THE RISE AND FALL OF CIVILIZATIONS - LESSONS LEARNT FROM HISTORY TO CREATE A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

Civilizations begin to fall apart once they start losing the ability to find a creative response to major challenges. Often, a failure in creativity follows a period of major civilization successes. After two hundred years of scientific and technological development, and wealth accumulation, we should therefore be cautious. Maybe we are the last generation of the old civilization, and the first generation of the new civilization. It is important to diagnose the key patterns of changes the moment they emerge so that we can later influence them. There are many signs indicating we are now entering the stage of a civilization crisis, e.g. an indebted and stagnating economy, an increase in social atomization, special interest groups whose influence outweighs the public interest, an enormous bureaucracy, and an inability to respond to local and global environmental problems. The crucial challenge is to find a new "shared sense" - a new sense of reality, human identity and social purpose, which we could share and which would respect our radically changing circumstances. If we are to ponder the challenge to find a new shared sense thoroughly and honestly, we cannot avoid the elementary questions accompanying the pilgrimage of human life: Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? Probably the most important event to have happened in the last 2,000 years is the fact that we are beginning to know our own story - from the Big Bang to the present, including indications of the future. The future of our civilization and/or society is not predetermined or set in stone. We have the freedom of choice.