Back in 2015-2016, when I first began writing columns for Impakter, my contributions covered theories of history based on progressive circularity — the idea that, though we might alternate in the short run between good and bad times, we were spiraling forward towards the good, as in “The Great Turning” (Joanna Macy), “The Green Collar Economy” (Van Jones), “The Collaborative Commons” (Jeremy Rifkin), and “The Circular Economy.”
Then we got the first Trump presidency, cycling us back; the Joe Biden presidency, with its progressive leap forward, and now (alas!) Trump 2.0 and the destruction of every personal, political, national or planetary value that we progressives stand for. It’s been thesis and antithesis all right, but are we heading towards any kind of beneficent synthesis?
It was Hegel who proposed that history moves from one phase to its opposite and then to an (ideal) combination of the two, and Marx who articulated this pattern as Dialectical Materialism. While Hegel believed the process originated with God, Marx saw it as an economic and class struggle that would inevitably end in common ownership of the means of production. In Russia, the supposedly intermediary period of “The Dictatorship of the Proletariat” consolidated into a one man dictatorship; for now, that is where the cycle is stuck.
Everything that Trump and his henchman Elon Musk have ordered during the month since inauguration leads in that same direction. If they succeed in destroying the American election system we, too, will be stuck in a dictatorship/oligarchy just like Putin’s, which is their model. Where have those hopefully progressive theories gone, the ones that saw us moving towards a sustainable planet and the common human good?
I am not sure that it cheers me in the least bit up, but there is a whole school of thought that takes all this smashing and trashing of everything we progressives and liberals cherish as a predictable transition (as in the cases of the Great Turning and the Circular Economy) to something better. In this theory, we are going through a “planetary phase shift” in which we must stand up against a “true dystopia: a deeply centralized AI technocracy with unprecedented power accruing to the US executive branch under the control of Elon Musk and his shareholders,” who espouse a “Dark Enlightenment ideology, inspired by transhumanist eugenics and scientific racism which envisages national democracies being smashed and refashioned into a patchwork of authoritarian structures subservient to transnational techno-capital.”
Say WHAT?
These negative factors are an element of Planetary Phase Theory, created by the Global Scenario Group (GSG) to posit a Great Transition, a concept that Kenneth Boulding originally came up with in 1964.
In a February 2025 article entitled “Trumpocracy 2.0, the Collapse of the American Dream and the Battle for the Next System,” theoriest Nafeez Al Ahmed outlines the Planetary Phase theory that “We are not the resistance. We are the future.” Al Ahmed sees the chaos that is making us feel hopeless about the survival of progressivism as the dialectical disruption that occurs when one system (fossil fuel-driven industrial capitalism) is on its way out and a better one (“a new post-materialist technological infrastructure”) is coming in. He makes the (hopeful?) point that “You cannot stave off’ (this) release stage. You can’t fight entropy. You need to be able to move through it and scale the emergence of the now.” Thus, he argues, we are “entering a liminal space of breakdown, revolution; destruction, renewal.”
Are we cheered up yet?
Al Ahmed seems to assume that we have both the means and the will, which he terms our “collective intelligence,” to transcend the “techno-capital” of the oligarchs and adapt technology for the common good. However, we don’t feel all that intelligent about Artificial Intelligence, nor are we convinced that there are enough of us to resist destruction and renew our society.
Let’s take a fresh look at the advanced technology that we can utilize, keeping in mind that Artificial Intelligence is, in and of itself, a neutral force, as deployable for the common good as it is for tyranny and malice. AI is value free; human beings make decisions about how to use it. For example, there are global organizations that are highly sophisticated adapters of the same technology that Musk and his minions deploy, but these apply planetary phase theory to human-friendly and earth-sustaining solutions. Social Media platforms develop AI algorithms to profit from ads, while the military programs drones to hit certain military targets; earth-friendly organizations, on the other hand, develop algorithms to maximize sustainability, and USAID formulizes optimal landing spots for its food drops
It is entirely a matter of human agency: somebody has to program AI for it to accomplish anything. This is done by transforming piles of raw data into models for the ways and means of accomplishing desired outcomes. This kind of data processing to implement specific choices has developed into a branch of Artificial Intelligence called Decision Intelligence.
