Futurist and author Robert Theobald died in November of 1999. Two years before his death, he gave a series of lectures that eventually became his final book which was published as Reworking Success . In the last of that series of lectures, Robert Theobald shared his vision of our near future.
Robert Theobald
In this final talk I’d like you to imagine I’m speaking in the year 2011 and reflecting on the fifteen years which have passed since 1996. My scenario assumes that continuation of current trends will lead to major breakdowns. We need to face our current situation squarely and honestly. It is only after we have done this that we shall be ready to act in ways which will improve conditions. This is why I define myself as a hopeful realist.
As a result of my experience in presenting this type of material over the years, I expect different reactions depending on your personal views. If you are already convinced that we face immediate and highly dangerous crises, then you will see my scenario as hopeful. Those who hope that current dynamics can continue will usually experience the radical changes I foresee as negative.
Scenarios are not designed to forecast the future: In today’s turbulent conditions, massive surprises are inevitable. They can, however, open up thinking if their fundamental assumptions are sound. There are three critical bases for my ideas. First, that ecological limits require an immediate end to our current maximum economic growth strategies and that the consequences will inevitably alter all our socioeconomic structures, particularly our assumptions about jobs and employment. Second, the changes we need can only be made if our core future commitment is to the maintenance and development of social cohesion, rather than acceptance of a growing split between rich and poor both within and between countries. Third, the only way we can change directions is for citizens to commit to continuing involvement in creating the future they desire.
I repeat: scenarios are not designed to forecast the future: All attempts to do this are bound to fail. They can, however, be highly successful at opening up new avenues of thought and this is my purpose here.
The late 1990s were a time of growing concern about the direction of the international economy. The downward pressures on wages and the upward pressures on unemployment were increasingly disturbing, while economic inequality was growing throughout the world, particularly in the United States.
Everywhere you looked there was a reactionary push toward efficiency regardless of its impact on people. This approach was generally justified by the argument that companies were engaged in global competition and that surplus workers had to be laid off for the good of the whole institution, because keeping them on the job would eventually lead to bankruptcy and more suffering. The language that was used to talk about these situations was dehumanizing. A whole series of euphemisms, such as downsizing or rightsizing, hid the people behind the unemployment statistics rather than forcing us to face the human suffering caused by corporate and government strategies.
Just under the surface, however, new voices were emerging to propose radically different futures. Unfortunately, so many directions were being suggested that most people found themselves unable to understand what the real issues of the time were, let alone get together to produce more favourable directions. Some people were arguing for greater technological efficiency. Some bemoaned the loss of a value-based culture. Some argued for social justice. Others demanded that attention be paid to the environment and ecological systems. And then there were some who saw the Internet as the way to a new politics.
Alternative Visions of Reality
Starting in the mid-nineties, it became clear that there were two non-compatible ways of perceiving the world. One of them accepted that industrial-era goals and methods were still essentially sound, that the capitalist market would eventually balance itself out naturally, and there was no clash between maximum growth strategies and ecological needs. The other argued that our extraordinary success had led to the point that these old approaches were making the chronic problems of unemployment, social inequality and environmental degradation worse and would continue to do so.
My own view was that we had no choice but to develop radically new directions and success criteria. I argued that it was impossible to have it both ways. Either the industrial era culture still worked and it was irresponsible to strive for profound change, or it was in the process of collapsing, in which case it was stupid to struggle to maintain it.
I also showed that the acceptance of this absolute necessity for rapid and dramatic change required us to search for common ground. Those attempting to preserve industrial-era systems saw no need for common-ground strategies and rejected this approach. Those who saw the need for fundamental change recognized that no individual or group could be sure they were right and that conflict could lead to new understandings and synergies if everybody were willing to listen carefully to each other.
Bringing together the needed coalition for change was, of course, difficult. It was certainly true that many people had, during the last three decades of the twentieth century recognized that the status-quo was not viable. Unfortunately, the resulting shifts in thinking were not broadly visible because the gatekeepers controlling the communication processes—politicians, academics, and journalists—often blocked the dissemination of emerging ideas.
However, two critical new directions were already visible by 1996. One was the recognition that the number of hours people would need to be employed over their life-times was declining dramatically. Instead of the lock-step 40-hour week, 50-day year, 40-50 year work-life, highly idiosyncratic uses of time were already developing. The process was highly confusing, of course, because few people understood why the changes affecting them were taking place. It was also, of course, easier for most people to see the negatives, rather than the positives.
