Ted Gioia points out that momentous changes in society are not often noticed until they’ve taken place, and provides ten warning signs of such a change happening right now:
Would you believe me if I told you that the biggest news story of our century is happening right now — but is never mentioned in the press?
That sounds crazy, doesn’t it?
But that is often the case when a bold new worldview appears.
- How long did it take before the Renaissance got mentioned in the town square?
- When did newspapers start covering the Enlightenment?
- Or the collapse in mercantilism?
- Or the rise of globalism?
- Or the birth of Christianity or Islam or some other earthshaking creed?
The biggest changes often happen long before they even get a name. By the time the scribes notice, the world is already reborn.
You can take this to the bank: If the New York Times notices the Buddha, the enlightened one has already left town.
For example, the word Renaissance got introduced two hundred years after the start of the Renaissance. The game was already over.
The same is true of most major cultural movements — they are truly the elephants in the room. And the elites at the epicenter of power are absolutely the last to notice.
Tiberius may run the entire Roman Empire, but he will never hear the Good News.
There’s a general rule here — the bigger the shift, the easier it is to miss.
We are living through a situation like that right now. We are experiencing a total shift — like the magnetic poles reversing. But it doesn’t even have a name — not yet.
So let’s give it one.
Let’s call it: The Collapse of the Knowledge System.
We could also define it as the emergence of a new knowledge system.
In this regard, it resembles other massive shifts in Western history — specifically the rebirth of humanistic thinking in the early Renaissance, or the rise of Romanticism in the nineteenth century.
In these volatile situations, the whole entrenched hierarchy of truth and authority gets totally reversed. The old experts and their systems are discredited, and completely new values take their place. The newcomers bring more than just a new attitude — they turn everything on its head.
That’s happening right now.
The knowledge structure that has dominated everything for our entire lifetime — and for our parents and grandparents — is collapsing. And it’s taking place everywhere, all at once.
If this were just an isolated situation — a problem in universities, or media, or politics — the current hierarchy could possibly survive. But that isn’t the case.
The crisis has spread into every sector of society which relies on clear knowledge and respected authority.
The ten warning signs
