Trends of The 202nd Decade AD

A cure or at least a countermeasure to cancer may emerge in this decade.

Things are becoming clearer even in the first year of the decade, where novel concepts like Arab Spring, Drone War, Wikileaks and Anonomous painted a portrait of a reality that increasingly resembles the quaint musings of science fiction paperback writers.

Who could have predicted the developments of 2011 in detail? Some of the events were predicted on a generic level, even by mainstream papers and magazines. This blogger did some predictions with accuracy, namely the Arab Spring, which I predicted more than five years ago under the name Arab Renaissance.

The fast and largely unchallenged implementation of Predator drones took me by surprise. The enormous impact of Wikileaks and the emergence of a strong, well coordinated yet decentralized resistance/freedom movement called Anonymous likewise.

The death of Osama bin Laden - or alleged assassination - is, in a larger perspective, a non-event, even if the announcement does indicate a minor shift to a new era in geopolitics.

Rush to Safety

One of the most significant developments of the coming decade will be the mainstreaming and gradual implementation of surveillance and home security technology. Everything from cell phones and computers to homes, cars and individuals will go through wave after wave of upgrade, resulting in an end condition resembling the Panopticon.

This movement will seem entirely justified, as society is rushed towards this goal by spontanous or scheduled riots, random vandalism, harrassment and violent assaults. It will be an almost entirely voluntary movement, rather than a top-managed process at odds with public will, comparable to the rapid and vast implementation of information and communication technology in the 201st decade AD.

In similar vein plus words will be comfort, safety, security and everything to do with home, garden and other comfort zones. It's a practical decade, rather than as the previous one dominated by flaring culture wars and rash engagement in large scale military operations.

Strange Wars

We will not, however, be without war. Military conflicts will break out in the most unusual ways and almost erratically, and with novel twists when comes to political alliances, the use of advanced weapons technology and even with regard to military doctrine.

Information war, culture war, psy war, economic war, everything will merge, and give rise to new astonishing technological innovations, many of which will spill over into the civil sphere. It will also be a decade in which we see the rise of new intellectual giants, the return of geniuses and renaissance men, some of which will be embraced with a personality cult we have not been used to in the previous four decades since the emergence of Generation X.

This is linked to a shift in the overall paradigm and a rapid transition towards a new spiritualism. On the positive side this gives rise to social criticism, to counterculture and to idealism, not least with regards to human and civil rights issues that have been grossly neglected if not down right sabotaged and discarded in the previous decade.

Sins of the Fathers

Dealing with the sins of the fathers, which could very well be the title of the decade, will focus intensely on the subject of civil and human rights, and other matters of justice, comparable to the enormous and in many cases sensational health movement of the past decade, most notable in the nearly complete ban on smoking in spite of heavy financial interests and lobbyism from the tobacco industry.

It's a scheduled event, and absolutely necessary. Artist-activists will rise to challenge dogma, traditionalism, male chauvinism, dictatorship and every other conceivable aspect of patriarchate. Women will play an increasingly important part, as leaders as well as mothers.

It will be a difficult time for religious leaders, male politicians and, particularly, the most conservative, traditionalist or autocratic. Business scandals and political scandals will, as always, ensue, but in this decade at a breath-taking pace and often unpredictably and to comical effect.

It is not a good age for dictators and hegemonic powers, which will be shaken over and over. These powers will act out, sometimes desperately and in extreme manners, which will only reveal them as hollow and increase the rate with which the old world order crumbles.

On the downside the Third Wave Feminism can develop occasional extreme positions and views, mirroring the gender oppression of the patriarchate of the past. The era also gives rise to new forms of tribalism, nationalism and racial identity, and subsequently to the darker side of "the blood", racism.

Celebrity Power Dips

The superficiality of the modern civilization, the Babylonian aspect if you will, the mind control of Hollywood and MTV, the cult of personality and the enormous dependency on visualization and stereotypical aesthetics, is a part of a mega-trend encompassing all foreseeable future of mankind. It is a millennial aspect, and it is going to become as pervasive as the cult of Puritanism during the Christian era in Europe.

But this decade will shift the focus a bit, diminishing the influence of many idols. The reality shows and talent shows will subtly shift in the direction of more "useful" messages, such as health makeovers and more focus on group dynamics and psychological development. This part of the entertainment industry will seek to regain ground by becoming "serious" or, at least, a little more mature.

The entertainment industry has taken some pretty big hits from the financial crisis and, before that, digital piracy. It will recover in this decade; the dip will mostly affect celebrities as power-brokers and not the general profits of big movie and big music. The problem will be handed over to the health care industry, where big pharma is going to hit some major obstacles.

