Of All Possible Future Worlds: Global Trends, Values, and Ethics

Abstract

What will our world be like in the next 15–20 years? According to policymakers in the US, EU, Russia, and NATO, trends may bend in many potential directions, ranging from the rise of technologically empowered individuals; to an aging, more crowded, urbanized, and resource-stressed planet; to a more equal, interdependent, and interconnected borderless citizenry; or to a competitive stage where once developing nation-states will increasingly co-define the contours of a no less divided globe. In the end, though, some future worlds may be freer than others. Some less just. Others possibly more peaceful, and still others more diverse. We must work toward a logic of one world to understand what will be possible, impossible, and necessary. The ethical choice for us then will be to determine what degree of our values we can achieve not only in the next fifteen years, but also, as we have in the past, for the longer future of humanity to come.

Keywords: global trends, values, ethics, political theory, philosophy, global governance, US, EU, Russia, NATO, future, policy planning