On Tuesday, a friend sent me an interesting article in The Atlantic about a really lofty topic: Davos and the future of the World Order. My first reaction was to chuckle at the loftiness of it, but once I started reading, I found the text informative and inspiring. Here are a few excerpts that summarize important things from which I think we often feel disconnected (bolding is mine):

Moving Past a Decade of Distractions
"For America, the completion of the 9/11 Memorial provided closure that was, in many respects, more than symbolic. After all, in 2011 the U.S. further undercut Al Qaeda's global reach and assassinated Osama bin Laden. It officially ended the Iraq War and announced its timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan. Taken together, the events of 2011 ended the post-9/11 era of security-focused US foreign policy.
Likewise, the financial crisis of 2008-2009 has faded as the fundamental driver of macroeconomic global policy. The euro zone has been left to deal with its current debt crisis largely on its own, as the rest of the world lets market pressure spur muddled results. The United States is showing signs of recovery in fits and starts as it puts the crisis behind it. On the whole, emerging market powerhouses like China have long since rebounded from the crisis and have returned to relentless growth. Most importantly, international cooperation in response to the crisis has not extended beyond it: the greater influence of institutions like the G20, so vital at the beginning of the global financial crisis, has since waned, and coordinated multinational policy has proved fleeting.
In 2012, it is now clear that a US security-driven foreign policy was just a decade-long detour that will not shape geopolitics in years to come. Likewise, the financial crisis no longer dominates policy, nor have its residual institutions engendered sustained international collaboration.
If the old global order is out, what is the new global order? If both the major security concern and the most significant economic event of the last decade have come and gone, where does that leave us? When the dust settles, where will global leadership and international governance come from?"
The Re-emergence of Geography
"We have entered the era of G-Zero, where institutions cannot provide coordinated leadership, nor can any durable alliance of states...In response to the global power vacuum, we'll see a return to geography as a primary organizing principle, where a country's placement will determine its friends and enemies, trading partners, and foreign policy focus to an outsized degree. Countries are already coming together in new ways on a regional level, filling the void left by global institutions with smaller-scale governance within limited spheres of influence. We will see new institutions, organized geographically that promote and reflect regional interests, and new trends exposing the ascendancy of neighborhoods in a G-Zero world."
This reassures my choice to major Geography in college, which is nice, since most people tend to think Geography entails only the memorizing of states and capitals...
The Importance of Youth
I wrote a post entitled "Dialogue of the Generations" a couple of months ago, discussing how the powers of old need and the powers of new need to have a more robust dialogue if we want the future to be any better than the past. The wisdom of elders is fertilizer for the enthusiasm of youth if both parties embrace this reality.
It's no secret that the 21st century presents tough challenges. Doomsayers jump on every opportunity to predict the imminent apocalypse, but I think that they're only denying their own wish for self-destruction, and selfishly imposing it on others. If everyone were to believe that the world's doomed, it would be exactly that. Prophecies--both negative and positive--are self-fulfilling. To paraphrase Henry Ford, what we believe will happen often ends up happening. So it makes sense to believe that the future is bright, and take aggressive, relentless action to ensure that this manifests. Communication is a huge part of this. We've got to have the tough conversations early.
Pipe up.