Stern Matriarchate

The sign opposite to a Pluto transit will bloom, following the logic that whatever death is furthest removed from will experience its summer. The sign of Cancer is represented by a crab, but associated with Hera, the consort to Zeus, as she sent it upon Hercules to distract him during his battle with the hydra. She was motivated by jealousy, since Hercules was Zeus' illegitimate son, a "crime" for which she also struck Hercules with homicidal rage, destroying his first family.

While globalization and, to some extent, globalism will be diminished and rolled back to a bare minimum, environmentalism and Mother Earth sentiments will flourish.

Another paradox is that the onslaught on the "white male patriarchate" will prove astonishingly conservative in other ways. The decade is best for monogamy and family values, cherishing motherhood and condemning infidelity. Female leaders will surprise with their reactionary attitudes, and on the ground many women will succumb to harrassment, jealousy and petty vengeance.

The new feminism will not have a discernable impact on the amount of war, but it is a part of a general and ongoing de-militarization of human society, if you can view it on a longer perspective. More encouragingly, sex trafficking and sexual abuse and sexual harrassment will become increasingly less tolerated and clamped down upon, as women emerge as a definite source of power.

The decade will give some gruesome examples of racially motivated hate crime, small scale terrorism and gang related violence. Almost everybody will become involved in some form of trolling or systematic campaigning against some enemy, real or perceived, and the insidiousness of such scheming will frequently gain media attention for invasion of privacy or harrassment.

Solidity counts

Overall, it will be a slow-burning decade, eventful enough on occasion but often felt as dreary or difficult to navigate or make progress from, almost as if caught in quicksand or struggling to find advantages in a burned down territory. It is not beneficial to opportunists and social climbers and gold diggers.

More headway will be found for scientists, researchers and innovative thinkers, a trend that grows over the decade only to culminate in around 2025. We are witnessing the rise of technocracy with all it entails, even elitism and transhumanism and, as a result, the crueller, less humane aspects of rationalism.

We already see hints of this new macro-management regime of demographics, statistics and utilitarian ethics in the way terms like "collateral damage" have been implemented and mainstreamed in the political language. Modernity, industrialization and development has its price, which is to be paid by farmers, gypsies, native tribes, whoever are deprived of a voice in the new world order - and the populations of the world are being prepared to accept this modern form of "human sacrifice" as an unavoidable evil.

Supranational failures

In spite of scientific breakthroughs, which are about to burst the dam, the general sickness and the number of people with chronical ailments will rise in the West to a point, where the discrepancy between the government's responsiblity, the number of treatable ailments and the cost of keeping people alive and well become overwhelming.

Along with the nearly total collapse of archaic systems of authority and traditionalism, subcultures and sexual deviations will explode. The collapse also spreads to academic authority and the concept of established knowledge, a trend tied to the emergence of new superstitions and super-cults.

Earth shattering events will be embodied by arcane horrors like the hydra, the typhoon and the chimera. The world will not develop sufficient levels of responsiveness; in fact, supranatural institutions will fail miserably in this decade.

Integrating Asia

On the positive side the mainstreaming of LGBT rights we witnessed parallel to the culture war of the past decade will encompass South Asians in the decade to come. Islam will, to a large degree, self-moderate and spawn new and more acceptable manners of social organization and expression, and by the end Muslims will finally see themselves accepted as worthy contributors to society.

Of course, there will always be naysayers and racists and culture warriors on both sides. But the overall conjuncture should also benefit Arab film makers, as well as other artists and art forms from outside the Western hemisphere. Bollywood, Asian film and African film may undergo revivals and gain broader audiences, and new musical influences other than rap and Anglo-Saxon pagan rock should begin to emerge.

From Big Brother to Big Sister

Development issues, construction and reconstruction, maintenance of infrastructure and all matters relating to health, scientific studies and social prudence are in focus, even to the extent of becoming more important to the public than celebrity issues.

Sport, exercise and physical aesthetics, which boomed in the 80s along with the general yuppie culture, also experience a minor revival. Martial arts, which have had a dead period, will also be revitalized, and new blood sports will stimulate a jaded audience.

Overall, you could say that the decade constitutes a shift from a Big Brother state to a Nanny State, a more amiable version of the same all-seeing eye. The Draconian measures persist with a makeover and sweeter rhetoric, but the matriarch will prove just as stern as the patriarch.

One of the strangest and most daring predictions I make is the power of the real estate industry. It seems counter-intuitive at the point, but one must remember that in spite of two consecutive IT bubbles, the information age is still a reality, and information technology a drive of progress.

Another peculiar prediction is a broad tendency to decentralization. On a tangible level, more people will work from home. On a wider scale an urban exodus will begin to take place in many parts of the world. Nations will become more protectionistic and isolationism will ensue.

On the internet small forums and networks will replace larger ones, providing more intimacy, comfort and safety.