JOURNEY TO 2060+: A Foresight into the Coming Decades

Is there a meaning to history?

Can we discern recurring patterns over centuries, giving us a sense of the direction of things to come? More importantly, can we derive from these patterns insights into the threats and opportunities awaiting businesses and individuals, gaining practical guidance on how to navigate the coming decades?

As the conclusion of our Global Transition Crisis series, we’ll present the results of our research, collecting insights from analyses in evolutionary psychology (Spiral Dynamics, Cliodynamics, and generational cycles) intertwined with an analysis of the impact of technological disruptions.

While it cannot be a definitive answer—the future is never fully deterministic: it emerges as a chaotic system—we believe this approach provides an intriguing evolutionary model that can explain the current poly-crisis and its likely outcomes.

To explore this, we’ll first examine traditional visions of time. Then, we’ll explore new models brought by evolutionary psychology. Lastly, we’ll see how they can be enriched by analyzing the impacts of technological evolution.

For those who prefer to jump to the foresight conclusions, you can access the synthesis of the entire model in the final foresight timeline below. However, we recommend reviewing the full reasoning in all sections. This will not only help us understand what brought us to where we are in the cycle today, but it will also help us reasonably assess what is likely to come next.  

Starting Our Journey Through History: Assessing the Three Core Philosophies of Time

 So, is there a meaning to history? For millennia, shamans, priests, philosophers, and later scientists have tried to distinguish order from chaos, building systems as diverse as humanity but ultimately converging into three main visions of time: cyclic, ascendant, and declinist.

⁃ Cyclic philosophies, often grounded in agrarian worlds and inspired by the cycles of nature, interpret history as a movement of eternal return.
⁃ Ascendant philosophies, more common since the rise of advanced civilizations, expect the advent of an eschatological destiny, although they usually predict that it will be preceded by dramatic apocalyptic times, much like the hero’s journey deeply rooted in the human psyche.
⁃ Declinist philosophies, though rarer, emerge from time to time, typically in decaying societies, predicting the imminent collapse as a form of expiation for perceived sins.

In the long run, does one of these visions stand out?

 Looking at the past millennia, it would be difficult not to see progress. Despite the claims of traditionalists denouncing the loss of primordial traditions or collapsologists predicting the fall of humanity, it is hard to ignore humanity’s ascendant path, from hunter-gatherer tribes to empires, industrial nations, and today’s digital societies.

Of course, observers will rightly argue that progress occurs in phases of crisis and temporary regressions into chaos. Progress is far from linear. Secular and generational cycles, like those explored in cliodynamics (1) and Strauss-Howe (2) models, show how societies evolve in waves, alternating periods of progress and decay, much like the natural cycle of life.

But there is more. How can long-term progress be incorporated into these models? History is not just a cyclic story of rises and falls. From prehistoric humans to today’s hyperconnected commuters, incredible leaps have been made.

Interestingly, in the 1940s, an obscure psychology professor named Clare W. Graves hypothesized, after research with hundreds of students, that individuals, organizations, and societies develop through identical stages of values and worldviews. Each of these stages (symbolized by a color) represents a distinct phase of growth, a leveled approach ranging from survival-focused stages to community-oriented ones and beyond, echoing Abraham Maslow’s pyramid of needs but applied to whole societies rather than just individuals.

Developed and extended later by Graves’ followers—Don Edward Beck, Christopher Cowan, and Ken Wilber—the model, then called Spiral Dynamics (as stages spiral between individual and collective systems of value), emphasizes that progress through these levels is non-linear but dynamically influenced by changing life conditions.

Each stage is characterized by a major dilemma—and a limit—that must be solved, and major social structures are optimized for addressing these dilemmas: pre-tribal (purple), clanic (red), hierarchical (amber), meritocratic (orange), pluralistic (green), and transcendent (teal). Those familiar with social theories will recognize in this model one of the strongest Marxist theorems, pragmatically proven by simple historical observation: the economic infrastructure conditions the social superstructure.

