{"id":238,"date":"2006-08-13T12:52:35","date_gmt":"2006-08-13T12:52:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php\/2006\/08\/13\/the_doomsday_sc\/"},"modified":"2006-08-13T12:52:35","modified_gmt":"2006-08-13T12:52:35","slug":"the_doomsday_sc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/?p=238","title":{"rendered":"The Doomsday Scenario"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a teenager in 1969, I was on holiday in Perth<\/a>
\nwith my family staying with
\nmy father’s parents in their old home. One morning something happened
\nthat I remember vividly but I think I have never spoken of before.<\/p>\n

\nI was thinking about waking up and drifting in and out of sleep. Then I heard
\nthe most powerful rumbling whole being shaking sound. I don’t know if it
\nwas a dream or a vision but no one else spoke about it so I have always believed
\nit was a private experience.<\/p>\n

\nThe sound seemed to continue for a minute or so although it may have been less.
\nMy thought at the time was that I was in the midst of a nuclear explosion<\/a>. The
\nThird (and surely final) World War had started and soon it would all be over.<\/p>\n

\nI woke up to the most surreal scene. Nothing had changed. Everything was just
\nas it had been the night before. Everyone was carrying on as normal. It was as
\nthough the war had happened but had left everything looking the same. I hadn’t
\nheard about neutron bombs<\/a>
\nat that stage but if I had, I would have thought that
\nthe war had been fought with some new weapon. Something that left everything
\nlooking the same on the outside but hollow on the inside. <\/p>\n

\nSurprisingly the experience didn’t frighten me but it did take me into
\nan altered state for much of the rest of the day. Eventually I came to realise
\nthat my experience had not been part of the physical world, but to this day I
\nam left believing it was real nevertheless. I do not often stop to ponder what
\nit meant but from time to time I do.<\/p>\n

\nI relate this story here because it tells something of the similarity of the
\nworld we now live in and that of the sixties.<\/p>\n

\nAs a teenager, we lived with the Cold War<\/a> with a constant threat of massive nuclear destruction.
\nWe all knew the acronyms ICBM<\/a> and MAD<\/a> and
\nthe tension between the Soviet Union<\/a> and the USA<\/a>
\nwas constant news. The Cuban Missile Crisis<\/a> took place in my lifetime although I was too young to know much
\nabout it when it was news.<\/p>\n

\nThen in 1967 the Six Day War<\/a> between
\nIsrael<\/a> and the Arab nations<\/a> started. Seeing
\nthe first news of the attacks and Israel’s march into Egypt<\/a> on TV, my father
\nremarked “I guess we’re about due for another world war.<\/p>\n

\nThe later part of the sixties was a time of hope in the midst of extreme fear.
\nThe sixties saw the sexual revolution<\/a> and we saw the ‘Flower Power<\/a>’ movement
\nin San Francisco. All this took place in the real knowledge that the world could
\nend tomorrow.<\/p>\n

\nBut the world did not end. We survived. The threat of all out nuclear war receded
\nand a new age seemed to be dawning with the amazing events in Berlin<\/a>, Moscow<\/a>
\nand South Africa<\/a>. At breathtaking speed the Iron Curtain<\/a> had fallen and Apartheid
\nwas gone. The threats to world peace that had hovered over us all my life were
\ngone.<\/p>\n

\nBut it was a brief interlude. Any final illusions we had that interruptions to
\npeace were the death movements of a dying animal were shattered on September
\n11, 2001<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\nPeople growing up today are living with the same constant fear that lead to my
\ndream in 1969, but there seems much less hope. There is no sexual revolution
\nand no flower power.<\/p>\n

\nThe threat of terrorism<\/a> is a constant in our lives with the news of a new threat
\nto blow up planes on transatlantic flights from Britain<\/a> breaking as I write this. <\/p>\n

\nWorld demand for oil has caught up with the limits of our ability to produce
\nit with Chinese and Indian demand only starting to kick in. The free run given
\nto the West from cheap imports from China and cheap services from India is coming
\nto an end.<\/p>\n

\nThe doomsday clock<\/a> is ticking.<\/p>\n

\nThe doomsday scenario is important for us. Not only is it a real potential scenario
\nthat maybe we can’t or won’t do anything to avoid but, more importantly,
\nI believe that only by looking this scenario in the face and tracing out the
\nshadow of its hand do our minds become fully open to alternative scenarios.<\/p>\n

\nThe alternative scenarios I am thinking of range from groundbreaking new inventions
\n(such as new sources of energy or radically more efficient ways of using the
\nenergy sources we have available) to the next social revolution.<\/p>\n

\nRegardless of the type of changes that we need to adopt as a society, at the
\ncore of those changes must surely be the need to bring more ourselves and our
\ncreative ability to the task of creating alternative scenarios. And our most
\ninfluential social institutions — corporations — must surely play
\na central role in bring more of our creative ability to social and industrial
\nchange.<\/p>\n

\nThe twentieth century saw the development of the modern corporation. By its end,
\nopportunities for organic growth had become limited by the sheer size to which
\ncorporations had grown. The immergence of the junk bond market enabled growth
\nby acquisition to continue for a few more decades.  Lazonick & O’Sulllivan
\nsuggest this has been achieved at the expense of reinvestment in our commercial
\nenterprise with the consequent destruction of long term productivity. (Lazonick
\nand O’Sullivan 2000). Corporations themselves are not only facing the doomsday
\nscenario through external pressure, but also by becoming empty on the inside.<\/p>\n

\nIndividually, I believe bringing more of ourselves to creating the future is
\nabout bring our soul to work.<\/p>\n

\nIn similar fashion. corporate survival is dependant on corporations, like the
\ntin man in The Wizard of Oz, finding their soul.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a teenager in 1969, I was on holiday in Perth with my family staying with my father’s parents in their old home. One morning something happened that I remember vividly but I think I have never spoken of before. I was thinking about waking up and drifting in and out of sleep. Then I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}