As grandes questões do nosso tempo: negócios, Deus e Power

Não se trata do rosto duplicado tipo-Zaramago, mas da cara da reflexão que aqui deixamos no original.

Nota prévia:

• Nos nossos escritos sempre privilegiámos a ciência da prospectiva, esse jogo da antecipação que leva à acção e, pelo caminho, elimina-se boa parte da incerteza, ié, ganha-se tempo, queimam-se etapas, torna-se o chamado decison-making process mais eficiente e mais eficaz. É, aliás, essa conspiração do futuro que leva os dirigentes políticos mais avisados a chegarem primeiro à fonte da sabedoria, à conquista do futuro, à desocultação de zonas de incerteza que abrem caminho para acção num contexto de mudança política, social e cultural acelerada que hoje aqui denominamos por globalização competitiva. Esta troika reflexiva espelha ideias e abordagens interessantes nessa busca da Verdade, nessa apropriação da incerteza e até nessa destruição da alienação em que todos nós, cada um à sua maneira, vive e vibra com as ofensas do sr. Pulido Valente à dona Clara Alves, à vitória do Benfica sobre o Liverpool, ao envelope nº 9 do sr. dr. Souto - que devia ter sido posto no olho da rua há mais de 500 dias, aos fatos Armani de Sócrates, ao lifting da Lili canecas, ao namoro do Ronaldo com a ... escapa-me o nome, aos resíduos da casa Pia e a mais uma catrafada de lodo e de junk food que nos tem atravancado enquanto personalidade colectiva. Julgo que nesta óptica - que em linguagem corrente denominaríamos de - "abrir a pestana" - seria útil reflectir sobre o resultado destas três reflexões interligadas sobre os Negócios, Deus e o Futuro pela pena do Presidente deste think thank - Sundeep Waslekar. No fundo, o que este senhor nos tenta dizer passa por três ou quatro coisas:

• a) Que o futuro não está escrito, embora seja possível começar a fazer o prefácio;
• b) Que o futuro é a nossa razão de ser no presente - entretanto já passado;
• c) Trabalhar na base dos métodos da antecipação ajuda a iluminar o túnel da decisão
• d) A antecipação permite-nos compreender e conquistar o real - antes dele perder interesse para os agentes sociais.

Para tal o Sr. Sundeep faz as perguntas certas, desconfia das ideias feitas, distancia-se do tempo macaco que nos desgoverna, imagina, inventa e, pelo meio, chega até a acreditar naquilo que pensa e diz. Isto não nos habilita a dizer que o senhor é um impostor, um ilusionista da mais moderna teoria social. Não!!! Antes pelo contrário, tal desiderato concede-lhe até uma aura especial de diagnóstico e de produção de ideias, teorias e críticas do mundo contemporâneo em que vivemos. Até porque se o futuro fosse plenamente previsível e seguro, nem sequer conseguiríamos imaginar quão insuportável ele se tornaria. Depois da vida, só podemos guardar uma certeza: a da morte. Por isso, valerá a pena evocar Deus. Esperemos que não seja em vão.

A coisa segue em inglês que é para desenfurrejar e também para fazer pirraça aos franceses que ainda pensam que falar a língua de V. Hugo e tocar é o passaporte para conquistar os grandes desafios europeus. Não é. Até porque hoje a maior parte das pessoas fala inglês e não toca piano. Mas como em tudo na vida, ça depend do teclado... Como dira Deng Xao Ping, quem não tem gato caça com rato.

Vejamos, pois, a ideias de Sundeep e atentemos no pulsar que ele nos deixa sobre o mundo: o nosso. Os negócios, Deus e o Poder...

• PS: por cortesia deixamos aqui a referência de um outro blog que já se referiu a este tema metapolítico e que teve a trabalheira de porceder à sua tradução. Assim, por cortesia - cá vai.

