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Next Century Scenario

Ethology : The great trends

Demography and Feminization

Because of the length of human life and the slow change in moral attitudes, demographers have been able to get away with producing 100 year projections. These are calculated step by step using a now standard model. Each generation gives birth to new generations, because of its fertility, and is affected by a mortality coefficient. Once fertility and mortality rates are known, it is possible to create models for the development of age pyramids. These parameters follow a general curve with the different zones of the world gradually approaching the rates of the developed countries as education for women and new technical systems become widespread.

In the 70s demographers forecast a population explosion. However, facts have since proved this prognostic to be wrong. It is not the population that has exploded but contraception. The threat of the "population bomb" is fading. It is true that we experienced a very worrying period as medical progress preserved the lives of children while fertility stayed at its previous level : up to 6 children per woman in traditional societies (8 in Kenya) whereas one only requires 2.1 for renewal when juvenile mortality is low. So exponential growth with catastrophic consequences was predicted.

The over population risk has not been banished but the conditions necessary for the human species to regulate its number are easy to state :

¥ world-wide contraception as a result of education (particularly of women) and a change in attitudes (tribal and religious attitudes).

¥ economic prosperity as a result of technological competence (education) and the formation of constitutional societies in which entrepreneurs can carry on their business without risk of being robbed, suffering criminal activity or being paralyzed by monopolies, corporations or bureaucracies.

It is not only a question of reproduction but of a coherent set of behaviour, initiating a development spiral based on technical know-how and concern for the quality of service.

If, on the contrary, society falls into the hands of warlords as we have seen recently in Somalia, Sudan and Cambodia, or criminal systems hold sway as in Italy or South America or if fundamentalism and tribalism do not permit birth control, then the impoverishment of the population provokes a biological survival reflex. The number of children increases which further increases poverty and other hazards associated with over population; illness, violence, drugs.

A spiral of decline thus commences or brute force takes over driving out competence and reducing opportunities for entrepreneurial activities.

Contraception has increased tenfold over the last quarter century. It has risen most in developing countries. From the year 2000, 560 million women will be using contraceptive methods, i.e. 1 in 2 women of child bearing age. Women will be deciding the most important issue in the next century; how many human beings will exist on earth in the year 2100 and they will decide by regulating births according to their own values.

This will mark the return of the feminine. I say 'return' in remembrance of the time of mother-goddesses and matriarchy. In a society where less children are born, more care is devoted to their life and quality is preferred to quantity. Love becomes a stake in survival. One can refer not just to female power but above all to a stress on feminine values; the quality of relationships, affection, the protection of life, harmony with nature, respecting biological rhythms. At the same time masculine values such as authority, conquest, assertion which go hand in hand with the stages of conquering expansion will diminish.

The first results of fertility regulation became apparent at the beginning of the 80s. Voluntary birth limitation had begun in all continents and prospects were becoming less alarming. From the middle of the 80s onwards United Nations calculations foresaw a levelling off of world population, at approximately 10 billion around 2100. We have re-examined this work, adjusting the hypotheses they used, which we considered over-optimistic especially with regard to birth control in India and China. The new calculations result in the above graph. It gives a stabilisation at about 13 billion inhabitants around 2140-2160 (instead of 10 in 2100). Implicit in this is a 'demographic transition' from an old regime of high fertility and high juvenile mortality to a new regime of low fertility and low mortality.

Low mortality, you exclaim! What about AIDS ? Is there a risk of AIDS decimating humanity as plagues used to ? While it is true that in certain African countries the proportion of HIV positives is so high (30% of certain age groups is quoted) that the demographic pyramid is bound to be affected, it should be remembered however that only cataclysmic events have a major effect on demography. The two world wars only caused slight indentations, now erased in regard to the First World War, in the European pyramid. However, AIDS is nowhere near as contagious as the great plague of 1348 which killed a third of a defenceless European population in one year. It also impels control of one's sexuality so its prevention will accelerate the diffusion of birth control and the rise in feminine values and perhaps slightly lower the level of 13 billion in the graph above.

