Abstract
The process of European integration, and the state of the eurozone in particular, seem to be in crisis. However, it is not only the European dream that appears to be challenged. Although there have been a number of success stories in newly developed countries, the global system is facing the issues of poverty, corruption and global warming in addition to the recent financial meltdown and slowing of the world economy. One wonders if we are witnessing a major world crisis that suggests the need for major and fundamental change. There may well be a general misalignment between the technology that humanity has managed to create and the speed of innovation on the one hand, and the rate of social and economic adjustment on the other. The developments in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) are of particular relevance here. These developments are creating a new reality and also leading to major steps forward in personal awareness and empowerment. This is leading to the emergence of the ‘person’ as distinct from the ‘individual’. The person is more aware, more conscious, more committed and more opinionated. The person's creativity and communal role in society are central to the evolving twenty-first century paradigm, and this raises the question of how society should be organised and how the economy should be structured. This leads to a number of issues related to policy formation and regulation, organisational dynamics and the underlying principles of economic theory. It also puts into perspective the need to take a more community approach to social organisation and political life, emphasising ethics and governance. The fundamental issue is closely tied to leadership that needs to be both inspired and inspirational. The twenty-first century paradigm offers the potential to re-dimension democracy to make it more genuinely participative. Europe may have the potential to lead the way if the necessary leadership is available. However, piecemeal solutions will not allow Europe to overcome the current impasse.
Keywords
Introduction: at a crossroads
Society today is at a crossroads; nothing seems to be working. The great European dream of creating a Union of continental dimensions appears to be under considerable threat. The eurozone is under tremendous pressure and at risk of breaking up. Nationalistic feelings are on the increase. Unemployment is at a record high. Several European states are facing severe sovereign debt crises, with Greece under pressure from a possible social implosion. Several EU and eurozone Member States have had their credit ratings slashed. The great European dream seems to be turning into a nightmare.
Yet Europe has never been so advanced; it has never been so free. The level of education among Europeans has improved substantially, and the level of investment in both hard and soft infrastructure has also been very high. Technologically, Europe is at the forefront, with major leadership in a number of areas. The EU has evolved into a true union of diversity and the European identity has been enhanced. So what is wrong?
The changing reality in a global dimension
In seeking to understand the changing reality, one has to realise that we are living in a very different world today from the one that existed when the European Ideal was first conceived. We are now living in a globalised world where newly developing states such as China, India, Brazil and South Africa are joining the ranks of successful countries like Singapore, Australia, South Korea and other rapidly evolving nations. The original group of 7 has now also been enlarged to a group of 20. In addition, although the absolute number of those living in poverty has increased, the worldwide proportion of people enjoying prosperity has also risen.
The world's population has topped seven billion, more than 50 % of the world's population now live in urban areas, and political borders have become less of an obstacle to trade and exchange than in the past. The world's economy has also grown; it may have become globalised, but the distribution of income between the rich and the poor is still heavily skewed. Globalisation has not alleviated poverty, and corruption may be rifer today than it ever has been.
The Western world has just experienced a major financial meltdown and is now facing major sovereign debt difficulties. It has been struggling with a prolonged recession, which is at risk of becoming a serious depression. The fast-growing economies in Asia have also seen their rate of economic growth slow somewhat.
Asia has been emulating the Western model of development with its contingent social dislocation and environmental pressures, while Africa faces very severe poverty problems and a ‘general failure’ to escape from a subsistence economy.
In the meantime the world is facing the new threat of global warming, which will have an untold impact on agriculture and food production, as well as on the availability of water. Therefore, I ask, is the world in a mess?
The technology factor
Humanity has developed ground-breaking technology in fields from robotics to digitalisation, from medicine to communications and from transportation to telephony, to mention just a few. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution two centuries ago, the speed at which scientific discovery and technological development have taken place has been accelerating continuously.
Technology has become a prime mover for change, and its application, in terms of the wider implications of technology for society as a whole, has changed life and society. However, such change has not been fundamental and general enough. The time required for social, organisational and economic adjustment is greater than that required for technological change itself. This acceleration in technological change is effectively leading to a wider gap between research, development and innovation, on the one hand, and the application of this new knowledge on the other.
A networked world
There is no better example of this than the developments in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and their impact on society. Developments in ICT have led to an effective networking of the globe in real time. This has led to a tremendous change in the speed and quality of communications, as well as in the dissemination of knowledge, exchange of ideas and expansion of commercial transactions and organisational structures. Developments in ICT have also had an impact on the media and therefore on the rate of dissemination of information and the formation of opinion.