• By Sundeep Waslekar Part 1: Business and the Periphery

Negócios, Deus e o Poder - em equação

Strategic Foresight Group is a product of twenty first century globalisation. We function because of the Internet, inexpensive conference calls across continents, and affordable airfares (though the latter might change with oil prices expected to reach $100 per barrel). We have collaborators around the world who are concerned about shifting global paradigms, and not merely their own geographies. One of them, Dr. Frank-Jurgen Richter is a German national, who lives in France with an office in Switzerland, and specialises in China. Mr. Sompal has a home in India and works in Rwanda, going back and forth, to help President Kagame revive agriculture in his country. I regularly confer with HRH Prince Turki al Faisal, Saudi Ambassador to UK, now probably moving to the United States, at World Economic Forum meetings at Davos and Dead Sea. Mr. Graham Watson, a British political leader at the European Parliament in Brussels, collaborates with us to engage Prime Minister Erdogan and other leaders of Turkey. We are not at all unique in benefiting from globalisation. Recently Semu, my special assistant, who is very fond of shopping, took a break from an international seminar on terrorism to find that shops in Cologne were filled with goods from India and her neighbouring countries. When Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf coast in the United States, Sri Lanka contributed to relief efforts, while the Sri Lankans themselves seek Norwegian mediation to resolve their ethnic conflict. When globalisation creates a world of opportunity, why does it attract virulent opposition? A few months ago, BBC World Television hosted a phone-in programme on globalisation. In 60 minutes, each and every call expressed outrage against globalisation and the institutions that symbolise it. In order to understand the contradictions of today’s world, we need a new analytical framework. Each country individually and the world at large, are divided into the business class and the periphery. The business class represents people who have access to the Internet in their office and white goods in their kitchens, who fly regularly (though not necessarily by J class) and who have friends or business contacts abroad. The rest form the periphery. Sometimes the periphery may be further divided into different categories. It’s only the business class people who participate in globalisation. In India and China – two countries that are projected as the new stars of the world economy – the business class constitutes a mere 2.2% and 6% of the population respectively. In the United States it accounts for 60% of the population. In countries like Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, Nepal, the business class accounts for less than 1%. In Dhaka, Bangladesh, a new shopping mall has come up – Vasundhara. A superficial glance projects a very vibrant economy and a dynamic market. But a look beneath the superficial level reveals that those who frequent, Vasundhara are feudal lords from the world of NGOs, exporters, government officials and politicians. A typical, lucky Bangladeshi works in a garment factory, surrounded by barbed wires, earning one dollar a day. A typically unlucky Bangladeshi works in a paddy field dreaming of finding a job in the garment factory with barbed wires. Globalisation is confined to the business class in each country. The people belonging to the business class in each country combine to form a global business class. They nurture each other beyond nationalistic and religious loyalties. For instance, the windows of shops in Milan display the most expensive of luxury goods. Not too far away in residential colonies, Italians live in run down apartments. Obviously they do not have Euros to purchase fashion statements. These shops cater to the business classes flying in from Seoul and Dubai to Moscow and Lagos. It’s not only in countries like India and China or Russia and Nigeria that the smart and small business classes cause resentment in the periphery. It’s also in Europe and the United States that the periphery is facing neglect, however, the periphery in these countries is comparatively small. In the United States, for example, out of 112 million households, 30 million households earn less than $2000 per month. Most of them don’t own cars or washing machines. We are talking about one among every four Americans. Hurricane Katrina with an extremely unfortunate blow exposed the economic condition of some of these people living at the periphery. The truth about the life of one third of the people living in Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky and most of the heartland states of the United States is not known. But it’s not necessary to go that far to understand it. A visit to the working class segments in Cairo or Rio will do. A big question of our time is how globalisation can be made relevant to the marginal people of the world. It is not a question of scarcity or abundance of resources. It’s not even a question of distribution of resources. It’s a question of creating real freedom of opportunity, where people, and not merely capital, can earn good returns for their participation in the economy. If globalisation of opportunity is divorced from over 80% of the people who live in the global periphery, a globalisation of risk will expand. In the last ten years, when globalisation saw its most unprecedented growth, terrorists inflicted over 20,000 attacks. Currently, there are close to 190 strong, self-sustaining terrorist groups around the world, almost as many as nations on the roster of the United Nations. They draw human and financial resources from a pool of criminals and extremists and sympathy from a much larger body of the despaired. Of course, many of the terrorist groups are hand maidens of powerful men who abuse ideologies and unemployment to protest against power of the business class, though what they really want is power for themselves. The periphery is squeezed from every side – the global business class that neglects it and the global criminal class that pays attention to it and then severely exploits it. We, at Strategic Foresight Group are aware of the responsibility that goes with belonging to the global business class. We project the details of doom, caused by distortions in the patterns of growth and governance, to alert policy makers and fervently hope that they do everything possible so as to prove us wrong. We also project hope when policy makers adopt corrective paths. It’s a strange business to be in. But it’s worthwhile since it is one small contribution to reduce the chasm between global business class and periphery.