If we are 12 or 13 billion people, more than double the present level an ancestral anguish will surface, "will there be enough for everyone to eat?" First of all let's examine the present distribution of population. Here is a map of population without borders where a small dot represents a town of over 5 million inhabitants. There are only four densely populated zones in the world, China, India, Western Europe and the eastern half of North America as far as the Great Lakes. The rest is relatively empty. Even Africa is not really over-populated bearing in mind its enormous natural resources. Decimated by shocking famines it seems overpopulated at present because its agricultural technology has remained traditional. Progress has been appropriated by predatory systems. However, the world-wide information linkage will lead to a unification of technology at a popular level. Poor countries have the capacity to assimilate progress in agro-food techniques as is shown by the experience of the 'green revolution' : India and China were able to increase grain yields by 5% a year between 1975 and 1983, or more than 60% over the whole period following the introduction of new rice varieties resulting from research financed by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations.These countries had experienced endemic famine over the centuries. They now even export cereals in some years ! I bet that by the middle of the next century the techniques of African agriculture will have caught up with those of other regions. The wealth of the black continent will surprise the world.

Agronomists believe there is no cause for major concern on a global level. A detailed survey was carried out at the beginning of the 80s and concluded : "with the techniques known we could already feed 30-40 billion inhabitants". This is twice as much as is needed and without including aquaculture or new developments in agriculture (transgenic plants, etc...).

Unused natural resources are enormous and abandoned terraces previously used for farming, unploughed land and neglected fertile areas can be seen everywhere. The developed countries suffer from overproduction.

Looked at globally there are in fact few regions where population is likely to overwhelm the sustenance available. If one considers arable surfaces and water capacity on the one hand and demographic forecasts on the other, then only the following countries risk not being able to meet their requirements in food in the decades to come ; Burundi, Bangladesh, Egypt, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, and the desert region countries of the Mediterranean belt, with the exception of Morocco. Contrary to widely held opinion the two heavy weights of demography (40% of the human species) could feed a larger population : 2 billion more for China and 3 billion more for India, and this without taking into account multi-annual crops. "The total population of countries in danger of breaking apart is less than 300 million, under 6% of the world population. While this is an enormous figure in itself, it is too small a proportion of the world total to give cause for alarm."

However, we do envisage quite large scale migrations. Official documents play this down as it is not a source of pleasure to any country represented in the United Nations; not to the countries of departure as it reveals the crisis, nor to the receiving countries as they are not ready to welcome migrants. But the causes of migration are not in the process of disappearing, in fact the opposite is true. Rural exodus resulting from competition from industrialized agriculture is continuing in the Third World. The attraction of more developed urban zones with work, even if only temporary, medical care and education available remains strong. Another factor is 'global warming', slowly developing because of the 'greenhouse effect'. Carbon gas (whether from car exhausts or oil or coal heating) traps solar radiation like a greenhouse. The first NASA model estimates that the rise in temperature over the next 50 years will be in the order of 10 degrees near the polar circles and only 1 or 2 degrees near the equator, while the sea will rise about 1 metre. The progress of desertification will not slow down in equatorial countries, unless we mobilize vast resources to prevent it, while at the same time northern regions will become more inhabitable. It is therefore natural to anticipate South - North migrations.

I believe that the pressure of problems in large towns, rife with deep poverty, violence and drugs, will lead to populating presently neglected but habitable areas with medium sized towns. As part of this scenario a new continent, the Ocean, will be born. A fairly sizeable population (several % of the human species) will begin living in marine cities at sea and then in cities in space in the following century.

Whatever, this attempt at forecasting leads to the question of why fertility is being progressively controlled on all continents. Is there a temporary cause or will it be long lasting?