At the same time as work patterns were changing, a growing number of people were decreasing consumption. More and more people decided that the rat race was simply not worthwhile. The mid-nineties therefore saw the beginning of the dialogue which has dramatically altered not only the way we think about work but also patterns of income distribution.
The change in thinking was supported by the Internet. The Internet was a critical tool after the Masseys were cancelled in September 1996 before their planned broadcast in October. It made it possible to hold a planned tour together and enhance it where necessary. It also enabled me to get a wide range of reactions to the decision and to see the most effective method of structuring my response.
The mid-nineties were also the period of exponential growth of the World Wide Web, whose successors are now commonly seen as the incarnation of Teilard de Chardin’s noosphere, linking human beings practically and spiritually. The Internet served us in two ways. It allowed interactive preparation of the talks: Many of the ideas were suggested, or developed, by people other than myself.
The Internet also facilitated the organization of several kinds of face-to-face discussion. For example, people gathered in small groups to examine their reactions. Some Canadians were reminded of the old church basement and living room conversations that used to take place in the 1940s in conjunction with the CBC radio broadcasts called Farm Forum and Citizens Forum. Others took an Internet class in early 1997. Still others worked with materials developed for Lent 1997 to challenge Christians to rethink how to live in the twenty-first century.
It was also possible to send messages to a complex World Wide Web site which became a significant arena for the exchange of ideas with people around the world. These local and international conversations, facilitated by the Internet, were just one of the many social inventions which developed rapidly at the end of the twentieth century. It was the same kind of explosion of creativity which took place at the end of the nineteenth century.
The difference, however, was that the energy was diffused rather than centralized. At the end of the nineteenth century, a small group of people worked together to develop service clubs, settlement houses, and new approaches to supporting the poor which were widely adopted. This time large numbers of people came up with their own ideas to develop social cohesion. Those were catalogued, using the Internet, under twin titles: Ten Thousand Discoveries and Ten Thousand Stories.
The year 2000 came to symbolize the potential for a vastly enhanced understanding of citizenship. By the turn of the century it was no longer acceptable in most circles to argue that maximum rates of growth would resolve our problems. It was broadly understood that the critical questions were profoundly different from those which had dominated the twentieth century, though it was still usually assumed that most problems had to be dealt with on the national, provincial, and state level, rather than locally or globally.
It was also still thought that power was the best way to bring about change. This belief persisted despite the fact that more and more initiatives were achieved by networks of servant leaders: Those who sought to empower others rather than control them. The Internet had become the organizing mechanism for citizen movements: When it was used imaginatively it proved stronger than the power of governments and corporations.
The year 2000 also saw the emergence of the second generation of the Internet. Basic levels of access were provided to all rich country citizens, as a matter of right, just as free libraries had been established a century ago. The Internet was increasingly organized as a place where it was easy for people to find material about whatever interested them most, whether in audio, video, graphics, or text. The 1996 trend toward overloads, both personal and technical, were overcome by greatly improved computer architecture and groupware which facilitated interactions.
Probably the main challenge at the turn of the century was to the entrepreneurs who had accumulated far more resources than the Carnegies and Rockefellers could ever have imagined. The cry for equity, within and between countries, had become louder and louder. The arguments for economic structures which permitted unlimited accumulation of wealth and increased the polarity between the very rich and the very poor, were no longer persuasive to most people.
One of the threads which caused the development of this new thinking was, quite improbably, the arguments for traditional religious Jubilee years. This was brought to broad attention through the Apostolic Letter of Pope John Paul II released on November 14, 1994 called As the Third Millennium Draws Near.
The words and deeds of Jesus thus represent the fulfillment of the whole tradition of jubilees in the Old Testament. We know that the jubilee was a time dedicated in a special way to God. It fell every seventh year, according to the law of Moses: This was the “sabbatical year,” during which the earth was left fallow and slaves were set free…. In the sabbatical year, in addition to the freeing of slaves, the law also provided for the cancellation of all debts in accordance with precise regulations. And all this was to be done in honor of God. What was true for the sabbatical year was also true for the jubilee year, which fell every 50 years. In the jubilee year, however, the customs of the sabbatical year were broadened and celebrated with even greater solemnity. As we read in Leviticus: “You shall hallow the 50th year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants; it shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his family.” One of the most significant consequences of the jubilee year was the general “emancipation” of all the dwellers on the land in need of being freed. On this occasion every Israelite regained possession of his ancestral land if he happened to have sold it or lost it by falling into slavery. He could never be completely deprived of the land, because it belonged to God; nor could the Israelites remain for ever in a state of slavery, since God had “redeemed” them for himself as his exclusive possession by freeing them from slavery in Egypt.