Only once the dilemma and limit are solved can the group move to the next level. Each stage builds on the previous ones, integrating and transcending earlier stages.

As with Maslow’s pyramid of needs, both progress and regression are possible on the spiral, depending on changing conditions. Moving up or down the spiral means progressing or regressing in values and social structure. As we will see later, this is potentially strategic for our future.

How does this model enable us to explain how our societies have evolved?

 If we follow this line of analysis, human evolution trends appear quite straightforward!

In prehistoric times, as pre-humans discovered fire and progressively evolved into small groups of Homo sapiens, the major dilemma of early human populations was still basic survival: finding enough food to live.

 This led to simple social structures: hunter-gatherer tribes, nomadically wandering in search of subsistence. While humanity progressed along this path—developing shamanic cults, basic crafts, and primitive herding—it ultimately encountered a limit: the scarcity of resources in the wild environment

By the end of the prehistoric era, it’s estimated that around 6 million people lived on Earth in clanic societies, scattered in small groups and tribes. Some people still live this way today, in remote parts of the world.

The First Turning from Tribes to Kingdoms: Solving the Food Predictability Limit with the Agricultural Revolution

Twelve to ten thousand years ago, a breakthrough innovation occurred during the Neolithic Revolution in the Middle East’s Fertile Crescent: the domestication of wheat and barley. People realized that planting seeds and cultivating plants not only produced more predictable food sources but also increased food availability, freeing time for craftsmanship and trade.

While this innovation enabled population growth, it also brought new dangers: how to protect the crops from looters? This necessitated the development of a new class of warriors, probably successful looters who strengthened their grip on early communities by becoming protectors against other looters. Eventually, these "protectors" evolved into warlords and then kings through brutal conquest wars, establishing lordly fiefs and kingdoms.

During this era, to solve the safety dilemma, societies became increasingly hierarchical, dividing into three main functional orders: producers (farmers, herders, artisans, and merchants), warriors, and priests. Priests, initially evolved from shamans, came under the control of warrior-kings, who strengthened their hold on populations by portraying themselves as gods or their representatives.

This led to the rise of cities supporting trade and crafts, with societies growing more complex, particularly in the Middle East, India, and China. In all regions, kings and landlords realized that ensuring a level of welfare and justice ultimately favored economic growth, taxes, and, subsequently, their own wealth. Some kingdoms even transitioned into oligarchic regimes (like in the Greek city-states or early Roman Republic), although these were rare and limited in time and space.

Over time, competition and natural selection between kingdoms led to the emergence of vast religious empires, which used ‘universal’ religions (Mazdaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, etc.) to unite their diverse ethnicities under shared beliefs, giving rise to major civilizations. However, these empires ultimately hit the same limit: manpower.

Even though philosophy and science began to develop in the Western world, agrarian empires were inherently limited by human-powered agriculture. It is estimated that by the middle of the 15th century, at the height of this era, the world’s population was around 600 million, not much larger than the 400 million at the peak of the Roman Empire. Even today, in parts of emerging countries, hundreds of millions still live in agrarian, hierarchical communities.

The Second Turning from Kingdoms to Nations: Solving the Manpower Scalability Limit with the Industrial Revolution

The invention of industrial manufacturing, combined with new sources of energy—wind, water, coal—began to break the manpower limit in Europe during the 17th century. Early technologies, such as the mechanization of textiles and steam engines, while rudimentary, carried the germ of a fundamental revolution: replacing human labor with mechanical power.

From the 17th to the 19th century, industrialized production brought dramatic economic implications, but the social implications were even larger. While agricultural societies only needed a limited elite of warrior-rulers and priests, with nearly 90% of the population dedicated to farming, industrial societies required far more complex social organizations.

The importance of production, transportation, and commerce of goods grew exponentially. This required a much more educated population—not only entrepreneurs but also masses of educated workers and engineers, along with large ecosystems in finance, trade, retail, and support functions like transport, logistics, and accounting. This created the beginnings of what would eventually be called capitalism.

