Gerald E. Allan, president of Criteria Architects Inc., is a WorldFuture 2008 keynote speaker. Here, he discusses his upcoming presentation: Five Great Ideas and Five Great Challenges the World Needs to Address. "The very characteristics that early humans evolved in order to survive in a harsh, dangerous, and competitive environment are now working against us in the complex technological and interdependent environment we have created,” says Allan. We asked him how we might move from competition to sustainability.

Interview by Rick Docksai

THE FUTURIST: How do the challenges of today compare with other times in human history when the demands of life very quickly and very dramatically changed, i.e., when humans discovered farming or that they could cross oceans? To what extent is our present challenge unique?

Allan: Everything done previously always had a localized impact. Today, the things we do have a global impact. Things happen now in universal time. Every advanced culture on the planet could now produce enough power [so] that their actions would have global consequences. You can do it technologically, biologically, environmentally; we have produced enough power to, in fact, do-in the whole system. Previously that was impossible.

The controlling element has to do with responsibility and being far-sighted. Without that, we will run right off the edge. 

We’re fascinated by technology, and we try to do the best we can until we get more information. But the question is, once we get the information, are we able to make a transition? The automobile gave us more freedom than any king or queen in history. But the unintended consequence is [that] it’s producing the need for this infrastructure that goes into streets, parking lots (taking farmland to support it), declining resources, creating pollution.

Every technology has as much positive effect as it does negative. Technology is always neutral and it always depends on our wisdom to manage it. Why it’s so difficult now is it’s never happened before. People born at this time have to take what I call a universal exam, a test everybody has to take.

FUTURIST: How easy or difficult do you expect it to be to effect this seemingly monumental change in human existence?

Allan: The future always yields change, and change always yields problems. Then you get most people trying to prop up what was before.

The Chinese have this beautiful character for problem: It’s not “problem,” it’s “decision point.” And the character divides into “decision point” and “opportunity.” True leadership says ‘What are the opportunities in this situation? How can we mobilize to do something about this?”

The crisis we have coming could arrive in one of any multiple forms. One such form is annihilation, and that’s not very interesting to talk about. Another is dieback: The population has to shrink. We’ve produced a fabulous source of food on this planet. It depends on cheap fuel, and cheap fuel has now changed that picture because it’s not now cheap fuel.

Another is subsistence, which means failed nation-states and wars to protect the wealthy. That’s the most dangerous actually. The one that would be the best case is [where] we evolve from all of this, there is enough for all, and we move to a global intelligence. We [would] move from the overuse of the planet to sustainable use. We’ve used our resources faster than those resources can replenish themselves. My question back to you is, Do we have to have the crisis, or are we smart enough to avert it? It’s not preordained.

This new level of global intelligence is achievable, but it’s going to take leadership to assist us. I don’t think that we can do it individually. 

FUTURIST: There are some who say that human nature cannot change. What is your rebuttal?

Allan: When I first put this together, I went through human nature as it manifested itself throughout history. And it was so dark I said I can’t give this presentation. What comes from that is that our genetics, our biological predispositions, are fixed, but the choices we make are not. It isn’t “can we change?” but “can we choose?” That’s the difference.

The fear factor (hostility to unfamiliar people, ideas, and places), is genetic. We can’t overcome that. That’s built into us. If we don’t react to a situation and protect ourselves, we can die. We can’t not have fear. But we can choose bravery, which is not the absence of fear but action in the face of fear. Our Founding Fathers in Philadelphia, when they wrote the Declaration of Independence, were signing their death warrants. They were choosing bravery in the face of fear.

We can also choose learning. Learning is the early process of dividing into parts. Today we now use massive information. Understanding is more sophisticated than learning. The only thing that gets people really riled up is lack of respect. They can be poor, impoverished, but if you do not show them proper respect, they will fight. All adults want respect. And all children want to succeed. If you give children an environment in which they cannot succeed, they will create one in which they can succeed.

Work and worth--our species came from tribes that built into us the desire and need for purpose. If you take away the human ability to find a purpose, to work, then the culture fails. That’s quickly evolving in our failed nation-states. Failed nation-states come from poverty and situations where people can’t eke out enough for themselves. And if it becomes severe enough, then there is mass unemployment. And we know the psychology of unemployment. It’s a loss of purpose, which leads to depression and a sense of I-don’t-give-a-damn. And then someone comes along and says ”I will give you purpose.” It may not be a good purpose. And we see it take the form of terrorism. The futurist outlook is: “think globally, act locally.” The terrorism outlook is “think locally, act globally.”

FUTURIST: The twentieth century saw the emergence of international entities like the United Nations and European Union, and substantial commitments by the industrialized nations to help spur development in poorer nations. Are these early steps toward the new way? What are they missing?

Allan: Absolutely: Communication is essential. What’s missing is one thing, and that is leadership. I think that in the long run it’s probably that leaders need to realize what leadership is as well as what it’s not. Number one, they have to realize that they’re part of a global community they can’t control by fear.

