From the Ashes of 2020
Every December, certain trend spotters, economists and analysts routinely prognosticate about the year ahead. I’m not generally in the habit of doing this because like many in the foresight field, I don’t believe that it’s my job to make predictions. Rather, I try to look to existing market trends, economic forces, research and aspects of human behavior in order to identify a range some of the probable futures which I and others can then prepare for and ideally steer in the direction of the future we would prefer.
But as everyone reading this knows, 2020 has not in any way been a typical year. We’ve had to deal with the death, loss and economic tragedy of a global pandemic. We found ourselves in the throes of civil unrest, as our nation once more was reminded of one of the worst sins of its past: institutional racism. We’ve seen vast regions of the country burn in conflagrations that will literally rewrite the textbooks with what we have learned about the physics of mega fires. Climate change continues to accelerate and scientists warn of mass extinction of many of the world’s species. Meanwhile, the global economy is in danger of plummeting off a precipice with all but its wealthiest citizens unlikely to recover for at least a decade.
Yet despite all of this upheaval, there are signs of light and hope everywhere. A worldwide effort by the scientific community has decoded the SARS-CoV2 virus, unraveled its actions on the body and created vaccines and therapeutics far more rapidly than previously possible. Though we’ve already lost far too many people to this virus and will continue to lose too many more in the months to come, we should see a substantial proportion of the world’s population immunized and protected during 2021. This will involve a level of logistics and distribution never before seen and will almost certainly lead to new processes and insights for managing resources and supply chains. Hopefully, it will also provide incentives for building more resilient and redundant systems and institutions for dealing with such threats in the future.
It is an ironic travesty that a country founded on words such as “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” still has not fully dealt with its racist past. However, the Black Lives Matter movement has returned this to the fore as a national conversation. It would be the height of naivete to think the many interwoven issues surrounding racism can be unraveled in 2021 or even the entire decade of the 2020s, but it is high time we addressed this complex subject with the ongoing focus that it so desperately deserves.
As terrible as the devastation from human-induced climate change was this year, it seemed to routinely be shoved aside by the many other news stories of the day. Nevertheless, there is a growing acceptance by both business and the general population that this is an all too real existential threat. Because of this, as members of the next generation of leaders begin to come to power, their influence on environmental policies will also grow. Ideas like the Green New Deal and youth-led climate activism could increasingly lead to a recalibration of our global priorities.
For similar reasons, we may begin to see inroads made in terms of the vast economic inequalities that exist in many parts of the world, including the U.S. The great uncoupling that has resulted in unsustainable disparity between the fortunes of Wall Street and Main Street only highlights the need for such realignment. Transforming how we handle taxation, health care coverage and education in the U.S. could go a long way toward making us a far more resilient nation, more capable of weathering those unexpected challenges we will inevitably face in the future. For instance, changes in the tax code could reduce the economic crashes that have become increasingly frequent in recent decades. Better health coverage and unemployment systems could lessen the impact of future catastrophes, including the next pandemic. A rethinking of how our education system is structured and supported, so that it encourages and promotes lifelong learning, would help address the workforce disruptions that will only grow as we continue to deal with a world driven by accelerating change and progress.
None of these areas and issues will be reformed in a mere year, but progress must begin somewhere. If we as individuals, as businesses, as a nation are to develop and thrive, then we must find ways to grow beyond our past and accept that building tomorrow is hard work. If we insist on wandering into the future with our eyes closed, we shouldn’t be surprised to find it doesn’t turn out the way we hoped it would. It isn’t enough to sit back and say, “this is how we’ve always done things.” This applies whether we are talking about how we treat our fellow human beings, how we care for our planet, or how we wash our hands and mask our breath. As the most adaptable species that has ever existed, we owe it to ourselves and to future generations to change and adjust as better and wiser strategies become discernible to us. I can think of no better way for us to avoid repeating the mistakes of this hopefully unforgettable past year.