Through social media, ICT now allows people to network with many others in real time, using both words and images. Networking is also changing the way people work and exchange information, how they engage in research and how they undertake project development. In short, the developments in ICT have unleashed the tremendous creativity of humanity.
Increased awareness
This increased connectivity and real-time exchange has led to increased awareness. This increased awareness is not only the result of greater exposure to the facts, wherever events may be unfolding, but it also implies an increased awareness of the opinions, trends, knowledge, developments, research and potential that others have, and with which one may network.
It is also leading to an increase in human consciousness. Until now, this has been the direct result of scientific and technological advancements, but ICT is now spreading this increased consciousness more generally throughout the world, thus impacting very materially on human evolution and accelerating the evolutionary process as a result.
Empowerment
This increased consciousness from increased awareness is neither latent nor passive. ICT allows the better informed to be in a superior position to assess, to form opinions and to act. This proactive stance is influencing public opinion and the political process, as well as political decision-making and the mobilisation of people. We have an excellent example of the power of ICT to influence the political process and mobilise people in the recent Arab Awakening that has spread throughout North Africa and the Middle East since last year. The absence of international journalists in Syria has, for instance, been replaced by footage and coverage made by those involved in the protests, who have then placed the film on YouTube for distribution via the Internet and the media.
This empowerment is not limited to any particular field. In business, ICT is providing a vent for creativity and empowering start-ups to access the virtual market globally and inexpensively in the very early stages of a new business. A creative website can attract substantial traffic and lead to business and a steady flow of transactions internationally via the virtual space. Thus, in an ICT-driven virtual world, it is creativity, and not size or location, that provides the platform for increased business.
The emergence of the person
This increased awareness, increased consciousness, and increased empowerment is leading to very definite psychological and social development. We are witnessing the emergence of the ‘person’ as distinct from the previous sociopolitical and economic concept of the ‘individual’. The person is more complete, better informed, highly networked, more knowledgeable, more opinionated and more empowered. We can no longer make a distinction between the worker, the consumer, the parent, the club member, the citizen and so on. The person is complete and indivisible, and acts as such.
This emergence of the person is an evolutionary reality that will have an increasing impact on society. This evolution will affect the way we have to view people, society and relationships, and will lead to a rethink of all the dimensions that constitute society.
The emergence of the twenty-first century paradigm
This evolution implies not only a change of context but also a change in the rules of the game. It must be clearly understood that we are not talking of a change in backdrop or a transitory stage, but that we are addressing a fundamental departure—an evolutionary change. Effectively we are looking at a new pattern which centres on the person and places his or her empowerment and creative capabilities at the core of the system and therefore at the centre of the twenty-first century paradigm.
The emergence of this paradigm will have a widespread impact on society, its institutions and its existing theoretical foundations and policies. Just as the Enlightenment and its focus on the philosophical and political dimensions of the ‘individual’ had an impact on society and the social sciences, such as economics, the concept of the ‘person’ within the twenty-first century paradigm will refine humanity's thinking, which will evolve accordingly.
The need to restructure organisations and institutions
Organisations cannot therefore continue to be structured as they have been in the past. Rigid hierarchical structures are a thing of the past and will not work within the new paradigm. Organisations need to be flatter, more flexible, better networked and offer more space for creativity and self-regulation. Increasingly organisations have to come to represent an environment where all can contribute actively to the generation of value, thus ensuring that the value chain truly becomes a team effort.
Similarly, institutions need to be more accessible, more transparent, more informative and better networked in society. Institutions can no longer be seen as an extension of power but as facilitators for better governance and enhancers of the value-generating process.
The need to revisit policies and regulatory systems
For too long the focus on the individual, at least in the West, has led us to think in egocentric terms. Moral values have been based on the defence of the individual as a separate entity, and society has been reduced to a collection of individuals. In an evolved society, where the person is more aware of reality and more conscious of social responsibility, this can no longer be the case. The person must be seen in context and as an integral part of society. The person will care and will not be egocentric. The person cannot ignore the suffering members of society and will be more spiritually encouraged to ensure moral correctness and ethical behaviour.
This has extensive implications for policymaking and regulation. The ‘common good’ will need to effectively condition priorities. The overall welfare of society, not in its majority but in its totality, becomes the underlying value to be promoted.
While keeping this in perspective, regulators need to realise that we are living in a rapidly changing world and that they cannot rely on the past to regulate the present. They need to understand trends and regulate according to how the environment is evolving, thus taking a dynamic perspective rather than a static perspective rooted in past experience.
