harnessing the collective intelligence. Even in the more traditional spaces like Harvard Business Review, you will read about organisational structures which act more like nature in a decentralised way.
And if one looks at the future democracy: the path forward seems to be more power at the town / city / state level than at the centralised nation state model we have today. This can be true participatory democracy. For global issues the UN - or its successor - will be able to co-ordinate.
As for the future of economics and finance, there is increasingly talk of crypto currencies (or at least local currencies) as the future. Of course, there has been immense speculation in this area (as there was at the dawn of the internet and the Dotcom bubble) but some of the smartest entrepreneurs on the planet retrying to figure out decentralised systems.
In manufacturing the future will be to move away from massive industrial scale to greater localisation - including harnessing technologies such as 3D printing and AI. Nature creates (or manufactures) in an additive way, from inside out. Until now humans typically take a chunk of material, and chop off what we do not want - creating a lot of waste. This will change with 3D printing.
Somewhat connected to this is the future of design. Finally we are beginning to figure out that nature’s 3.8 billion years of R&D means something! We can learn from nature. And the field of biomimicry is becoming increasingly popular at design schools and in companies.
One of the founders of the modern biomimicry movement explained best why I think that the future is ecological.
“We are still beholden to ecological laws, the same as any other life-form.”
― Janine M. Benyus, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature
If we do not : we will go extinct. And the evidence is that we are poised to move in that direction. Even if it looks like a super tanker which is pointing in the wrong direction ,the smartest hands on the deck are now seeing the latest cartological evidence of where we need to go.
Approaching the VUCA world
How does one approach a world in chaos? Actually, one can chose to be overwhelmed by the changes or one can decide to create the new at this poignant moment of history. There is a unique opportunity to build. Think how many people lament that they were no around in 1999 to create a Dotcom company with the dawn of the internet. This is even bigger even if it is bewildering and painful to many.
What is the the Answer to VUCA?
I am not alone in suggesting that as we move further away from the industrial age, new skills and mindsets will be needed. The World Economic Forum’s skills for the future highlights that shift.
Bill George, a professor of management at Harvard Business School, also suggests that VUCA invites a leadership response which he calls VUCA 2.0: Vision, understanding, courage and adaptability.
My view is that in an age of artificial intelligence we need to root ourselves in human intelligence! Humans will not be able to compete with AI over narrow intelligence. We do not need to - we should just harness that intelligence. We need to focus on expanding our broader intelligence. Some of the soft skills of the past will become the hard and necessary skills of the future:
a. Imagination - the most important mindset or skill is the imagination - by far! Einstein recognised it. Everything that humans have created from the first tools to modern cities and spacecraft first originated on our imagination.
b. Resilience - this is the agility to keep adapting to change. This is something when we were 5 years old but it can indeed be relearnt.
c. Emotional/Social intelligence -we must find better ways of working together. Not only will this create better outcomes but it will have a positive on our feeling of wellbeing. Ultimately I think one of the most important superpowers of the 21st century will be recovering the lost art dialogue. This is sitting in a circle and not debating but endeavouring to create the conditions so that collective insight emerges.
and most importantly having a
d. Purpose: there has never been a better time create the future. If you graduated from university a generation or two ago, the world was fairly static. As everything is in flux now, the opportunities are endless. But one needs to have a vision and passion around that.
I might add a last one which would be to think ecological - or maybe local. Until now the focus of entrepreneurs has been to solely focus on industrial scale. This will not work for much longer.
So what is my message for the Year of the Dragon? I think it is a time for us to rebalance and to harmonise internally and use our inner and primal energies energies to create the new. I think the ancient East (before it was dominated by Western thinking) or the ancient Celtic has much to teach us.
A Japanese perspective on the dragon
For some the dragon represented the primordial yin (masculine) energy and the tiger represented the primordial yang (feminine energy) as in the 16th Century Japanese painting below.
For the less philosophically inclined then my central message is that the tumultuous twenties will continue to unfold: the chaos will likely intesify. But this is what one would expect at the dawn of a new civilization. We are living at a poignant moment of history. Focus on maintaining inner balance and keep your eye on creating the new. Fear and the slaying of old dragons will only hold us all back.
Join us at an estate in the UK to imagine the 2030s together - Embassy of the Future
The Artist: Lucas Davey
My friend Lucas is just launching an exhibition in Wales called “In the Footsteps of Dragons”.
Lucas is an author, conservationist and artist who lives in the heart of the mountains of North Wales. Lucas draws inspiration for his art both from his fascination with this ancient land’s ancestral, shamanic and mythological past, as well as from a deep love and compassion for its wildlife. As can be seen from his work, Lucas’s love for nature not only extends to those creatures who currently inhabit this landscape, but also betrays a nostalgia and longing for those many wild creatures, once common, but now sadly lost. His skillful mastery of realism combined with a unique, minimalist “chiaroscuro” style, powerfully captures both the soul of his subjects whilst evoking an intimacy not often found in contemporary art.
Please contact me if you are interested in his work.