By Sundeep Waslekar Part 2: The Future of God Strategic Foresight Group uses the 4-G framework to analyse the future of countries. Three of the 4 Gs – Growth, Governance and Geopolitics – represent traditional drivers that determine the destiny of a nation. Increasingly we are finding that the 4th G – God – is assuming importance in our calculations. The resurrection of God within a century of being declared dead by Friedrich Nietzsche is quite impressive. God’s prospects have been going up and down. In the 1960s, Time magazine asked on one of its covers if God was over and done with. By the end of the millennium God had been revived. The rising importance of God is these days associated with social and political changes taking place in the Islamic world. Turkey elected a religiously oriented party 80 years after abolishing the Caliphate. I noticed several more women wearing hejab when I visited there earlier this year than when I first visited the country in the 1980s. In particular, women associated with the power structure, as spouses of important ministers or office holders in the ruling party or the government, were conspicuous in their preference for tradition. This is not to suggest that Turkey of tomorrow is Iran of yesterday. Prime Minster Erdogan is very keen on the country joining the EU and has invited the Pope to visit his country in 2006. Iran continues to be governed by the college of Ayatollahs and their power was reasserted in the recent elections to the parliament as well as presidency. In post-Saddam Iraq, religion is an important force in politics. When Afghanistan wrote its constitution, the most significant issue was about ensuring the religious character of the state. In Southeast Asia, it is possible to notice increasing adherence to religion in the social sector, though the Malaysians defeated a religious party in the elections. In Southeast and Central Asia, Hizb-ut-Tahrir is spreading far and wide. Pakistan and Bangladesh, of course, continue to be the citadels of religious extremism. While changes taking place in the Islamic world, enhancing the role of God in society and politics, are highlighted by the world media, the real growth of the popularity of God is taking place in the United States and the Christian parts of Latin America, Asia and Africa. Already, 70-80 million Americans, out of the total population of 300 million, are estimated to be evangelicals. One of our researchers at Strategic Foresight Group is examining this development and will present her findings on the future prospects for God in American society and politics in due course. The religious forces question the very spirit of the American constitution. Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues had taken pains to separate religion and politics. The confinement of religion to the private domain is credited for the popularity of Church in the United States, as compared to its decline in Europe. Now the new fundamentalists essentially want religion to enter social and political life in a big way. The big question of our time is whether the American politics in the next 20-30 years will be governed by God. As the American economy declines and America’s role as a leader of the community of values is rejected by West Europeans, Canadians and others, will the United States need an anchor for its society in the form of religion? While the United States and many of the Islamic countries provide good prospects for divine rule, many other parts of the world have turned away from God, especially from politics and society. In Europe, Christian Democratic parties are on decline. The success of one of them in the German elections had to do with economics, not religion. In India, Bhartiya Janata Party, the standard bearer of political Hindutva, is debating whether it should give up politics of religion in order to win in the politics of power. In China, Falun Gong is purely a spiritual and social moment. It has nothing to do with introducing religion in politics, even though the paranoid Chinese would like to believe otherwise. In Japan, Nepal and a host of Asian countries, the younger generation is turning away from God. Why is God gaining ground in the United States, Latin America, parts of Africa and Islamic countries, when people in other parts of the world are happy with the confinement of faith to private life? Does it have to do with the fact that the countries where God is rising in politics are precisely the ones where economic conditions of pockets of population are declining? Or does it have to do with the fact that these countries are feeling a sense of relative loss of power and need something to believe in? Is God just a cover for underlying political and economic dynamics? Earlier this year, I was invited to address a session at Davos on whether God loves democracy. Whether God loves democracy or not, the current trends indicate that from George Bush to Ayatollah Khamenei and Gerry Adams to Pervez Musharraf, all those leaders who believe in authoritarian or expansionist approach to power games seem to be pushing God in public domain. The Future of God outside of our intimate spiritual realm will therefore depend on the failure of economics and the success of autocrats and imperialists. Nietzsche used the character of a mad man to declare God dead. If he were alive today, he would probably use the character of a dictator to declare the rebirth of God.