The prescriptions for the jubilee year largely remained ideals-more a hope than an actual fact… Justice, according to the Law of Israel, consisted above all in the protection of the weak. The foundations of this tradition were strictly theological, linked first of all with the theology of creation and with that of divine providence. It was a common conviction, in fact, that to God alone, as Creator, belonged the dominium altum—lordship over all creation and over the earth in particular. If in his providence God had given the earth to humanity, that meant that he had given it to everyone. Therefore the riches of creation were to be considered as a common good of the whole of humanity. Those who possessed these goods as personal property were really only stewards, ministers charged with working in the name of God, who remains the sole owner in the full sense, since it is God’s will that created goods which should serve everyone in a just way. The jubilee year was meant to restore this social justice. The social doctrine of the church, which has always been a part of church teaching and which has developed greatly in the last century, particularly after the encyclical Rerum Novarum, is rooted in the tradition of the jubilee year.
The specifics of the Jubilee year could obviously no longer be applied in 2000. But the idea that great wealth and deep poverty were unacceptable in a just society became one of the great rallying points for a changed vision adopted by a growing segment of the population. These dramatic changes in public commitments and goals altered the political landscape. Instead of having two or more political parties essentially proposing the same directions, and arguing about details, the central disagreement was between those who wanted to continue the industrial era and those who were committed to creating a changed culture.
Elections in the early years of the twenty-first century were fought across this fault line. A transnational coalition, using the Internet, developed which created an agreed global statement of the opportunities which could be seized—and the dangers which would develop if we failed to grasp them. The primary shift was from concentration on the quantity of goods to a commitment to enhancing the quality of life.
The efforts of these new political parties around the world were guided by a set of generally agreed principles. Although these are now well known, I repeat fifteen of them here in the hope that you can recapture a sense of how fresh they seemed at the end of the two-century long industrial era.
- Stress the opportunities in a situation rather than the problems. The opportunities in situations usually have to be discovered rather than being obvious. Creative thinking is required to see what can go right rather than wrong.
- Encourage thinking which supports individuals and groups in moving toward more open and creative thought and activity.
- See healthy relationships as essential to effective activity. The time put into really knowing the people with whom one works is essential to common ground work.
- Acknowledge the importance of spirituality. We are spiritual beings. Denying this reality impoverishes not only ourselves but those around us and our work. We need poetry and art and drama as well as intellect.
- Recognize the importance of using values—honesty, responsibility, humility, love, faith, cooperation and a respect for mystery—as a compass which guides our choices.
- Move beyond dichotomized thinking. Recognize how both/and language, which is inclusive, rather than either/or language, which is exclusive, aids the process of finding colleagues.
- Understand that while everything is connected, we must “bound” the realities we consider if we are to be able to think or act at all. This approach contrasts with the past when we tried to develop a complete, objective picture of “reality.”
- Understand that reality is born largely from the beliefs and boundaries we co-create with those around us. Although we need these boundaries and beliefs to function, we should not take them too seriously.
- Acknowledge and empower competence based on knowledge, skills, abilities, wisdom, perspectives and experience rather than accepting the dominance of coercive power.
- Be aware that strengths always carry weaknesses with them. All strengths, when overplayed, are destructive.
- Learn that we can make progress together to the extent we control our ego needs and grow beyond them.
- Recognize that people operate in their perceived self-interest because they have to screen reality through their own senses and the “stories” and “myths” they have learned. This does not mean that people will necessarily see their “self-interest” narrowly or selfishly because they will be aware, to a greater or lesser extent, of community values, nature’s requirements, system feedback patterns, and the implications of “mystery.”
- Learn that different people will inevitably see the world from varied viewpoints and that reactions will therefore be highly diverse.
- Discover that our collective intelligence, our ability to see, think and respond together, depends largely on how consciously and creatively we use our diversity to learn from the disturbances we face because they can show us the opportunities of our time.
- Support the emergence of new systems which will enable us to continue to grow without damaging the ecological patterns on which we depend for survival.
