2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
Accompanying this social revolution in the position of the individual has been a parallel political revolution; though this has yet to be fully recognised. Politicians in the West have long claimed that democracy, the people's vote, is the best - many would claim the only - satisfactory source of government power. It was ultimately this power of the individual, and not capitalism, which defeated the Marxist governments of Eastern Europe.
Yet, whilst claiming to be the guardians of democracy, Western governments themselves have signally failed to recognise the implications which emerge when the people come to demand that power is really distributed to the individual. The lessons of Eastern Europe, graphically conveyed on television, have since been well learned by the electorates in the West. They have been leveraged by the move there to genuine equality; not least by the remarkably effective feminist movements. Thus, above all, women have come to realise that they are individuals with real power not just dependent members of a family. Indeed, in many respects, the 21st century may come eventually to be seen as the century of women!
Individualism has - not least - been seen in the buying power of individuals; first - after being freed from subsistence existences - as the conspicuous consumption reflected in individual lifestyles, but more recently as responsible buying to protect the green environment. Potentially most important of all, though, it is now being seen in voter power; voting out of office, around the world, governments which have long considered that they had a monopoly on power.
At the same time, the spread of power has changed dramatically. For most of the past century it has traditionally belonged to national governments, even where the nation was an artificial construct. Now it is being stretched in two opposing directions. The regions, often 'tribally' or ethnically based, are demanding an increasing say in their own affairs - and below them even separate communities may want to decide their own future. In the other direction, as globalisation bites - and no part of the globe can any longer isolate itself from the rest, which is now a mere microsecond away on the electronic networks - governments are increasingly being forced into supra-national groupings. These are, for the first time, starting to garner their own powers, which overrule the national powers of their members.
15 May 2003
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