Animal species manifest various ways of life. Their numbers (of any one species) necessarily adjust to resources available and to the actions of predators. However, for some species very high mortality is compensated for by very high fertility; for each adult fish, 10,000 young are hatched. For other species, such as primates and other great mammals, who are more dominant and less affected by illness, a few young ones for each female are enough to maintain the species. Thus, reproduction is a cultural activity even amongst animals.

This is true for humans as well. Fertility falls as urban development and education progress; in Mexico for instance it has fallen by 25% in 5 years. Detailed research has revealed that it is not so much government pressure as in India or China but the growth of female education which has caused this regulation. The desire to limit births was already present. A United Nations enquiry (1990) revealed that 1 pregnancy in every 3 in the Third World would have been terminated if it had been possible, and bear in mind that women in the Third World would not yet be completely open about this subject. By the next century they will gain access to contraception for the moment reserved in practice to developed countries even though illiteracy is presently still rife in poor countries and reflected in the inequality of the sexes in schooling.

In the past feminists primarily demanded that women be allowed to also fulfil roles traditionally reserved for men and that they should be treated on an equal footing. In many countries the law agreed with them even if practice has not followed suit. But in thrusting this cause forward, militants were also taking the side of masculine values of domination whose effects they were criticizing. It was perhaps impossible to proceed differently at the time but once the authorities give way the real issues reassert themselves.

It is not a struggle for supremacy between male and female. Each of us has within us both male and female aspects and these two aspects of our personality are expressed to a greater or lesser extent according to the circumstances and the mode of our social life. The next century will witness a general evolution of behaviour towards a more feminine style. To take an example, company management, a businesslike masculine style, stresses power relationships, makes everything very clear cut, gives orders, makes demands and if necessary forces. In contrast feminine style seeks harmony with clients and suppliers. Attentive, it bothers about the little details which make life easier and more agreeable. Inspired by the principle of pleasure, it finds efficiency through other way. The era of power and quantity is superseded by the era of charm and quality.

Why not imagine that everyday objects will also reflect this evolution in their own way. The enormous office blocks erected by companies in the 20th century as a testimony to their power and glory are clearly phallic symbols brazenly rising up towards the sky. Chief executive's office was located at the summit to denote his seminal role. Everything expressed masculine power. In contrast the underground cities constructed at the end of the 20th century (the forum of Les Halles in Paris, various commercial centres in Montreal) were built to be seen from the inside, a sort of welcoming womb for visitors in search of sustenance.

The concern is with another way of conceiving the environment rather than with architectural shape, involving a return to our basic needs. We constructed buildings to be appreciated from the outside though they are intended to be lived in and thus viewed from inside. We are now aware of how much visual, sound, olfactory and tactile environments influence the state of our psyche. A new humanism is germinating related to our true needs and it is feminine in inspiration.

The urban savages

Nevertheless, the feeling of overpopulation is not without foundation. If we look at the world without borders where do we find overpopulation? In Angola with 15 inhabitants per cultivable sq. km or rather in New York and other megalopolises where the density of population is above 1000 inhabitants per hectare i.e. 1000 times greater and on land which is now sterile (apart from a few urban militants' kitchen gardens). These towns bring in and throw away almost a ton of food and rubbish per person per year in the midst of infernal traffic congestion. Citizens are directly affected by this overpopulation and project their anxiety onto poor countries accusing them of being overpopulated whereas in reality they contain enormous untapped natural resources. The following fable, from Desmond Morris shows how things really are.

"Imagine an area of land 30 kilometres long by 30 kilometres wide. It is uncultivated and inhabited by large and small animals. Now visualize a compact group of 60 human beings encamped in the middle of this region. Imagine yourself sitting there as a member of this small tribe with the landscape, your landscape surrounding you as far as your eyes can see. Only your tribe roams this enormous area, its your exclusive territory, your tribe's hunting grounds. From time to time the men of the tribe set off to go hunting while the women gather fruits and berries. Children are boisterously playing in the vicinity of the campsite, pretending to be hunters like their fathers.