In this changing world, the rigid social stratifications and privileges inherited from the traditional agricultural world no longer made sense, as Enlightenment thinkers soon pointed out. Gradually, the former aristocracy—descended from warriors—was overtaken economically by the merchant, financial, and industrial bourgeoisie.

In this context, the traditional royal or imperial governance model, based on a religious or force-based grip on illiterate subjects, could no longer function effectively. Faith in traditional religions, which had so far helped control the masses, was wavering in the face of rising science. To maintain social order, it became more efficient to offer people a vision of meritocratic progress while fostering a collective sense of belonging to preserve concord and peace. The dilemma: favor voluntary community-building while allowing for individual liberty. A dilemma very well captured by the oxymoronic motto of the French Revolution: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity".

It’s no surprise that oligarchic democracy, an old Greek invention that was initially limited to a small ruling class, gradually emerged as the new lever of governance. Merchant, financial, and industrial elites began to wield real power in former kingdoms, which slowly evolved into democratic nation-states and republics.

This evolution occurred in fits and starts, through painful coups, revolutions, and social conflicts. Elections often masked the influence of competing lobbies, making democracy, at times, a deceptive game masking the iron law of oligarchy. Gustave Le Bon, in his "Psychology of Crowds", effectively emphasized how mobs are erratic and easily deceived...

Nevertheless, this revolution marked the beginning of the industrial era in Europe, the Americas, and much of the world. Novelists like Dickens, Hugo, Vallès, and Zola vividly captured the early stages of this era, depicting millions of poor workers pouring into cities, child labor in factories, and the violent Luddite revolts against mechanized industries.

During these disruptive times, things got worse for many, leading to utopians dreaming of the end of poverty. This era saw the rise of major social movements, unions, and revolutionary struggles, which shaped the 19th and 20th centuries.

However, this was also a time when everyone began to have a voice, and, crucially, when social mobility started to be possible. People could, through hard work, talent, and luck, change their destiny or that of their descendants, slowly creating precarious balances and improving living standards everywhere, eventually culminating in the pinnacle of the model: social democracy.

This model took different forms around the world, adapted to local cultural differences. It was more liberal in the West, which had more individualist cultures and relatively homogeneous ethnic or cultural nations. Elsewhere, in societies with more authoritarian cultural backgrounds and heterogeneous populations, it took on more authoritarian forms (3). Nevertheless, the industrial world evolved into the social democracies and consumption societies we know today.

This model offers an enlightening perspective on historical evolution, provided we avoid a common misconception. It is not a "rise in human consciousness," as some idealists argue, that enabled humanity to progress. Rather, it was technological innovation that allowed humanity to break through previous limitations and reach higher levels of social governance, all based on underlying social and psychological needs. As we mentioned earlier, it’s the infrastructure that shapes the social superstructure.

This doesn’t mean specific individuals or groups can’t reach higher levels of development than the overall society. There have always been pioneers. We’re merely stating that the general trajectory of society aligns with its mean level of development.

Where Are We Today in This Evolutionary Spiral, and What Might the Future Hold?

Our world has been shaped by the industrial era, which reached its peak in the 1960s with the rise of meritocratic, middle-class social democracies in the West, ultimately leading to today’s consumption-based society. This era enabled exponential population growth worldwide, thanks to abundant food production and advances in medicine, even in developing countries.

But as the industrial world evolved through successive technological revolutions—steam, railroads, electrochemistry, automotive, and aviation—it encountered a limit: growing complexity. This is the challenge that the development of information technology has been addressing since the 1970s.

The Third Turning from Nations to Global Networks: Solving the Operational Complexity Limit with the Digital Revolution

By enhancing cognitive power and enabling business collaboration anywhere, anytime, information technologies have radically optimized increasingly complex value chains through strategies like just-in-time. These technologies have also shifted a large portion of added value from production to design, management, delivery, and ultimately, finance, fostering globalization, offshoring, and financialization. This has accelerated wealth production but has also led to more individualistic, heterogeneous, "liquid" societies, as highlighted by sociologists like Zygmunt Bauman (4).