Number two, they have to listen and learn from past cultures. I’ve given the example before of Mayan temples, in which the tragic flaw was stucco. It was a manifestation of unintended consequences; the leadership took on the idea of power first and sustainability second.

Third, leadership has to understand context. The environment has no boundaries, so you have to think of that bigger picture. That’s different from saying “we will take care of you.” It’s not symptom-treating.

Leadership can set clear goals and ask citizens to participate in meeting the challenge. It’s not “we’ll take care of you.” The UN, EU, G7, all those are what I call social tech, as opposed to tool tech. Tool tech is technology. Social tech is what we develop to help us live better together, like libraries and open-source information on computers. Leadership, in this case, must set the tone for these to be successful. And the leadership cannot be naïve. 

FUTURIST: To what extent have current anti-immigration movements in Europe and the Americas pushed us back? Are they new? Do they have staying power?

Allan: Here is a matter of human desire and choice. I would choose to have a better life; I would choose to have a better life for my children. Built into me is a desire for work and worth; built into this is this interesting family structure, because work and self-esteem come from that. To me, the anti-immigration mind-set is a symptom. It’s symptom-treating instead of problem-solving. The problem-solving is [about] how we create meaningful work so that everyone can enjoy work and worth.

We have this incredible allegiance to the group we happen to be born into. That was necessary to our early survival because it allowed us to raise our children and protect them. And anyone outside this group was seen as extremely dangerous. But if you carry that over into a modern society, it doesn’t work. The old ways of doing things no longer work.

FUTURIST: The twentieth century will be remembered as a time of great fear that the human race could obliterate itself using weapons of mass destruction. Is the fear of an Armageddon with us still? Is it justified?

Allan: Weapons of mass destruction will never do it. Only the United States and the Soviet Union could ever deliver that kind of blow. The missile crisis in Cuba that Kennedy dealt with--I don’t think that could happen today. I think nuclear weapons could be tossed around on a regional basis, which would be the wrong model. The things that would be Armageddon-quality are going to be very small. They are biological; they are environmental. It gets to the point where we can’t control it, and it results in tremendous loss of life, a very cloistered quality, and centuries to recover.

We don’t need to invent new things. We just have to make the right choices from things that are available to us. Are we wise enough to learn from them?

FUTURIST: Let’s talk about the environment. You have stated often that we need to change our attitude toward the environment and realize that we should not keep trying to control it. Many will say that we’ve done a lot of good things environmentally in the last few decades: land conservation, recycling, pollution controls are more common; there is greater concern about global warming and animal species extinction. Are we stepping in the right direction?

Allan: Absolutely: But the question is, how do we know this? Hazel Henderson, 20 years ago, talked about the need to have an economics that includes the environment. And it’s never caught on. It took a movie by Al Gore to say “Hey, this is what is happening.” So now, it’s popular.

The first step is awareness. The second is asking “how does it affect me?” The third is asking “Can I do anything about it?” And then they talk to their friends and take action. The consequences are real. You can’t change anything. If you can’t measure it, how do you measure it in an honest way? I do strategic planning for companies. The CEOs want to formulate a plan, the rank and file say “what happened to the last one?” and so I’ll say “just look at the plan from five years ago. And put red stickers on categories where you haven’t made any progress and green on categories in which you’ve made progress.” They almost always have green stickers on finances, because they have a comptroller who is telling them week by week what is going right or wrong.

The one where you almost always have a red sticker is human development. That’s the difference. That’s why with the environment, the challenge is to move from sustainability to replenishment. But the question is, how do we measure? How do we know how we’re doing? How do we measure the ability to keep this and maintain this? How do we know that? We don’t know the outcomes as well as we should.

It’s very positive right now with the steps we’re taking. We’re making movement. It used to be jobs first and environment second. Now it’s swung the other way; it’s gotten to be the environment first and jobs second. It has to be neither. The environment means new jobs and new processes, but at a level we never thought before.

Contact Carpet is a great example. They don’t sell a carpet anymore, they issue a carpet. When you are done with it, you bring it back and they make a new carpet out of it. We have the models, but what you need is an honest broker.

FUTURIST: Is globalization a good thing? In other words, is internationalizing commerce a prerequisite to recognizing that we are all the same tribe?

Allan: It’s important to realize that with modern transportation and communication, globalization is inevitable. You can’t stop it.

To the second question, is it a prerequisite, I say that commerce is a prerequisite. It has to be followed by fairness and trust. Instead, what happens is we say, “we’re going to produce hybrid seeds that work in drought situations. But we’re not going to sell them to you. We’re going to sell the produce to you. We’re also going to own the water rights and the property rights to the farmland.”

What nature does with its profit is create life. It creates miniaturization and complexity. Globalization moves to simplicity, away from complexity.

Globalization is a very good thing. But when it’s being done without respect, it’s very dangerous. In Dubai, we have all the wealth in the world used to build a city in 10 years. The architecture is fabulous, built for people to go skiing in the middle of the desert. But people come to work and they take their passports away; they don’t provide the housing, they pay them a horrible wage, and they [don’t let them] leave when they find out it’s not as good as they had thought. [This is] the model of absolutely the wrong direction. The administration on the other end is not dealing with fairness and respect, and thinking “these people could be our citizens and bring their families.”

