On October 8, the Valdai Club held an expert discussion, titled “On the Threshold of the Great Reassembly of the 21st Century: Paths to the Future and Russia's Stakes”. In his opening remarks, Fyodor Lukyanov, Research Director of the Valdai Discussion Club, noted that the world is now undergoing a transformation and against this background it is necessary to analyse long-term trends without extrapolating the current state of affairs to the future.
“We are now entering a period of turbulence. The world is simply feverish,” said MGIMO professor Andrei Bezrukov. "The principles on which the old world order and the old technological order were based will no longer work." In his opinion, it is necessary to be ready for such a future, when the world will be “reassembled” on a new basis. One should try to understand what values and what systems will serve as this foundation. “Our task is to help decision-makers to understand the problems of the future,” he added. The expert suggested that during the transition process. the competition between blocs and alliances may “reach the level of fighting”, but the result will still be a much more humane, global and resource-efficient model.
“We understand that this future is ahead - this is a huge minefield,” stressed Pavel Luksha, founder and a director of the Global Education Futures initiative, and member of the ASI Expert Council, noting that there was nothing similar to the current challenges in previous eras. In his opinion, a paradigmatic shift is now taking place - a reboot of the economic, social and cultural structure, reminiscent of the transition from an agrarian society to an industrial-level one. He pointed to the changing nature of war, implying the growing importance of working with consciousness and mass behaviour, and the transition from a consumption economy to an economy of wealth and self-realisation.
Nikolay Yutanov, Head of the “Designing the Future” Research Group, spoke about the tools and models for long-term forecasting. He emphasised that on a long horizon, it is impossible to predict situational, eventful things, but it is possible to study qualitative changes in the world, and briefly presented a model for the development of even longer-term forecasts, based on taking into account the processes of the planetary level and the influence of a number of global factors, from biospheric processes to cosmic ones. “In order to comprehend the entire package of tasks, we need a certain way out beyond planet Earth,” the analyst concluded. At the moment, in his opinion, this may imply the development of a new type of orbital monitoring.
