Future studies are often frowned upon. Somehow social sciences do not like to peer into the future.
With the exception of thinkers such as Ziauddin Sardar, Heidi Toffler, her husband Alvin Toffler, invariably, John Naisbitts, author of the “Megatrends,” almost no one has systematically tried to appropriate the paradigm of social studies into understanding what is to come.
Yet, Future Studies are key to the workings of the government. As and when a country performs a Five Year plan, atypical of what the erstwhile Soviet Union used to do, a tradition that is maintained by the likes of India and Malaysia, for example, such forays are suggestive of the importance of “Future Studies”.
When governments go into any polls by first studying the electoral preferences of the people, the dynamics of future studies have begun to impose a certain degree of weight on the field.
In other words, it is almost unavoidable that social studies are embedded with a huge proportion of future studies. Faculty members in University of Hawaii Manoa and University of Tokyo do take the fields seriously to allow ‘Future Studies, ‘ as a stand alone discipline. So what are we to do with the book by Hamish McRae ?
After all, Shell Scenario Studies are perhaps the most sought after method of understanding what will take place in future.
The intelligence analysis report of the intelligence agency, especially the Central Intelligence Agency, is one of the leading institutions to look into the future based on what the present can avail.
Hamish McRae did not produce his Magnus Opus on Future Studies.
But then again neither did many dictators—–this despite the fact that the dictators themselves were in control of the most number of variables.
“The World in 2050” is a light and pleasant read in the sense that it does not provide any alarmist views that any one single region will crater and fall due to the possibility of environmental disaster or nuclear exchange.
Hamish McRae, meanwhipe, affirmed that any one set of outcomes in Europe are likely.
First, the core member states of the European Union (EU) may enhance their collaboration with the United Kindom.
Second, those on the second ring can choose to have more collaboration with Turkey.
Third, European Union may find itself muddling through the present, indeed, all the way into the future.
Lastly European Union just stalled to remain geopolitically and geo economically relevant.
As for China and India, Hamish McRaae believed that they can continue to be big. It is their size thar will give them the imprimatur to lord over others, rightly or otherwise.
As for the United States (US) as and when it is receptive to more immigrants into his fold by 2050, with its population growing up to 380 Million people, with the further assumption that the US government does not allow social and racial divisions to render their faultlines even sharper, then the US would continue to be a massive military power.
That being said, what Hamish McRae did not touch on is the problem of addiction. Whether it be drugs or social media, all of which can badly distort the values of the new generation.
Granted the omission of these two variables, this book has to be read with a keener sense of how Hamish McRae may have inadvertently left out other important factors too.