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IT is clear that we face unprecedented times. Unprecedented because there is no direct precedent, no past for what we see. The world is totally oriented towards the future. And whoever still dwells in the past doesn�t understand the future because the past is of full of prejudices, of commitments. It arrests us.
Today, the extent and pace of fundamental change is extraordinary. We wake up every morning to a new world. I like to think that the conflicts and crises we see raging are a sign that the world, as we know it, is pregnant and going through a painful labour. What we see and hear are the labour pains. Who knows how long this tortuous labour will last, but we can be sure that what emerges from this delivery will be a tomorrow that is profoundly different from today.
And it is for this tomorrow that we must endeavour, and devote our intellectual energies to dealing with the prospect of a very different future.
Modern society hinges not on the experience of the past but on risk-taking for the future. But all the expertise of the world hinges on what has happened, not what may happen. So perhaps it is more important to imagine than to remember. What are memories anyway? We barely remember that which was not right or not easy, but remember clearly all that was agreeable. Remembering is, in a way, conveniently forgetting.
Peace is indeed in our destiny. The question is how long it will take and how many victims it will claim. The history of land is besmirched with red; people have been fighting for centuries to either defend their lands or to extend them. But the minute the world�s focus shifted from land to science, what was there to fight about any more?
Armies cannot conquer wisdom. Customs cannot inspect a scientist�s thoughts. All that is vital for tomorrow is uncontrolled and free, making land and borders increasingly irrelevant. In countries today, it is of greater consequence to have more engineers per square kilometre than to have an extra square kilometre.
And our problems today, are they between nations � Arabs and Jews, India and Pakistan? Or instead a battle of generations, between an old age and a new age? The terrorists protest the influence of the new age, which they believe endangers their tradition. They consider modernity their enemy but, sooner or later, they will have to bend.
Yet opposing modernity and change is still protest, not terror. The problem begins when one tries to kill the future. As the opponents of modernity will soon discover, nobody can stop the future. One cannot continue to live by archaic traditions. Take attitudes toward women: if women lack equal rights, a nation will only be half a nation. Not only do you lose the women, you lose the children too because an uneducated woman cannot educate her children. This is a clash between generations, not nations. And I�m hopeful for the future, because today�s young are largely free from the shackles of the prejudice that encumbers the old.
Terror does not have a future, because terror has neither message nor vision. What hope or promise can it provide to the people? Terrorists fear the further development of the new age, but how long can they cling to the past and their outdated traditions? Progress will not cease and people will soon tire of them, that much is inevitable.
Grievances and protests have to be managed through dialogue. Traditional battles over land are inertia from the past and prolonging them is senseless. But war unifies nations, while peace divides them and gives rise to arguments about the price.
Yes, negotiations are difficult and peace is expensive but nothing is wiser than making a moral choice. The future is always in a minority, so to be accepted and popular go praise the past. If you want to serve the future, however, don�t be afraid of belonging to a minority.
Governments and administrations are becoming old, staid bureaucracies. They represent, all over, a fading age. The world of tomorrow will centre on global corporations that are devoid of armies. They will be based on creativity and goodwill and around countries that will form into geographic clusters.
Perhaps we can envision South Asia as one economic bloc. A common people sharing a common market, currency and heritage, with divisions having broken down in the face of economic cooperation.
I see tomorrow�s people living on two foundations: the heritage of our culture and values, and our skill with modernity. It�s an educational challenge, but the balance between authority and freedom is overwhelmingly in favour of freedom.
Today everything is global: the war on terror, global warming, the environment, financial markets, media. Governments and borders too will go global. This is the delivery we shall witness in our lifetimes. This is the future.
Rakesh Mani is a New York-based writer.
rakesh.mani@gmail.com
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