[Flagged up to me by my brother, Joe Taylor, asking what I thought – I’d value contributions.
Original article about this paper:
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By Nafeez Ahmed
2024, Foresight: The Journal of Futures Studies
Planetary phase shift theory offers a new collective anticipatory intelligence framework for foresight study and practice, formalising the notion that humanity has arrived at an unprecedented historical and geological turning point. It is based on a transdisciplinary integration of C. S. Holling’s adaptive cycle with phase transition theory at societal and civilisational scales. This framework is used to assess empirical data across energy, transport, food and information, revealing that the proliferation of multiple global crises across earth and human systems is related to the last stages of the life-cycle of global industrial civilisation. The planetary phase shift implies that humanity has arrived at an evolutionary turning point that is either the precursor for collapse, or a new civilisational life-cycle representing the next stage in the material and cultural evolution of the human species. This life-cycle could comprise a networked ‘postmaterialist’ ecological civilisation unleashing an unprecedented possibility space for post-carbon prosperity within planetary boundaries. Yet its success requires a fundamental reorganisation of the governance, economy, politics, culture, worldview and value-system of our societies, guiding the design and acceleration of key technologies.
“Planetary phase shift” as a new systems framework to navigate the evolutionary transformation of human civilisation
Systems Community of Inquiry 