More votes have come in since I last reported on my poll. The question based on history is this: what catalysts drive human action in the future? It took two world wars and a great depression to drive humans to act in ways that prevented reoccurrence and advanced human development. In a world that looks eerily similar to that era, we once again wonder about catalysts. Here are the current results.
What do you think? What compels us to act in ways that once again advance human development? Please add your thoughts by taking the poll below. You can select multiple options. The other category has been very interesting, with thoughts like empathetic leadership, biodiversity loss, enhanced self awareness, and vertical convergence added to the discussion.
Reimagining the Future 
Interesting inquiry. I think there are three key catalysis that might have been missed. Great men, ideas & money/power.
Ideas and revolutions in ideas such as Enlightenment ideas that sparked democracy and human rights, industrial revolution ideas generated great wealth and made exploration and expansion possible and the scientfic method and scientific ideas have made both technological, medical and industrial changes and revolutions possible. Perhaps “rapid pace of innovation” and “Innovations arms race” encapsulate “ideas” to some extent.
Great men like Woodrow Wilson and FDR (probably Churchill too) and George Marshall. pushed the League of Nations, New Deal, United Nations, NATO and the Marshall Plan, but it took the USA emerging onto the world stage as well as an industrial and economic power to make all this happen. So probably the convergence of various catalysts, ideas and men are really required to make big changes in historical course.
Of course wealth and the quest of power are both HUGE catalysis IMHO. Wealth through economic, industrial and technological innovations because it makes new things possible when people aren’t scrapping for morsels to eat, clothing, shelter or security. Quest for power as in Roman emperors, Spanish and English kings and Hitler for instance.
I also think globalization is inevitable unless there is a complete collapse of civilization. “Deglobalization” is just a temporary lull and reaction to the changes wrought by globalization IMHO. We were globalizing more than 3000 years ago by “The latest and most surprising discovery is strands of silk found in the hair of an Egyptian mummy from about 1000 B.C., long before regular traffic on the Silk Road and a good millennium before silk was previously thought to be used in Egypt.”
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Great set of comments!
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