The need to revisit economic theory
There is no doubt that the market has always driven the economy and always will. But there are important aspects of the prevailing economic theory that need to be addressed in the context of the twenty-first century paradigm. We can no longer assume that the consumer is out to maximise his or her satisfaction and that the entrepreneur is all for maximising profit. Such a premise is powerful as a model but simplistic in concept. It is fine to accept this when an individualistic, egocentric society with no understanding of social responsibility and an undeveloped level of consciousness is assumed. However, it is not acceptable in the context of our evolved, caring person. The person who is empowered, opinionated, knowledgeable, conscious and an integral part of society (not only the local–domestic society but increasingly the global society) has a different set of priorities and values.
The person does care about his or her own well-being and improvement, but not to the detriment of others in society. In this context the role of social business comes into play and may well be an important dimension in the continued development of the market economy.
In such a society there is no such thing as a ‘freebie’, everything has an opportunity cost and the environment is respected. Value generation does not have to imply the destruction of value somewhere else in the system. Therefore, we would have to view the economy from a more basic perspective. The economy exists to serve humanity, not the other way round.
The need to build a sense of community and adopt an ethical approach to governance
This requires that we become more conscious of the importance of building communities and is a fundamental departure from seeing society as a collection of individuals. A community is not the sum total of its individuals but has a dynamic of its own that benefits from the collective care and sense of mutual responsibility that determine the features of a community. This does not mean that each person loses his or her own identity; far from it. The community is actually enriched by the diversity of identities from which it is formed. Nor is a community to be viewed as a fixed number of persons. On the contrary, a community is enriched by variations in its composition. The social and economic value of the community lies in the collective care of willing and responsible persons.
Such an approach would result in a zero-tolerance attitude to corruption, discourage crime and encourage the adoption of a more ethical approach to governance. The impact of such a social change would not be purely local or domestic but would become increasingly global as the twenty-first century paradigm is understood and adopted more widely.
The need for inspirational and shared leadership
There is no doubt that the changes envisaged here will require fundamental adjustments to society. These changes are consistent with the evolving reality. Of course, they may not happen, and the current crisis that we are witnessing, with all its social and economic disruption, may be opted for as the softer, but worse option.
The view of this author is that the need for changes in policymaking is becoming urgent, particularly in Europe. This is an opportunity for Europe to act as a global leader by embarking on the relevant changes. Continuing without change is not an option unless Europeans want to risk the break-up of the European dream. The current situation is unsustainable and its costs will become unaffordable. Making temporary repairs is not a substitute for real change.
However, such major changes require leadership that is both inspired and inspirational. Is this kind of leadership currently lacking? The EU does not seem to have a clear vision to which members of the Union can openly subscribe. Nor does it appear that there are inspirational leaders who are able to take on this responsibility. However, this inspirational leadership is a pre-condition for the necessary change.
However, leadership in the twenty-first century should not be seen as a solo act. The spark is likely to come from one person, but success will lie in the development of a participative leadership. In the context of the evolved person, leadership should be viewed as a shared concept. Space needs to be given to those with the vision to participate actively in shared leadership.
A re-dimensioning of democracy within the twenty-first century paradigm
The argument in this paper leads to a logical reflection. The development of the twenty-first century paradigm as viewed here leads to a realisation that the evolved person, operating in a community and acting creatively, proactively and responsibly, will be able to participate more actively in an evolved democratic model. Rather than relying on elections and consultations, society will actually operate on the basis of the ongoing participation of the person in the decision-making process.
Such a model is operationally possible where an accepted vision is guiding society, where leadership is inspirational and shared, and where the persons constituting the community are networked through effective ICT.
‘We make the times!’
Saint Augustine is one of the pillars of Western civilisation. He lived in the fourth century AD, surviving the fall of Rome and the disappearance of the Western Roman Empire and its civilisation. He once argued that we cannot blame the ‘times’ for our woes: ‘You say the times are troublesome, the times are burdensome, the times are miserable. Live rightly and you will change the times. The times never hurt anyone. Those who are hurt are human beings; those by whom they are hurt are human beings. So, change human beings and the times will be changed’ (Saint Augustine 2007, Sermon 311.8).
Humanity determines its own destiny. We are the source and the receivers of our own actions. We cannot therefore blame the ‘times’, we can only blame ourselves.
Humanity has shown itself capable of dealing with supreme challenges, building tremendous civilisations, creating unbelievable technology and understanding our world and the human body through science. We have engaged in the discovery of the universe and have actually travelled in space. Surely such an evolved race can re-dimension society to be more in line with the evolved person that humanity is coming to represent. The mess we are witnessing in the world, and the frustration in Europe in particular, may well be the result of this fundamental misalignment between the institutional set-up, the organisational structure, the policies being followed and the evolving realities of the twenty-first century. Adjusting to this evolving reality, rather than making temporary repairs, is likely to serve the European dream much better and, in any case, will be more sustainable.