Madagascar has set the goal of a zero-carbon footprint. They’re asking the right question environmentally. But what is the social tech that will accompany it?

FUTURIST: Some see the Internet as a powerful means to global interconnectedness–anyone can connect to the global network of information. Others see it as an accelerator of fragmentation--everyone carves out their little niche and can block out the greater glut. What do you think? Will the Internet help us get to where we need to be?

Allan: We have never had that before. We have never had the possibility that anyone on the planet can talk to anyone else. That is a dream that seemed always impossible, and we are there. And we are a herd animal, so it’s interesting to ask what impact would that have.

There is an old science-fiction movie called The Red Planet. The understory was [that] when our space travelers visited the red planet, there were no people. There were beautiful houses but no people. The people that had been there had a replicator that produced anything they needed to their best wishes. And it wiped them out. That was a cautionary tale built back in the fifties. The Internet is that same sort of thing. It can do wonderful things, but it can also create isolation. It can lead to destructive activities. Open source has powerful potential but we have to ask it important questions. Left to our own devices, we will entertain ourselves.

The human mind loves to be challenged. The oil thing—we have humans in their garages coming up with all kinds of crazy ways to solve it. But instead of celebrating them we give them a few minutes on TV and forget about them. 

The Internet is an opportunity. Right now, every day, you see a different person coming up with a different solution. One guy came up with a fiberglass car. It gets 300 miles per gallon. Three-wheel deal, he’s driving around in it; it doesn’t have a catalytic converter, isn’t crash proof, but that’s okay: What can we do to improve on it? How many engineers can you pay that are trapped in their own paradigm? GM and [other] companies could work on it but don’t give them permission to do it.

Real progress happens at the margins, but it needs the center. A good leadership says we’re going to respect the edges, give them some assistance.

The Five Ideas is about this very thing. What I’d like to do the following year is come back and say “This is what we got from the blog and letters. How can we build upon it?” I don’t want to give a presentation that does not offer a challenge. I don’t want to just give them information they can use or reject.

FUTURIST: How would community life be different in the new paradigm? Family life? Workplace life?

Allan: We should look at models that already exist rather than creating a new one. I ask why is Denmark the happiest place on earth? Number one is that they, on their own dollar, brought together 50 top economists around the world to create the Copenhagen Consensus, in which these 50 economists asked, What is the biggest cost benefit to solving all the problems we have in front of us? What is the return on our investment if we do  that instead of doing nothing? Out of that, they came up with their top 50 problems and solutions. It’s terrific. Why didn’t we do that?

They are a society that put social development and medicine first whereas we put property and profits first. Who is happier? Even the queen has a bicycle. They have a plan to be fossil-fuel free in 20 years. They are putting that statement out there that we are going to the moon in 10 years. What they are saying is [that] this is a challenge we are making to our citizens, to our public officials, to our scientists: What is available, what can we adapt? There is an economy used in a different way from the economy of scarcity.

I think there are models out there. Family life is one source. But family life has to have the expectation that it can have life, health, safety and a living wage. No one should have to work an eight-hour day and still not be able to support his or her family. With that kind of disrespect for the person and the family so common, it is not surprising that family life dissolves, that it can’t hang together.

What I’m asking the audience to do in advance is come up with ideas that will help deal not just with these issues, but deal with our human condition. I’m not looking for technological ideas necessarily but technology in light of who we are as human persons.

One idea that I like concerns community life: Every child in every culture would be required to provide public service for one or two or three years. You could do it in medicine, the environment, the military, it could be wherever. If you completed one year, society would give you two years of vocational schooling. If you did it for two years, society would give you four years of community college. If you did it for three, you would have free education at any institution in the world.

Another that I have talked about concerns global citizenship: If you are going to be a leader of a country, you have to spend at least six months of working in six different countries of different economic stages, as well as two years of education in two different countries; you have to also learn two other languages beyond your own. Then you could be a global citizen and could run for office. We now live in a global community.

The Peace Corps is a good idea but it’s a one-way street: We give but we do not receive. Once we move to that level where we give and receive, we are now a tribe.            

The workplace can evolve as it looks around and says, What is our vitality, what are the issues not being addressed? That’s that sort of strategy.

FUTURIST: What made you decide to address the World Future Society?

Allan: From the time I joined it, the magazine was terrific, was always global, offered the best social as well as environmental and technology insights. Some magazines are dazzling graphically and offer lots of exciting stories about breaking news items. But with THE FUTURIST the audience are seekers looking for the bigger picture. And I’m honored to have the opportunity to talk to a group like this.

Every generation has an opportunity to be great. We cannot pass this on. If we don’t accept the challenges of today, we have passed up the opportunity to be great. Because this is our challenge.

Gerald E. Allan will present his talk Five Great Ideas and Five Great Challenges the World Needs to Address at WorldFuture 2008 on Sunday, July 27, 2008, 7:30-9:30 p.m.

This interview was conducted by Rick Docksai

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