The Roots of the Current Polycrisis

 Where does it lead? To the fast-changing world we see every day, with:
⁃ Western democracies disintegrating as their traditional middle class is progressively crushed by offshore production, mass immigration, and automation. This is leading to fragmented multicultural societies gradually losing cohesion, breaking the traditional social democratic compromise. A phenomenon exacerbated by the Western generational and secular crises.
⁃ Developed Western states maintaining social peace by fleeing into debt-funded redistribution, increasingly dependent upon, controlled, and taken over by globalized industrial and financial oligarchic networks.
⁃ Emerging countries rising up the economic value chain, with their populations emerging from poverty—particularly in Asia—and beginning to challenge Western powers, but with their own oligarchies and development models.

This transformation is deeply highlighted by Branko Milanović’s elephant curve (5), demonstrating how we are moving toward highly unequal hourglass economies, benefiting both ends of the wealth spectrum at the expense of the Western middle class. All this is further complicated by rising tensions everywhere—demographically, resource-wise, economically, geopolitically—and by a hybrid world war between NATO and Russia, with China in the background.

Are today’s tensions just cyclical or structural? Some believe they are temporary. We are, indeed, at the confluence of cyclical crises: in the midst of a generational crisis and nearing the burst of the debt cycle, at the tipping point of the second secular cycle of the dominant player, the USA. This is also a time of shifting world order, with the rise of China as a challenger to US hegemony, threatening the USA’s military and financial supremacy—especially the reserve currency status of the dollar—with the development of the Belt and Road Initiative, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and all the BRICS political, defense, economic, and monetary initiatives (NDB, CRA, a possible BRICS payment system, and reserve currency in the future, etc.).

All these are reasons to anticipate a temporary retreat from US-driven globalization and to expect a decade of deep financial, economic, and military troubles, driven by growing societal and geopolitical tensions, populist movements (which explains the rise of Trump in the US and nationalist movements in Europe), worsening hybrid wars (including possible civil wars), and maybe revolutions.

This will likely lead to a surge in more authoritarian and isolationist regimes in a multipolar world. Some analysts call this time ‘deglobalization,’ but it is rather a period of ‘reglobalization,’ a world fragmented and reshaped into competing globalized zones.

Should we expect a rapid growth rebound after the crisis, a temporary return to protectionist regimes in many parts of the world, or even a possible escalating global war, as in previous generational or secular cycles? That is not guaranteed.

The First Strategic Challenge: Will the Population/Resources Equation Remain Sustainable?

First, world resource peaks are in sight—notably in fossil fuels, certain metals, and rare earth elements—just as population growth, though declining in OECD countries, remains uncontrolled in many parts of the Middle East and Africa (MEA). Even though an eventual demographic transition is probable (as indicated by recent UN forecasts (6)), a demographic increase of nearly 3 billion more people is still expected by 2100 in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. Many of these countries may lack the economic development, energy, and food supply needed to support this population explosion, making uncontrolled migration—particularly toward Europe—and conflicts almost inevitable.

Thus, continued progress along the "Spiral Dynamics" ladder is not assured. If resource consumption is not managed, if the development of alternative energy sources (especially nuclear and potentially fusion) is not accelerated, and if the demography of several MEA countries remains unchecked, significant parts of the world could regress in the coming decades. This is the prediction of some futurists, who foresee the rise of eco-millennialism, or even a regression into a new Middle Age before the century ends.

The Second Strategic Challenge: Will Stable Governance Be Maintained Amid Geopolitical and Technological Disruptions?

Second, assuming we meet these challenges, the Schumpeterian creative destruction phase of the digital revolution is just beginning, threatening to radically transform our economic and social environments. Whereas the agricultural and industrial eras favored scale, the digital era is decoupling scale from performance, rendering the pure demographic advantage through AI, automation, and robotics.

Digitalization favors agile, AI-powered collaboration, fostering new types of slim, networked, gig-based organizations. These are distributed in small teams, reconfiguring in real time based on market trends and demand, and can outcompete traditional large structures in many high-value creation domains (though scale and size still matter in basic material domains like commodities).

