" And there are epochs of change when upheavals occur that, in extreme cases, can affect the very roots of humanity, ”the philosopher Karl Jaspers once wrote..

Our era is definitely an era of upheavals. At a time when Europe is at war and the world is counting the losses from the deadliest pandemic in modern history, a sinister spirit reigns on earth. After years of economic upheaval, social unrest and political instability, it has become common to feel that the world has simply been thrown adrift, like a ship without a rudder in a terrible storm..

" Humanity is now facing a heap of challenges unlike any other in its history.. Climate change is rapidly changing the conditions of life on our planet. Tensions over Ukraine and Taiwan have revived the specter of conflict between nuclear powers. And the rapid development of artificial intelligence raises serious concerns about the risk of a global catastrophe caused by it,” writes Jerome Ros, a political economist, sociologist and historian at the London School of Economics, in an article for the New York Times..

He explains that such an unsettling situation requires a new perspective to understand the rapidly changing world and figure out where we can go.. Instead, humanity is offered two familiar but very different visions of the future: a doomsday narrative that sees the apocalypse everywhere, and a progress narrative that claims it is the best of all possible worlds..

Both views are equally convincing in their claims and equally deceptive in their analysis.. The truth is that none of us can really know where things are headed.. The crisis of our time has opened the future,” writes Ros.

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Soothsayers would probably not agree with this.. From their point of view, humanity is now on the verge of catastrophic changes that will inevitably culminate in the collapse of modern civilization and the end of the world as we know it.. This sentiment is reflected in the growing number of doomsday preparations, billionaire bunkers and post-apocalyptic television series.. While it may be tempting to dismiss such cultural phenomena as fundamentally frivolous, they reflect an important aspect of the zeitgeist, revealing deep-seated concerns about the fragility of the existing order..

Today, these fears can no longer concern only fanatical marginal survivors with weapons in their hands.. The relentless pressure of threatening crises unfolding amid flash floods and wildfires is steadily pushing apocalyptic sentiment into the mainstream.. When even the head of the UN warns that sea level rise could lead to " One poll showed that more than half of young people now believe that "

At the same time, in recent years there has been a revival of a completely different type of narrative.. An example of this is the many bestsellers and viral TED talks that downplay the challenges we face and insist on the inexorable march of human progress.. If doomsday thinkers worry endlessly that things will get much worse, then the prophets of progress claim that things are only getting better - and will probably continue into the future..

The Panglossian scenario drawn by these new optimists naturally attracts defenders of the status quo. If things are really going for the better, then obviously there is no need for transformational changes to solve the most pressing problems of our time.. As long as we stick to the script and keep faith in the saving qualities of human ingenuity and technological innovation, all our problems will eventually solve themselves..

These two visions, at first glance, seem diametrically opposed. But they are really two sides of the same coin.. Both perspectives emphasize one set of trends over the other.. Optimists, for example, often cite misleading poverty reduction statistics as evidence that the world is getting better.. Pessimists, by contrast, tend to take the worst-case scenarios of climate change or financial collapse and present those real possibilities as inevitable facts..

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Ros admits it's easy to understand the appeal of such one-sided stories.. Humans seem to naturally prefer to impose clear and linear narratives on a chaotic and unpredictable reality.. It is much more difficult to live with ambiguity and inconsistency. However, this selective focus leads to the fact that our ideas about the world are false..

“In order to truly comprehend the complex nature of our time, we must first of all accept its most terrifying aspect: its fundamental openness.. It is this radical uncertainty - not knowing where we are and what lies ahead - that gives rise to such existential anxiety, ”the expert advises..

Anthropologists have a name for this disturbing type of experience: liminality.. It sounds a little technical, but it captures an important aspect of the human condition.. Derived from the Latin for " In a traditional coming-of-age ritual, for example, it marks the point at which a teenager is no longer considered a child, but is not yet recognized as an adult.. Ask any teenager: this state of suspension can be a very disturbing period that is difficult to survive..

“We ourselves are in the midst of a painful transition, a kind of interregnum, as the Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci called it, between the dying old world and the new one that is trying to be born.. Such epochal shifts inevitably hide the danger. But for all their destructive potential, they are also full of possibilities.. As the 19th-century historian Jakob Burkgardt once remarked, great upheavals in world history can be seen " “The crisis should be seen as a new point of growth,” the article says..

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As soon as we accept this Janus-like nature of our time, both scary and at the same time generating, a completely different vision of the future appears.. In this way, history can no longer be seen as a straight line, heading either up towards gradual improvement or down towards inevitable collapse.. Instead, we see phases of relative calm, which are interrupted from time to time by periods of great upheaval.. These crises can be devastating, but they are also the engine of history..

“Progress and catastrophe, these binary opposites, are really connected into a single whole.. Together they engage in an endless dance of creative destruction, forever forging new paths and spiraling into the unknown.. Our era of upheaval may well lead to a global catastrophe or even the collapse of modern civilization - but it can also open up opportunities for transformational change,” says Ross..

He is confident that we can already see this conflicting dynamic in action.. The pandemic that killed millions and nearly brought about economic collapse also empowered workers and boosted government spending on a vaccine that could soon give us a cure for cancer.. Likewise, the great turf war in Europe, which displaced millions of people and sparked a global energy crisis, is now unwittingly accelerating the transition to renewable energy, helping to fight climate change..

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“The solutions we are looking for today – regarding global peace, the transition to clean energy and the regulation of AI – will one day form the basis of a new world order. Of course, it is impossible to predict what this development of events will lead to.. We only know that our civilizational rite of passage opens the door to the future.. It depends on us whether we will pass through them,” the article says..