by Rakesh Kapoor
Introduction
The four scenarios on the pessimist-optimist axis presented by William Halal and Michael Marien are helpful constructs to envision the future of global reality in the medium term. The contrasting assessments of Halal and Marien give us a good sense of the wide range of opinion on how the world will look like in the next few decades. My position is much closer to Marien’s “Four I” scenario (Infoglut, Ignorance, Indecision, and Inadequacy), as I believe that we have enough knowledge and tools available, but we do not have the political-social leadership and collective capacity to act adequately and quickly enough. Bigger than the huge budgetary deficits in the developed economies is the “wisdom deficit” we face globally.(continue…)