There are periods in human history when the need to change the thinking on collective matters is so pressing that unless it happens the world cannot live at peace. There was a time when humans lived in societies that we now name as hunters and gatherers.
That was a life limited by its resources and possibilities. Then came the time when humans settled and bigger civilisations came into existence. Then new ideas and new ways of thinking came into being. After sometime the substance of human thinking was not enough to support new formations of collective relations.
So it again changed in the very fundamental ways. Similarly, when empires were formed human mind produced fresh ideas, and created means to sustain an empire. Now we had a world that was run by kings, courts, armies, and battlefields.
The commercial side of an empire was also way different than all the earlier ways of material transaction. So it needed whole-scale changes in the ways of thinking, and executing. The last great period of change was seen when the sun set on empires and the world gave rise to nation-states. This transition from empire to nation-states was not just a shift from one power module to another. It was a transformation much bigger than this.
Democracy, individual choice, and new market forces – the human mind unleashed great ideas. It was because of those ideas that we have a new world where we are breathing. To sustain this world, and manage the problems in this world, global minds produced institutions, and technologies that could run it.
But now it looks like that mankind has reached a stage where another transition is in the offing. The tectonic changes in societal behaviours ask for this transition. The churning in human consciousness asks for such a change. And then we have technology. There are now signs that people will finally travel to places in the outer space. AI will bring changes never seen before. All this points in the direction of another transition in human history. One can only wish that mankind enters this change peacefully.