At the same time, the "winner-takes-all" effect of the networked economy favors the creation of huge financial and digital ecosystems, platforms, oligopolies, or monopolies in globalized zones, increasingly supported by artificial intelligence. These ecosystems orchestrate lightweight, agile teams of suppliers and networks of gig workers, mirroring how digital behemoth companies are gaining power in our economy today.

This has dramatic implications, aligning with our extrapolated "Spiral Dynamics" model. After the relatively egalitarian, social democratic phase of the industrial era, are we now cyclically heading toward much more inegalitarian, hyper-controlled societies structured in antagonistic blocks? Are we moving toward "hourglass societies on steroids"?

- At the top are high-net-worth organizations and individuals in the star economy, along with their close collaborators, holding most of the wealth and power.
- In the middle, an impoverished mass of smaller organizations and gig workers, assembling and disassembling on the fly, facing massive offshore competition.
- At the bottom, an even larger, growing population of low-skilled workers, often globalized through massive immigration, performing tasks that cannot easily be automated or handled by machines (such as low-value services)—some of which will eventually be threatened by AI-powered robotics, though not in the immediate future.

In some ways, democracy was a natural byproduct of Western industrial societies, which required the collaboration of masses of educated workers, organized within relatively homogeneous cultural nations competing against each other. This led to the emergence of a strong middle class. But is this system still sustainable in globalized economic blocs, where many transnational corporations have more international reach, power, and influence than many nation-states? Where offshoring and mass migration put downward pressure on wages and fragment populations into multiple transnational communities and social archipelagos? Where artificial intelligence and robotics not only render the middle class dispensable but also ease population control?

In this context, isn’t the promise of "universal democracy" made by some futurists more of a mirage? In 2011, American economist Dani Rodrik stated in his famous "trilemma" that combining economic globalization, national sovereignty, and democracy was impossible, and that only two of these three objectives could ever be fully achieved at once. But can even globalization and democracy coexist when, due to mass migrations over recent decades, a large portion of the population living in the most developed Western nations shares no common culture or sense of belonging?

One might argue that it’s just a matter of time before cultures re-harmonize and shared values emerge. But it took centuries for modern nations to form in the developed world, built on centuries-old relatively homogeneous cultural and religious foundations. Our modern digital era does not favor convergence; rather, it favors divergence—of communities and "tribes" scattered across national boundaries, as highlighted by key sociologists such as Putnam or Maffesoli (7) since the 1980s. Moreover, we are in a time of secular crisis in the West, marked by deep social fragmentation.

In this context, is universal democracy our future? Or, on the contrary, is a return to some form of technocratic or imperial governance—at least in the next few decades—within several large multipolar blocs combining hegemon, client states, and multiple cultural communities the more likely scenario? Will authoritarian oligarchic regimes guide heterogeneous populations?

It’s no surprise that Rome transitioned from a republic to an empire when it grew beyond its Mediterranean geographic origins, incorporating multiple barbarian nations from Northern Europe, and when mass migration of diverse populations made imperial rule inevitable.

This transition to what some might call "tech-feudalist" societies may take time. Just as the light from dead stars continues to shine decades after they’ve exploded, many old nation-states in the West will continue to exist formally, with the appearance of democracy. To paraphrase French sociologist Emmanuel Todd, we may still live in a world of "zombie" democratic nation-states, in social-technocracies that simply mask the reality of complex, competing imperial and oligarchic networks underneath.

Of course, parts of these imperial constructions may collapse when debt levels, the cost of complexity, and elite decay cross a threshold. Just as the Western Roman Empire disintegrated in 400 AD (giving rise to multiple barbaric kingdoms that fought to resurrect the prestige and power of Rome), internal dislocations and civil wars remain possible, as highlighted by cliodynamics founder Peter Turchin and economist Ray Dalio. As we’ve pointed out throughout the Global Transition Crisis series, the EU, as the most dysfunctional zone today, may be particularly at risk.

