I began this article sitting in a very well-spaced socially distanced Starbucks in South Korea's second-largest City, Daegu a short time back. Whilst I sipped that Sunday morning coffee, I skimmeed through some of the headlines. 

I read that the US Senate is poised to commence the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump. Joe Biden's Secretary of State has blasted his Chinese counterparty in their first call as the geopolitical war intensifies - a new superpower endeavors to challenge the preeminent power. There is a headline suggesting that, at the current rate of COVID inoculations it would take 7 years for 75% of the world to be vaccinated. 

Either way, politicians around the world have essentially suggested that we won't be back to normal in 2021. I continued reading.

Bitcoin is back above $40,000 US [today above $50,000!) and other markets are roaring to new highs. Many assets are the most overvalued we have seen for half a century or longer. Despite this, the world faces serious numbers of bankruptcies due to lockdown measures and yet other serious risks are hidden within the financial system yet to come to bear. I continued reading.

Myanmar has had another coup d'etat whilst the West and the world faces continued civil unrest as social cohesion continues to erode. One of the most dystopian articles I have seen since Biden was inaugurated was in New York Times concerning the need for a Commissioner of Truth, reminding me of Orwell's Ministry of Truth in 1984. Politicians are trying to ram Patriot Act 2.0 into law.

Suffice to say the world seems as uncertain as ever. In response, amongst futurists and visionary thinkers around the world there tends to be quite binary views - dystopian or utopian scenarios - for the 2020’s. 

The dystopian being the economic and ecological collapse of the current world order, based as it was on an unsustainable industrial paradigm. Or the utopian idea of a Golden Decade of reform and innovation, with a Green New Deal and a Great Reset, influenced by new ideas from Donut Economics to Regenerative Design. 

For some time now I have been saying it will be both. I have characterized the potential for the 2020s as the Tumultuous 2020s.

An old system is crumbling, as they do. A new one needs to be built. That prospect is both exciting and thoroughly frightening. Civilization needs to go through a phase transition, to borrow from physics, as significant as the shift from hunter gatherer to farmer, and the birth of the first cities in Mesopotamia - 10,000 years ago or earlier if Plato was right about Atlantis! 

I propose that the most resilient replacement which will maximize planetary health, human happiness, economic prosperity and social justice, will be a “Small is Beautiful" system (to use the title of E. F. Schumacher's book). A more bottom up and resilient system. I refer to it as a technologically advanced ecological civilization. I am sure that someone more famous than I will coin and trademark a more coherent term at some point in the future.

 Whatever it is named, in becoming post-industrial our civilization will have to become not merely environmentally friendly and sustainable, but it must reconnect with nature again. In this fashion, catalyzing our evolutionary potential as we harness our propensity for greater self-expression, creativity, diversity, organization, novelty and connection. This is the opposite of today's command and control paradigm.

In response to the climate and ecological crisis as well as the pandemic, many of the world's policymakers and the agendas of think tanks and international organizations have plans which are still too top down and aligned with the old paradigm.

However, we've never be as ready to make the transition as we are today. The more aware of us are at the forefront of thinking across disciplines and instituting the principles of self-organization and decentralization. 

In technology, we have 3 D printing, blockchain, and the potential for personal AI. In economics we have bitcoin and peer to peer thinking. In corporations there is the work on self organizing systems such Frédéric Laloux. In the field of governance, there is a growing recognition of the importance of local communities, towns, cities and regions in dealing with the wicked problems of our time. 

Probably we will need to transcend the nation state which is one reason why I am establishing a planetary Embassy, the Embassy of the Future. E. F. Schumacher. 

As he said, "There is no such thing as the viability of states or of nations, there is only a problem of viability of people: people, actual persons like you and me, are viable when they can stand on their own feet and earn their keep. You do not make non-viable people viable by putting large numbers of them into one huge community, and you do not make viable people non-viable by splitting a large community into a number of smaller, more intimate, more coherent and more manageable groups."

I was very excited to hear how Jerry Ashton was establishing Let's Rethink This, after the noble and impactful work he performed in lanching the charity, RIP Medical Debt. His rethinking his industry and the nature of debt so far has resulted in the abolition of $3 billion in medical debt for over two million people. This was an example of being prepared to creatively dialogue and boldly imagine the unknown to create an amazing social and financial impact. 

Similarly, we must be prepared to drop our old beliefs. The great sages of antiquity from Socrates in Athens to the grandfather of Zen, Hui Neng, in China all espoused the power of not knowing, entering a space when new insight can emerge, not colored by the knowing of the past. Paradoxically, those ancient sages were also prophets of the future. 

E.F. Schumacher also said that a man who uses an imaginary map, thinking that it is true, is likely to be worse off than someone with no map at all. In reality, this is the realm that we must go to, the one that has never been mapped: the pathless path if humankind will make that great transition.

It will be more like a collective Odyssey than a case of smooth implementation as the agendas policymakers and think-tanks suggest. To make this Odyssey, new capacities and most importantly new philosophical approaches will be paramount. 

Joseph Campbell, the mythologist and well renowned scholar of stories would always talk about forging one's own unique path into the forest of the unknown. This requires the courage and capacity for vision, sense making, collective dialogue, imagination, creativity, resilience and the ability to learn and relearn.

This is a time to listen to the yearning of our souls to be “a little dangerous,” jettisoning the known for the excitement and perils of the unknown - just like Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey.

Playing it safe just won't work anymore.