"It is diffuse rather than centralized, and so a lot of change can happen in a very small period of time, and the change can happen globally..."
Funny, I was pretty sure it was the exact opposite -- spreading radical change in thinking across huge populations takes decades, while convincing authoritarian leaders to implement top-down policy changes, or replacing them with other leaders more sympathetic to your cause, may take months or even less. But that's not really what this post is about.
"...people in their respective spheres *automatically* work to perform the changes required in their local areas, independent of deliberation...David Korten used the example of the Chinese reading/literacy campaign..."
As I see it, the important issue is that no one knows what the "changes required" are, or whether any conceivable set of changes could possibly be enough. Starting exponential-growth curves, e.g. in literacy or even wind-farm construction, is fairly easy, but the task at hand is to figure out how to stop not one, but dozens of interlinked exponential-growth or -decline processes within a very limited timeframe, then move the values in question back to some human-friendly norm, quickly but not so quickly as to accidentally push them into another out-of-control feedback spiral. No one knows how to do this, and I strongly suspect it's flatly impossible. It's kind of like taking an in-progress explosion and trying to stuff it back into the bomb that produced it.
The only global exponential-growth curve that we might have already gotten a handle on is world population (http://reason.com/archives/2013/07/19/population-explosion-again), thanks to the so-called "demographic transition" where wealthier societies have lower birthrates. But first, that transition is threatened by a bunch of other trends that will push countries toward becoming poorer rather than wealthier; second, average per-capita consumption of resources is increasing way faster than population, which is why Paul Gilding says population growth is almost irrelevant in the next several decades; and third, the UN projections probably assumed the Chinese government wasn't about to abolish its One Child policy (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/19/china-end-one-child-policy_n_4301221.html), ironically in the name of enhancing its increase in wealth. There's a sudden and radical authoritarian policy shift for you.
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Date: 2013-11-23 06:46 am (UTC)Funny, I was pretty sure it was the exact opposite -- spreading radical change in thinking across huge populations takes decades, while convincing authoritarian leaders to implement top-down policy changes, or replacing them with other leaders more sympathetic to your cause, may take months or even less. But that's not really what this post is about.
"...people in their respective spheres *automatically* work to perform the changes required in their local areas, independent of deliberation...David Korten used the example of the Chinese reading/literacy campaign..."
As I see it, the important issue is that no one knows what the "changes required" are, or whether any conceivable set of changes could possibly be enough. Starting exponential-growth curves, e.g. in literacy or even wind-farm construction, is fairly easy, but the task at hand is to figure out how to stop not one, but dozens of interlinked exponential-growth or -decline processes within a very limited timeframe, then move the values in question back to some human-friendly norm, quickly but not so quickly as to accidentally push them into another out-of-control feedback spiral. No one knows how to do this, and I strongly suspect it's flatly impossible. It's kind of like taking an in-progress explosion and trying to stuff it back into the bomb that produced it.
The only global exponential-growth curve that we might have already gotten a handle on is world population (http://reason.com/archives/2013/07/19/population-explosion-again), thanks to the so-called "demographic transition" where wealthier societies have lower birthrates. But first, that transition is threatened by a bunch of other trends that will push countries toward becoming poorer rather than wealthier; second, average per-capita consumption of resources is increasing way faster than population, which is why Paul Gilding says population growth is almost irrelevant in the next several decades; and third, the UN projections probably assumed the Chinese government wasn't about to abolish its One Child policy (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/19/china-end-one-child-policy_n_4301221.html), ironically in the name of enhancing its increase in wealth. There's a sudden and radical authoritarian policy shift for you.