The Age of The Unthinkable

I’ve been reading a book by Joshua Cooper Ramo, THE AGE OF THE UNTHINKABLE: WHY THE NEW WORLD ORDER CONSTANTLY SURPRISES US AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT. It’s one of those seminal books that simultaneously challenges and opens new windows of thinking. Ramo’s point is that the world we thought we knew no longer exists, so we’d better get with it and radically change our way of thinking. His main application is to US foreign policy, but his logic and conclusions are equally applicable to business and our personal lives. If I were President of Holland America Line, or any other company, I’d want all of my senior people to read THE AGE OF THE UNTHINKABLE and then start to think about the implications for how we do business.

Obama rode to the White House on a wave of change, change which Ramo points out is a hallmark of this generation.

“Change is at the center of all of their lives. They seek it out and, when change is proceeding too slowly, accelerate it. They operate with the self-regard and courage of people who believe that the tide of history is on their side, bringing us closer to whatever dream they find most exciting, whether it is fast universal connections to data or wholly new types of government.”

We are living, according to Ramo, “in an age in which the unthinkable [has] become, frankly, inevitable.”

In this post 9/11 world,

“We are entering, in short, a revolutionary age. And we are doing so with ideas, leaders, and institutions that are better suited for a world now several centuries behind us . . . Whether they are running corporations or foreign ministries or central banks, some of the best minds of our era are still in thrall to an older way of seeing and thinking. They are making repeated misjudgements about the world . . . They came of age as part of a tradition that all international crises had beginnings and, if managed well, ends. They share as background a view in which the spread of capitalism is good and inevitable, in which democracy and technology produce and increase in general stability . . . They lack the language, creativity, and revolutionary spirit our moment demands . . . The sum of their misconceptions has now produced a tragic paradox: policies designed to make us safer now instead make the world more perilous.”

It is a fascinating book with far reaching implications not only for how we govern and relate to other soverign nations, how we view our religious commitments, how we manage businesses, but also how we react in our personal lives to living in a world of change and seemingly disorder. It’s not only a good read, but a book to ponder.