The fundamental change parties tackled many of the taboo issues and voters rallied to them because they were tired of being fed pablum. The parties recognized that all addictions—to alcohol, smoking and to legal and illegal drugs and many other destructive behaviors—could only be broken as people developed a sense of personal self-esteem. Instead of concentrating on the problems caused by addictions, it aimed to support family and community structures which provided a sense of self-worth. This commitment also reduced teen-aged illegitimacy and the felt need of teenagers to join gangs in order to gain a sense of power and purpose.The parties also faced up to the growing demand for a right to death as the population aged. The psychic costs of keeping people barely alive in helpless misery were recognized. The fact that no set of safeguards could prevent some people from encouraging grandparents to die had been recognized as a danger to be guarded against, but was broadly regarded as a smaller problem than the misery caused by warehousing millions of the elderly. Life was redefined as the ability to develop oneself and support others: death when these conditions were no longer met. Moving our attention away from concentration on a heart beat and brain wave, enabled a new consensus to emerge about the importance of supporting the sanctity of life and the infinite complexity of doing so in the real world.
In the United States the election of the year 2004 was the bellwether. A new party developed immediately after the depressing 1996 campaign resolved to raise the real issues. The party gained a few Congressional seats in the year 2000 and 20 percent of the popular vote for President. This provided the launching pad which enabled it to win the 2004 election.
By the year 2006, the commitment to finding new cultural forms was emerging in much of the world. One primary goal which was now widely accepted aimed to limit the amount of life-time hours people spent on the job. Declines in the percentage of people actually in the work force at any moment were now seen as a gain rather than a loss.
The widely shared desire to enable better parenting was one of the primary drivers of this change. Social priorities and economic structures changed so those who wanted to stay home and raise their children were encouraged to do so. Two broad learnings supported this trend. People with multiple incomes began to discover that the net earnings from a second or third job, after taxes and all expenses were deducted, were often small or even negative.
The choice of holding a job or not increasingly became a life-style, rather than an economic, choice for dual-parent families. The ability to make this choice was enhanced as parents with children increasingly decided that divorce was an unacceptable option, except in extreme circumstances. Women then felt freer to stay home because they were less fearful that they might at any moment be forced to fend for themselves.
The growing commitment to social cohesion led to a second learning. It was recognized that it was more important for children to have parents in the home than for parents to hold minimum-wage jobs. Pressures for everybody to be employed throughout their lives eased dramatically. Good parenting was seen as a contribution to society and a way to limit costs caused by delinquency and crime.
Today, in 2011 new ways of seeing the world are finally dominant. The most important shift is one that has become so commonplace that most people have forgotten how dramatic a change it really is. In 1996, it was popularly believed that there were absolute answers to all questions and that these answers could be found at the top of hierarchical structures: “Experts” knew, “bosses” knew, “presidents” knew.
There were already, of course, all sorts of cracks in these structures. Companies were reorganizing into teams in order to become more effective – the concept of the primacy of rank was being challenged. Thinkers like Charles Johnson, author of Necessary Wisdom were proposing ways to live in the tension between apparently contradictory ideas. Scientific theories were being challenged and debunked. Listen, for example, to what Richard Lewontin said in his 1990 Massey Lecture: Biology as Ideology:
“Despite its claims to be above society, science, like the Church before it, is a supremely social institution, reflecting and reinforcing the dominant values and views of society at each historical epoch.”
Back in the nineties, most people still thought science was objective and value free, but Lewontin’s view to the contrary was gathering force. A significant group of people came to believe that it was impossible to build any theory without relying on unprovable first assumptions that could not be usefully compared or challenged.
In its extreme form, this way of thinking led to total cultural relativism and the argument that there can be no valid way to judge behaviour. If a particular pattern occurs in a culture, and the culture appears functional, then those supporting this model argued that nobody had the right to challenge it. For example, if slavery was accepted in a culture, then outsiders needed to accept it rather than denounce it.
This way of thinking supported a strong intellectual thesis for several decades. “Political correctness,” in all of its finally bizarre forms, held that it was inappropriate to challenge the behaviour of various groups. Vigorous debate became all but impossible because people were afraid of each other. The fear was partially personal. For public figures, however, the risk was the loss of all credibility if they trespassed beyond the limits of acceptable discourse even if they raised a valid issue or voiced an unpalatable truth.
Today the dominant style is profoundly different. People recognize that everybody will inevitably see the world differently based on their experiences, genes, sex, age, et cetera. We now recognize that there can be no absolutely correct answer when dealing with complex, open questions. Decisions today can only be effectively made on the basis of personal authority rather than power.
This shift away from power strategies has, perhaps, been the greatest change in human history. It has only been accomplished because citizens became so angered by power games and the danger they were posing to human survival. This shift away from power is the primary change that the new political parties around the world have made as they create new cultural norms. They are committed to enabling people of different views to live together, to accept that conflict remains inevitable but it does not have to lead to violence. 2011 is therefore no Utopia, but we are moving toward collaborative decision-making models which seek to navigate the rapids of change with minimum cost and pain.