Now imagine another area of land, also 30 kilometres by 30 kilometres. Imagine it is filled with machines and buildings. Visualize a compact group of 6 million human beings camped in the middle of this region. Try and see yourself there surrounded by all the complex landscape of a large town as far as the eye can see.

Now let's compare these two scenes. In the second there are 100,000 individuals for each single person in the first, though space remains the same. In evolutionary terms this radical change has been almost instantaneous. It has only taken a few thousand years to change the first setting to the second and while the human animal seems to have adapted extraordinarily well to the new and strange conditions imposed upon her/him, s/he has not had sufficient time to alter biologically, to evolve into a new genetically civilized species. The civilizing process has been entirely one of learning and conditioning and biologically speaking s/he is still the simple animal described in the first scene. S/he has been living like that not just for a few centuries but for over a million years.

Now s/he finds himself a citizen, a member of a 'super tribe' and the crucial difference is that s/he no longer knows every member of the community to which s/he belongs. This change, moving from a personalized society to an impersonal society was and still is the cause of the most profound distress for the human animal."

This will be the most important tension at the onset of the next century. By the year 2000 more than one billion of the 6 billion human beings will have been driven from their land by competition from industrialized agriculture. They come and fill the inner city areas and slums of large towns like Mexico, Los Angeles, Sao Paulo, Bombay, Abidjan, Washington, London, Shanghai. Second generation born children will no longer be able to return to the natural habitat of their ancestors as agricultural know-how for survival has not been passed on to them. Nor are they conversant with modern technology ; schools are not ready to welcome them. They are "urban savages", men and women brought up outside all culture, almost reverting to a primal state of nature. In this situation they are forced to consider the town as a jungle and invent new methods of survival.

Already town planners in all large cities will tell you that there are districts where the police no longer go, it's too dangerous. And if the police won't go, then neither will the plumber. So buildings become dilapidated and are squatted and a different type of society emerges. It's at the mercy of fundamentalism, sects, criminal gangs and of any organization which exploits vagrants and the excluded. Sectarian, counter-societies set up in the gaps left vacant by the official social fabric.

If urban savages only represented 2 or 3% of the human species, then it would just be a problem of social assistance and control. However, if they form more than 10% of the young it becomes a structural issue. Now by 2005 half of humanity will be living in towns and this urban population will further increase in the future to over 80% in the developed countries. Certainly modern communications, because they allow work at a distance, will slow down and reverse this tendency but one must hope that their influence on our habitat will be felt within the next twenty years, bearing in mind the time necessary to set up infrastructures and for attitudes to evolve. At the present time humanity has omitted to care for a portion of its offspring. Once adult they will redirect the negativity they experienced on to the preceding generation. We have allowed a social bomb, rather than a population bomb to form as a result of the unbridled operation of economic mechanisms.

Multi-membership

The third great trend concerns behaviour. We should face up to the third millennium with humility as 98% of our genetic heritage is the same as that of a chimpanzee. Behind each human being hides a primate. We are entering the 21st century with the powers of a demigod and the instincts of a primate. It is a period with high risks and we therefore need to urgently look at the behaviour of monkeys in groups.

Primates are tribal like many other mammals and this tribalism can be expressed either joyfully or aggressively. In Europe it took two world wars and an additional forty years (the fall of the Berlin Wall) for us to manage to celebrate our respective successes instead of reacting to each other like hereditary enemies.

If we think about areas of the world which are still animated by tribal passions today (ex-Yugoslavia, ex-Soviet Union, India, Africa) we can only hope that their transition to post tribalism is quicker and less costly in lives than ours. But will they be able to make this transition ? Does the reappearance of ethnic identification after the intimidatory period of the Cold War mark a return to a normal state of conflict or is it a temporary phase in dissolving ancient adherences ?

