The most remarkable thing about the past decade is it is likely to be the decade in which people were least likely to die as a result of other people’s malice.

Depends on what is meant by malice.

But for argument’s sake, let us restrict the definition of malice to organised lethal violence, a term which includes conventional war, unconventional war, state terrorism and non-state terrorism.

Some very nasty wars have continued apace. The Congo, for example, was not spared massive violence during the noughties. We didn’t notice because the great powers, especially the US, were not particularly engaged.

On other levels, the arithmetic of death encompassed by the above statement is possibly correct.

But does this mean that the world has developed a higher order of morality in the last ten years? Almost certainly not.

Our relatively malice-free noughties were more likely to be the result of the final years of post-Soviet Pax Americana. No major power had filled the breach of the chief supplier and promoter of insurgency relinquished by the Soviet Union upon its demise.

Perhaps China can institute a Pax Sinoica [a neologism whose time may have arrived] without resort to massive violence, either in its achievement or in hanging on to it in the face of US-inspired insurgency.

My guess, however, is that a future without massive malice is an unlikely one.

In other words, I predict that humans, especially, Chinese and Americans, will prove that their appetite for organised malice has not been satiated.

It’s at worst conceivable that the capacity to use this massive increase in processing power to identify genomic sequences will allow significant innovation in whole fields of vital importance to us human folk — waste disposal, especially of polymers for example), protection from infectious disease, oncology, better targeted drug delivery, biofuels, low footprint mineral resources harvest, CO2 sequestration and much else.

The biggest story of the decade may be the rise of China, but we see it only in terms of a pissing contest with our own governments, not the massive and very real differences in millions of people’s lives.
Likewise, we describe the last decade as being on of rising inequality. Within many societies certainly, a troubling yes. But globally, astonishingly trend was slightly down. The consequence of which was subsumed into the pissing contest.

Subsequently I predict the story of the teens, told by us, will be about us (middle class, mostly white etc.) and self obsessed.

The most remarkable thing about the past decade is it is likely to be the decade in which people were least likely to die as a result of other people’s malice. Population growth had meant that even the World Wars etc. couldn’t bring the twentieth century up to the proportion of previous centuries, and existing hunter gatherer societies seem to demonstate a 40% chance of a male dying of homicide over a lifetime. It speaks volumes that we are so appalled by Afghanistan, Darfur and Iraq. They pale massively even compared to the “optimistic” 90s, with the Yugoslav wars, Rwanda and the Congo war (perhaps the 4th bloodiest ever). Then Iran-Iraq, The first Sudan war, Cambodia, Vietnam, Nigeria, The Great leap Forward, Korea and the rest of them.

After all that we can be disgusted at Iraq. That is the most wonderful thing ever! May we maintain this disgust so we can be appalled enough to bring our murderous urges down even more.

Id have to go with the rise of China. Their involvement in Africa and other 3rd world countries over resource security, untied loans, handouts, and (frankly) general neo-imperialism will be have profound ramifications by 2020.

2) What do you most hope for, and most fear, about the decade to come?

Most hope for concerted international action on climate change. Most fear tipping points are far closer than we think.

3) What idea do you see fading and/or emerging in 2010 and beyond?

Global warming denialism will die off by mid-decade owing not to the victory of scientific rationalism, but to popular rejection – run over by the Clapham Omnibus for denying the bleeding obvious.

Emerging ideas – people to people networks increasingly undermine and supplants traditional state internationalism. Crisis of legitimacy in several western states as carbon elites dominate policy making, increasing restriction on freedom of speech and assembly in response to popular protests over inaction – various brands of authoritarian capitalism jostle for market share.

2) What do you most hope for, and most fear, about the decade to come?

3) What idea do you see fading and/or emerging in 2010 and beyond?

1) The triumph of post-modernism in political and social discourse. The expansion of the internet and its communication possibilities has actually exacerbated this trend, by blurring the distinctions between reality and the cacophony of opinion. The consumers of Fox News get their reality, and others get theirs. Reality has become, perhaps for the first time since the middle ages, disputed territory. Bloggers have become as valued a source of what passes for knowledge influencing policy as are scientists. The Enlightenment is under serious threat for the first time since the imprisonment of Gallileo.

2) Ditto Katz.

3) Fading: Illusions in the global North about the positive and constructive role of the imperial powers in their dealings with the global South, and specifically the illusion that Israel is a democratic light unto the nations.

Emerging: Local and individual action regarding consumption and climate change action eclipsing government initiatives.

1) What was the most significant trend in the century’s first decade?

2) What do you most hope for, and most fear, about the decade to come?

3) What idea do you see fading and/or emerging in 2010 and beyond?

1) The rise of Internet 2.0. Where else can us base partisans get our fix of post-structuralist analysis of the pollies at Canberra? But seriously, it has the potential to change Western society beyond imagining, and to widen the gap between us & with the rest of the world.

2) WMD terrorism existing, pandemics existing, India and Pakistan throwing down, the assassination of the American president, a new bubble emerging before some basic sensible controls can be imposed on high finance, know-nothingism stopping any further climate change policy. Those are the fears.

The hopes? Why would they ask us about the hopes in the same sentence as they ask us our fears? Is this a highschool essay contest?

3) Obviously something to do with stopping AGW. Hopefully not a return to neo-Malthusian-population-control-before-everything-else as our main attitude to the issues of the developing world (though I was bothered to see a ‘Lateline’ report by Ticky Fullerton pushing this very line a month ago. I would hope some of the science bloggers like Lambert took that show apart, but I’m not optimistic, and won’t be googling for that.)

My gut feeling is that any further American decline will be imperceptible, I don’t expect the greenback to remain in the gutter permanently. Likewise I think the PRC is reaching a ceiling that can only be breached by full ‘glasnost’ and ‘perestroika’, and I don’t think the regime looks to Taipei as an example of how mainland Chinese should be allowed to choose the form of their own government/civil society.

Here too, it might be germane to observe that the sort of authoritarian state led capitalism characteristic of the Chinese model has both its parallels and echoes in the West

I wonder if they’re just Czarist Russia with a trade surplus. An analogy that will screw with the Marxians’ heads, I admit.

2. Hope. That Western governments will sieze the opportunity of Global Warming Awareness and Resources Depletion to change the course of our civilisation towards clean perpetual sustainability away from unfettered exploitation.
Fear. Greed will dominate commerce and politics for another 10 critical years.

3. Fading. The love of the “car” as a thing to dominate our way of life. Cars have become a trap that confines and isolates. While cars give us mobility, their form and their needs are beginning to cost more than they save.
Emerging. A desire to step back from the frenetic chase for asset security. Our emerging young are demonstrating a new class of personal security based on pride of their own performance supported by their mobility of interconnection. This can go horribly wrong when the new media are used as weapons of hate, but from what I can see the new media are used for positive personal development and sharing. The nice part about this new order is that parasitic commerce is struggling to find ways take a hold.

The end of the End of History.

2) What do you most hope for, and most fear, about the decade to come?

Hope: Cross-cultural consensus on planetary limits.
Fear: Various kleptocracies will vie with increasing violence for access to strategic resources.

3) What idea do you see fading and/or emerging in 2010 and beyond?

Fading: neoliberal mythologies of limitless growth.
Emerging: a new, combative mercantilism led by an alliance of national political elites and favoured corporations. The relationship between Goldman Sachs and the Obama administration is an embryonic form of this relationship.