One way to catalogue the changes which are taking place is to look at various scales of decision making. The family is once again the core of society, but in a different way than it was in the past. Instead of defining families in terms of blood-relationship or marriage, we consider any group of people who make a commitment to love and care for each other as a family. We recognize that families are necessarily small, for it is only possible to intensively care for, and support, a limited number of people.
The nature of marriage is changing. People see relationships in increasingly varied ways. It had already become clear by the 1990s that many people no longer saw the need for either the church or the state to have any part in determining when and how they lived together.
On the other hand, society increasingly demands high levels of commitment from those who intend to raise children. Essentially error-proof contraception at very low cost has made birth a choice rather than the accident it still so often was in the late twentieth century.
Small, geographically based neighbourhoods are now seen as the basis for much activity: They tend to range from 200 to 500 people. People in these neighbourhoods are deeply committed to each other and aim to grow and produce much of what is needed for living through local activity. Neighbourhood gardens have made a come-back and two-way relationships with local farmers are also important. These neighbourhoods usually support a full-service community structure. It is often based in an extended family’s home and contains the complex technology required in today’s world. In addition, it is a safe house and a support system for those in trouble. It also manages the exchange of goods and services within the local neighbourhood and arranges for exchanges with other local groups and Internet groups, using local currencies.
These small neighbourhoods of 200 to 500 people are the base of the political system. Each one elects a representative (who must live in the area) to the next level of government. The procedures in these elections vary widely, but there is one common thread: People who show any sign of wanting an office so as to exercise power are usually denied it. Instead, representatives are sought on the basis of their competence and knowledge. People are “drafted” by their peers who have observed past actions.
The next level of government links, typically, anywhere from ten to fifty of the smallest levels of government into a “conviviality,” a new word coined to describe this institutional level. All the representatives from the smaller areas meet to consider issues where cooperation is felt to be helpful. Now that energy taxes are high enough to have significantly reduced long-distance transportation, the discussion is often around how to create the highest levels of self-sufficiency or local exchange, often using local currencies.
Communities, the next level of government, look at broader issues. While there is a presupposition that families, neighbourhoods and convivialities should make decisions for themselves, there are times when communities need to imagine and support common patterns. Communities have developed various rules for resolving inevitable conflicts but there is almost unanimous agreement that messiness cannot be avoided. The old tradition of clear-cut lines of authority is dying—though the process of death is slow and painful in many areas.
The next level of government is the bioregion, linked by shared ecological realities. Much of the early thinking on bioregions assumed that they would have clear boundaries like the political structures they replaced. As understanding has grown, we have discovered that bioregions overlap. Bioregional interests are typically represented by councils which recognize that they will flourish as they respect natural limits and suffer if they ignore them.
There have been, of course, dramatic changes in governance. Decision-making has devolved largely to the community level. Nation states have lost much power, as have their various sub-units, described as states, provinces, countries in various parts of the world.
National sovereignty was based on the ability to control the economy and to protect one’s borders. Technological developments have made it impossible to maintain these powers. Today’s structures depend less on coercion and more on shared agreement. Agreement is achieved locally through face-to-face discussions and globally through networking.
One of the most fascinating shifts in the last 15 years has been the changes in the way that national identity is understood. For example, in Great Britain, national power has largely devolved back to England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. The sense of shared history, without political coercion, has led to closer relationships at the personal and cultural level than ever existed in the past both within these units and between them.
Canada has rediscovered that, despite its immense size and relatively sparse population, it is joined by a common sense understanding of the public good. Once it was recognized that industrial-era versions of sovereignty were essentially meaningless, many of the issues which had caused so much tension in the late twentieth century turned out to be relatively unimportant.
The inevitable result of the movement toward community decision-making is much greater variation in the situations within communities. Some have developed strong commitments to all the people within them as the poorer members of the society have realized their need for education and involvement. Some areas are distressingly unjust. It has been realized, with considerable pain and grief, that there is no substitute for local effort and that if people are not prepared to look after their own destiny, it cannot be taken care of by big government.
Nevertheless, there is still a possibility of appealing to larger levels of political organization. If the power structure in a neighbourhood or a community is clearly refusing to permit citizens to be involved in decision-making, then there is a process to bring in outside support. It can be triggered if 60 percent of those in an area petition for outside intervention.