The ethology of primate aggression reveals spectacular gestures concerned with the defence of territory but rarely to the extreme of murder. Contemporary wars while horribly murderous have all stopped before threatening the survival of the species. Even the Nazi madness could not accomplish the genocide it had programmed and its successors have become reconciled and built Europe together. Once the absurd has been attained people say "never again" and do what's necessary to prevent former evils returning. In complex technical societies information spreads more rapidly and the intolerable manifests itself more quickly than previously. Obstinacy calms down when faced by lack of water, electricity and petrol supplies.

But what will be the nature of post-tribalism? Everybody needs to 'adhere', if a human being does not have a tribe then s/he invents one. S/he invents the company, the Nation-State, the association, the football club and many other ways to feel interdependent, protected in a grouping which is both reassuring and stimulating. Nowadays, we are leaving exclusive, total, even totalitarian adherence behind for an era of multi-membership.

At one and the same time, the plaits mean he is a member of an Indian tribe while the tie makes him a member of the businessmen tribe. This diversity is slowly spreading through the world and every one individual belongs to several groups all very different from each other. Dispersal is becoming a general state for all people. The present Palestinian, Maghrebian, Turkish, Chinese, Indian and African migrations and also professional diasporas have replaced the former Jewish, American and gypsy diasporas. The villages of electronic engineers and also of biotechnologists are global.

The human species is facing a situation never before encountered in its history. Individuals can instantly communicate with one another from one end of the planet to the other (today by telephone, tomorrow by videophone). The notion of a "global village" corresponds to the first phase of the entertainment society, the television phase where only a few can express themselves. This is followed by the superimposition of multiple professional global villages, each consisting of several hundred people.

Multi-membership is imperceptibly gaining ground in proportion to business extending its networks through the world. This is because while one belongs to a tribe every moment of the day, throughout one's life and even beyond, one only belongs to a company for 8 hours a day and not including holidays or retirement.

At the same time one belongs to a family, a city and various groups and association. The evolution of work is progressively blurring the dependence of employees. Temping agencies, freelance, part time work, all these social innovations are moving in the direction of multi-adherence. However traditional behaviour is not surrendering without a fight. Authoritarianism and its counterpart servility are still present in organizations and promotions are often the result of allegiances rather than competence. The trend towards objectivity and professionalism which go together with multi-membership comes up against old clannish practices everywhere.

A businessman descended from a traditional tribe has to fight against his relatives to keep money in the firm. As soon as he's making a profit his brothers, cousins, uncles and nephews jump on him demanding a share. He receives requests to pay for traditional celebrations and marriages. The accumulation of capital necessary for his advance is paralyzed by the weight of his tribal duties. And corruption which is viewed as a crime in our lawful societies is experienced as natural where the interests of the clan are placed above all others. Thus compliance with basic accounting rules and the distinction between the property of the individual and of the company call into question deep reflexes, in that person, associated with his tribal roots. That is why it requires several generations and strong safety nets for the legal rules preserving the gains of firms, associations and other corporate bodies and legal entities to become solidly established.

Multi-membership is also a consequence of the linkage of world communications. It reaches into all societies even the most recalcitrant, keeping pace with the connections, as the layers of telephone lines thicken and economic exchanges expand. It produces a reconfiguration of the institutional landscape at all levels. Nation-States, remnants of the previous technical system are in decline while in contrast businesses constitute a vibrant and triumphant ensemble. This is especially true for small firms as top-heavy structures are counter-selected, (a term used by biologists), by the mechanisms of the post-modernist market. Lastly the third sector, by which I mean Non-Governmental Organizations, increases in importance. One finds campaigning institutions (Greenpeace, Amnesty) humanitarian ones (Red Cross, Médecins sans Frontières) professional organizations (Reuters) and standardization bodies (ISO for industrial standards).

The geopolitics of yesteryear, concerned with areas of influence, power, conquests and relationships of force no longer have much relevance. It has been suggested that we are nearing the end of History. Some people discuss this. Others hail with nostalgia a heroic epoch where men tore each other's gut's out for a patch of earth. Soon barbarity will seem like prehistory. The third millenium will be the beginning of history for mankind as a global conscious living being. That's why I call it the start period of the Specie's Odyssey.

