The transition

This is the third year I have provided readers with a forecast for the year ahead. This forecast will be spread over several columns.. This first column frames where we are in a large historical context and the trends and forces that are reshaping the world as we enter this New Year.

The general feeling in the U.S. and around the world is relief that 2008 is over and uncertainty about 2009 and what lies ahead. These two years are part of a 5-7 year transition period between two ages. Humanity is moving from the Information Age to the Shift Age.

Whenever a transition such as this occurs, there is much disruption as existing structures, systems and processes give way to new ones. A good example of this is the decade of the 1970s, which in hindsight was the decade when the Information Age began and was therefore a decade long transition from the Industrial Age to the Information Age. Things started to happen economically that hadn’t happened before. The phrase stagflation was coined to describe the unprecedented confluence of high unemployment, high inflation and rapid increases in the cost of energy. It was a decade when many major indices went sideways and sometimes up looked like down and down looked like up. Things seemed to be disassembling. Sound familiar? In the 1970s New York almost went bankrupt. In 2006-2008 the activities of New York’s Wall Street created bankruptcies globally.

This transition between the Information Age and the Shift Age began in 2006 and will continue through 2010-12. Those of you who are regular readers of this column, viewers of my YouTube channel or have read my book “The Shift Age” know that one of the forces of the Shift Age is the Flow to Global. The Shift Age is the global stage of human evolution. We are all moving to a new unprecedented global integration, reorganization and consciousness. The new developing human reality is global. This reality of global far surpasses the concept of economic globalization and the global economy.

That said history shows us that usually economics leads the way in human endeavor, economic motivations and forces happen first, followed by culture and politics. What is now universally accepted about the financial meltdown of 2008? That it was a global financial meltdown. The financial collapse has opened all our eyes to the reality that finance in practically every aspect is now global. The concept of an isolated nation state economy is somewhat anachronistic in an age when money is electronic and therefore flows instantaneously around the world.

So the way to view the financial collapse and global economic meltdown is that it is part of the transition from one age to another. The economic pain will continue for two more years as we move from the old economic landscape to the new one. Any new order or new organization that takes hold will cause disruption and pain to the old and existing orders. The pain is particularly acute as reflections on past disruptions - is this like the Great Depression, is this like the recession of the early 1980s - can only give partial guidance as each new Age is ultimately unique and new.

There are four words that keep coming back to me as I view the landscape of what lies ahead in 2009 and beyond. They are contraction, cleansing, reorganization and transformation. It is these four words to keep in mind as you read the forecasts here and look around you

Contraction in the economic sector as the mindless commitment to endless economic growth fueled by credit and debt is now shown to be hollow, unrealistic and unsustainable.

Cleansing in the economic sector and elsewhere as old models, ways of doing business, values and ways to view the world are scrubbed away and purged from what will be our future.

Reorganization of almost everything that is part of society and how humanity operates within society. This reorganization will happen to economic institutions, political and philosophical allegiances, geopolitical alliances, communications; all to a new global order that is getting ever more electronically connected.

Finally, transformation of almost everything into new ways of seeing, doing, understanding and living. All of this will ultimately move us into new transformative realms of consciousness and understanding. That will take a decade, but the process is underway and the transition to it is what 2009 will be about.

This then is the context for the next few columns which will make specific forecasts for 2009 and beyond.

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