By Sundeep Waslekar Part 3: The Future of Power

• I was recently at Waterloo, a small university town about an hour’s drive from Toronto, Canada where my friend John English has recently established the Center for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) with support from Jim Balsillie, founder of the Blackberry communication system. The occasion was a CIGI conference on emerging powers.
• While the academicians at the conference, signalled the arrival of India, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico as the new powers, based on their share in global GDP and military expenditures, they missed what was happening around them. (The academicians also mentioned China but I believe that China is not an emerging power. It has already emerged as a major power.) Canada is emerging as a major centre of innovation in the future. Both, Arnold Toynbee and Paul Kennedy have demonstrated in their well-researched history books that the countries, which innovate, rise while the countries that overspend on military, decline. The fall of the Western Roman Empire 200 years before its Eastern counterpart, despite a relatively greater distance from external aggressors, was due to a difference in technological innovation and the quality of governance.
• The Canadians seem to understand this well, without pretending any claim to a future great power status. Waterloo provides the maximum number of recruits to Microsoft every year. The founders of Blackberry have set up CIGI, an institute for research in theoretical physics, hoping that Canada of the future will make major breakthroughs in physics. The Governor of Ontario keeps personal charge of the department of research and innovation, indicating how important this portfolio is in provincial politics. The entire Waterloo region is promoted as a centre for research and development and the provincial government is going all out to attract investments from high tech companies.
• More significantly, the Canadians have launched a quiet revolution for clean energy. I met my friend Nicholas Parker after several years to find that he has set up Cleantech Venture forum to bring together venture capitalists and small entrepreneurs exclusively in the field of clean energy. The big Alberta energy companies are focussed on research and development for clean energy in the future. Soon after my visit to Waterloo, the federal government announced a new immigration policy to attract talent from other parts of the world.
• Besides Canada, we see emphasis on innovation in the Scandinavian countries. I flew from Toronto to Stockholm for a dinner with Dr. Michael Nobel, the chair of the Nobel Family Society. This family provides the Nobel prizes in the memory of Alfred Nobel, Dr Michael Nobel’s great granduncle. Now Dr. Michael Nobel is in the process of creating an award in the memory of Ludwig Nobel, his great grandfather and brother of late Alfred. The new award will be for innovation in energy.
• Of course, the Nobel prizes merely symbolises the spirit of innovation in Scandinavia. It is a part of the world where several large and small companies have concentrated on technological research and innovation in governance. Nokia and Eriksson are famous companies in the communications sector. But there are several other technological experiments going on in agriculture and energy, medicine and metallurgy.
• Interestingly, Canada, Sweden, Norway and Finland, with less than 1% of the world’s population among them, play an important role in the institutions of global governance. Their nationals hold key positions in the World Bank and various UN agencies. Their representatives lead many multilateral committees and set the global agenda more effectively than most other countries in the world, except of course the P-5 powers of the Security Council. As these countries win the technological race, their importance in trans-national commerce and the global economy is bound to increase in the future.
• China has taken a clue from these developments. A few months ago, the government in Beijing identified five universities to be brought up to the level of the best in the world - including Harvard, Stanford and MIT, especially in the field of science and technology. The Chinese know that low cost goods can help attract investments and raise income in the short run but it is not the solution in the long run. Of course, the Chinese have a serious problem in their rural backyard. If they fail to manage it, their aspirations may disappear in a thousand revolutions.
• For those who want to climb the ladder of science and technology much needs to be explored and invented. Sir Martin Rees, a leading British scientist, has come out with a succinct book, Our Final Century, which lists what science has yet to achieve. According to Sir Martin, it is too early to conclude that there are only three dimensions or that the earth is the only planet with biosphere. We know the history of time from the second moment after the big bang but it remains to be discovered what happened at the first moment and just prior to it. We know how life was created from one cell to multi-cell entities to the Cambrian explosion yet we do not know how the first cell came into being. Most dramatically, Sir Martin warns that it is too early to conclude that our biological evolution is complete. With the advent of biotechnology and nanotechnology the human species may evolve into semi-machines capable of proliferating and self-reproducing in the outer space, and perhaps beyond our solar system.
• Some of these ideas may be the stuff of science fiction, but sometimes what might appear impossible to imagine might be a reality sooner than we would expect. In 1937, a group of leading American scientists failed to predict the rise of nuclear power, computers and the Internet.
• With such a track record, of experts in predicting the future, some of Sir Martin’s fantasies may not be fantasies after all. The countries and companies that make a breakthrough in new, cheap, clean energy or the viability of outer space life or all purpose medicine are bound to be more influential than the countries that seek to gain a piece of territory here or there or throw out one or two small time dictators out of power. If I am looking for future power players, I would worry less about expensive weapon systems which are more likely to turn obsolete before they are ever used and keep my eyes and ears open to find out what comes out of the theoretical physics research institute in sleepy Waterloo.