Eamonn Kelly, CEO and president of the forward-thinking Global Business Network looks back and forth, picking up clues about the future rooted in the past. From the 18th Century Enlightenment, Kelly projects into the near future of spirituality in human affairs.
“I think in our lifetime the dominance of secular modernity is coming to an end. We are now seeing the reemergence of the sacred worldview alongside the secular worldview. Most of us have always assumed that the progress of mankind was such that as education increased and prosperity increased the religious and sacred world would decline. That’s been true in Europe but not in the United States, and we are not sure where it’s going to go in the rest of the world.
We have been making an assumption that now has to be challenged. We can see in the U.S., with Christian fundamentalism, and in other parts of the world, including where there is Islamic fundamentalism, that the sacred world is very much back in play. Not just at the fundamentalist end of the spectrum—it’s also emerging at the spiritual end; a rather more tolerant and inclusive approach. Clearly more people are finding the materialism of the secular worldview insufficient to deal with life. So I want to argue that we are going to see in the coming decades a strong requirement for those of us, and I include myself in this, which is firmly of the secular mindset, to have to figure out how we accommodate the sacred mindset. It hasn’t gone away as we thought it might. It’s very much back and going to be in play in the decades ahead.” — Eamonn Kelly, Five Centuries of the Future, Global Business Network
- What key cultural indicators suggest the near future Kelly imagines?
- If Kelly is right about this, is it good news, bad news or simply news?
- What opportunities and obstacles can we anticipate as practitioners of commerce and people of faith?
- What preparations can we make now that might pay dividends in five, ten and 20 years?