In “Link: How Decision Intelligence Connects Data, Actions, and Outcomes for a Better World,” DI inventor Lorien Pratt emphasizes the importance of minimizing people’s distrust of technology by making its sophisticated tools accessible and easy to use. She envisions DI as a way to solve some of “the hard problems we face as a species — conflict change, conflict, poverty, inequality, democracy” by helping decision-makers to “understand the impact of their choices, identify leverage points, and navigate complex situations effectively.”
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Pratt terms ordinary people’s intentions as the “reality stack” in computer decision-making. Models for action are built by processing “the tech stack” or raw data, through the “reality stack” consisting of outcomes based on our values and desires. In her understanding, AI implements organizational decisions in a way that it impacts stakeholders and, ultimately, the world at large. In healthcare, for example, DI can help allocate resources more efficiently, ensuring that funds are spent where they will have the most significant impact. In environmental sustainability, it can guide efforts to reduce supply chain risks and promote long-term solutions.
Well, that’s good news. Or is it?
We can see how to use our means, but are there enough of us to carry it out? Are there enough people who want governments based on the common good and environmental policies based on planetary sustainability who will use Artificial Intelligence for progressive, rather than regressive, ends?
While we were tearing our hair, this worldwide will has actually been expanding. Earth4All, an international systems-based organization acting on behalf of “a sustainable and equitable future for our finite planet,” has collected statistics proving that “the majorities of populations (69% in the US, 70% in the UK, for example) desire a world based on the wellbeing of the planet and its inhabitants.” G20 countries commissioned by Earth4All affirm “that there are huge majorities of people across both the (Global) North and South who are desperate for change, recognize the importance of an ecologically-conscious approach, and want economic transformation.”
The Global Citizens movement, concerned for the way climate change is bringing about worldwide poverty, urges leaders to keep fossil fuels in the ground and support the most-impacted and vulnerable communities. We can take heart from the successes manifest in their list of achievements: 42.9 million actions taken, 1.3 billion lives impacted, $49 billion in funds distributed, and 30 policy statements delivered.
Despite these significant bits of good news, there is no question that America, and European countries like Germany and France as well, are teetering on a knife edge between democracy and fascism, and between saving our beloved planet for future generations and letting the climate render it unsustainable. This basic philosophical dilemma has very ancient roots. As Sherwin Nuland puts it: “We talk about good and evil, and one of my favorite examples of this is something I got from my Orthodox Jewish background, which is the principle of the good inclination living in balance with the evil inclination and one must make that choice at all times.”
Since the American election, the balance between longing for a better world while living in a worse one has become a fraught issue. We Americans, Franciscan Priest Richard Rohr suggests, are misled by a basic fallacy: “We think that our country, our form of government, our way of doing things fell straight from heaven, as if it were God’s plan for the world. We think that if everyone would live like Americans, the world would be happy.” Utopia, in his philosophy, is an aspiration to work for or towards, but which we are never going to see fully actualized; rather, we remain wedged between the “now” and the “not (if ever?) yet.”
Though hard to swallow for people like me who are very utopia-minded, this philosophy is steadying: we have to give our allegiance both to an ideal world which will never come into total realization — the values and ethics of secular humanism, say, or of American democracy, or the teachings of Jesus or Buddha or the Hebrew prophets — over/and against the world we actually live in, where competition for power and the acquisition of wealth are the rule.
It comes down to a matter of the attitude with which you approach your decisions, a way of looking at the world that is framed by your core values. Staying in power seems to be the core value for many Trump-loyal Republicans and even some timorous Democrats these days, but, take heart, plenty of people are bending their actions toward justice, present in the now, and fighting fiercely for the not yet.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of Impakter.com — Cover Photo Credit: Serhii Tyaglovsky.