However, the ultimate shift to competing empires 2.0—with multiple client states, small city-states, and micro-nations in between, and troubled fringes in the middle—seems to be the most probable scenario for the coming decades. Power will progressively shift from finance to digital oligarchies—whether private or mega state-owned—able to exert strong "social credit" control over the masses and a more programmable, controllable digitized economy. Some libertarians hope that Web3 technologies will reverse centralized powers, but the chances of success are far from certain.

These dynamics will likely vary significantly across different geographic zones, each with its own cultural and political background—whether more libertarian or collectivist—as highlighted by pioneering sociologists of civilizations like Emmanuel Todd. The West will likely be dominated by the US, the Asia-Pacific region (and perhaps parts of the MEA) under Chinese influence, with Russia seeking to maintain its grip on Eurasia. Other growing powers, such as India and Turkey, will play their own cards as unaligned actors. Meanwhile, middle-rank players—Indonesia, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and others—will play regional roles, all influenced by and influencing transnational networks, usually tied to a specific zone but with some remaining partly global in the multipolar world of 2050 and beyond.

Does this new multipolar world—more conflictual, unequal, and authoritarian—mean that growth opportunities will shrink?

Not at all! Paradoxically, such hourglass economies and networked social structures distribute power across all levels. At the top, oligarchic control rises, bringing with it enrichment opportunities linked to proximity to power, policy choices, money supply, and the ability to drive ecosystem platform strategies. In the middle and at the bottom, opportunities also grow. Even though competition is fierce, you can leverage the network effect and play either adaptive or visionary strategies in fast-changing business ecosystems, provided you play by the rules. In a multipolar world, there may even be new opportunities to position oneself as a middleman. As history has shown, it is often at the fringes of competing powers that the most opportunities arise.

Exponential changes create exponential opportunities, provided you understand the game, the chessboard, the players, and what can and cannot be done.

So, is this the mid-term future that awaits us? Time will tell in the coming years of the Global Transition Crisis.

If we overcome these challenges, what might we foresee over the long term?

 If human behavior programming, deeply ingrained in our DNA and based on millions of years of evolutionary selection, was well-adapted for survival in small hunter-gatherer tribes, it is less suited for today’s always-on, fast-changing technological environments. Our human flaws are well highlighted in numerous psychology and sociology studies:
⁃ Our limited cognitive abilities, which make our archaic reptilian and limbic systems dominate our advanced neocortex, make us prone to various biases—loss aversion, confirmation, anchoring, etc.—putting us at risk in technologically advanced societies, as demonstrated by the exploitation of these flaws by social media's dark designs and the attention economy.
⁃ Our rather short lifespan, which limits our ability to progress.
⁃ Our natural selection process, well-adapted in prehistory, but now leading to significant risks of dysgenia in modern societies.

Over the last millennia, centuries, and decades, multilevel cultural selection has partially mitigated this mismatch. However, the rapid acceleration of social change and the rise of tech-driven societies may make this mismatch increasingly difficult to manage. General Artificial Intelligence could be on the horizon within a few decades, if not sooner. How do we control the capabilities of machines that may soon dramatically surpass us?

Thus, the rise of projects focused on human augmentation, both physical and cognitive, with prosthetics, neurotech, and ultimately, genetic enhancement.

So, what will the next disruptive paradigm be? It will likely be bioengineering—the Promethean dream of creating a new human, taking control of human evolution.

This Promethean dream has already begun to emerge from the depths of Silicon Valley laboratories and in many other places around the world, from Beijing to Cambridge, Heidelberg, Tokyo, Paris, or Singapore.

Will some of us, in the future, become human-created ‘titans’ or demigods? This could lead to dramatic promises as well as dramatic risks of bio-controlled tyrannies, potentially resulting in the enslavement of remaining original humans.

As brain-computer interface technologies mature, could they revolutionize human communication and foster the development of true collective intelligence? Will this lead to some kind of human ‘hives’ as we head again towards a more collective phase in the Spiral Dynamics cycle?

