Leading from the Emerging Future

1On the Surface: Symptoms of Death and Rebirth

This chapter explores the symptoms at the tip of the iceberg of our current reality. We move from the toppling of tyrants to an exploration of the deeper fault lines that keep generating the disruptive changes of our time. We also look at these disruptive events from the viewpoint of change-makers: In the face of disruption, what determines whether we end up in moments of madness or mindfulness?

The Toppling of Tyrants

In the fall of 1989, two weeks before the Berlin Wall crumbled, we took an international student group to East Berlin, where we met with civil rights activists in the basement of a church. At one point, the professor who was with us, peace researcher Johan Galtung, put a prediction ...