This is my first blogpost about the Millennium Project´s report, The 2011 State of the Future. I will come back in a coming post to discuss some of its principal themes, or “challlenges”, from the specific point of view of the Paradigm Shift.
The Millennium Project is an amazing multinational undertaking that is now in its fifteenth year. It has forty so called Nodes spread across the globe, and each of these is headed by a “Node Chair”. Together they collect a wealth of official facts, mostly from government or institutional statistics, as the basis for a broad analysis of the ongoing evolution of our global society, with projections for the future.
The Project Director, Jerome C. Glenn, has recently presented The 2011 State of the Future, this year´s annual report, as “another extraordinary rich destillation of information for thought leaders, decisionmakers, and all those who care about the world and its future.”
Since I qualify, at least as someone who cares deeply about the world and its future, I jumped at the opportunity to write a brief review of the report in my blog.
The Millennium Project is a collective effort by hundreds of “thoughtful and creative people”, running into several thousand participants over the 15 years it has existed. However, it´s headed and led by a coordinating triumvirate of “fire souls” as they might be called in Sweden. They are the project leader Jerome C. Glenn, who like me is a professional member of the World Future Society, the Senior Fellow Theodore J. Gordon, and the Director of Research Elizabeth Florescu.
The 2011 State of the Future identifies the following 15 global challenges:
1. Sustainable development and climate change
2. Clean water
3. Population and resources
4. Democratization
5. Long-term perspectives
6. Global convergence of IT
7. Rich-poor gap
8. Health issues
9. Capacity to decide
10. Peace and Conflict
11. Status of women
12. Transnational organized crime
13. Energy
14. Science and technology
15. Global ethics
Each of these is dedicated a chapter in the report, which has 106 pages. It is then complemented by a CD containing 8,500 pages with additional information.
This is how the report is presented:
“The 2011 State of the Future is an overview of our global situation, problems, solutions, and prospects for the future. It is especially critical for senior executives, thought leaders, strategic planners, public policy experts, policy advisors, non-profit organizations, teachers/professors of world issues, and anyone interested in a global overview of our prospects for the future.”
In other words, exactly the same people who ought to read my blog every week and routinely consult me for their planning and decisions.
In the Foreword to the report, the triumvirate states,
“The Millennium Project´s diversity of opinions and global view is ensured by the Nodes – groups of individuals and organizations that interconnect global and local perspectives.”
Then it goes on to formulate its objective thus:
“Through its research, publications, conferences, and Nodes, The Millennium Project helps to nurture an international collaborative spirit of free inquiry and feedback for increasing collective intelligence to improve social, technical, and environmental viability for human development.”
I totally and wholeheartedly concur with this objective, and I am extremely impressed by both the scope and the quality of this gigantic undertaking.
Having said that, I see this report as too dependent on official government information. I understand the need for such an approach, and the difficulty of justifying any other, extra-official sources of information. However, in actual fact this exposes the report to some blind spots and some twisted perceptions in the assessment of Humanity´s true future path and potential. The reason for this is at least two-fold:
First, there is the problem of common paradigm blindness. Those responsible for the official facts, figures and opinions are unable to see beyond their traditional limiting beliefs, and therefore leave out all information regarding possibilities and aspects that are not part of the reigning old paradigm.
It should be pointed out, though, that the report itself is not at all paradigm blind to the same degree. It shows a growing holistic awareness that has not been present in government planning anywhere I know. Its authors are aware of the ongoing paradigm shift, and they stress, for instance, that the 15 global challenges are interdependent, and that an improvement in one, makes it easier to address the other and vice versa.
But it goes without saying that if the underlying information is deficient or false, it must necessarily condition the conclusions made from them.
The second reason why official sources of information maybe unsatisfactory is that many governments and international agencies are these days run on covert political-economic agendas, often dictated by global corporate interests. And that makes some of them “cook” their statistics and other information to promote these agendas, without regard to the facts.
An international minefield of vested – or wrested – interests, which I have investigated and where I know my facts, is health, and particularly so the HIV and AIDS issues. I therefore must regret that the State of the Future reports seem to unquestioningly accept the totally fabricated numbers of the corrupt official version.
As we saw, the Millennium Project makes the appealing claim that it ensures diversity of opinions and global view. However, in the case of the AIDS and HIV issues, I see no mention of the existing strong case against the official dogma, brought to the fore by thousands of so called dissidents, among whom many scientists, physicians, biochemists etc., who are absolute tops in their field. Since both medical institutions and media have been bought by the mentioned interests and threatened with loss of funding and worse, the opinion of these many top scientists have been suppressed and ridiculed.
The first fact is that AIDS – that does exist but is easily cured – is not caused by any virus, and is not an infectious disease at all. The second fact is that HIV has never been proven to exist, and that the tests are 100% bogus and cannot, under any circumstances, determine the presence of a never encountered virus.
The only thing the tests may show – with different results at different laboratories and in different countries depending on the varying standards used – is the presence of unspecific antibodies to any of around 70 different exposures. Among these are hepatitis, tuberculosis, the flue, practically all kinds of vaccinations, and even normal pregnancies. None of them has anything to do with AIDS. Besides, having antibodies to infections is a good thing, not a bad one.
The AIDS – HIV hoax is one of the worst scandals in human history, where science, medicine, ethics, common sense and simple decency have all been taken hostage by a politically protected mafia for a complex of obscured reasons, one of which is obviously to – literally! – “make a killing” on the lethal, very expensive and fraudulently named “anti-retrovirals”. But there is much more to this turbid story than meets the eye.
So, dear Millennium Project, next year please include the truth about HIV and AIDS in order to live up to your excellent claims!
As for you, my dear readers, I invite you to stay tuned for my next instalment about The 2011 State of the Future, where I will discuss some of the 15 challenges from the point of view of the Paradigm Shift.
Till then, keep calm, cool and collected through hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions and pandemics – it´s like homeopathic treatments: first symptoms get worse, then they disappear, and you are cured. So don´t despair!
Dr. Jens
P.S. If you want to go to the website of the Millennium Project, here is the link: http://www.millennium-project.org/
