Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New Renaissance
b"With Ian Goldin, Professor of Globalisation and Development and Director of the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford, Author of\\xa0The Age of Discovery: Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New Renaissance
\\u201cIt was the best of times, it was the worst of times,\\u2026it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness\\u2026\\u201d, so begins A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens novel set in London and Paris in the context of life before and during the French Revolution. Some might apply these lines to the sentiments of many in today\\u2019s world of rapid change and global discontent. Ian Goldin offers a different view, an optimistic view, in his new book, The Age of Discovery: Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New Renaissance.
As Director of the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford, past Vice-President of the World Bank from 2003 to 2006, and advisor to President Nelson Mandela, among other distinguished positions, Ian Goldin speaks with historical perspective and international acumen when he states that, on the contrary, these are the best of times.\\xa0 We\\u2019re living longer, healthier lives than ever before; our average incomes are higher; our access to many choices and freedoms is higher; and yet, he acknowledges, there\\u2019s a general mood of pessimism in many places.
Goldin refers to the present as a New Renaissance and to explain the general discontent taking place in spite of such optimistic and exciting elements in our society, he highlights several factors.
The world has been fundamentally transformed in the last 26 years, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the rate of acceleration has upset our equilibrium. \\u201cWhen change happens more rapidly,\\u201d he says, \\u201cpeople get left behind more rapidly because if you aren't able to change, if you aren't able to change jobs\\u2026 or go to where the jobs are, or you don't like the changes, you get left out of change more rapidly.\\xa0 Inequality is growing in many countries between people that are able to benefit and those that aren't able, and the sources of uncertainty and complexity are growing, as well.\\u201d A recent example is the reaction of a block of disenfranchised people voting for Brexit, Great Britain\\u2019s decision to leave the European Union.
Goldin points out a distinct parallel between the present time and the European Renaissance of the 14th and 15th centuries, which was most certainly a period of tremendous disruption. The world rose up out of the Dark Ages with an explosion of great artistic, humanistic, and scientific achievements. Great men doing great things filled with imagination: Michelangelo and da Vinci, Copernicus, Galileo, Gutenberg, Columbus, Magellan, and so many more. Not only did people have exposure to great works of art, but the printing press allowed the dissemination of information and knowledge, and the world, which had been a rather small place, suddenly expanded geographically.
But then what followed was a backlash, a pushback from extremists and reactionaries: Savonarola and the Bonfire of the Vanities, Luther attacking the corruption of the Catholic Church, The Catholic Church instituting the Inquisition, heretics, homosexuals, Jews, Muslims were hounded, and no one felt safe. Ultimately, Europe was pulled back to the mental dark ages.
The lesson from those events, says Goldin, \\u201cis how these periods of tumultuous change can lead very, very quickly and very surprisingly to these rapid reversals. In such times, there are always those whose lives actually don't improve, who feel left behind and discontented and rese..."