A Revolutionary Age
The world is entering a revolutionary age—an age marked by ceaseless change and extraordinary disruption and dislocation!
Severe sovereign debt issues… ongoing economic distress… increasing social unrest… upcoming resource wars… invisible power structures… hyper-efficient warfare… transnational crime… terrorism… privatized armies… weapons of mass destruction…the privatization of emergency management… the erosion of nation-states… the ascendant power of individuals and corporations… the rise of virtual states… superbugs… increasingly meaningless borders… environmental degradation… demographic bulges… growing urbanization… climate variability (no, I do not mean climate change)… high technology and disruptive breakthroughs… universal connectivity… global grid volatility… genetically modified plants and animals that are altering the DNA on this planet and threatening our food source… the advent of trans-humanism—the merger of man and machine… the singularity—“The theoretical emergence of super-intelligence through technological means”… the serious prospect of severe space weather that cripples electric grids for years sending vast swaths of a continent back into the 19th century… a rising incidence of natural disasters… radioactive contamination of the Pacific Ocean and the Northern Hemisphere from the ongoing meltdown of the Fukushima reactors… and several years of fiscally record-breaking natural disasters—these are the powerful, disruptive and often violent forces that confront us as nations, corporations and individuals at the dawn of the 21st century.
It will become apparent as you read through the information in all of Blackbox’s research areas (which will be added to on a long-term, ongoing basis) that many of the forces I just listed have already begun to challenge our traditional security structures so much so that it has resulted in a significant loss of faith among a contingent of citizens around the world. And now, a parallel, decentralized security structure is slowly emerging.
This is inevitable because of four very important realities:
- Lack of Resilience: Ceaseless, disruptive change is the order of the day and the complex systems that underpin modern life have little resilience to withstand the increasing volatility.
- Outdated Mindset: Our mindset is outdated—even our leaders fail to understand this new environment. The result—a tragic paradox… many of our attempts to make the world safer end up making it more dangerous!
- Destructive Weaponry & Volatile Technologies: Our high level of technology gives us unprecedented access to highly destructive weaponry and volatile technologies that are capable of destroying life on this planet as we know it. Never before in recorded human history has there been the ability to, literally, destroy the world.
- Interconnectedness & Fragile Systems: Our global interconnectedness and the fragile, complex systems we rely on can cause once isolated, local disasters to mutate into regional or global catastrophes.
The world is entering a revolutionary age—an age marked by ceaseless change and extraordinary disruption and dislocation!
What’s more our high level of technology and global connectivity make these ‘change epidemics’ pervasive and lightning fast.
- One bank fails—BAM—100s fail sparking a global financial crisis! (Great Economic Recession 2008)
- One virus mutates—BAM—a global pandemic with 20-40 million dead! (Spanish flu 1918)
- One tree branch falls in Ohio—BAM—55 million people are without power for 2 days! (Northeast Power Outage 2003)
- One political cartoon—BAM—riots spread to 3 continents! (Danish Cartoon Scandal 2006)
- One powerful earthquake—BAM—3 nuclear reactors go into full meltdown spewing a plume of radioactive material that floats around the northern hemisphere within 18 days and succeeds in contaminating the Pacific Ocean for decades (that’s a minimum). A once-in-a-1000-year event, it also succeeds in even shifting the earth’s axis slightly which will affect global weather patterns and the length of night and day. Fukushima Disaster 2011)
- One man, Mohamed Bouazizi, self-immolates in Tunisia—BAM— a revolutionary wave of protests, civil wars and riots spread throughout Africa and the Middle East toppling governments in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen. (Arab Spring 2010-2011)
- One powerful earthquake—BAM— 100s of thousands of unsuspecting people are killed by a tsunami. (Indian Ocean tsunami 2010)
- One national bank fails—BAM—all private savings accounts within the country are on the chopping block! (Cyprus Crisis 2013)
Former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, recently noted our unique point in history: never before have so many revolutions and transformations taken place in so many disparate parts of the world—yet, they’ve been made instantaneously accessible via the latest communication systems.
Basically—the world is not becoming more stable, it is becoming MORE COMPLEX, UNPREDICTABLE, and VOLATILE!
But, it’s not just that—it’s that the rules are changing… and they are changing fast!
And, if we don’t understand this new environment then we will be victims to it.
And when I say victim, I mean victim to natural and man-made disasters, poverty, disease, sickness, even death.
So, settle in for your first REVOLUTIONARY STORY.