Entering the Global Stage of Human Evolution – Part One-
[This column is an excerpt from “The 2020s: The Most Disruptive Decade in History”. This was first published as a column in Medium]
We are now in the global stage of human evolution.
The Flow to Global is one of three flows of the Shift Age. The label “global” has become common. In the last century the words used were “overseas”“foreign” “international”. The concept of global is now something we all live with.
The Flow to Global reflects the fact that we have entered the global stage of human evolution. There is no going back. We
have moved organizationally from family to tribe to village to city to city state to the nation state and now our only
boundaries are global. This is true across most aspects of humanity: issues, climate, economics, culture and
consciousness.
First a historical step back…
The era of the nation state has largely been time congruent with the Industrial Age. There were nations in the Agricultural Age,
but it was only in the last 250 years that humanity moved toward the nation state as the highest organizational form of
government. Most problems were within nations or due to the aggression between them. Nationalism ruled. Economics,
money, education, health care, culture, language all were nation state defined. People felt themselves citizens of their country
first and foremost.
Post WWII, the United Nations was created to provide a global political platform with the hope that it would promote peace
and support higher human goals. It was an organization of nation members, but it had no true authority over nations. The
evidence of that is clear: the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the first Iraq war, Bosnia, and the still on-going, at the time of
this writing, conflicts in Iraq/Afghanistan/Iran/Pakistan. The Security Council, made up of a small group of nations, had
authority and power, but the reality was that the Cold War meant there was always contention based upon the divide
between the “communist” and “free” states.
This nation state reality is still in existence. The problem now, though, is that the biggest problems humanity faces are truly
global in nature. Climate change, pandemics immigration, wealth inequality, pollution, ocean degradation
and social injustice are all issues that are larger than any single nation. They are global problems that need global solutions.
Nations are not structured to face global problems, so there have been efforts to collaborate to face them. This is not
working very well. The wars listed above are a case in point. A more recent example is the vestiges of the Conference of the
Parties (COP) Climate forums. Designed to foster the cooperation between nations needed to effectively address our
climate crisis, the COP has devolved into bureaucratic meetups sponsored in part by the fossil fuel industry. A chapter later in
this book focuses on our climate crisis. Hopefully, the Paris Climate Accord is the last time we approach a global problem
as a collection of nation states.
The Paris Climate Accord of 2015 was a massive effort, thought successful at the time, for 195 countries to come
together and commit to facing carbon reduction. Kumbaya! We did it! Hurray for us! That was the feeling at the time. The
flaw was, to get consensus, the goals had to be lowered and dumbed down so all could sign. Consensus typically results in
suboptimal solutions. The commitments were less than the science at the time recommended.
Since that temporary celebration five years ago, not one of the larger countries has met their promised carbon reduction goals.
Talk, no action. In addition, the goal of the Accord was to keepa global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees
Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees
Celsius. Due to almost total non-compliance by the signatories, it is expected that 1.5 Celsius will be reached by 2022 or 2023.
It is already 1.3 degrees Celsius in some parts of the planet. It was at 1 degree Celsius in 2015 when the Accord was signed.
Tragically, this COP accord fell even further behind with a total failure to reach consensus in the late-2019 meeting in
Barcelona. So, it is a painful indication of our need to move to a more global level of issue by issue governance. This will be
examined in a subsequent book in this series. A quick comment on this need and how it will manifest itself. This 30
to 40 year move from nation state centric government to global centric government will begin with issues. The nations will, one
global issue/problem at a time, move toward coordinated, collaborative addressing of the issue. It will probably start with
Climate Change, then Natural Resources, then migration and of course global integrated public health. A daily, virtual, screen
reality gathering of the leading authorities, signed off on by the nation states, that meets every day in an “assembly” or
“committee” in the screen reality to coordinate and set global policy on the specific issue.