Reconstructed Nature

Multi-membership means the human species is negotiating with its own nature. It plays with the instincts of the primate using them as a sailor uses the wind. The complete recasting of wo/man's relationship with life and nature, with companies and other institutions becoming like living beings lies further on in this evolution.

Descartes said : "The time has come for us to be the masters and possessors of Nature". The philosophers of the century of the Enlightenment added. "We will exploit nature using the knowledge provided by science and its offspring technology. By this means we will eradicate misery, this malediction cursing our species since centuries."

We are now arriving at the end of this movement and seeing the beginning of its reversal. Ecology is without doubt the only really new political idea since the Second World War and it has come to prominence because of global hazards and damage. It condemns overexploitation and pollution but under its pastoral guise it poses a very radical question.

The facts are these; no continent, except perhaps Europe has been spared by the ecological crisis. People are aware of the Sahel drought, the deforestation of Amazonia, the oil slicks and the Chernobyl catastrophe. Every day they breathe in the awful pollution of our big cities. They are less aware that China is risking an ecological crisis at the beginning of the next century because of wood felling or that the United States is overexploiting the Middle West's underground water table which is beginning to show worrying signs of exhaustion.

Also the total number of different animal and plant species lies between 5 and 30 million (of which only 1.4 million are listed). However, 50,000 are disappearing yearly, or to put it another way, at this rate the genetic inheritance of our planet which it took 3 billion years to constitute will be exhausted in 200 years (taking 10 million as the total figure). Human activity would have accelerated the disappearance rate of species by 1-10 thousand times.

The great bread-baskets of antiquity such as Mesopotamia (Iran and Iraq), Anatolia (Turkey) and the Maghreb have already become or are in the process of becoming deserts because of wo/man's activities, agricultural overuse. Europe is lucky to have a temperate climate, a resistant vegetation and a tradition of prudence since the catastrophes of the middle ages but other continents are not so fortunate. The foresight of Humanity is now being challenged. The large aforested countries of the North (Scandinavia, Canada) have recently enacted legislation for forest conservation and world agreements have been signed for the protection of certain endangered species - limitations to fishing, protection of rare birds. But the means to enforce compliance are not yet really operational.

The human species is no longer just the exploiter of Nature. It is also its protector. This new responsibility leads us into negotiating with our own instincts. Already nature is no longer the eternal and generous mother who gave birth to our ancestors, she has been transformed into a techno-nature . By this, I mean that our everyday, immediate environment is filled with artificial objects. Even so called 'natural' spaces are placed under regulated control (agriculture, husbandry) or placed under the protection of wo/mankind (nature reserves). During the next century the last great virgin forests (Amazon, Central Africa, South-East Asia) will at best be placed under the watchful surveillance of conservation institutions or at worst shamelessly exploited. The oceans themselves subject to aquaculture and voluntary limits to fishing will be controlled areas. Techno-nature will encompass the whole globe with humankind as the gardener and protector of equilibrium. This quest for equilibrium also fits in with demographic regulation and feminization.

Prior to living in harmony with Nature, humanity will re-examine its own nature. We live in towns like animals in a zoo. Animals are unhappy in zoos with no room to play, deprived of the colours, smells and stimuli of sensation and emotions they need. Some just lie around, asleep in a corner. Others exhibit the rocking motion associated with distress which one also sees in orphanages, asylums and homes for the dying. Others start overeating, often to a dangerous degree, in compensation. Bears have been seen to die from eating too much, out of despair. A world map of malnutrition shows countries subsisting on an average of less than 2000 calories per day, in hunger, in contrast to countries overeating with more than 3400 calories daily. Those externally poor and those internally deprived!

Voltaire's recommendation to "cultivate our garden" can now be fully understood. Both the global garden for which we have inherited responsibility and our interior garden also. Without our own personal harmony we cannot assume responsibility for guiding the biosphere.