Perhaps the next stage in the development of humanity will be the massive exploration and colonization of space, starting with the solar system and possibly extending to the stars in the future.

It is a Promethean dream that may result in success, dramatic failure, or likely both at the same time.

We are not there yet. If the future is indeed nearer than we think, it may not fully unfold until the late 2050s or early 2060s. We are still in the midst of the digital revolution, and at the epicenter of the generational, secular, and technological Global Transition Crisis. The next decade will be a highly strategic one and will decide our fate.

And it’s up to us to steer it in one direction or another.

As companies, as individuals, will we be the victims of this transition? Will we merely survive, or will we thrive?

As popular wisdom states, if we don’t take control of our future, someone else will...

This final post in our initial 'Global Transition Crisis' series summarizes our foresight on what may lie ahead in the coming decades. We will then continue with our 'Anti-Predictions' series and launch a new practical series on 'Antifragile' strategies. Click here to subscribe >

'THE DAY AFTER' is the thirteenth post in our 'Global Transition Crisis' series. The previous posts of this series, 'ANTI-PREDICTIONS 202x+", "ESCAPE VELOCITY", "GREAT RESET", "DEJA VU", "HISTORY'S FORMULA", "UNCHARTED TERRITORY", "ESCAPING FROM ZOMBIELAND", "10x MOONSHOTS", "META HUMANS", "UNIVERSE 25", "THE UNCANNY VALLEY", and 'CHAOS IS A LADDER' can be found here >

_{(1) Cliodynamics is an interdisciplinary field that uses mathematical models and data analysis to study the long-term dynamics of historical societies. By combining history, sociology, and economics, it aims to make predictions about the future of societies based on historical trends.See our previous post: "HISTORY’S FORMULA: is it time for psychohistory?"}

_{(2) The Strauss-Howe generational model posits that history moves in recurring cycles, roughly every 80 years, divided into four generational archetypes. These cycles influence culture, politics, and economics, with each "Fourth Turning" marked by a major crisis, reshaping the social order. The theory aims to explain historical rhythms and predict future societal shifts. See our previous post "DÉJÀ VU: is our past our future?"}

_{(3) In "Lineages of Modernity: A History of Humanity from the Stone Age to Homo Americanus", French sociologist Emmanuel Todd demonstrates that family structures shape the evolution of civilizations by influencing political ideologies, social hierarchies, and economic systems. He categorizes family types (authoritarian, egalitarian, nuclear, etc.) and links them to the development of different societies. For example, authoritarian families foster hierarchical, centralized governments, while egalitarian families promote democratic values. Todd’s thesis suggests that these underlying familial patterns are crucial to understanding political and social changes across civilizations.}

_{(4) Zygmunt Bauman was a Polish sociologist best known for his concept of 'liquid modernity,' which describes contemporary society as constantly shifting and uncertain. He argued that modern life is characterized by rapid change, fluid identities, and unstable social, economic, and political systems. His research explores the effects of globalization, consumerism, and individualism on social cohesion and personal relationships.}

_{(5) Branko Milanović's elephant curve graphically illustrates the distribution of global income growth from 1988 to 2008. It shows that the middle class in emerging economies experienced significant income growth (the elephant's "back"), while the global poor saw little change (the "feet"). Meanwhile, the lower middle class in wealthy countries stagnated (the "trunk dip"), and the richest 1% gained the most (the "trunk rise"). This curve highlights growing income inequality between global elites and middle-income workers in developed nations.} 

_{(6) Recent projections from the United Nations' World Population Prospects suggest that humanity's population is expected to peak at around 10.3 billion in the mid-2080s before starting to decline.} 

_{(7) Robert Putnam and Michel Maffesoli both explore modern society's fragmentation. Putnam, in "Bowling Alone", emphasizes the decline of social capital and community bonds in the face of individualism and technological change, leading to societal disengagement. Maffesoli, in "The Time of the Tribes", highlights the rise of "neo-tribes," fluid, small, identity-based groups formed around shared interests or lifestyles, reflecting a shift from collective societal structures to tribalization}