Let me start with an appeal: do not make a Cassandra out of me. Why such a fearful
e-paper?
The compulsions were many and some of them were quite powerful. I am sure the coming years are going to be crisis-ridden like never before. Look intently through the telescope of current affairs, rapidly developing events and fast-track happenings, you are sure to spot all the potent signs of an approaching cataclysmic crisis.
The future is ominous, threatening and looming large like millions of life-threatening Damocles’ swords. Looming so over everywhere. You can see them wherever you cast your glances.
The hyperactive Middle Kingdom of China seems to be going overboard taking the whole world down with it on its chosen path of self-destruction. Meanwhile, egged on by Chinese ideological props, the Hermit Kingdom of North Korea is mouthing N-bomb threats and looking at global relations through glasses tinted with irrational whims and fancies, most of them bordering on the megalomaniacal.
Look a bit further. Faith-possessed religious terror groups are proliferating in Asia, Africa and increasingly so even in the traditionally-tolerant Indian sub-continent. Alongside, a deluge of scared and shelter-seeking migrants from such troubled nations are pouring into supposedly-safe countries in neighbouring continents.
The future seems really fearful!
That fear is not restricted to geo-politics alone. Global currencies are tottering on the edge of collapse, over-leveraged and heavily-indebted economies are going bust and creating crisis in inter-linked economies, fly-by-night startups are going bust faster than they started up, bankrupting their investors and ruining their creditors in the process.
And somewhere over there, democratic territories are being annexed with the aid of military muscle and might, and their sovereignty trampled upon by neighbouring autocratic and covetous heads, breeding hatred and stoking rebellion all along.
The future seems really ominous!
That fear is quite palpable. Despots are emerging, even in so-called democracies. And internecine regional wars are flaring up with unpredictable regularity like forest fires.
In global business too, the story is equally fearful. Yesteryear corporate giants are gradually bowing their way out, making large rooms for new-world internet conglomerates and e-commerce leviathans.
In politics too, the fear-triggering factors are all there. The cancer of corruption in public life is fast spreading and eating into the vitals of many nations. This used to be the case with banana republics, now every governing politician seems to be going bananas.
With that, popular political icons are fast going under the scanner and emerging tattered and tainted. And the damage they have caused to their fragile economies is likely to continue, well into the next decade.
To say the future is fearful is sheer understatement!
Meanwhile, Mother Nature becomes a handmaiden of rapacious industrialist-exploiters. Inevitably, natural catastrophes and calamities occur regularly, even in the unlikeliest of regions. Climate change has already begun wreaking untold havoc in select sectors of the globe.
So, it is like a million mutinies, a million forest fires and a million nuclear wars, all at the same time.
How much can this fragile humanity bear? How long can one grin and bear this man-made rigmarole?
Sadly, is this the kind of world we are going to bequeath to our posterity? What kind of future will our progenies inherit?
We may not be able to wish away many of these orchestrations. And most of them have the dangerous potential to balloon into major war-like situations, major conflagrations, major calamities and unmitigated disasters.
So, be informed. To be informed is to be aware. To be aware is to be prepared. Being prepared is a sure-fire insurance for all of us facing a bleak, fearful future.
The Fearful Future is a humble effort towards informing you all, making you all aware and prepared. Never did the thought of scaring you cross my mind, even once. Believe me, the idea is not to scare you out of your wits, but to secure you in your knowledge about what is in store. Certainly, that should eliminate future shocks.
The Fearful Future will bring under its analytical scanner all coming crises and all potential problems in geopolitics, in over-leveraged economies, in collapsing capital markets, in crumbling economic ecosystems, in fast-depreciating currencies and in economies going bankrupt.
The Fearful Future will also bring under its microscopic analysis the continuous weakening of multi-lateral global bodies such as the United Nations, continents that continue to be dark (both literally and metaphorically), farcical diplomatic relations, over-extended global corporations, meaningless religious equations, growing penchant for soufflé governance, the weasel world of global banking and finance, well, everything that has the power to stoke the flames of fear in your hearts.
Put differently, The Fearful Future will look at everything that has the potential to make your future really fearful.
It is often heard these days, more often in learned military circles, that if we were to face another World War, such an all-destroying war is likely to get sparked off somewhere in the Middle East or in the Indian Subcontinent.
Sobering thought, no doubt. The Fearful Future ensures such a sobriety.
Harish Kumar
Curating Editor
hkumar2d@gmail.com
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