One reason the community-based approach normally works is that most funds for those who need help are now generated locally. There has been a dramatic decrease in national, state, and provincial tax rates associated with a decrease in their responsibilities. This has freed up resources which are now used more effectively locally. Military expenditures have also declined dramatically.
The question of the appropriate level of transfers between richer and poorer people, richer and poorer areas of countries, and between rich and poor countries worldwide is still, of course, not resolved. The pathologies of aid are today far more fully understood. On the other hand, the challenge of supporting those who cannot develop resources for themselves is far more completely recognized. The transfers that take place are now almost always locally controlled and far more emphasis is placed on small or micro loans and grants.
Those countries, and companies, which deny , or ignore, shared cultural and ecological commitments find that penalties are heavy. This distresses some people who still feel that companies and countries should be able to do whatever they wish. But there is more and more general agreement that we should not countenance behaviour that damages ecological systems or fails to support basic human rights.
This result could have been foreseen in the mid-1990s. Companies, and countries, were already discovering that their well-funded public relations mechanisms could be overwhelmed by public outrage. Today the successors to the Internet make it possible for public opinion to be organized rapidly. Those who have felt the weight of anger which can develop so rapidly have become far more cautious in their decision-making.
At this point I want to look specifically at the subjects I used as an entry-point in my Massey Lectures some fifteen years ago: The questions of work, purpose, jobs, resources, prestige and the relationships between them.
Computers and robots have taken over a great deal of the menial, unappealing, unattractive and dangerous toil. Given that nearly everybody in the rich world has basic economic security, although the methods chosen to achieve this goal vary widely, people can largely choose what they want to do.
Today we understand that most people want to work at tasks which make sense of their lives. They do not do this work because it earns them money but because they enjoy it. The norm is now for people to work on what matters to them rather than struggling with a job they may detest just to pay the bills.
There was massive opposition to tampering with the job system. Many feared that people would cease to work if they were not forced to do so by the need to earn their living. Others felt that the unpleasant work would not get done at all. While there are, as expected, some difficulties with both these issues, they have proven to be minor.
The emphasis on parenting, increasingly seen as important work, has continued to develop. If one parent wishes to stay home and raise children, both communities and firms are developing ways to make this possible without significant financial sacrifice. It is increasingly understood that the skills gained in parenting are directly relevant to the needed work of 2011. Parents inevitably have to know how to think for themselves and that’s the most important criterion for a good worker in 2011. Parenting is being “automatically” combined with access to the public world through electronic networking.
The establishment of sabbaticals for growing numbers of workers has been one of the strongest trends in recent years. There are many ways workers can earn the right to take several months off from work in order to concentrate on learning. Sabbaticals are, of course, part of much broader changes in the life-cycle including the effective abandonment of the concepts of adolescence and retirement.
Everybody is expected during their teen-age years to give two years of community service. There are multiple benefits. The activities provide heavy physical activity at a time when young people need it. It puts people in touch with those from other religious and ethnic groups and classes which they otherwise might not meet. It provides a labour force for activities that people choose not to do later in life.
Tax policy has altered. Upper and lower limits have been set on retained wealth on a worldwide scale. A few areas are still failing to enact this legislation, but the trend is irreversible and the loopholes for millionaires and billionaires are becoming narrower and narrower. Taxes are designed to decrease consumption: Investment is increasingly used to reduce waste and the use of non-renewable resources.
I suppose that the main shift that somebody jumping over the 15 years since 1996 would notice is that our pace of life is far more relaxed. It is true that those engaged in certain types of activity do have to work extraordinarily hard, but we recognize that such intensive activities should be limited in time. Tired people necessarily narrow their thinking and this is unacceptable in a rapidly changing world.
I cannot end this scenario without mentioning the poor countries. This is a subject which would take its own set of talks to handle adequately. In summary, I can say that the decision of the rich countries to abandon maximum growth models has opened up the potential for the redefinition of desirable developmental strategies which concentrate on the quality of life rather than the quality of products.
Poverty in 2011 is still a massive problem in many parts of the world. But as birth rates drop dramatically as a result of the wider education of women and the availability of contraceptives—the Catholic Church abandoned its opposition with the new Pope –there are signs that the corner is being turned.
The experience of Kerala, one of the Indian provinces, is increasingly cited as a model. Despite its relatively low per-capita income, it has extraordinarily high standards of health and education. Its life expectancies are similar to those of the rich countries. Kerala provides clear-cut evidence that social justice and social cohesion are possible without high levels of consumption.